How many students in Berkeley's EECS program get "weeded out"?

Colleges & Universities University of California - Berkeley
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<p>I was recently accepted to Berkeley’s EECS, and while the offer certainly interests me, I’m really worried about the competitive nature of the school. How many people get “weeded out”, and what’s a good measure to know if I’m going to be on the lower end of the spectrum? On a side note, is Hilfinger a good enough teacher to risk failing a class with him, or should I avoid him like the plague?</p>

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<p>The College of Engineering says that 80% of frosh engineering majors at Berkeley graduate with engineering degrees, although that leaves open the possibility of someone switching to a different engineering major.</p>

<p>All of the EECS frosh-level courses are shared with other majors (other engineering majors, L&S CS, physics, etc.), so there is not a course that can be a reliable indicator for frosh EECS enrollment (and it is likely that EECS has gotten more popular recently, like L&S CS, unless they have been holding the line at the admissions office).</p>

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<p>First off, EECS/CS does not have a competitive nature. I’m not sure where this common misconception originated from. Cooperation is far more common than competition, even in curved classes like CS 170.</p>

<p>So the only real “weeding out” occurs when people find out they’re not really suited for EECS (lack of interest, lack of ability, and so on). If you’re in the bottom quartile or so of the intro classes, you may want to reconsider EECS, but even if you’re getting mostly Bs (maybe a few Cs), you’re doing fine.</p>

<p>To summarize my opinion on Hilfinger, his class will probably make you bang your head against the wall (at least a few times…) trying to finish the projects and do the exams, but you come out of it a better coder. I personally liked his class, but other opinions vary. There’s a lot of information about Hilfinger in this thread (disclaimer: I contributed a couple of posts to it): <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-california-berkeley/1462928-cs61bl-summer-get-hilfingered.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-california-berkeley/1462928-cs61bl-summer-get-hilfingered.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;