Berkeley vs. UCLA for Philosophy

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of California - Los Angeles
1

<p>Hello all, I recently sent in my UC applications and am now waiting for the rejection/acceptance letters to come around late march mid april. I am hoping to transfer in as a junior from a CC(hence my name!), I am very confident that I will be accepted into both schools and am having trouble deciding between the two schools. </p>

<p>My ultimate goal is to attend law school at any of the top 15 law schools in the nation, the branch of law I would like to study is still unclear. I did not choose Philosophy as a major because I thought it would help me get into law school, I genuienly fell in love with the subject after taking Theory of Knowledge. </p>

<p>But because of the limited job opps that a philosophy major has, I am kind of stuck between two professions: lawyer or professor. I am leaning towards lawyer, and because of that choice which school would be better for my career path? </p>

<p>Is it true that UCLA's philosophy department is more logic orientated? Does Cal offer a more rigourous education? Is it the difference in difficultity even noticable? If Cal truly does offer a lower tier ivy education at the cost of a public school would it be the better choice? Is it even a good idea to choose a school based on its difficulty, shouldn't I as a student seek out the school that will challenge me the most both academically and as a person?(I am from SoCal)</p>

2

<p>Oh yeah and I am talking strictly about the undergraduate programs for both schools.</p>

3

<p>Berkeley and UCLA are pretty much the same for undergrad, with Berkeley having higher quality professors. For graduate, Berkeley is much better than UCLA’s grad.</p>

<p>Berkeley’s undergraduate program is sadly overhyped. But so is UCLA’s. They’re amongst the best of public schools, but I feel that a top LAC/ivy league school would have a better undergrad experience. </p>

<p>Berkeley’s grad program is when it gets super prestigious and rigorous. So no, Berkeley’s philosophy major is definitely hard but not overly crazy. </p>

<p>If you want to go to law school, choosing one school over the other won’t do much of a difference. Chose a place that you will like better.</p>

4

<p>According to a lot of the old Berkeley vs. UCLA philosohpy debates on these forums, that is not the case at all. Granted that the bias will lean towards whichever sub-forum the topic was started in, the general consensus seems to be that there are pretty significant differences between the two undergraduate programs. </p>

<p>So I started this thread to see if any current or past UCLA/Cal students wanted to drop by and share their opinions on the matter.</p>

5

<p>Do we really need to scrutinize every frivolous liberal arts program? Go to the university that feels the best. </p>

<p>It honestly won’t matter how well you learn “philosophy” in terms of your career and ranking authorities, such as USNWR, have already ranked practically every program that is worthy of being ranked.</p>

6

<p>I’m a philosophy junior transfer at UCLA.</p>

<p>UCLA, historically, has a better graduate program than berkeley.</p>

<p>[The</a> Philosophical Gourmet Report 2009 :: Overall Rankings](<a href=“http://www.philosophicalgourmet.com/overall.asp]The”>http://www.philosophicalgourmet.com/overall.asp)</p>

<p>if you look here for all of the programs in the same rank in rank 9 (where berkeley and UCLA are tied with stanford and UNC-CH) all of the medians for the above schools are 4.0, whereas berkeley’s is 3.5s. This doesn’t say MUCH about the schools, other than, like i said, historically it offers a stronger grad program.</p>

<p>UCLA’s philosophy department is very focused on analytic philosophy. You come into contact with a lot of philosophy of language, logic, etc. I can’t speak about berkeley’s because i don’t go there.</p>

<p>i can tell you that in no law school will care whether you went to berkeley or UCLA. If they did care, they’d probably be viewed very similarly, it’s not like if two applicants were completely identical except that one went to cal and the other to UCLA, then the cal one would win.</p>

<p>so at this point, you need to decide on other things like what city you’d prefer, whether you’d prefer semester or quarter, etc. they’re both good programs, and if you work hard and do well on your LSATs, you should have no problem getting into the school you want.</p>

7

<p>does berkeley even exist if you don’t attend?</p>

8

<p>Beyphy, did you just recently transfer to UCLA in Fall 2010? How are you enjoying UCLA as a whole, the phil department, the people, the city, etc? </p>

<p>I guess the whole point of this thread is to see whether the academics offered at one school is significally better(or different) than the other, because if there is no significant difference then I can feel at ease by deciding which school to attend by weighing other factors, not academically related.</p>

<p>As far as the poster of this question is concerned, “Do we really need to scrutinize every frivolous liberal arts program? Go to the university that feels the best.”
Yes I do feel it is necessary to scutinize every aspect of these two schools in order to arrive at the best possible conclusion. I come from a family where college is not a natural birth-right, where it is considered an absolute privilege. And to pay back my family for this privilege I would like to ensure that I get the best quality education I can so I can pay back my family later on in the future. This is not an attack at your post, I am just trying to answer your question. Please do not misunderstand.</p>

9

<p>@CCjuniortransfer i’ve lived in los angeles my whole life, so it wasn’t too big of a deal attending UCLA.</p>

<p>i’ve only taken two philosophy classes here. One with David Kaplan (who’s a really famous philosopher who received his PHD from another famous philosopher Carnap [who studied under frege]) and one with Andrew Hsu. I liked both classes a lot, especially Hsus. I think i would have liked Kaplan’s just as much, except the concepts kind of escaped me, and i didn’t make the effort i should have to try to understand them.</p>

