<p>I was talking to a friend about some pros and cons of attending Berkeley and he brought up a very good point about how theres way too much competition in that school. Exactly how competitive is it? How much would that impact the level of enjoyment, etc. at the school?</p>
<p>I've been wondering this exact same thing. Any thoughts please?</p>
<p>i guess there's some competition in like...the curved/sciency classes and to get into haas, but it's not cut-throat, that's just the way it happens to be because there's limited spots for various programs, so they have weeder courses meant to get the best students, or they have an admissions process. It's really as competitive as you want it to be. you can do your best, and have fun with it, or you can stress over every little bump in the road.<br>
If you're in social sciences or humanities it's definitely not competitive, it's all about learning and rhetoric</p>
<p>Tip: Don't listen or trust people who talk about Berkeley who don't attend Berkeley. They tend to magnify a lot of what the reality really is. Especially look out for those who get rejected and try to give you advice.</p>
<p>Berkeley will not be like high school where effort and some work = automatic As. You will face a fair shair of competition if you want to major in the traditional majors such as business, economics, engineering or biology (MCB and IB). It is competitive, but don't think that you'll have make everyone else enemies. Most people are eagered to form groups to study together and suffer the pain together.... :)</p>
<p>I think it's really chill. At least on my floor, everybody helps out everybody. Viccissitudes can confirm this, as we've both stayed up late doing E77 homework together. We all help each other out for all our other classes too - sharing notes, helping with homework, getting together to study for midterms, etc.</p>
<p>From what I've seen it depends on the person (i.e. how much do you care about grades) and the classes/major. For the pre-meds, pre-Haas, it can get pretty competitive. Still, for those classes there are study groups and such. Engineering students, while they are studying something difficult, tend to work together and cooperate more (like phroz3n mentioned), because they're not competing to get into med school or law school or anything. The humanities tend to have not very much competition. There's a lot of reading and writing papers and working on your own.</p>
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The humanities tend to have not very much competition. There's a lot of reading and writing papers and working on your own.
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<p>While competition among undergrads in the humanities may not be as strong as it is among undergrads in premed or pre-Haas, there's still plenty of competition. I'll give you three examples.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Many profs in the humanities, thinking that they'll be saving students some money, put readers "on reserve" at copy places. Students then come in one at a time to make their own reader. What's wrong with that you say? Well, some incredibly insecure students come in and destroy/disorganize/steal large parts of those readers. </p></li>
<li><p>It is often difficult to locate prof-recommended "supplementary" items in the library shelves. Why? Because some students do it ahead of you and intentionally misplace the items so that only they will have access to it throughout the semester.</p></li>
<li><p>I know a guy who once was sick and asked someone in his humanities class to please tell him the general gist of what went on in the previous lecture, which he hadn't attended. So the person tells him. Then when class starts, the prof summarizes the main points of the previous lecture. Turns out the person entirely misrepresented the "general gist." Her summary had related to French imperialism but the prof's stated that "only now" would he begin to talk about French imperialism.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>That said, competition really shouldn't detract that much from your Berkeley experience. Just know that it's there.</p>
<p>i've heard of case where while one student left his chemistry lab to get some more sample chemicals, another student sabotaged it.</p>
<p>^ I've heard of such incidents on this forum, but never in reality have I come across such.</p>
<p>same with me, most people are pretty laid back</p>
<p>wow with the descriptions from the previous post, it sounds like WWII berkeley style. Should I be scared?</p>
<p>I've never personally encountered what dobby was talking about, or heard about two of the things on the list with respect to the humanities or social sciences (the first and third items) until now. Many people will refuse to share notes, though.</p>
<p>ditto what DRab said</p>
<p>I remembered! Something really bad happened to me along these lines. I'm not going to elaborate, but just watch out who you trust, especially ones that you don't know at all.</p>
<p>At UCB, there are only a small fraction of people who are truly competitive. Thus, it's hard to get an A, but very easy to get a B in any one class. That's my general experience so far.</p>
<p>^^ In technical courses....you need to know your **** so well, that you can equate calculations in your dreams to get an A. Getting a B+/B is hard but that too hard...B- is reasonable....but unfortunately, everyone in ChemE gets B's and C's.</p>