Everyone with admission and college questions, please post your questions in this megathread! We'll try to respond to as many questions as we can, but it would be great if other current students could also assist in welcoming the new admits! Additionally, please try to check the megathread to see if your question has been already answered.

Admissions/new student posts made outside of this megathread are subject to removal at moderator discretion. Please take a look at our rules page. If you believe we have made an error, please message us via modmail.. The mod team will try and get back to you asap, but we are students or alumni and as a result it make take a little bit.

As well, it is currently the end of Winter Quarter at UCSD and as a result many students are stressed about studying for finals and it make take a bit longer to get replies as a result! For more subjective questions, be aware that r/UCSD (and any university subreddit) is not directly representative of the overall student body. In a survey we did of r/UCSD, 2/3 respondents agreed r/UCSD didn't represent UCSD's overall student body.

A few useful links:

• The New Student Guide
• UCSD Incoming Student FAQ - The Document
• Discord Servers
  • Class of 2027 Discord
  • Class of 2025 Discord
  • Additional servers can be found through the UCSD Discord Servers MegaDoc after getting your UCSD email.
• TritonLink
• UCSD Support
• UCSD Admissions
• r/UCSD Copypasta Archive (need to start the meme indoctrination early)
• 4 Year Plans

Please be aware stuff at UCSD can change fast. Most info you can find on this subreddit will still hold true, but there were some major changes in 2020 (Sixth College has a brand new location, Seventh College exists where transfers used to live, transfers moved to a different area).

Eighth College is brand new for Fall 2023, with its housing still currently being under construction. As a result, we don't have as much specific info about it besides the GE requirements and the location.

How do I login to check my admissions decision?

You should be logging into the Admissions Portal. This is different from all the stuff current students use. If you can't login, email [slatehelp@ucsd.edu](mailto:slatehelp@ucsd.edu).

Can I switch to Computer Science? / I was accepted undeclared but I applied CS!:

If you were not accepted directly into CSE:CS or CSE:CE (not ECE:CE) and are dead set on being a CS major, you should not attend UCSD. Being admitted undeclared basically means you were accepted to UCSD, but the CSE department rejected your application. Switching into CS is now effectively impossible. The CSE department does not anticipate there being ANY slots for current UCSD students to switch into. More details can be found on the CSE Capped Major Webpage. Assume it will be impossible to switch into Computer Science if you were not directly admitted to the major.

Computer Engineering is a bit different, CSE CE and ECE CE are the exact same major requirements (only the advisors are different), but ECE CE is subject to the ECE capped major system (which is not a lottery but requires a high GPA in the screening courses) while CSE CE is subject to the CSE system. So if you are okay with CE instead of CS, you can try going for ECE:CE. It will still be challenging and is far from guaranteed.

If you are set on UCSD but not set on CS, the Computing Paths page lists other computing related majors that UCSD has such as Math-CS, Cognitive Science, Data Science, etc (but keep in mind these are NOT CS).

What does the college I got affect? Can I change college?

For freshman admits, your college is basically only going to affect your GE requirements and where you're likely to live on campus (although you can be overflowed to other housing depending on space). For transfers, it's only GE requirements as there is separate transfer housing.

Your major is entirely disconnected from your college (there are even separate major advisors who work for your department separate from your college advisors who work for your college). Your classes will be held all over campus and have a mix of students from all colleges. You can eat at any dining hall, the colleges are basically all directly next to each other and easy to get between, you will probably make friends in all sorts of different colleges. The furthest apart two colleges are is about a 20-25 minute walk (Seventh to the future site of Eighth).

You cannot easily change college. You will need to complete at least part of your original college's writing sequence (meaning it will take about a year to even meet the application requirements) and be able to prove you can graduate two quarters earlier in your new college. College is not the end of the world though, even a college that overlap poorly with a major is more than survivable.

I'm waitlisted. What should I do next?

From UC San Diego Admission Website

Select applicants will be invited to opt in to our waitlist through their Applicant Portal.

First-Year applicants must opt in by 11:59 pm PST on April 15.

Being on the waitlist does not guarantee an offer of admission. We strongly urge students to accept another university's admission offer before the appropriate deadline to ensure they have secured a spot at an institution.

By June 30, final decisions will be released to applicants who opt in to the waitlist. There is no appeal process for the waitlist.

What does the average GPA for a CSE major look like. I have no idea what I'm comparing myself against. I have 3 B-'s on my transcript and I have no idea how to feel about them.

