Switching to CS After Admitted Just Won't Work Anymore

As the hottest college major in the US today, Computer Science, is undergoing some major policy reforms. In short, it is much more difficult to become a CS major at a school known for good engineering programs.

University of Illinois Urbana - Champaign (UIUC)

A few weeks ago, UIUC announced a new policy: to major in computer science, students entering after the summer of 2022 must be directly admitted to the CS major through freshman application or transfer application. Students will not be able to declare CS major through internal transfer.

(Source: UIUC Official Website)

What does this mean? It means that at UIUC, students can no longer change their major to CS after being admitted as another major.

University of Michigan

Coincidentally, University of Michigan recently announced a similar policy: students admitted in Fall 2023 and later who want to graduate with a CS major, must apply as a CS major at the time of application, whether under the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts or under the School of Engineering.

(Source: University of Michigan Official Website)

From University of Michigan’s announcement, we learned that the reason for this policy is that there are simply too many students who want to major in CS, exceeding the school’s faculty capacity. The policy was announced for the purpose of maintaining the quality of students’ learning experience.

UC Berkeley

Earlier in April, Nicholas Weaver, a professor of EECS at the University of California, Berkeley, published an insider article titled "A Personal View of UC Berkeley's EECS Crisis." The article points out that EECS was overwhelmed, and the department, after negotiating with the college with no prevail, intended to take its own action to restrict students from registering entry level CS courses required to declare CS major.

Now, it seems that similar situations has also been observed at CS departments at other universities.

This week, Berkeley has new updates. Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, a top business school in the United States, announced that it will expand its existing 2-year business school undergraduate business program into a 4-year undergraduate program.

(Source: dailycal.org)

The Haas School of Business at the UC Berkeley is one of the few business schools in the US that provides the highest quality undergraduate business education. Originally, its undergraduate business program only offers two years of study during junior and senior year. Students at UC Berkeley would submit an application to the business school in their sophomore year, and declare business major in their third and fourth year at Berkeley.

Because of the sheer number of students interested in business and the limited capacity of the two-year undergraduate business major, the program is now extended to a four-year program, named Spieker Undergraduate Business Program. Those who plan to start college in 2024 can now directly apply to this program.