<p>To be completely frank, Berkeley is filled with academically-driven kids who don’t know how to balance their lives-- they work hard but don’t leave any time to socialize. You’ll find a population of kids like this anywhere you go, but it seems like Berkeley has a disproportionately high number of them.</p>
<p>Of course, if you can balance your life and surround yourself with like-minded friends, then you’ll have a ball at Berkeley.</p>
<p>Everyone here talks about balancing as if it were as simple as counting to ten.</p>
<p>I agree, Batman.</p>
<p>You all speak of balancing in such normative and prescriptive terms, but use it in an incredibly diffuse and vague manner. Moreover, on the descriptive side of things, I would be interested in both the construct and discriminant validity of “balance,” and how it even relates to “happiness” (however it may be measured).</p>
<p>third-ed. Criticizing other people for studying too hard and saying that it’s because they’re “idiots” of some sort makes you sound bitter.
I would say coming to college for “the experience” is a much worse opposite than coming to college to study. And in reality, not too many people shut themselves in completely, even with heavy schedules.
Anyways, I imagine UCLA is about as good or better than Berkeley for a lot of majors (especially not just considering rank), besides engineering/business.</p>
<p>Well, people socialize if neither pressured not to by an outside source nor feeling inside that too much of it would be exhausting. In the event of the former, all that one gathers is that Berkeley is a stressful school on average. The latter case is more interesting to me – why, if there is any validity to the claim made about students’ habits being disproportionately skewed in a certain direction, are they if not guided by an outside source?</p>
<p>tastybeef, did you live in foothill?</p>
<p>90% of people in the units party like crazy every Friday and Saturday night. Barely anyone is academically motivated to the point you’re describing. Classes are hard because people are so smart, but most people I know balance it by studying hard and then partying hard. It’s stressful but never depressing, everyone ends up having a good time.</p>
<p>The only people I know who dislike it here are the few who were extremely extremely academically driven in high school and came here with no intention of socializing or having fun. They barely leave their rooms, go home every weekend they can, only eat dining commons food, and spend the rest of their time complaining about test curves and hobos. Nobody else ever complains about the city.</p>
<p>I both loved and hated my time at Berkeley. I’m a bit cold on my alma mater right now, but I think that has to do more with the economy and the bad football season we just suffered through. Seriously, can someone shake Tedford out of his happy rut and make him take some real risks? Anyway, I’m off on a tangent.</p>
<p>There were a lot of things I hated at Berkeley, but they were petty, trifling things after the first year. The biggest one was the number of fake people. And I’m not talking the fraternity and sorority people, just people in general. But that’s pretty much anywhere you go, so before people make LA comments, a lot of these folks were Bay Area locals. I had some really **** poor classes too, which spoiled my mood and I dealt with some pretty crushing depression, at my disappointment. But the vast majority of my issues with Cal, again, were petty trifles. Stress was the biggest thing, and it’s kind of hard not to be bitter now, with all of the damned hard work I and many other graduates my age put in and be struggling so bad to find a job. I have to go back to school, and I’m not talking grad school, I’m talking CC and Extension program type Cert cirriculum because things change so quickly. Eitherway, no one wants to hear an old man ramble. I love Berkeley because it enlightened me, I had the opportunity to master one of the most difficult, if not overly foreign languages, on Earth, (you try learning the nuances of German and becoming fluent. You’ll see!) the friendships I made, for what they were worth, and opened my mind in ways I could not comprehend then, but I also hate it because I feel like it was a big waste given my current situation and I could have gone some place, had more fun, had an easier time at studying something that would be marketable, and more time to cultivate real, deep, meaningful relationships and not led to some of the emotional issues I have today. But overall, I would say I was ‘happy’ at Berkeley.</p>
<p>…that kinda just scared me reading what you wrote. No joke. I’m interested in your ramble if you’re willing to type it out. I’m intrigued by what an alum has to say. Because the only other three alums I’ve talked to said they were pretty bitter to meh (2:1) about Berkeley and these guys/girl graduated (I think) a couple of years ago…</p>
<p>Well, I know all sorts of Berkeley alums who look back on it super fondly. One is a teacher I had in high school, another an acquaintance who went on to Stanford to get his PhD in EE after getting an EECS degree at Berkeley and is having a great career and valued his education in college a lot. A few other engineering friends who haven’t gone to grad school yet, but will in the future.