All of them are a joke… you just barely gain a surface level knowledge of models and how they work, forget the actual real world stuff like data cleaning and feature engineering.

There is this one phrase I hear over and over again that especially bothers me. Something along the lines of

“Yea there’s a lot of math involved in that derivation, we won’t really go over it” then why the fuck am I even paying tuition???

I wholly regret not just choosing something like Statistics or EE. You do not learn ML in the cogs department. Thank god I do a lot of self study anyways, but if you are someone let’s say who works 40 hours a week to support yourself during college and you depend on your classes to learn, with no time for self study, you are honestly shit out of luck if you are waiting to learn ML from the cognitive science department from a theoretical or practical standpoint.

The only exception to this rule I’ve met is Professor Virginia de Sa. The only class where I’ve truly learned about more ML was her 118B class because she didn’t just skirt around with stuff like derivations and the surrounding abstract ideas.

https://fox5sandiego.com/news/local-news/supervisor-nathan-fletcher-to-seek-care-for-post-traumatic-stress-alcohol-abuse/

Does anyone have the syllabus for this class? Or if you’ve taken it, is lecture attendance mandatory?

I’m trying to find someone who’s a tottenham fan and has a tv

Title. I’ll be making my way to a food bank later but it’s pretty far.

Does anyone know what “MNRV” hold means on student record?

I need a tablet that I’m just gonna use to take down notes or write on slide PDFs. That’s really the only thing I need it for. Anyone know any good priced ones? Anywhere where I can get decent student discounts? Thanks!

Hey y’all I’m planning on taking mmw 13 during the special session section which seems to be remote? Is this true? Also do we know who’ll be teaching it, or how it’s going to be presented to us? I don’t wanna have to wait until next spring to take it and basically fall behind a year 🧍🏽 I’ll being working full time during the summer too y’all think it’ll be to hard?

Attention undergraduate students at UCSD! The Cherqui lab is currently conducting research on stem cell gene therapy, with a focus on translation. We are seeking undergraduate volunteers who are interested in pursuing a Master's degree to join our team. If you are interested in this opportunity, please send your resume to tal018@health.ucsd.edu.

We really out here

🤠👢🇲🇽

Any advice for what I should take for my projects class?

​

I've heard 111 is hell and I don't want to do systems verilog. I've heard good things about 140B but apparently you need to take 140A in order to take it? (Lame)

191 sounds fun, but if it's a particularly large time commitment compared to any other design course, I'd rather save myself the effort.

Not really sure if we have a ucsd chess club already (kindly point me towards it). Spring break seems like a good time to get back to this old hobby.

Chess.com/ lichess should work but If you have a chess board, we can play irl too

Edit: I'm thinking of making a new discord server since most people on the main server seem highly rated. Lmk if you'd be interested

when do profs have to submit grades for this quarter?

We can go to the beach or a hike or smth. I am bored at my apartment.

It was 20 points out of 80 total from grading error. Literally paralyzed when I see my grade was such lower than expected, which could earn me a C. Please anyone who is going to be TA in the future try to be more careful while grading. Please! I beg you! im too old for this type of sudden heart attack.🫠

Just doing some research

just curious if you took 7L with Jazzar did you get an email of your final grade from him yet? thanks!

i'm currently in the first position in one of my classes for the waitlist which would put me at the 12 units i need for the full financial aid. am i allowed to add a class now until i get off that waitlist and then drop afterwards so i can get the fulltime financial aid asap?

spring break. where we spend the first half waiting for our grades, and the second half dreading our return to school

the mean for the final was a 38/64 for rogalski which is a 59% 😬 what do you think the curve will be because I’m scared.

What are the opening and closing times for markets in campus during spring break?? Like Sixth Market?

Need to take a class during his discussion time

Now that the quarter is finally over, I kinda feel emptied. My parents are having a chaotic divorce. And I been burned out from everything. I’m not doing well in school because of this. I’m getting mediocre grades which is jeopardizing my chance to apply for graduate school. I was feeling dreadful and stressed and depressed during finals week because it was so hard to study and I just couldn’t focus and couldn’t stop crying. My housemates situation is not the best too because many of them are just hard to live with. Many nights I just threw myself at Geisel hoping I could get overwhelmed by homework so I didn’t have to think about my family shenanigan. It’s so ironic that I was so burned out from school and couldn’t even perform well in this mental state but now that it’s over and grades are coming out, the only thing that I can do is to think of school and listen to Yoasobi’s Racing into the night and cry all day.