<p>Is it common for Cal undergrads to continue their graduate studies at Berkeley?</p>
<p>Depends on the discipline. I observe, for instance, a stark contrast between the math and CS cultures, given the former generally discourages undergrads at Cal from attending its (top notch!) grad programs in more than a small way, and the latter just doesn’t seem to mind – fairly a bunch of CS grad students are former undergraduates.</p>
<p>I doubt it’s “common,” but it’s not restricted. You may have a bias against you in committee, and if you’re applying in a humanities discipline you might have more trouble (schools, often unlike science/math/etc., strongly encourage you to go somewhere else for your graduate degree), but…</p>
<p>I know of at least one student in the English department who went to Cal as an undergrad. I also know a math major who is now a grad student at Cal.</p>
<p>So it HAPPENS, but remember that Cal is the top grad program in a lot of fields, and they don’t want to glut with their own students, so I wouldn’t call it “common.”</p>
<p>The department of Engineering has about 200 slots each year. This year, they’re reducing it to about 160 due to the budget cut. The other schools that normally send more than 5 students each year to the EECS department are Michigan, Cornell, MIT, Stanford, Caltech. Berkeley normally have a few more students than the other schools. This is coming from a current PhD student. So there’s no reason to believe that Berkeley doesn’t want its own students.</p>
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<p>This is only true for certain disciplines, as I said above. CS was certainly one of them. EE might be another. However, I certainly know that the math department explicitly discourages its students from returning. My friend was accepted back into the Ph.D. program, but when he talked to someone about being nominated for a fellowship, the professor actually told him flat out that undergrads are discouraged from coming back in general, THOUGH in his special case, he was a transfer student, and so it was kind of a different deal.</p>
<p>Now, I myself would love to come back to Berkeley for grad school…</p>
<p>mathboy98: I am just curious. (Don’t overanalyze my question…) Why would schools do that?</p>
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<p>Ah, well quite simply because in some departments, the culture just is such that they want you to have exposure to different locations, as they generally have different kinds of faculty to get you exposed to, and may quite possibly have different research cultures. I feel like part of the reason the math department cares more about this is that it’s SO small at most top schools, and it’s plain that you’re actually going to feel the difference noticeably going from one school’s department to another’s.</p>
<p>I know that Berkeley explicitly discourages philosophy undergrads from pursuing a graduate degree. Part of the reason told to me was because of overcrowding. :/</p>
<p>what about public health?</p>
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<p>You guys should feel lucky: discouragement of its own undergrads is not the most extreme outcome that a Berkeley department can choose. Certain departments prohibit outright admitting its own undergrads to the grad program except under highly restricted and enumerated circumstances. Chemical Engineering, for example, specifically disallows as a matter of explicit policy admitting its own undergrads unless they have earned an intervening degree or have gained substantial work experience. </p>
<p>*Q. My undergraduate degree is not in chemical engineering but I would like to pursue a M.S. or Ph.D. in chemical engineering. What are my chances of being admitted to your program?</p>
<p>Although nearly all of the best chemical engineers are Berkeley graduates, this department, like most other top chemical engineering departments, feels strongly that its’ undergraduates are better served by pursuing graduate studies in a new and different environment. Thus, unless you have obtained a degree elsewhere or have substantial industrial experience since you graduated from Berkeley, we will not admit you to the department for graduate work.*</p>
<p>[UC</a> Berkeley, Dept of Chemical Engineering](<a href=“http://cheme.berkeley.edu/grad_info/faq.html]UC”>http://cheme.berkeley.edu/grad_info/faq.html)</p>
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<p>Wow! This is extreme. I never knew that. I think some other math departments are similar to this, and I’m very glad that grad school at Berkeley is still an option for me.</p>
<p>Wow. That’s harsh.</p>
<p>What about the School of Social Welfare? Or any of the social sciences or arts and humanities?</p>