<p>Does anyone know where Berkeley's life science (MCB) stands compared to other universities? Is there an undergraduate ranking sorted by majors, or this exists only for engineering majors?</p>
<p>The research coming out of the department is pretty darn good, top 1-3. But research reputation almost always rests on faculty and grad students (mostly faculty.) Undergrads probably don't have much to gain from the department, other than classes and the promise of a BA. If research in the life sciences is what you want to do for the rest of your life, I strongly discourage you from going to Berkeley MCB as an undergrad. Even for premed it's yucky.</p>
<p>Do you have any proof or experience or all of this hearsay? </p>
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Undergrads probably don't have much to gain from the department, other than classes and the promise of a BA.
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<p>What else can one expect to gain from a department besides an education and research opportunities?</p>
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If research in the life sciences is what you want to do for the rest of your life, I strongly discourage you from going to Berkeley MCB as an undergrad.
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<p>This is quite an ignorant statement as majoring in MCB doesn't limit you to research, you can do alot with a degree... I'm a premed in MCB and I don't see how it is "yucky".</p>
<p>Maybe if you spent more time formulating an argument and not just bashing berkeley aimlessly...</p>
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Do you have any proof or experience or all of this hearsay?
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<p>Why don't you investigate? You'll find that what I said is essentially true. The MCB department generally has great faculty researchers. But the grad students generally are a notch below, mainly due to the fact that Berkeley has less funding for its grad students than its major competitors (Harvard and Stanford) do.</p>
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What else can one expect to gain from a department besides an education and research opportunities?
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<p>How about psychological well-being? Plenty of MCB undergrads are unhappy and the oftentimes negative experience the MCB department provides plays a major causal role in that.</p>
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This is quite an ignorant statement as majoring in MCB doesn't limit you to research, you can do alot with a degree...
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<p>I didn't say that majoring in MCB limited students to research. What I said was that if research is what some bio students want to do for the rest of their life, they would probably be better off not attending Berkeley as MCB undergrads. Heck, even IB probably offerers better research opportunities than MCB.</p>
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I'm a premed in MCB and I don't see how it is "yucky".
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<p>Alright, so you like being a premed in MCB. However, do most MCB premeds feel like that? I say no. And if they are, the sentiment probably doesn't last very long. If Berkeley were to carry out a "satisfaction with majoring in MCB study," I strongly suspect that satisfaction with MCB would decrease over time. As students grow older, graduate, and fail to get into the medical schools they dreamed of as freshmen, they will look back on their Berkeley years as a horrible time indeed.</p>