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Undergraduate Major Migration & Persistence
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(Last updated on December 15, 2023)
Sources & Methodology:
- This data comes from UC Berkeley's data warehouse reporting system, Cal Answers.
- There are structural policy differences between freshman and transfer students as well as across colleges/divisions/departments. For example, some colleges admit students directly into a major (e.g., College of Engineering), whereas the College of Letters & Science has not done so historically.
- Students can declare and earn a degree in multiple divisions/departments. Students are counted once in each division/department of the charts.
- Multiple major examples on the Major Persistence tabs of this dashboard:
- Intended -> Declared -- A student with an intended major in Astronomy that (ever) declares in Astronomy and Physics. The Astronomy row would count them as Blue (“Yes”). On hover over the blue area, they would also be counted for Physics in the “Top 5 other departments: Declared majors.” There would be no effect on the Physics row.
- Intended -> Degree -- A student with an intended major in Astronomy that earns a degree in Astronomy and Physics. The Astronomy row would count them as Blue (“Yes”). On hover over the blue area, they would also be counted for Physics in the “Top 5 other departments: Degrees earned.” There would be no effect on the Physics row.
- Declared -> Degree -- A student that (ever) declares majors in both Astronomy and Physics but only earns a degree in Astronomy. The Astronomy row would count them as Blue (“Yes”). On hover over the blue area, no additional information would appear. The Physics row would count them as Green (“No”). On hover over the green area, they would be counted for Astronomy in the “Top 5 other departments: Degrees earned.”
- For the Major Migration dashboard’s “Declared a Major” chart, if a student had at least one other declared division/department other than (L&S, CNR, CoE) undeclared, then the undeclared record was dropped. There were also some students who only had undeclared as their declared major. Most of them did not earn a degree.
- Declared major and Degrees earned data are as of the Fall Census, and Summer Degree term, respectively. The dashboard is updated as newer data become available though, due to the lag between Fall and Summer, more recent cohorts may appear to have lower percentages of degrees earned.
- Cases where students declare a major after the census snapshot are not included. This is especially apparent when the count of majors in a degree are greater than the count of majors declared.
- There are a few instances where there are no data for students’ intended and/or declared major. These students were excluded from all reports.