CS classes at UC Berkeley for non majors

Colleges & Universities University of California - Berkeley
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How accessible are CS or DS classes to non-majors at Berkeley?

My son was accepted to UC Berkeley (in L&S-Applied Math).

He wanted to take some CS classes but it appears that most CS classes (asides from a few like 61a or b? Are there others?) are restricted and only CS or eng majors can take them. Given how impacted classes are, would he even be able to gain access to the few classes that are open to non-majors? In CS and how about DS? How about statistics? We often hear how hard it is to get classes at Berkeley.

The Berkeley class schedule shows ‘unreserved’ seats. Is that what is currently available or is that the number of seats open to non-majors? And do they fill up so it’s impossible to get?

I know it is not possible to switch majors to CS or DS anymore (or there is something about comprehensive review limiting spaces to very few) but didn’t realize they couldn’t take some classes to do a cluster or minor.
Just trying to gather info before committing to a school. He loves math, (esp AIME, AMC stuff) and enjoys coding/ data science too but not sure of career goals yet.

Thanks for your help.

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See the following for CS classes in particular:

This is generally only for classes for high demand majors where the enrollment limit for the majors is based on the capacity of the classes (so that the classes tend to be filled with students in the majors). Most subjects are not in that category, but some popular subjects like CS and business are in that category.

Changing to or adding a CDSS major for a non-CDSS student involves a comprehensive review: FAQs: Moving Computer Science, Data Science, and Statistics majors from L&S to CDSS | CDSS at UC Berkeley . It is likely that statistics is less difficult to change into (or take classes as a non-major) than CS or DS.

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Thank you. So for the few classes like CS61a and b, non-majors are allowed to take the class but do you know if they are actually able to get the classes? Or are there just too many students who want to take them?

It appears comprehensive review is new so no one has gone through it yet.

How are hard are DS classes to get?

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Looking at past (fall 2024 and spring 2025) class schedules at https://classes.berkeley.edu/search/class?search=compsci&f[]=course_level:up&f[]=course_level:low&f[]=term:8558&f[]=term:7699 suggests that there may be significant space available in COMPSCI 10, 61A, 61B, 70, 152, 161, 162, 164, 168, 170, C176, 186, 188 (though not every course is available in both fall and spring or has significant space available in both fall and spring).

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It looks like redoing the above search with DATA instead of COMPSCI shows even fewer courses with available space for fall 2024 and spring 2025.

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Is the # of Unreserved seats = to the number of seats that are still available? Or is it the # of seats that can be taken by non majors? I thought it was the latter but that doesn’t tell me if the class is/was full and if a student can actually get the class.
I also thought the upper div CS classes are closed to non majors so not possible to take 100+.

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Those are listed under open seats, so that indicates space available in the class at the add deadline.

Policy does say that upper division CS courses other than 168 and 188 are not available to non-majors in fall or spring, although who knows what happens if you ask when there is actually space available in the class after all of the students in the major have had a chance to enroll in it.

Note that overall enrollment is lower in the spring (students graduating one semester early or late tend to have one more fall semester than spring semesters), so classes that tend to be full may be less likely to be full in the spring than fall.