If you have just applied to the major and are awaiting the admissions decision, follow the advice below. Keep in mind that units for waitlist courses are counted as part of your unit total (enrollment unit caps), so you need to pay attention to your maximum units for your current college. If your current major is outside the College of L&S, you may have other unit caps to follow. For L&S students, Phase 1 has a 13.5 unit cap and Phase 2 has a 17.5 unit cap. You may be admitted into the major during Phase 1 however seats for public health core classes may still be reserved for PH seniors. If seats are released to all PH majors before Phase 2, but you are enrolled in 13.5 units in Phase 1, you still won’t come off the waitlist until Phase 2 when your unit cap rises to 17.5. You will need to wait until Phase 2 if admitted from the waitlist into the PH core courses.
Phase 1 Enrollment
You should enroll in PH elective and breadth classes first. If you have not taken DATA C8 yet, we also recommend you try to enroll in this course if possible. Then you may either join a waitlist or leave room for the public health core classes you wish to take if you are admitted to the PH major. Or you can enroll in classes for your back up major and have a plan for what to drop and add upon hearing whether or not you are admitted.
It would be okay to Phase 1 or Phase 2 the core classes you are hoping to enroll in. You may want to Phase 1 the courses you need to prioritize for your backup major, other requirements, or popular courses you are interested in that fill up quickly since PH core classes will have reserved seats for PH majors.
Phase 2 Enrollment
We reserve seats in the public health core classes for newly admitted PH majors, this can sometimes happen during Phase 2. If you are admitted to the PH major in Phase 2, you will bypass everyone on the waitlist who is not a PH major to be enrolled in the class as long as the discussion you chose still has open seats. You will remain waitlisted if the discussion is full. If that is the case, then you will have to change the discussion section to be able to enroll in the lecture and discussion. This can mean having to drop the course to be able to re-enroll and choose a different discussion option as you can only swap discussion sections when you are already fully enrolled in the course. See more in “For PH majors: Swapping discussion sections.”
If you have paperwork to be completed in order to declare the PH major, please make sure to do so and be in communication with the PH advisors. If you are unable to complete the paperwork and declare the major before Phase 2, please let the PH advisors know ahead of time what core class and open discussion section you are trying to enroll in as seats in core classes will be released to non-PH majors during the Adjustment period.
If you need to prioritize other classes in Phase 1, you can enroll in some of the Public Health core classes (142, 150A, 150B, 150D, and 150E) in Phase 2. PH 150E is a class that fills up quickly with current PH majors so we recommend that you Phase I it (if during enrollment for spring courses). You should also Phase 1 your chosen capstone course once you enter your final 2 semesters at Berkeley).