<p>I go to private school but hobos don’t bother me bc i live in LA.
I think i want to go to med school but i’m not sure. i might just go into research. i’m definitely going to some sort of graduate study though. my major is biological science for brown and mcb for berkeley.
I have Regents for Berkeley, but I receive ZERO financial aid otherwise for both schools. This means 27k vs. 52k</p>
<p>Berkeley wins the following:</p>
<li>COST! (leaves me with more disposable income)</li>
<li>Regents benefits (not sure if there’s anything really)</li>
<li>Better at bio (i heard this somewhere. is this true?)</li>
<li>More of a real-world experience, more down-to-earth.</li>
<li>Better food / more to do in the bay. Providence is kind of boring.</li>
<li>Weather</li>
<li>More diverse</li>
</ol>
<p>Right now, Brown wins the following:</p>
<li>Berkeley is very competitive; people don’t want to help each other study. Brown is more chill.</li>
<li>Class sizes are a lot bigger at Berkeley, harder to have one on one time with the professor.</li>
<li>Open curriculum as opposed to a bunch of general ed’s I don’t want to take</li>
<li>Higher ranked, Ivy league</li>
<li>Less competition for research opportunities</li>
<li>Recognized for undergrad whereas Berkeley is more well-known for its graduate program</li>
<li>Professors are professors at Brown but at Berkeley many classes are taught by grad students</li>
<li>High GPAs are incredibly hard to get at Berkeley.</li>
</ol>
<p>I’m not really asking you to make the decision for me; I’m just asking that you consider the arguments that I’ve been told and tell me if they’re valid. Thanks in advance.</p>
<p>1) Only kinda valid. Depends on classes. Most people aren’t like that.
2) Go to office hours, it shouldn’t be a problem.
3) True
4) Depends on major
5) I don’t think that’s true…Berkeley has a lot of opportunities because of its reputation and location
6) Only the discussion sections are taught by grad students, the professors are great here
7) True</p>
<ol>
<li><p>People are competitive, especially in pre-med (which is what a lot of MCB is). However, they’re not all cut throat and a lot are smart enough to realize studying with other people helps them as well. There’s plenty of opportunity to relax, take a trip to SF, etc.</p></li>
<li><p>Not all classes are huge and they get substantially smaller the further you get away from weeders and pre-reqs. As N Y C says, go to office hours and it’s not a problem. (You should go to office hours anyway.)</p></li>
<li><p>GEs suck. End story. Honestly, GEs are rarely fun and they’re annoying when you want to do anything but, but sometimes you find something you’d never have tried before and find out you like it.</p></li>
<li><p>Not gonna go there on rankings. Suffice to say that Cal has plenty of brand-name recognition.</p></li>
<li><p>Berkeley has a TON of opportunities, not just at the school but in the surrounding area. You can find something.</p></li>
<li><p>Eh, the grad/undergrad distinction isn’t as daunting as you think. I’m not even sure why the grad program being stronger would make your undergrad experience worse. What are you afraid of? </p></li>
<li><p>SOME classes at Berkeley are taught by GSIs. Those classes are generally not important in the scope of your major anyway. Besides, this is a plus for the “stronger grad program” thing – the strong grad program means smart GSIs!</p></li>
<li><p>High GPAs are hard to get anywhere. I guarantee you’ll feel more accomplished for having worked for it.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>As for getting into med school, that highly depends on how you performed at the undergrad. If you’ll garner a sterling GPA and an excellent score on the MCAT, you’ll get into top med school like Harvard, Hopkins, UC-San Francisco, etc… Undergrad’s school name at all top 50 schools don’t really matter as much as GPA and MCAT scores do.</p>
<p>brown is consistently ranked among the top 5 schools in the country for getting students into med school (and although “chillness” isn’t ranked, i would argue brown is the least stressful place to be pre-med)</p>
<p>Seems like most the points have been addressed by previous posters.</p>
<p>Just keep in mind though that your GPA is usually considered in the context of your college if you’re applying to grad school. That is - a 3.4 from Berkeley may often be much better than a 4.0 from some GPA-inflated college. It’s harder to get a high GPA, but it doesn’t really matter when context is considered. It’s not like in high school where the adcom knows nothing.</p>
<p>It seems like your arguments for Brown are not necessarily valid and Berkeley can compete on all levels. It should really come down to - visit both at a random in-session day and see which one feels right.</p>
<p>Yup. Brown gets a much higher percentage of its premed population into med schools than Berkeley does. If your ultimate goal is med school and money is not a huge concern, then go to Brown.</p>
