<p>h.w.t.f. (wow, I can't say w-t-f together)- do you have Evans in Valley Life Sciences for Math 54?</p>
<p>yup, good teacher isn't he :)</p>
<p>Personally, I think that Berkeley has a lot of crappy, lazy, unmotivated students. This is not to say that they are not very clever, but they are lazy. There are even instances of Regents Scholars not doing well. However, as for the Engineering versus premed atmosphere, Engineering is way better. There is an almost endless amount of camraderie between students in my Chemistry class (Chem 4B), as well as in math and physics. I'm telling you, I think that everybody would go nuts if there were a premed atmosphere. The primary reason for this is that the engineering science classes pose a challenge for even brilliant people, so those brilliant people will band together and solve difficult problems. On the other hand, a lot of the premed classes are so mind numbingly easy for those students (they might have had it previously in high school) that everybody is an arrogant ass. Thus, people are less likely to be accomodating due to the fact that they are bored. So, if you really want to have good friends go with a hard science or engineering (College of Chemistry is the best). The only downside is that you will get worked to the bone, and will have to solve problems all day to get an A-. It's all worth it, however.</p>
<p>I agree with PimpinatCal. It's not just 'not doing well' - I knew a Chancellor's Scholar who didn't just "not do well', he ended up completely flunking out. There are unfortunately quite a few lazy and unmotivated students at Berkeley.</p>
<p>As far as some of the previous posts on this thread, I think it is fairly clear that Berkeley students, on average, are not as good as HYPSMC students, and the way to see that is simple. Just think about a person who applies to, and gets admitted to both Berkeley and one of HYPSMC. That person is probably (not guaranteed) but probably going to choose HYPSMC and not Berkeley, except perhaps to save money. In other words, Berkeley wins only a minority of the HYPSMC cross- admits. Berkeley cannot draw the best students outside of the state of California, because they tend to prefer to go to HYPSMC. Yet, Berkeley also can't draw the best students within California, because they also tend to prefer HYPSMC. </p>
<p>What Berkeley needs to do is improve its offerings such that the best students will prefer to go to Berkeley over other schools. In fact, that's precisely what happens with many of Berkeley's PhD programs. Many of the top graduate students will happily turn down admission from Harvard or Stanford to enter some of Berkeley's PhD programs. So if the PhD programs can do that, why can't the undergraduate program do that too?</p>
<p>Very nice posts. It's interesting to learn more about Berkeley's engineering since I applied as undeclared engineering there and would like to know more about it.</p>