Are some majors harder than others?

ucbalumnus
Mon, 26 Nov 2012 02:04:11 +0000

Note that, at Berkeley, 80% of freshmen in the College of Engineering eventually graduate from the College of Engineering, indicating that the attrition rate out of the College of Engineering is not that high (it may be different for chemical engineering in the College of Chemistry). This is likely due to Berkeley being highly selective; attrition out of engineering is much higher at less selective schools.

Note also that changing into the College of Engineering requires going through a highly competitive admission process, presumably due to capacity limitations. So that puts a cap on the inbound changes to College of Engineering majors that is lower than the number of students who want to change into the College of Engineering.