Transfer students who want to pursue the computer science major, must have applied and been admitted to UC Santa Cruz as a proposed computer science major.
Prior to admission, transfer students must have completed the following five courses or their articulated equivalents with a combined minimum GPA of 3.0.
Lecture/lab combinations count as one course.
This course
CSE 30 | Programming Abstractions: Python | 7 |
Plus one of the following
CSE 13S | Computer Systems and C Programming | 7 |
Plus one of the following options
Plus one of the following
MATH 19A | Calculus for Science, Engineering, and Mathematics | 5 |
MATH 20A | Honors Calculus | 5 |
Plus one of the following
MATH 19B | Calculus for Science, Engineering, and Mathematics | 5 |
MATH 20B | Honors Calculus | 5 |
Minimum GPA
The combined GPA in the five courses above must be at least a 3.0. A student lacking one of these five courses may be admitted if they have completed CSE 16, and CSE 12, or the articulated alternative.
Furthermore, transfer students entering in the fall must have completed at least three of these courses by the end of the fall term of the previous academic year and have a minimum 3.0 GPA over all completed CS major qualification courses at that time.
Transfer students are strongly recommended to complete CSE 16 as part of their screening courses, and to complete one course out of MATH 21, AM 10, MATH 23A or AM 30, and most general education requirements prior to arriving at UC Santa Cruz.
Transfer students admitted for the winter term must satisfy the major preparation criteria for transfer students admitted for the fall term and, additionally, must have successfully completed at least two additional courses that are required for the proposed degree, prior to admission. It is highly recommended that these courses should be AM 10 (or MATH 21) and AM 30 (or MATH 23A).
Most courses in the computer science program at UC Santa Cruz have a strong theoretical component to prepare the student for designing, as opposed to simply using, computer systems. Often, courses taken at other institutions which emphasize applications of current languages and computers do not count toward the computer science major at UCSC.
At UCSC, computer science students are first introduced to programming using the programming language Python. The core programming sequence—courses CSE 30 and CSE 13S—exposes students to both Python and C. Many upper-division courses that involve programming use the C and C++ programming languages.
Transfer students who are not familiar with both an object-oriented language and C may need to take a remedial course. Students familiar with C++ and Unix should find the transition to Python and C relatively simple.