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UC Berkeley Letters and Science Majors
brement
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Replies to: UC Berkeley Letters and Science Majors
https://ls.berkeley.edu/advising/planning/schedule-planning/choosing-major/high-demand-majors
"High demand" majors are those where student interest in declaring the major would exceed the department's instructional capacity if all who passed the prerequisites were allowed to declare the major.
MCB is not an impacted major. Therefore, we will accept any interested student who meets the minimum course and GPA requirements and is realistically able to complete the major requirements during the student's remaining time at Cal. The deadline to declare MCB is the semester before the Expected Graduation Term listed in CalCentral.
In order to declare the MCB major, you must have:
2.0 overall UC Berkeley GPA,
2.0 MCB major GPA (all lower and upper division courses taken for MCB),
2.0 MCB upper division GPA (all upper division requirements including electives),
Bio 1A/1AL (either completed or are currently enrolled with a C or better on the first midterm in Bio 1A),
Chem 3B (completed or are currently enrolled after the 2nd week early add/drop deadline), and
decided on an emphasis (it is possible to change this after you declare).
For the Haas Business undergrad school for business majors, current students apply in their second year with a separate application. No special GPA cutoffs, but the average 50th percentile GPA is around 3.7.
L&S CS has the requirement of 3.30+ for the first 3 required CS classes in order to declare. Economics has a requirement of 3.00 for the prerequisites needed to declare, which consists of 5 classes. Psychology has a similar border. There may be other majors as well with a separate GPA border than the university mandated one of 2.00 in order to declare.
Depends on the major. Within L&S majors:
Prerequisite GPA cutoff (published beforehand, but may be changed as demand relative to capacity changes): art practice (3.3 + portfolio), CS (3.3), economics (3.0), environmental economics and policy (2.7), media studies (3.2), political economy (2.7), psychology (3.2), statistics (3.2)
Competitive: operations research (minimum 3.2), public health
Unclear from web site: cognitive science, social welfare
Changing to another division (e.g. business major in the business school) should be assumed to be competitive.
Currently for CogSci to declare, a 2.0+ in the CS61A (first CS class) and Math 1A/16A class (Calc 1). For DS to declare, a 2.0+ cumulative average in the Data 8 (first DS course), Linear Algebra, and Data Structures (CS61B - second CS class, or equivalent). Interestingly enough, in the case of DS, if one has taken community college classes in Linear Algebra and/or Data Structures, the GPAs that you get from CC for these classes is also used in determining the qualifying GPA. This GPA-mix policy is probably major-dependent - CS for example all the classes needed for determining the 3.30+ cutoff is based on classes taken at Berkeley.