Please note that some courses require pre-requisite courses that are not listed above. Students must also complete the 7-course breadth requirement from the College of Letters and Sciences.
The Bachelor of Arts in Chemistry is offered by the College of Letters and Sciences, while the Bachelor of Sciences in Chemistry is offered by the College of Chemistry. In terms of major requirements, the B.A. degree requires the 7-course breadth (college requirement within L&S) while the B.S. degree requires a physical chemistry laboratory course along with a chemistry laboratory course, and the Allied Subject requirement (+ Chem elective). Between the two, there is no major difference. Both will allow you to pursue the same careers (and are equivalent for graduate school admissions). That being said, because the Chem B.A. requires the 7 course breadth while the Chem B.S. instead asks students to take elective courses relating to chemistry, the Chem B.A. can be seen as a degree aimed for a more liberal arts education and a career in education, pre-health, or social sciences, while the Chem B.S. can be seen as a degree aimed for a more research-oriented track. Choosing which major is right for you depends more on what classes you want and don't want to take as opposed to what career you want to go into.
The Chemistry B.A. degree often works better (compared to other chemistry majors) as one-half of a double major. Before you decide to double, please read the corresponding page on double majors. Please note that students are not allowed to double major in Chemistry and Chemical Biology.
Some students choose to obtain minors in related fields, such as Bioengineering, Computer Science, Materials Science and Engineering, and Mathematics, amongst others. To find out more about minoring while in the College of Chemistry, please consult the Minors page.
From the 2017 Career Center survey of Chemistry Majors:
Of the Chemistry majors graduating from UC Berkeley, about half (50%) continue with their education, attending graduate school for their Doctorate, PharmD, or Master's degree. These students attend schools like MIT, Caltech, Stanford, Princeton, and UCSF.
Of the students who go into the workforce, 64% work for for-profit corporations, with 21% for education and 14% for government. The average salary is $50,400. The most common jobs for graduates are research techicians (research associates) and software engineers.