<p>Realized my economics degree is very useless and I wish I majored in something that gave me a technical background.</p>
<p>Originally planning to graduate in December, but I'm allowed 2 more semesters. </p>
<p>I would plan on taking CS61A this summer, then during the fall I'd do CS61B, 1 CS elective, then in the spring CS70, 2 CS electives, and then during that summer CS61C.</p>
<p>How does this sound? Or is it not worth it. Because I heard people can still get software engineering jobs with CS minors which I would definitely prefer.</p>
<p>I take it you are not that interested in the kinds of jobs that economics graduates find?
<a href=“https://career.berkeley.edu/Major/Econ.stm[/url]”>https://career.berkeley.edu/Major/Econ.stm</a></p>
<p>Yes, taking some CS courses may be helpful, although employers may understandably look at CS majors before CS minors.</p>
<p>For the minor, you need CS 61A, 61B, 61C, 70 and three upper division CS courses (162, 170, EE 122, 186, 169, 161 are probably most helpful for industry jobs).</p>
<p>Some (mainly transfer) students with programming background do double up CS 61A and 61B, or 61B and 61C, in order to complete prerequisites for upper division courses more quickly. The upper division CS courses that do not list 61C as a prerequisite are 160, 170, 184, 188, 189, C191, 195, H195.</p>
<p>I am interested in those jobs, but my GPA is too low. I’ve applied to way too many internships and always get rejected. And even if I can get them during full time recruiting, I also really do want a technical background.</p>
<p>It seems like most of those upper division courses require both CS61A and CS61B as prereqs… hmm… do you think it’s okay if I take them concurrently with 61B?</p>
<p>And before someone says that if my GPA is low in Econ. then I won’t be able to survive CS, my GPA is low for good reason. I had terrible medical problems during my first 2 years at Berkeley, in addition to the fact that I was pretty arrogant and thought I could do well without studying. Started studying during the past year with slight medical issues and I’ve been doing really well in all my classes.</p>
<p>It is probably easier to get away with 61A and 61B together than 61B and an upper division CS course that lists 61B as a prerequisite together, though either case would be more doable if you had partial knowledge of 61B stuff going in.</p>
<p>61A and 61B together in the summer would be an intense summer, though.</p>
<p>I think you’re better off pursuing a MS in computer science. But yeah, if your GPA is low in economics (health issue or not), I think it will be pretty difficult for you to survive CS. </p>
<p>I personally feel that even economics is a little difficult. (which is why I’m not doing it) Of course, an economics degree without much statistics or advanced technical content is relatively easy to obtain - but it’s a choice between rigor and high GPA. You might as well do a easy major without much technical stuff in it and get very high GPA. </p>
<p>On the other hand, a double major in economics and maths is just as technical as a CS minor. But the jobs for “economics” students are not for these students only. For example, a sociology major with a 3.9 GPA may get these jobs as well. I think for math/econ - it is designed for those who want to pursue economics PhDs.</p>
<p>If you just want the “economics” jobs…you can be like Stephen Schwarzman, who did an “easy easy” major at Yale and Harvard MBA; Or like Mitt Romney, who did English at BYU then Harvard MBA; or…Hank Paulson, who did English at Dartmouth…then Harvard MBA. From my point of view, I think a high GPA matters more than the choice of major/ minor.</p>
<p>Have you ever program before? If so, did you like it? Do you think you are good at it?</p>
<p>Several high school students have asked my opinion about getting into CS and I always start with those questions.</p>
<p>EECS/CS (the EECS students take the same CS classes) at Berkeley are considered top programs in the country and therefore very competitive. If you don’t like it or is not good at it, it will be hard to do well.</p>
<p>I don’t agree that Econ is a useless degree but a low GPA will hurt. A low GPA in CS might not get you any jobs either.</p>
<p>Unlike getting a MBA where you can come from any undergraduate major, it will be extremely hard to get a MS in CS wihtout some related CS undergraduate degree.</p>
<p>If you think you can do it in 2 semesters, do well in it and you can afford to stay 2 more semesters, go for it.</p>
<p>Keep in mind that you might not be able to start with a software engineering job with only a minor, but there are plenty of jobs that can use a CS minor.</p>
