I will be attending Cal day with my family. What is best things to do or see on Cal day?
Dorm visits are an absolute must, assuming that you are staying on campus. It’s the only time of the year you can see a real dorm and not a staged one. Also, I would recommend eating lunch at one of the dorm cafeterias to see what the food is like.
Going up the clock tower if you haven’t done it before would be fun, but I would either get there really early or really late. It’s free for students normally, so not a big deal if the lines are long and you skip (the lines will be long).
Every major will have their own presentations and the schedule will probably be out soon if it already hasn’t. Do note that the campus is quite large. As an example, it will take 20 minutes or so to walk from the Law School buildings on the southeast side to the Genetics Plant and Bio building on the northwest side. If you’re planning on visiting the Clark-Kerr dorm, it will take 20 minutes to walk to the dorm from the center of campus (or take a bus). So do plan your schedule accordingly.
Some presentations fill up really fast so you’ll want to make sure you’re not late, since you might not get in. That happened with the Data Science presentation last year. For CS and EECS majors make sure to visit Wheeler Hall, especially Room 150. You’ll be spending a lot of your next 2 years there. Also Soda, Etcheverry and Cory.
@ProfessorPlum168 With regard to dorm visits, Cal holds housing tours may times throughout the school year (including the rest of April and May). We visited after Cal Day when D was admitted (we were touring another school on that day so could not go) and took a tour of the dorms. I guarantee it was not “staged”, as they had to kick out the one kid still hanging around. I remember doing a housing tour at UCLA’s admit day and it was Disneyland line length/wait crazy; Cal Day may be similar. If there is some way to visit again this spring, I’d do the housing tour THEN.
the dorm tours on Cal Day, you usually have to wait no more than 10 min. It’s pretty organized. This was my experience last year when going to look at Foothill and Unit 3. Blackwell was still under construction at the time.
I’ve asked about having a separate dorm tour in the past (circa early April) and Housing always said that the only unit available to see would be a model dorm in Unit 1 or 2. I could see dorm tours after the students move out after mid-May, but it might seem weird to have a dorm tour while school was in session. I can’t imagine that the school would have any inventory to show since obviously they would want all the rooms to be filled.
Are there other admitted student days in May? Mid May is the only time we be able to visit Cal to check out the dorm and other stuff. But I am not sure if they even offer such tour given the fact that all the students would have already picked the school by then.
Around May 1 is when you need to turn in your dorm choices, so after that it’s probably too late to tour dorms, unless its more for validation. There’s not a separate Open House date that I know about.
@ProfessorPlum168 Yes, we were shown a Unit 1 dorm on our tour after admit day. I actually slept in a dorm room during parent orientation (cannot remember which unit - ), so I know what they are like when they are empty. It was actually a little helpful to see when they are occupied to show just how CRAMPED 3 people in a tiny dorm room meant for 2 really is. It’s good to see a range as your child’s 5th choice should be “any available” if he/she wants to get on-campus housing - may wind up in one of those Cold-War era dorm rooms!
There are dorm tours through May 3rd (Google UC Berkeley residential housing tours for a schedule) - housing applications for freshman appear to be due May 2nd - so, yes, probably for validation/information at that point.
wow did everyone get the email from the bookstore today?
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