<p>Help me decide!</p>
<p>UC Berkeley: I have been admitted as an Undeclared/Pre-Business major, and I intend to apply for Haas after my sophomore year.
Pros
-MUCH cheaper (California resident)
-More prestige/higher ranking
-Academic excellence
-Near San Francisco
Cons
-Risky; only ~40% of applicants from Cal are admitted to Haas (I am really worried about this)
-Spring admit (they have a Fall extension program for people like me, so it's not too big of a concern)
-More on my own when it comes to looking for internships/jobs
-Hard to get a good GPA
-Far from home
-This is subjective, but I feel like Berkeley is very cut-throat and, in general, a less friendly atmosphere than USC.</p>
<p>USC: I have been admitted to Marshall as a Business Administration major and invited to join the Global Leadership Program.
Pros
-GLP ("honors" program)= one-week trip to China during spring break
-Trojan network/great connections for internships
-Close to home (30 minute drive)
-Good chance at high GPA
-Amazing school spirit
-Smaller class sizes
-Southern California weather!
-Better social life
Cons
-$$$$ (I don't qualify for financial aid). While my family is able to afford USC, I'm not sure it's worth the huge price difference (almost double)
-Less prestige/lower ranking
-USC is, in general, less academic than Cal</p>
<p>closetpoet, I am in almost the exact same situation as you are (I’m enrolled in FPF, planning to go business, no financial aid from USC, etc), except I live in NorCal.
I visited Berkeley yesterday, toured Haas and talked to some Berkeley students. Apparently Haas has services that are very comparable to Marshall’s when it comes to advising, recruiting, and class sizes. It’s basically like a private school within a large university, to quote my tour guide. Also, the nice thing about FPF is that we’d get to have smaller classes for our first semester at Berkeley. And even for some of the bigger classes at Berkeley, I hear there are smaller discussion groups.
It’s nice that we’re already into Marshall though, so we can relax. It seems like we’d have more flexibility when it comes to the classes we take if we went to USC, since we don’t have to deal with pre-reqs for the business school for the first two years. And the Trojan family is pretty cool, but mostly centered in SoCal.
Here’s the link to a thread I started about this topic: <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-california-berkeley/904873-berkeleys-haas-vs-uscs-marshall.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-california-berkeley/904873-berkeleys-haas-vs-uscs-marshall.html</a>
And another thread I found helpful: <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-california-berkeley/481434-business-cal-usc.html?highlight=haas+marshall[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-california-berkeley/481434-business-cal-usc.html?highlight=haas+marshall</a></p>
<p>Good luck with your decision!</p>