<p>Hard stuff like CS generally can’t be considered as a makeshift solution. </p>
<p>I think it’s generally a bad idea to get into it for the money. You’d have to be like woz (who did CS at Berkeley), who simply enjoyed building the best computer…</p>
<p>Money-wise, I think the economics/business job ends up being more lucrative unless you’re talking about having a tech-startup, say, Square or Tumblr</p>
<p>Agree with nespresso.</p>
<p>Doing CS just for the money is probably not going to work out well, doing something you are interested in/good at will usually have better results</p>
<p>Econ can get you lucrative jobs. S is third year Biz Econ major and got multiple job offers this summer. He accepted one for the summer and convinced another one to let him work in the fall. He only needs one more quarter to graduate so he is taking the fall quarter off. He likes what he is doing (very motivated and proactive) and he is good at it (very high GPA).</p>
<p>Not all tech startup founders are tech people although many are. Some are from other fields such as business.</p>
<p>BusyMei, is your son at Berkeley? Or is “biz econ” something at UCLA? I wonder if a political economy major has the same out-of-college prospect as the biz econ majors do. If not, I’ll try to go to business school right out of college (I’ve got work exp already)</p>
<p>For tech startup (I was lucky to be part of two startup processes), the best team is made up of pure techies and businesspeople. You could see this from the example of Apple, made up of a somewhat manipulative Steve Jobs and a techie Woz. Yahoo is such an example, too - at its early stage Jerry Yang asked one of his HBS friends for help to draw up the plan. </p>
<p>In one of the tech startups I was involved with (as a valuation person using DCF and rule-of-thumb method), the founder was an accountant (A chartered accountant actually) who hated his job as a CFO at a public software company. But I valued his company (post-money) at only $5M so leading to his belief that I was deliberately trashing his company or that I thought his imagined financial plan was completely bogus. Most start-up financial plans are indeed wild dreams.</p>
<p>The biggest problem CS majors - or any engineers - have in the start-up process is that they are trained to use the waterfall development (i.e., engineering method) approach. It’s product-driven and ignores consumer demand. But the correct, fashionable way, is to use Steven Blank’s customer discovery process. Many founders don’t know this and develop stuff people don’t need/want, although of very high engineering caliber. (Apple Newton / Motorola Iridium, etc.)</p>
<p>So now, generally in the start-up world, highly sought-after are the ones who know exactly what the targeted customers will want (i.e., if I develop A, A will sell) People now tend to see the engineering (soft or hardware) part as the easiest hurdle to jump through. It’s a little…while not completely true…if I raise $1M, I can always hire a bunch of Berkeley/ MIT engineers to work for a couple of months, can I not?</p>
<p>I was in a slightly similar situation as you as an mcb major but I just turned out to lose interest in mcb and gain interest in cs. Because of units, the most I could obtain is a minor, which is what I’m pursuing now. I also want to comment that you can get a software engineering job with a minor if you’re experienced in some way. I have a friend with no cs degree or minor who got a software engineering job out of college. He’s just been programming on his own time since high school. </p>
<p>Having gone through lots of scenarios and plans myself, here’s the best schedule I would recommend for you. One thing that will hold you back a lot is pre reqs for classes since you’re trying to completr the minor in such a short time period. I’m going to assume no prior programming experience. Take 61A and cs70 in the summer. A lot of the upper divs require cs70. Then take 61b and 188 in the fall. Then you could either take 61c and 2 upper divs in the spring or just two upper divs and take 61c in the summer. It’s really hard to complete the minor in a year because of the prereqs for classes. By not completing 61c, you’re held back from many of the upper divs. Course wise, it would be best if you had 3 extra semesters. You may be able to do it if after your 8th semester you don’t exceed 130 units (which is what I’m doing), but you have to ask yourself if you want to spend that much more time in school. For me, I had zero programming experience before so I think the minor is necessary for me to learn more. I know that I definitely would not be able to learn these topics as well without having taken courses. </p>
