<p>I am confused as to why some cs programs require as few as 13 courses and others as many as 32. Oddly, some of the more selective schools have the fewest course requirements. Here is a look at some of the California schools:</p>
<p>UC Berkeley Letters & Science: 13 required courses or 50% of total coursework
Pomona College: 13 required courses or 40% of total coursework
U of San Diego: 16 required courses or 50% of total coursework
Chapman: 22 required courses or 58% of total coursework
UCSD: 26 required courses or 64% of total coursework
Cal Poly Pomona: 32 required courses or 71% of total coursework</p>
<p>Am I to understand that getting a CS degree from UC Berkeley or Pomona College is "easier" than the others I named? I would really appreciate being enlightened on this.</p>
<p>Much of the difference results from the programs offering a BA or a BS. For example, UC Berkeley CLS offers a BA in CS, while Cal Poly Pomona offers a BS. If you look at UC Berkeley’s EECS major, which is the CS major housed in the CoE, the disparity disappears. I promise you that the EECS major at Berkeley (and likely the CS major) is very competitive.</p>
<p>tl;dr BA vs BS requirements. </p>
<p>Engineering-based CS majors will require extra physics courses compared to non-engineering-based CS majors.</p>
<p>For example, Berkeley L&S CS requires 14 courses (about 56 credit units) out of a typical 30-32 (120 credit units) total, or 43.75-46.67% (not including breadth requirements). Berkeley EECS requires 75 out of 120 total credit units, or 62.5% (not including breadth requirements). The extra comes from 5 extra courses (about 20 credit units) of math, physics, possibly other science, and EE.</p>
<p>But note also that the frosh/soph level courses differ between schools. It does appear that more selective schools tend to pack the frosh/soph level CS course material into fewer CS courses or credits than less selective schools, so less selective schools may have higher numbers of courses or credits required.</p>
<p>Thank you. That is helpful. We are looking for a program that is adequate but that allows for a second major in the humanities. Pomona College’s program would be good, but it’s a very competitive school and I would expect the classes to be tough. I know that Harvey Mudd’s program is killer and the schools are in the same consortium. </p>
<p>I passed up on considering UC-Irvine as a CS transfer because it looks like it would be almost impossible to graduate on time as a transfer student… the amount of required credits is much higher than some other UCs.</p>
<p>With the variations between schools… within that “percent of total coursework” is a further variation on what the coursework actually entails. For some BS degrees, a large portion of the ‘major coursework’ isn’t actually computer science classes but physics, biology, chemistry, statistics, mathematics, etc… UC-Davis’ CS degree for example requires a year of Chemistry (or biology or physics) and two upper division math classes.</p>
<p>Note that ABET-accredited CS degree programs need a minimum of 33.3% of the credits to be CS courses, and 25% of the credits to be math and science courses (at least 58.3% of the total credits). While engineering-based CS majors typically contain that and easily meet ABET accreditation if they apply for it (not all do so), non-engineering-based CS majors often require fewer math and (particularly) science courses – typically about 13.3% to 16.7% of the credits in math, often with no science required for the major. They might also require slightly fewer than 33.3% of the credits of CS courses (so total major requirements may be around 40-50% of total credits). So non-engineering-based CS majors typically do not have ABET accreditation.</p>
<p>ABET accreditation in CS per se is only important for the patent exam. But while it should indicate at least a decent CS major, there are many non-ABET-accredited CS majors that are good (although there are also many that are quite poor or limited). Someone who wants additional out-of-major elective space while studying CS would likely find it in a non-ABET-accredited CS major – but needs to choose carefully to find a good one.</p>
<p>Some schools (e.g. Berkeley as noted above) offer both an engineering-based ABET-accredited major and a non-engineering-based non-ABET-accredited major for CS.</p>