<p>Dude ---- it’s BERKELEY. Unless you’re doing a flaky major, Brown’s name-recognition isn’t going to beat Berkeley’s – Brown has undergrad prestige as an Ivy, sure, but Berkeley is an internationally acclaimed school, and unless it’s Harvard or MIT you’re talking about, I’d kind of forget the name-recognition thing when you’re comparing with Berkeley. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>The <em>real</em> classes are taught by professors. The smaller itsy bitsy things don’t need professors. Berkeley grad students are incredibly smart, and Berkeley professors are more accomplished than you ever will be (99.9999999999999999% I’m right, and I ignore the chance I’m wrong), and you’d not understand the difference between a Berkeley prof and a grad student at the lower division. </p>
<p>OK now I’m done being brutal and potentially insulting – but frankly, it is a STEAL to study at Berkeley for the in-state tuition in my honest opinion, and I’d not dismiss it with light things like “Brown’s prestige” – it really doesn’t make sense.</p>
<p>I have to make a comment on Brown’s research opportunities. I have two friends who are currently attending Brown. One is an international relations major who is loving the Brown curriculum (though she mentioned having some disputes with her profs over their differences in viewpoints) and she is currently in Egypt studying aboard. The other is a physics major turned BioE major. The reason for the major change in the first place was that there were no research projects or opportunities in Brown’s physics department and he switched to BioE hoping to get some research except the BioE department at Brown is so new the professors are still trying to find good longterm research projects.</p>
<p>Sure Berkeley has more people competing for research opportunities, but Berkeley has a lot more research opportunies than Brown, especially in the field of biology. If you can’t find one on campus, there’s LBNL, UCSF, and even the USDA. There are plenty of options and opportunities if you just look. I do think your odds of getting a research position are better if you at least have opportunities to apply to in the first place.</p>
<p>On a more random note, I feel like the fact people on this board keep trying to encourage people who post here asking about whether they should go to Berkeley to come to Berkeley demonstrates that we’re not as competitive as people make us out to be. If we were really competitive, you’d hear us telling you how much Berkeley sucks and don’t come to decrease the competition. Then again, I’ve heard it mentioned that the people on the CC board are not quite a representative sample of Berkeley students.</p>
<p>I’m not sure what type of arrangement does Brown have when it comes to research, but from what I know, most research-led schools such as Berkeley, Stanford, MIT, Cornell, Harvard, Princeton, Hopkins, UPenn, UMich, Duke, NU and the like, research funding usually comes from private sponsors, aside from university owned. That is why, if you are serious in majoring in science/engineering, research-led schools are the better options (if you have such one) because these type of universities have rich and tight relationship with privates sponsors. Look at the labs at Berkeley, Stanford, MIT and Harvard, for example. They’re funded by private donors, if not by the government. The level of research they conduct are usually of national and international scale and caliber. Those kind of researches do not occur at small, lowly funded schools like Brown because they don’t have the facilities, manpower, resources, capabilities, etc… </p>
<p>It’s probably true that Brown and such schools are great for science/engineering, but due to their very limited facilities, resources, faculty, etc…they could NOT compete with research-led schools. And the argument that they provide a much better education in science and engineering than schools like Berkeley, NU, Penn, Hopkins and the like is a claim that cannot be subsantiated.</p>
<p>^ That not what I said.
I said at research-led schools such as Berkeley, Hopkins, Michigan, Penn, Columbia, NU and the like, not at small schools like Brown and Dartmouth.</p>
<p>There isn’t a “reasoned” answer to this question. Only you can decide what that money means to you and your family and only you can tell whether you prefer Brown enough to make it worth it to spend that money.</p>
<p>The main advantage of Brown would be that the students, I would think. There will be smarter/cooler people, in general, than you’ll find at Berkeley. Brown selects smart people from across the country, Berkeley gets the top tier of students from each California high school…</p>
<p>That makes it easy for everyone to have 4.0 GPAs without trying at the Ivies. We should push to fix the GPA system at Cal if it is as bad as some indicate. A little student action could work wonders.</p>
<p>Brown is in Providence, where nothing happens and it may be a great experience for those who don’t know what they want to do. It is not so good for those who have a specialty where they want the best instruction.</p>
<p>At a tour, Brown’s admissions director was whining about how they had lost good profs to other universities. He said to pick the school for the students, not for the profs.</p>
Honestly, GEs are rarely fun and they’re annoying when you want to do anything but, but sometimes you find something you’d never have tried before and find out you like it.</p></li>