<p>Aside from the scheduling aspect, I agree with what others have said. Don’t do cs just for the money. Lots of people think they should have done cs without actually trying it to see if they like it. You may end up loving it or you may end up hating it. Cs takes a lot of time. There’s really no way around it unless you’re an absolute whiz. CS at berkeley is superb and I’ve enjoyed everyone one of my classes (aside from cs70) but I enjoy it so much that I don’t mind putting the hours of work in.</p>
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<p>Also note that productivity varies by an order of magnitude between better and worse software developers. If you do not really like doing CS (i.e. doing it only for the pay prospects), then you are more likely to be at the worse end of this scale, which lead to long hours of misery doing CS programming assignments, and worse job prospects later, compared to the highly productive people.</p>
<p>^Yup I completely agree. Projects in classes can take anywhere from 2-30+ hours depending on the class and instructor. And that’s by students working on them who enjoy cs and care.</p>
<p>@nespresso
Yes, S is at UCLA. For some fields, major matters more. For others, major matters less. It all depends on what you want to do. S is in consulting where major doesn’t matter, being at a target school matters, having very high gpa matters. Together with solid work experience and excellent interviewing skills (spent countless hours practicing), multiple job offers.</p>
<p>I am a CS major from UC Berkeley and have worked in software for years for many large, mid, startup companies. My view is the biggest factor in a successful company/project is in the people. It doesn’t matter if you are using waterfall, agile (the latest fashion), the right people will figure out the right thing to do and adjust as time goes.</p>
<p>If you raise $1M, you can hire me. I am semi retire waiting at home for the next big thing or I can spend more time on CC :)</p>
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<p>If you can show a few impressive open source projects, you can get a job without any degree although a degree is always recommended. You are still competing with people who have degress and are experienced in some way.</p>
<p>I always encourage everyone in CS to start programming asap and as much as possible. There are plenty of open source projects and if you can’t find any you are interested in, CS is probably not for you. Or you can start your own at GitHub.</p>
<p>^For sure. As I mentioned in my post, I have a friend who got a job without any degree.</p>
<p>@OP
Another good thing to look at is some online lectures from various schools to learn things you might be interested in that aren’t taught at your school. Currently I’m going through a course on app making from Stanford (don’t worry my faith is still with Cal) since they don’t offer such a course at Cal. There is a decal but I’m not sure how much detail it goes into. But the point is to get programming on your own side projects as BusyMei said. It has to be something you’re interested in or you won’t stick with it and will likely give up and have nothing to show. I tried going through a web development class from Harvard extension but I just wasn’t interested in building websites as much as I am in building apps at the moment so I didn’t get very far in those videos. You learn very much by doing in CS.</p>
<p>^ xfer, could you please link me to the app making course in Stanford? I’m interested in learning as well. PM or post is fine.</p>
<p>I heard that Stanford offers a good class on iOS and/or Android apps. Such skills are in demand. Not sure if that is the class xfer is taking but big kudos for doing it.</p>
<p>Yup it’s the iOS one. I’ve gotten through about a third of it in the past week since school let out and it’s pretty awesome. Click the itunesU link here. [iTunesU</a> Viewers | CS 193P iPhone Application Development](<a href=“http://www.stanford.edu/class/cs193p/cgi-bin/drupal/node/201]iTunesU”>Non-Stanford Student Viewers | CS 193P iPhone Application Development)</p>
<p>May I ask what field in business you were aiming for, Ankur? Scaring me a little as an econ major…</p>
<p>A great project for the summer, write a fun little iOS app. You can put it on your resume, talk about it/demo it during the interview, put it on open souce (make sure it is nicely architected, well written code with plenty of documentation).</p>