Interested in info on this topic from those with experience at UC Berkeley. A lot of what we hear about is the culture and pressure for pre-med students. How is it for those in other majors?
I was Berkeley class of 1999 double majored in music & psychology. When I entered undeclared as a freshman and thought I wanted to possibly major in MCB or CS, my experience was horrible. Everyone in those classes were competitive and it was hard to find partners in group projects. I was very unhappy. When I changed my mind and switch to music & psychology, it was a whole new ballgame and group projects were collaborative and everyone got along without the competitiveness. So I would say the culture for non-premed and non-CS was quite a positive one for me.
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Granted this is coming from a perspective of 30 years ago, but the humanities and social sciences at UC Berkeley were very collaborative. The only thing I would say is that it really helps to be a good writer in the non-STEM disciplines as you are graded on both content as well as writing style (diction and structure, well defined thesis with data to support that thesis, strong conclusions, evidence of organized thought throughout, etc.).
Another plus for Berkeley is that every field at the school is likely very well regarded in terms of its academic reputation, so no matter what you major in, you will get a top-notch exposure to that discipline. I never felt “looked down upon” by peers for studying the humanities and social sciences, although maybe the increasing professionalism of college students today might be different from how it was back in the Mesozoic Era of my youth.
Finally, I think the “Berkeley is so competitive” angle gets way overplayed. You never hear that said about UCLA, and yet the 2 schools admit students of pretty much the same “caliber” (how ever that’s defined). I think the competitiveness of Cal is more “urban legend” than truth. Berkeley is a challenging school and hand-holding at the undergraduate level is fairly non-existent, but students at Cal are not hyper competitive and out to run one another into the ground.
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There was probably greater competitiveness for L&S high demand majors since students needed to meet a college GPA threshold to declare them. However, new policy of semi-direct-admit for L&S high demand majors means that those with the semi-direct-admit no longer have so much pressure to compete for grades, although those without semi-direct-admit will find it more difficult to switch into one of those majors.
The L&S high demand majors are listed at https://admissions.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/First-Years-New-High-Demand-Majors-Policy.pdf . Only one (art practice) is a humanities major, although several others are social science majors. None is a biology major, but the density of pre-med students in biology majors can increase the competitiveness there. Although political science is typically the most popular pre-law major, pre-law students are not as concentrated in political science as pre-med students are in biology majors. The remaining incentive for competitiveness is competitive admission for the business major, but that major is moving to semi-direct-admit in fall 2024.