How hard is changing majors at Cal?

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of California - Berkeley
1

<p>I'm dying for the 25th to come, which is probably why I'm still up at 4am. Got rejected to UCLA and accepted to UCSD (which I'm still surprised at with a SAT of 1880) but Cal is my top priority, of course.</p>

<p>Thing is, I applied with a Chemistry major. I would like to switch into engineering (I realize they are different schools). How hard is changing majors into engineering, esp. with Cal's great engineering reputation?</p>

<p>Thanks.</p>

<p>-A nervous, college bound student not yet ready for real life.</p>

2

<p>First of all, don’t be so nervous, you have plenty of time to figure it out – basically all of us needed that too :D</p>

<p>Switching is possible, but takes very good performance to go to the College of Engineering, which is traditionally tough to get into.</p>

3

<p>Changing majors is as easy as filling out paperwork if you have the grades to back you up. Since CoC and CoE have pretty much the same lower-div requirements, you can wait it out for a semester or two to see how you’re doing and what you like, and if at that point you have a GPA of at least 3.6 in the engineering lower-divs, you should be able to switch with no problem.</p>

4

<p>While AppleJuice is right, getting a 3.6 GPA in engineering prerequisites is far from trivial.</p>

5

<p>a gpa of 3.0 and above in technical/engineering prereq courses should be enough to switch into the COE… unless you’re trying to switch into EECS, BioE and Engin Physics, since these three are the most competitive… i don’t understand why it’s so hard to switch into E Physics, though… i heard that this major is very very unpopular.</p>

6

<p>Well I would love to switch into Mechanical or EECS (looks like MechE is the way to go here though). Good to know CoC and CoE prereq’s are similar, takes a load off my mind.</p>

<p>Just… How hard is getting a 3.0+ gpa in engineering anyway? Would love something to compare the difficulty to. I’m taking 6 APs (Physics, Lit, Econ, Gov, Calc BC, Psych) and piano advance to top it off and I don’t think its very hard at all. I’m scared that getting doing well at Berkeley is like study 24/7 and still fail…</p>

7

<p>Not everyone studies that much here. There are basically two types of people who excel at Cal, those who have good study habits and study all the time, and those who are naturally intelligent but not lazy enough to never study. I know a few engineers who are very smart and study some but not nearly as much as a lot of Cal students and are pulling off 4.0’s in engineering pre-reqs, so its really not impossible, it just depends on how quickly you can grasp and apply abstract concepts.</p>

8

<p>Everything you need to know about changing into COE can be found at [Change</a> of College — UC Berkeley College of Engineering](<a href=“http://coe.berkeley.edu/students/prospective-students/admissions/change-of-college]Change”>http://coe.berkeley.edu/students/prospective-students/admissions/change-of-college).</p>