Pattern: lots of engineering and computer science graduates.</p>
<p>I’d wonder if a large part of the above poster’s misery actually comes from what major was completed and how much the toil correlated with a comfortable life subsequently. I wanted to bring this point up because a friend of mine was making the point to me earlier how graduates of Harvard may many times have very ordinary luck with career, nothing special, depending largely on what they studied in school. </p>
<p>I think this unfortunately applies to a major like MCB at Berkeley – the amount of toil put in (plus the stress specific to Berkeley’s competitive setting) probably will not correlate well with future career opportunity at all. But to those who’re unhappy, I’d only say to consider other options. If MCB is interesting, one can do it as a major without making medical school the ultimate goal, as some acquaintances of mine do (and grab other majors such as CS, and make those the basis for their careers). After all, to do a CS degree you don’t even have to be in the engineering college. This is just an example out of the blue, and I’m not sure how the CS market is now, but replace that degree with any plan that leads to a job that is in demand.</p>
<p>Just my thought. I didn’t find the above experience particularly unique to Berkeley, though I didn’t read terribly carefully.</p>
<p>This thread has basically confirmed all my fears about Cal. I thought it was just me, and turned a blind eye to my problems and just got on with it.
Hmm.</p>
<p>My history teacher in highschool went to berkeley back in the day during the protests and told really cool stories about it. </p>
<p>I think that it does largely have to do with your major. I personally think that its just the premeds that are unhappy. The engineers are really chill. My Harvard interviewer was this guy who majored in comparative religion and he struggles to get a job. He is now working as an EMT at Alta Bates where you don’t really need a college degree, just training. </p>
<p>Its not the school in general but the people who you are talking to. I think berkeley is great!</p>
<p>@Batman – If you want to hear about my woes, I’ll sum them up.</p>
<p>While I was at Cal and my time after – what ****ed me off – note, this was back in the Aught-Aughts, so it might not be like this anymore – and these are in no particular order:</p>
<ol>
<li>The availability of classes, especially as a Frosh.<br></li>
<li>The mental and academic erraticness of administrators, GSIs, and RAs. I am really not going to go into this because I experienced some pretty nasty racism and institutionalized oppression and it just makes me ****ed off that stuff like this could happen at an “enlightened” and “liberal” university. And don’t even get me started on the bureaucratic incompetence of the administration. Everything had to be exactly by the book and to the letter, no matter how illogical.</li>
<li>Fake People. Again, say what you want about Los Angeles, but I met people that were far more afraid of confrontation and actually dealing with beefs and into the ‘nice to your face, nasty behind your back’ stuff who were from Northern California. Los Angeles is a lot more like New York and Europe in where you **** someone off, they’re likely to come talk to you about it and you know what? Usually after that, you both get over it, have a beer, and actually become friends or come to an amicable concordance. Here? I just find that grudges run deeper and deeper until they explode and people go out of their way to escalate things. All of this “we’re chill here in the Bay,” etc, is a bunch of #@%@^@ in my opinion. </li>
<li>Dogmatism and close-mindedness. I experienced a lot of this at Cal. It was toe the line or shut the hell up and be written off my first few years. </li>
<li>The depressed student body. I mean, when I was there my first year, the Daily Cal wrote three articles on the vast number of students going to the Tang Center to get hopped up on anti-depressant meds. I had to undergo TWO different therapies to get through the place. Those who did not go the ‘healthier’ route often turned to excessive drugs, alcohol, and promiscuity to validate themselves. This, unfortunately, shut many doors for me, that could otherwise have been open. (Military and certain Government)</li>
<li>The inability to form real relationships. Again, this goes with fake people.</li>
