UCLA EE vs Cal CS

Hey Everyone!

I’ve had the good fortune to be accepted into both UCLA for Electrical Engineering and Cal within the College of Letters and Science, with an intended major of computer science. I really like both schools, especially after visiting them. After Cal Day I was leaning towards Cal but I went to the CS presentation for incoming freshmen and they said that the new requirements to declare a major in CS would likely be a 3.3 GPA in CS61A, CS61B, and CS70. I’ve searched around on CC and talked to people and some people are saying that it is hard for someone with no programming experience, while others are saying it is fairly achievable. Furthermore, I hear that CS majors at Cal spend a huge amount of time working on projects and psets with very little time to have a social life or do out side activities, and that they frequently pull all-nighters or get only 3-4 hours of sleep a night. I’m not sure how true this is, so I was hoping someone could let me know of their experiences at Cal in CS. Does it really take away all your time, and is it truly that competitive and difficult? Thanks!

CS courses with programming like 61A, 61B, and 61C do tend to be above average workload, although the frequent all-nighters are likely only experienced by procrastinators at starting assignments. Note that CS 70 is basically a math course.

You can preview the course materials at http://www-inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/classes-eecs.html .

If you have no programming experience, you may want to take CS 10 first.

I would go to Cal for better employment prospect, CS has better opportunities than EE.