Hello, I’m going to Berkeley this fall, and I’m considering CS as my major and possibly a double major in statistics.
So I was wondering what classes I should take first semester and how many. Cuz I do not know the work load of each class.
So for first semester I was thinking of taking Math53 and CS61A, but I didn’t know if I should take CS70 first semester too. Also, what classes do you guys recommend for the breadth requirements? and how should I balance things out? Thank you so much guys.
Yo just finished my first year as an EECS major. Definitely take 61A first semester. I’m not sure if 54 is a requirement for Stats, but I recommend taking Math 54 before 53. Don’t take CS 70 first semester, it’s a notoriously difficult class and is usually taken first semester sophomore year or second semester freshman year if you’re feeling ambitious. I can’t really speak to breadth requirements, but I recommend getting your AC/R&C requirements out of the way ASAP before your technical units start piling up. For reference, my first semester, I took Math 1B, CS61A, History100AC, and CompLit R1B, and it was a pretty doable semester, with time to join some extracurricular clubs.
what about 61b? when did you take CS61b?
In theory, it is possible to take all of CS 61A, CS 70, Math 53, and Math 54 together, as they do not have prerequisite dependencies on each other. However, only those who live and breathe CS and math all the time would find that a desirable schedule.
CS 70 is basically a math course, but it is different enough from most of the math you have been taking so far. Here is a course web site for CS 70 if you want to preview it: http://www-inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~cs70/fa16/
Math 1B does include some introductory differential equations material that may not have been included in other calculus 2 courses or high school AP calculus BC courses. You may have to self-study it if you take skip Math 1B and take Math 54.
As far as workload goes, the nominal workload is 3 * U hours per week of work, where U is the number of units a course is. In practice, courses with labs (including art studio or music performance as well as science and engineering labs), large term projects (including in humanities and social studies courses), or computer programming assignments tend to be higher workload than others.