<li>With a few exceptions, I was never that impressed with the “brilliance” of the professors. I felt a lot of them were riding work they did decades prior and a lot of it just felt moldy and outdated and inapplicable to the real world.</li>
</ol>
<p>Now we are going to go into what ****es me off now… (We’ll start this with my graduating year to the present day)</p>
<ol>
<li>The magic imploding football team. It’s depressing to watch the same game be played game after game and year after year. People keep telling me to remember the Holmoecaust, but come on, we’re starting to begin that slide.</li>
<li>FAKE PEOPLE!!!</li>
<li>Career fairs – because I was and am not an econ/business, CS, or engineering major, I am and was treated like garbage. I can sling crap and services as well as anyone else and do the economics stuff, and I can computer program as well, self-taught, but I can do it, but because my piece of paper doesn’t say one of the ‘prize majors’, I am immediately written off into the ‘teacher/grad student/law student/chronically unemployable’ category by many companies. And the people were downright nasty, despite the fact I proved my acumen to them when they interviewed me. I’ll tack that on to the bureaucratically incompetent management of the university. I’m not being overly sensitive, but I definitely got the vibe of “We don’t care how smart you are, if you don’t have our ‘major’, we don’t want you.”<br></li>
</ol>
<p>So yes, my inability to get a job despite the fact when I was accepted and they were recruiting me, I was promised a valuable and marketable degree regardless of what I studied, is a big part of my discontent. And the only job I did get, which was a miserable insurance claims adjusting job, where I was abused by the locals, my supervisor, and my manager, was mostly manned by Cal-State graduates, so as you can understand how I feel… not to be arrogant, but being ordered around and told you are incompetent and stupid by someone who barely graduated from Chico does not lend itself to happiness with your degree.</p>
<p>There are many many things I liked as well, what classes were good, were amazing, I liked the friends I was able to make, and my fraternity, was not a d-bag house, but real guys who knew what brotherhood and friendship was really about, and a lot of the stuff other people cited, but I just feel like I did not get what was marketed to me or promised. I really wanted to go to Cal for the prestige and the promise it lent, but I feel now like I might have been just as well off going to an easier state school or private and getting a real marketable degree. I studied what I studied at Cal because I couldn’t get into business, despite it being a backdoor into many of the business classes. But because I do not have that ‘Business’ degree, I’m hosed.</p>
<p>100% agree. message me responses as well, if you have time(:</p>
<p>These people seem happy [The</a> Campaign for Berkeley](<a href=“http://campaign.berkeley.edu/]The”>http://campaign.berkeley.edu/) .</p>
<p>Find happiness elsewhere. I always thought the classes would kill me but then there’s telebears…</p>
<p>I sympathize with andrewtdx’s situation, but a lot of what’s stated there seems awfully specific to one person’s experience, and I could easily give experiences that speak the exact opposite.</p>
<p>this thread is making me want to call up the UC center and have them remove berkeley from my options 
i know no college is perfect, and i’ve been through the 4 yr college route (but somehow wound up going to community,) but seroiusly? if it’s that bad why do people still choose to enroll?</p>
<p>Because it rivals Harvard, Yale, MIT… without emptying your bank account. Professionals view a degree from Cal in a way that opens up doors that other UCs (excluding UCLA) can’t.</p>
<p>as much as it shouldn’t, prestige matters.</p>
<p>Not to sound bitter, but if UC Berkeley opened so many doors – then why am I and so many other alumni having so much trouble finding work and opportunities?</p>
<p>obviously, the economy isn’t on its perfect shape now. even Harvard grads are having a rough time getting their desired jobs these days. A friend of mine from Dartmouth who majored in biology has been out of jobs for 2 years now. You won’t believe what he does now to survive. he’d be applying for grad school next year. he has a pretty decent academic stats at Dartmouth so he might be able to crack Berkeley’s tough grad school admissions.</p>