<p>CS61A I think requires <em>some</em> programming experience, and they suggest taking CS3 first if you have none. I still stand by my belief that your best bet is to take E77, which requires no prior programming experience. It is in a better language that you will definitely use regardless if you’re EECS or MEng, it satisfies requirements whether you’re in EECS or MEng, and I thoroughly enjoyed the class as a whole. The best part is that it leaves your options open: if you don’t transfer into EECS, you’ll have completed a class you needed to anyways. If you do, you can go straight into CS61b and CS61c and skip the whole CS3 / CS61a stuff.</p>