Warning
The following content is only my personal experience of transferring from the mechanical department to the School of Software. There are few shares about transferring to software, and its assessment method is a combination of computer fundamentals assessment +30% written exam and 70% interview, which is rather special; these two points are the reason I wrote this post.
Background
I (lz) have “relatively rich” experience of transferring from mechanical to software engineering (twice, in freshman and sophomore years). A couple of days ago the public announcement was finished, meaning I officially transferred to the Software Engineering class of the 2023 cohort, so I write this post to record some insights for future reference.
About the Written Exam
This part is a recollection written about a dozen days after the exam; there may be some inaccuracies, for reference only.
First, the transfer written exam for the School of Software differs from other engineering majors; it does not test calculus, linear algebra, or subjects like physics and chemistry that some majors require. Instead, it focuses on computer fundamentals. According to the Academic Affairs Office documents from recent years, the assessment content is:
申请转入电子与信息学部软件工程专业的同学计算机基础知识和逻辑推理能力考试安排：计算机基础知识考试内容参考《大学计算机》教材（吴宁主编，高等教育出版社）
Specifically, the questions include term definitions, true/false judgments, short answer, calculations, and logical thinking. For term definitions, pay attention to English terms; this year the exam should include Turing machine, TCP/IP, OS, PC (program counter), big data, SQL.
Short answer questions cover components of the CPU, topics related to original code, one’s complement, two’s complement, and character encoding (seems to ask what kinds exist). The calculation part gave a simple weighted graph, requiring counting the number of simple paths between two vertices, then writing and explaining the shortest path; another question involved base conversion. Logical thinking questions included one that required finding a pattern from an image, and another classic puzzle where several people say statements about themselves and their professions, with some telling truth and some lying; you need to determine each person’s profession and give a brief explanation. There was also a question to write the truth table of a logic circuit, likely belonging to the short answer or calculation section. The programming design question had no language restriction; this year you needed to write two programs, accounting for about 12–13 points, not a large proportion, and there was no runtime limit—brute force would suffice. Note that the programming question required drawing a flowchart; I hadn’t reviewed that, so I just scribbled something on the spot in the exam room 
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About the Interview
The interview groups are basically ten people per group, order drawn randomly; you only need to bring your transcript. The teachers in the School of Software are very nice. Compared with interviews in other schools, there is no English self‑introduction, random Q&A, or other weird segments; basically it’s just a self‑introduction and some simple questions, no subject‑specific questions, just to get to know the interviewee.
This year I brought a résumé and some award certificates, but the teachers said they don’t look at those; from start to finish they didn’t see them, so just bring the transcript and prepare a solid self‑introduction, focusing on relevance to the major, your efforts and gains.
During the freshman‑year interview
:pleading_face_mouse The questions I was asked in the interview when I changed majors this year are completely different from yours 