<p>I've never been to a public school before so I was wondering- is it hard to get the classes you want? One of my friends told me that it takes 5 1/2 years on average to graduate from UC because they're so overpopulated and there is limited class space. Is this true? I'm guessing it's not but I wanted to make sure.. Thanks</p>
<p>Depends tons on major (if classes tend to be hard to get) and class standing (how early signups are). And certainly one can graduate quite comfortably in 3 years from many majors.</p>
<p>There are challenges in getting into any specific class, but with some advanced planning and flexibility it is very achievable. That is, you may have a list of requisite classes to take, but some degree of freedom in the exact sequence. If in a particular semester, you find class X is already full, you take class Y.</p>
<p>Secondly, Cal provides a mechanism to help with this. The appointment to register for classes is assigned based on seniority and some other factors, thus making it increasingly easy to snag the remaining classes you need as your priority goes up. Some classes that are in high demand will divide openings into categories, some of which are by ‘year’ or for people in the major, thus allowing those that need these most to get in. In addition, registration is broken into two halves, phase I and phase II, by limiting the number of units that you can register for in the first phase. This lets you prioritize the classes that you most need, locking them in durng phase I. Others, who want the class but consider it of lesser important (to them) compared to some other course, will wait to phase II before trying to enroll. </p>
<p>Sections with less desireable times, i.e. 8AM, fill last. More than one professor may be giving the class in a given semester; the one with higher student approval, better grade distributions or whatever will be the one that fills first, but if you need a class to graduate you may find space in the less preferred profs section. </p>
<p>One of the main factors in taking extra semesters if when someone changes majors late in the game, thus introducing a new set of pre-req courses that were not taken under the ‘old game plan’. If you make minor shifts, much of the requirements remain the same. If, on the other hand, you make a more dramatic change, you will be adding a lot of extra units that need to be taken.</p>
<p>Cal has a limit on total units that can be taken, which will make it very very hard to take 5.5 years to graduate. You have the cap, but also minimum units to be considered a full time student. For the college of Letters and Sciences, 13 units minimum times 11 semesters would set an absolute minimum of 141 units, yet the L&S cap is 130 units for a single major, 136 for double major/simultaneous degrees. At the average pace of 15-16 units per semester, you hit the 120 needed to graduate in 8 semesters. At the bare minimum of 13 per semester, which almost nobody understakes except for the first freshman semester as an adjustment, you already have 104 at the end of the 8th semester and might go all the way to the end of the fifth year. Someone who is working full time and supporting a family, using an exception to get to some lower than minimum enrollment, might need a lot, but you are describing a situation of almost the extreme of the bell curve and nothing that is representative.</p>
<p>Thanks for the info guys.</p>
<p>Since I’m going into Engineering, and I know it’s an impacted major, I was wondering specifically how hard it is for those classes? I’m not sure what type of engineering, but I’ll probably go in declared as Mechanical.</p>
<p>Pretty much the same. Minimum is 12 units for CoE, but there are more prescribed classes and the average workload for engineering students is a bit higher. Maybe slightly harder to finish in 3 years, but still easily do-able in four. Unless you change after two years to a totally unrelated college and major, e.g. mech engineering to art history.</p>
<p>For mechanical engineering, it’s pretty easy to finish in 3 years provided that you have already killed some prereqs by taking AP tests in Calc, Chem, and physics and take only the required courses while you’re in Berkeley. The reason I’m saying this is that AP’s pretty much get you out of most freshman courses so that you can start taking 2nd year courses during your first year.
You should be able to get the classes you want if you plan ahead and make your schedule flexible. Getting into my classes has never been a problem for me. But one thing to note is that since engineering classes are so heavily dependent on prereqs, not being able to get into a single class can hold you back an extra semester.</p>