My son is in his 3rd year. He’s in L&S. Didn’t get into HAAS, then didn’t get into ECON.
Now trying to get into Applied Mathematics.
Because of his attempt in Business then Econ, he has many units that are no longer useful for his major.
He is a 3rd year, but technically a senior because his has so many units!
He just started with AM this semester, so he’s officially still UNDECLARED L&S, and has to be approved by Math Dept to declare AM as his major. His grades are struggling, 2.6 and he just failed a midterm in an important class. If he doesn’t pass this class, the Math Dean can deny him.
If that happens, he only has 1 option left to pick as a major, Interdisciplinary Studies…What the hell is that? And it sure doesn’t sound like a sound option for getting a job after graduation.
I’ve tried to talk to my son, he’s always tried to take care of everything without help from me. I didn’t go to college, he used to respect my opinion, but now that he’s at Berkeley he thinks all his friends there know more than anything that I can say.
I don’t know what to do…what will happen to him? What will the school do? Can you even stay at CAL for 5 years?
Hopefully he will get into applied math, but that is a tougher major than econ. I assume it doesn’t require Bs in prereq courses like econ does. If he does end up with interdisciplinary studies, maybe he can get a math minor. I assume his records will be flagged at some point soon if he doesn’t declare a major because they expect you to be making progress toward a degree.
Math (applied or pure) does not have high GPA requirements. If he has at least C grades in all of the lower division math prerequisites (1A, 1B, 53, 54, 55), then he will be admitted to the major.
https://math.berkeley.edu/programs/undergraduate/majoring-mathematics
Assuming that he is in his 5th semester and successfully declares the math major, he needs to take 8 upper division math or related courses in his 3 remaining semesters, which is doable (normally 4 courses per semester).
https://math.berkeley.edu/programs/undergraduate/major/applied
If he wants to stay more than 8 semesters, then he is subject to the 130 unit ceiling; if he has more than that for semesters beyond 8, he cannot register for a fall or spring semester. Note that some units do not count toward this limit, such as AP credit and college courses completed while in high school.
https://ls.berkeley.edu/advising/planning/enrolling/unit-ceiling
https://ls.berkeley.edu/advising/planning/enrolling/deductible-units
Interdisciplinary studies is described at:
http://isf.ugis.berkeley.edu/