<p>The department is very reputable from what i hear (Barbara Herman, another philosopher here, is supposed to be an authority on Kant.)</p>

<p>Reaffirming my earlier point, you’ll get a good education at either school. This isn’t to say berkeley doesn’t have famous philosophers there as well. There’s some professor there (his name escapes me) who’s an authority on heidegger who some philosophers consider to be one of the greatest of the last century. </p>

<p>Let me know if i can tell you anything else about the department :)</p>

<p>EDIT: oh and yes, F2010 was my first quarter.</p>

10

<p>Beyphy, what would you say is the major difference between the Philosophy classes taken at a CC and the Philosophy classes at a UC? Pinkerfloyd who is also a UCLA Phil jr transfer said in a post somewhere that if one honestly understood the concepts and did well in the CC philosophy courses then one would do just as well at UCLA. Do you think this is true? Is it that the approach in which the concepts are presented that makes the concepts more difficult or is the actual material itself harder when compared to the material learned at a CC? Again, I really do appreciate you taking the time to answer these questions.</p>

11

<p>I’d say that the classes i had in community college i could rely more on the text whereas at UCLA i need to rely a lot more on lecture. You can’t take Kaplan’s class on Russell for example and just expect to understand it by reading On Denoting or Chapter V from Principles of Mathematics. The papers just have way too much context, difficulty, and explanation for it to be understood without it being explained.</p>

<p>It was the same with my class with Hsu on Descartes. The text was meant to accompany concepts that we examined in class, and the concepts in class often dealt with problems which where in no way explicit in the text. In my CC i had always just been able to read the textbook and understand the arguments, whereas here i need to actually combine the two.</p>

<p>It depends on the class, but overall i’d say the concepts aren’t too much more difficult than the ones in CC, but the assigned reading is way higher in my experience too.</p>

12

<p>Beyphy why did you choose UCLA over UCB? Was it because Berkeley didn’t have any courses that matriculated to your CC? Because it would seem easier if I went to UCLA because I have completed all the major pre reqs, but with berkeley I would have to take a semester to finish their major pre reqs(Logic, and Ancient/Modern Phil). Do you know if UCLA includes the four major pre-reqs listed as actual major requirements? Because if the four courses that are required prior to transfer to UCLA are part of the 13 major pre reqs listed on the site, it seems it would be much easier for me to attend UCLA rather than Berkeley. It would mean I only have to take 9 Major pre req courses instead of 12(9 for ucla, 12 for berk)</p>

13

<p>Why did i chose UCLA over Berkeley? I got rejected from berkeley xD I was a boarderline case though seeing as UCB admissions called my house to do a telephone interview with me (which i wasn’t home for at the time) and hence, i was rejected.</p>

<p>although, before i even knew i was rejected, i still sent in my SIR to UCLA.</p>

<p>I thought i was going to be living at home and commuting to school (even though i’m living in westwood now) as far as the departments being similar in graduate school rankings, prestige (at least in philosophy, although i think UCLAs more prestigious imo) and thought it would be foolish to take out loans if it could be avoided.</p>

<p>that was another reason, for some odd reason, i had 3/4 major prereqs completed at UCLA, yet none for berkeley. The prereqs for UCLA are a course in philosophy of mind/skepticism and rationality (both of these deal with epistemology) symbolic logic, and ethics. Pretty decent foundation in nearly all of the four main branches of philosophy. </p>

<p>i’m not sure if you go to assist.org, but they have the major prereqs lined up pretty well, as well as showing whether your community college offers equivalents. At UCLA at least, when we went to orientation, we got forms from the departmental advisor who gave us papers that allowed us to petition our classes. I’m pretty sure berkeley has some similar appeal process.</p>

<p>Also, it’s important to note that classes aren’t offered every semester (budget cuts) so it might take you more than a semester to finish your prereqs if you have more than one class. </p>

<p>i’m not sure where you’re getting 9/13 major prereqs from. UCLA only has 4, and i think berkeley only has 4 too. You don’t have to finish all of the major prereqs prior to transfer, although most people do, or at least finish most. I just needed the skepticism requirement because unfortunately my CC only offered it in fall, and i realized this in the spring of my last semester. I’ve also seen a few other people who didn’t do either their logic requirement, or their ethics requirement, but to even get accepted it’s expected that you have at least most of them done so you can have a decent understanding of your major, and be certain that you want to do it.</p>

<p>EDIT: oh, if you mean the 13 classes that are required for the major to graduate, these are UPPER DIVISION classes. so if you get admitted into the major with none of the prereqs done, you’ll need at least 16 classes for the major.</p>

14

<p>It’s been a long while for me, but I’d give UCLA the edge on difficulty over Berkeley at least for undergrad. But included in that heighened level of difficulty is the quarter system vs. the semester system. Philosophy courses should be studied in semester increments. Quarter sytem doesn’t allow the subject to develop as deeply as one might want.</p>

<p>Philosophy is actually an excellent major to be followed by law school. Very similar in so many respects. I’ve used quotes by Sartre and Kafka more times than I like to think (and fairly successfully) in my pleadings over the years.</p>

<p>Both being equal, go with the school with the system (quarter v. semester) that works best with your personality and lifestyle.</p>