In recent semesters, an increasingly large number of students aim to CODO — Change of Degree Objective, essentially switching majors — into the Department of Computer Science to varying degrees of success. As someone who has successfully CODO’d into the Department of Computer Science to major in data science as well as being in contact with students that have attempted/are attempting to/have successfully CODO’d (both friends and students I have TA’d for), I have discussed the CODO process countless times. Misinformation has certainly been spread. In this post, I will detail the CODO requirements and give some commentary on how to increase one’s chances.

My information comes from two official sources: the College of Science’s Academic Advising’s CODO Requirements for 2019-2020 and the Department of Computer Science’s CODO Requirements.

[EDIT 2020 April 13]: I’d like to mention that outside of parts that make direct use of official sources, much of this blog post was written with some guess work. While I wrote this after having had successfully CODO’d into data science, I know more now than I knew then. Unfortunately, the things I have since learned and confirmed are not things I can make public, sorry.