<p>Hi, I know you guys are probably sick of these blabidy blahs vs Berkeley threads, but please help me out! I'm really not sure which college I should go to and I'm running out of time... I'm deciding between UC Berkeley: School of Letters and Penn CAS and my intended major is international affairs. Money is not an issue- both colleges are offering me the same amount of financial aid. Im mainly hesitant because Berkeley offered me Regents Scholar and if I like the campus and San Francisco a lot, but Penn is Penn; its an Ivy </p>
<p>Please help me out! Tell me anything and any reason why I should go to either school :p I just need to hear something, anything! I'm that confused. One of the major turnoff for me about Berkeley is that it doesnt have an international affairs program. Is there any way to compensate that? And how much does that Regents Scholar weigh in terms of applying to prestigious grad schools? Could being Regent Scholar match the prestige given by an Ivy school?</p>
<p>My apologies if I'm sounding like an indecisive dope, but deciding where to go next is even more stressful than waiting for the acceptance/rejection letter :p</p>
<p>hands down…u penn.
penn is an ivy while berkeley is a public school. this means smaller class sizes
at penn and much larger lecture halls at cal…</p>
<p>if theyre both the same price, definitely penn</p>
<p>Berkeley isn’t radioactive. PA is loaded with nuke plants, some of which are alleged to cause serious problems. The areas downwind of TMI is a mess. Limerick, 20 minutes form Philly, has contaminants of radiation, arsenic, cyanide, etc, and is very unhealthy. Also there is the issue of whether you would want to eat locally grown food in PA. Worse, they are planning more nuke plants for Philly. The closest nuke plant to Berkeley is Diablo Canyon, a couple hundred miles or more away.</p>
<p>i got into penn and cal. I went to cal. long story short, go to penn.</p>
<p>regents is nice, and that looks good on your resume because you stand out here already, but penn is just a much better school. i would go into more detail, but i am cramming for a midterm.</p>
<p>I got deferred then rejected from Wharton so I am going to Cal this year.
But I am pretty sure that Penn would have a good international affairs program right? Since it is the Ivy that accepts the most international students, plus its international business is good so I am just going to assume its int’l affairs is good as well.
For the same price, I would definitely pick Penn.
Regents is only like $1k anyways and guaranteed housing is like, “so what?” since you move to apartments after a year or two.</p>
<p>As far as grad schools are concerned Berkeley is more prestigious than Penn. It’s much higher regarded by academics. For professional school it may be a different story but it’s hard to beat Berkeley if you’re trying to go to a school that a grad school adcom will know a great deal about.</p>
<p>Thanks everyone for the imput. I still don’t have a clear cut idea on where I want to go yet. If you have a chance, krysaio, will you elaborate?</p>
<p>biomech: I would not hesitate to go to cal if I had wanted to major in the sciences and engineering. Liberal arts wise, I heard that Cal is not so great on the undergrad level… Will I get more internship and research opportunities at cal than at penn? And will Berkeley Regents really be better in terms of getting me to grad school? cuz that’s all I really care about, getting to grad school, and everything else (environment, people, campuses, food, whatevers) is secondary. In terms of learning, I can find my way.</p>
<p>If money is no object, I think you should visit Penn to get a feel of the school. Plus, it’s good to get out of CA for a while and 4 years of college is the best time to do so.</p>
<p>The most Regents will do for you is start you out with a few connections (you get an advisor). I doubt that many grad schools – at least the ones you’ll be applying for in the upper tiers – care about the award itself, just what you do with it.</p>
<p>On that note: where are the grad schools in the general field you want to go on to located? I agree that you should get out of CA if you can; if your grad school aspirations take you elsewhere, there’s no reason to do it before you get your undergraduate degree.</p>
<p>I don’t know why L&S is supposed to be “weaker” – I know the English department is tied with Harvard, Yale, etc. (y’know, the Ivies?) for the top. I’m self-centered and that’s my department so I can’t tell you with certainty how the rest of it goes, but suffice to say that EVERY department is in the top 10 nationwide or near it. Even if this refers to the graduate programs, realize that the same professors teach the graduate classes as the lower division ones, and when you do have GSIs teaching/aiding a class, you get the benefit of world-class scholars-in-training.</p>
<p>Honestly you can’t go wrong with either school. Both will place you in an excellent spot with an eye to graduate school. It really is up to the subjective “everything else” that is secondary.</p>
<p>Oh, the grad schools that I’m looking at are predominantly on the east coast–Harvard, Yale, SAIS (Johns Hopkins) and Columbia. I am also considering Berkeley; its grad school rocks </p>
<p>haha undecided, you have a reason to be defensive; the English department is great. I guess what I meant to say that the departments in Letters and Science that pertains to my major is not so stellar at the undergrad level (I heard from quite a few that the political science department is complete bs, but then again, how many other poli sci departments in the country at the undergrad level is not?). </p>
<p>Thank you all; I believe I have made up my mind (I hope ).</p>
<p>In my personal opinion, Berkeley is worthier than any lower Ivy for engineering (across all majors), computer science, Haas and all those professional programs such as optometry, dentistry, architecture and the like. However, if you’re not going to major in any of those programs, then you should choose an Ivy especially if the cost is just the same. </p>
<p>Personally, If I get into EECS, for example, I would got for it because that is worth attending more than any not-overly-subscribed program in a lower Ivy. I would even pick EECS over any liberal arts, humanities, philosophy or social science program at Yale, Stanford or Princeton, for sure.</p>
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