<p>Hey, I'm currently doing research on colleges and I'm wondering what do people who go to UCB like/hate about the school.
(for example: dorms, food, social life, class size, etc etc)</p>
<p>Thankss</p>
<p>i'll answer your questions in a couple posts. I'm too lazy to do them all at once.</p>
<p>people</p>
<p>the school is like 40-50% asian, which means there are about as many asian as non-asian people, so asians are the "minority-majority". this was "culture-shock" (color-shock, in reality) for me because i (an asian) am used to being in the minority (my school was like 15% asian or so, which is pretty high by national standards but nothing out of the ordinary in CA). But we're liberal enough that you're supposed to pretend not to notice race except when making self-deprecating jokes, which i think is a bad thing but others might say is good. Also, it's like a 50-40-10 socal - norcal - nocal/obscureCal mix if geography matters to you. </p>
<p>Lots of pre-med and pre-hass here. I think the worst part about berkeley is all the pre-meds and pre-haas people. They're the ones who give cal the bad reputation for being cutthroat and hard. (they seem to spend all their time whining about grades and comparing themselves with each other.) if you're pre-med, i suggest not going to berkeley unless you know you're strong enough to be mellow above the fray. (my pet theory is that the people who complain the least get the best grades because they can channel all their whining-energy into studying and then relaxing/having fun.)</p>
<p>dorms</p>
<p>the dorms vary greatly in quality even though they all cost about the same. units 1, 2 and 3 are on southside pretty close to campus and are pretty good, and are reputed to be the most lively of the dorms (unit 3 is supposed to be the liveliest). Units 1 and 2 have especially nice new buildings that are hard but not impossible for freshmen to get. Clark kerr is spacious but far away and old. Foothill/Stern/Bowles are on the north side. Since your seem to be a girl (username), you have already made a good choice because guys-only Bowles is the worst dorm (some toilet stalls lack doors, dorm has barren concrete floors, etc.). I don't know much about Stern. Foothill is suite-based so it tends to be more insular, but the facilities are okay. most people used to move out of the dorms in the 2nd year but now that they've extended the housing guarantee to 2 years you might stay there for longer. </p>
<p>Oh and people make co-ed bathrooms out be a much bigger deal than they actually are. at least in my dorm the shower stalls were double-layered (stall door + curtain), and it's not like people run around naked.</p>
<p>Food</p>
<p>Dining plan food is okay in general. Clark kerr in particular and Crossroads (unit 1 and 2) are pretty good, but unit 3 and foothill (bowles and stern eat here too) are mediocre. The on-campus meal-plan "restaurants" are also mediocre. There's a lot of good, cheap food in Berkeley so it's a good idea to eat out. (if you're ever in town, I recommend Cafe Intermezzo and Crepes a go go, although Crepes a go go is kind of expensive for what you get.)</p>
<p>Social life</p>
<p>berkeley is big enough that it's hard to make a blanket statement about social life. School spirit here is pretty strong, especially since our football team last season was pretty good, but not great. We're reputed to be less fun than UCSB, but more fun than UCSD. We're nerdier than UCLA. Also, north side (where the stereotypical engineer lives) is much more boring than south side. There are a lot of clubs and campus groups, too, though I've not gotten too involved in those so I can't report on those. </p>
<p>Other</p>
<p>Lots of fellowships and churches if you're a Christian or are interested in learning more. Some are very strong, some are dubious. First Pres is apparently pretty famous.</p>
<p>i hate dorm food...esp. unit 3 food..all they have is chicken..
i eat cereal in the morning..how can you eat greasy food in the morning?</p>
<p>Thank you so much you guys.
Any other opinions?</p>
<p>-The professors & GSI's are very smart, engaging. I love all my classes last semester.
-Big library, spacious study areas.
