Hi, I am a student at UC Berkeley and I am interested in become a programmer/software engineer after college. Unfortunately, I highly doubt I will be able to make the 3.3 GPA requirement for the CS major. I can, however, get the CS minor and get a degree in Cognitive Science. Would it be better to just transfer to another school and get a CS degree and not waste my time with the CS minor and Cog Sci major, to get those jobs? Thank you!!
Find out how many and which upper division CS courses* you are likely to be able to enroll in as a major in something else with a CS minor. http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Policies/enrollment.shtml indicates that L&S CS and EECS students are the only ones who can enroll or waitlist upper division CS courses in phase 1, therefore getting higher priority than others when being moved from the waitlist to the course during phase 2 and later of registration.
*Particularly those with important concepts of general applicability like 161, 162, 168, 169, 170, 186.
@ucbalumnus I have priority enrollment…
Some people in the computing industry do not have CS degrees, but have proven that they can write software (whether they learned it in school or on their own).
If your ultimate goal is to become a programmer and you don’t have much interest in Cognitive Science, I’d suggest transferring to a school where you can get a CS degree.
I know several programmers with degrees in Cognitive Science, though. They took a few programming classes in school, and that was enough to get them software jobs.