-Many beautiful spots around the campus, which make you feel like being in the wood.</p>
<p>what exactly is the dorm food? is it an all u can eat buffet, or is it a point system or what? somebody please clarify the food system at berkeley.</p>
<p>everything you never wanted to know about Cal dining... <a href="http://caldining.berkeley.edu/%5B/url%5D">http://caldining.berkeley.edu/</a></p>
<p>Yeah, it's both. When you're enrolled, you will get your Cal1card which serves as both an ID and a credit card. When you go eat, they just swipe the thing, and points will be deducted from your meal plan.
When you run out of points early as I did last semester, you can pay by cash. But that will cost you an extra dollar/meal.
Only for people in unit 4(Bowles, Stern, Foothill), we have Late Night Grill starting from 9pm-2am Sun-Thu. It's really convenient if you suddenly feel hungry while studying during the night. They make all the good stuffs that are different from what they have for dinner.</p>
<p>Just how competitive ARE the pre-haas people? lol</p>
<p>(I'm applying to the pre-haas undergrad major)</p>
<p>UGBA 10 is a requirement to apply for Haas and its notorious for having a tough curve. The subject matter is not difficult, but its the curve that kills.</p>
<p>But Haas excepts 50% of applicants I think.</p>
<p>i get the impression that applying to haas is like applying to college all over again.</p>
<p>class size</p>
<p>"IT VARIES" is the common response. If you're a science/engineering type, the shared lower div classes like math and chemistry are all 100-200-300+ person lectures, with ~25 person discussions with graduate student instructors where you discuss homework, do labs and stuff like that. I find that lectures by professors aren't as useful as going to discussion/lab with the GSI, but i've had middling professors. I suspect the same is true of business/econ/psych/polisci/other common majors for lower div. All other classes (lower div non-popular majors, upper div classes in general) are supposed to be smaller (<50 people in a class), with especially unpopular classes like nuclear engineering or geography being in the teens or smaller. i think that with the possible exception of R1A/R1B (writing breadth), all classes are lectured by professors/lecturers. If i'm wrong on this, someone correct me.</p>
<p>academics</p>
<p>berkeley is a pretty good school. Supposedly we're one of the best, but our reputation for being really hard i think is over-hyped. if you confidently did well in high school AP classes & tests or other such hard things you're fine as long as you don't do something stupid like take 20 units your first semester. if you're gung-ho about units, it's probably best to ramp up your unit load gradually. if you're a genius, this advice doesn't apply.</p>
<p>i should add that berkeley is a bureaucratic mess, and that if you're not familiar with the paperwork it can be miserable. navigating bureaucracy is a pretty easily learned skill so it should be okay if you've been able to handle your neighborhood DMV.</p>
<p>the definition of "fine" can vary greatly among people.</p>
<p>it may be easy to get a B in so and so course, but like eiffelguy87 says about ugba 10 there are courses that are made to weed out students. even our assistant dean of engineering acknowledge about weeder courses. my coworker says her friend's math 1b professor failed 40% of his class. surely many in the class tried their best but still failed.</p>
<p>^p.s. ap calc in high school is nothing like calc here</p>
<p>Here's my list-
Good things about cal-
The amount of clubs, the professors are great, the price of tuition, the amount of classes makes choosing them very hard (in a good way).</p>
<p>Not so good things about cal-
Some classes are taught by GSI's and i really don't like that, GSI grade inflation, classes with curves are very hard to get good grades in, the price of the dorms (they are some of the most expensive in the country)</p>
<p>Nobody at cal is there to hold your hand to walk you through things. Everytime i have a problem at school my mom says, "Well why don't you go talk to a counselor about it?" And i have to say, "What councilor?" Whereas at Staford (so i have heard) if you are having problems with a class an assigned councilor will talk it out with you over tea and cookies. Last year i wanted to take a theater class and i couldnt even find the department to sign up for auditions until second semester. So it can be hard but it also prepares you for the "real world"</p>
<p>ps haas is very hard to get into. What i have heard is that they basically just take the students with the highest GPAs who apply. And yeah, don't take math 1b my friend failed it twice.</p>
<p>
[quote]
it may be easy to get a B in so and so course, but like eiffelguy87 says about ugba 10 there are courses that are made to weed out students. even our assistant dean of engineering acknowledge about weeder courses. my coworker says her friend's math 1b professor failed 40% of his class. surely many in the class tried their best but still failed.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>A guy I know who graduated from chemical engineering from Berkeley once remarked at how he took the chemical engineering weeder course that was TA'd by a GSI who did her undergrad at MIT. After final grades were posted, she said in passing that she thought that the curve was unusually harsh. Think about that. MIT grads are obviously no stranger to ridiculous grading standards, but even she thought that the Berkeley ChemE curve was harsh.</p>
<p>Academics are not as crazy as it seems, at least not in the beginning...BUT, you'll be hard pressed to get A's in some of the tougher courses. I did very well in all my tests in Chem 1a and ended up with a B+...it was exactly 83.9%, and I don't know the curve, but if 84% was an A- and I was one point off, that's tough to swallow.</p>
<p>Food is atrocious for me, but I'm not used to eating "American" food every day. And I'm a vegetarian, so everything they serve that I can eat is bland. Once in a while the Asian section will have something vegetarian and that's always tasty. They make omelets at Unit 3 Cafe until 2 PM, so that's usually the best meal of my day. Dinner at Crossroads must be swallowed down like my grades.</p>
<p>Social life...there are plenty of nice people, and if you're Asian you'll fit right in by default. I still haven't met anyone I would really consider a friend. Like...someone you'd go out of your way to call up and hang out with. I only have acquaintances, and that's no good. Hopefully I'll find a few people when I join something or do something extracurricular, which I haven't yet done.</p>
<p>Professors are great, but they're like celebrities. They won't respond to e-mails, at least not for a few months, so you'll have to go to their office hours. My experience with GSI's so far has soured me quite a bit. One GSI didn't know much more about the material than us, and the other I just plain didn't like. GSI's don't teach the big classes, so don't believe all that. Sometimes they will substitute. I had two substitute GSI's last semester and didn't learn a thing from their lecture. Professors know how to lecture, they make it seem like a dialogue. GSI's memorize what they have to say and they spit it out without even thinking about it.</p>
<p>Berkeley has a lot of potential to be a fun time, but so far it hasn't been. I go home on the weekends. I'd rather hang out with my dog than the people on my floor, no offense to them, but he's a good boy.</p>
<p>pre-Haas kids are the worst, easily.
I used to be pre-Haas, was even an officer of my business club, but the competitive and cutthroat nature of the people, combined with their crappy sense of humor and tendency to overemphasize grades over everything else disgusted me and I switched majors.</p>
<p>I'm sorry but for me college is about a lot more than just getting a high GPA. And that's why I joined a co-op :)<br>
<a href="http://www.usca.org/%5B/url%5D">http://www.usca.org/</a> for the uninitiated
Whoever claims northside is boring obviously has never been to a co-op party...</p>
<p>If you really want to get to know professors take a freshman/sophomore seminar. I was lucky enough to take two in the fall semester, one that was 1 unit and another that was a 4 unit history seminar. These classes were taught by full professors with 9-13 people in each. They were both absolutely an amazing experiences. At the end of both these classes my professors invited us to their homes for breakfast (a wonderful break from Crossroads!). Certainly this will not happen in traditional lecture courses, but seminars are certainly something to keep in mind if you are really worried about getting to know a professor.</p>
<p>Tell me more about the co-ops not described on the website please :)</p>
<p>how's the poli-sci program? best/worst things? class size? etc....</p>
<p>Some GSI's do teach large classes. I took a class last year with maybe 300 people in it that was taught be a GSI. I am not in the polisci program but i have heard nothing but good things about it, it supposed to be one of the best in the country. Class sizes will not be good in it though. Maybe upper division will have decent class sizes but lower division will have between 400 and 1000 people I am guessing.</p>