<p>Are you/did you like your experience at Cal? What were some of the best things? Worst things? How's social life? Profs? Anything else you can add, feel free to.</p>
<p>The vast majority (I would guess 75%) of people somewhat like to really like their experiences. This post is so very broad. I'd love to help you out, but can you be a bit more specific? Also, you might want to search for previous threads. :)</p>
<p>Sorry yeah it was late last night and I hoped for some responses but now I see why, still after 90 views, I just got 1 reply. :|</p>
<p>*Social life? Are students engaged in conversations and like having social times during classes and all? Is it pretty laid back? Is there a strong school spirit?
*Students: How would you describe a typical Cal student? Smart yet social and fun? Personalities?
*Campus aesthetics? The site provides some pictures, but how would you rate campus aesthetics?
*Dorm life? Describe your dorm life? How is it? </p>
<p>I'll maybe come up with more later on.</p>
<p>thanks</p>
<p>I will bump this thread up come Octoberish-Novemberish when I get a true feel for Cal :)</p>
<p>Yeah, asking people in the middle of summer how Cal student life is is awkward. Bump this up in a few months.,</p>
<p>A large majority of people on these boards do, and would quote evidence that wouldn't stand up to any scrutiny such as a nonrandom survey of Berkeley students, but it seems to me from personal the experience the smarter you are the less satisfied you tend to be with Berkeley's personal experience and, to a lesser extent, uneven academics.</p>
<p>The students that seem to do best at Berkeley are in-state, slightly above-average IQ, hard-working students who would feel challenged by Berkeley and already have a network of high school frends to fall back on.</p>
<p>A highly amusing sentiment. And a very thinly veiled attempt to deride the intelligence of students who like Berkeley.</p>
<p>The students that would do best at Berkeley are self-motivated, highly organized (or will become so), and hard-working.</p>
<p>There is no reason I can see why a network of high school friends is needed, or at all desired. Most top schools seperate out high schools very much in the way that there is practically no high school network at all. I'd say this is actually a negative of Berkeley, where it is far more likely to bump into far too many previous aquaintances.
The way Berkeley is structured and the general atmosphere of it tends to make it extremely easy to socialize should one choose.</p>
<p>Very few people should have problems making college friends at Berkeley.</p>
<p>Hey Allorion is posting again.</p>
<p>Is it just I or is Shiboing Boing starting to sound like LiberalCensors/Cantsilencetruth?</p>
<p>Shiboing Boing has trolled before.</p>
<p>Yes, I think it's the same serial poster. Handle #5 in the last 3 months?</p>
<p>The students that do best at Berkeley are those who have a basic amount of social skills and cultivate some interests, academic and otherwise. Those that do work hard also do well, but they could have done well in any other school. The former group really take advantage of what Berkeley has to offer.</p>
<p>OP: "*Social life? Are students engaged in conversations and like having social times during classes and all? Is it pretty laid back? Is there a strong school spirit? "</p>
<p>Berkeley is a bit like a great bike with a missing first gear, it will start harder than other bikes but once you hit your stride it will feel great. My experience is maybe a little different as an alum since i wasn't able to start in the dorm (it wasn't guaranteed back then and I got in late, after appeal.) Or another analogy wuld be an adult-sized bike when you're a teenager, one that feels a little big early on but that you won't outgrow. A lot of other campuses feel more intimate and comfortable early on, but you may outgrow them quickly. Some won't feel they have outgrown those environments, because their outlook is perhaps more limited.</p>
<p>Socially speaking I had the best time in my life the last 2-3 years at Cal. I've made a group of lifetime friends that I talk with/email every week a decade and a half after. I hosted a Cal friend two weeks ago in the south of France, will visit another Cal friend in Manhattan next week for a reuniion of sorts, will go to SF soon to work on an Asian business deal with another close Cal friend.</p>
<p>*Students: How would you describe a typical Cal student? Smart yet social and fun? Personalities?</p>
<p>There is no such a thing as a typical Cal student, the spectrum at Cal spans the whole socio-economic and ethnic gamut. But very roughly, about half of the student body is very serious and focused on grades/academic while the other half is just as serious but more social. Maybe it's a reflection of the admissions policy, with half of those done solely on the basis of GPA/SAT metrics. You've got a lot of students with a lot of school spirit (especially with Cal Football emergining as an NCAA powerhouse and a lot of other top-flight athletic teams), kids who are "too cool" for that and students who don't bother leaving the library other than for eating or sleeping.</p>
<p>*Campus aesthetics? The site provides some pictures, but how would you rate campus aesthetics? </p>
<p>It's f****** gorgeous. The campus is awesome, the site is absolutely amazing, and the area around it is the greatest in North America, with a unique combination of sophisticated urban attractions and incredible natural and rural scenery. Berkeley beats the $h!t out of any other North American university. The more time goes, the more I visit other campuses, the more this becomes quite clear to me...</p>
<p>The unfortunate thing is that a significant portion of the student body (and of ousiders) don't have the perspective or have too narrow a mindset to appreciate the incredible wealth, breadth and quality of the Berkeley experience.</p>
<p>I've posted a big collection of campus photos here (scroll down):
<a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=209483&highlight=Calx%5B/url%5D">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=209483&highlight=Calx</a></p>
<p>*Dorm life? Describe your dorm life? How is it? </p>
<p>I lived at the International House, which is a graduate and upper div dorm that's filled with half American students and half foreign students. Gorgeous building, great atmosphere, lifelong friendships.</p>
<p>Calx overgeneralizes.</p>
<p>The vast majority of students don't or can't live in the dorms for more than the year. Not only is it inordinately expensive, the dorm experiences varies very greatly.</p>
<p>Ihouse houses some very mature students so I can understand why his experiences there were better than elsewhere but for the most part dorms are 1 year stops for most people where you'll make largely temporary acquaintances, and then head off for 3 years into fairly crappy private housing with 2 or 3 close friends.</p>
<p>He also overgeneralizes about the enthusiasm of the average Cal student.</p>
<p>In general, the student body at Cal is better than almost every other public school but depending on your point of view that may not be a great thing. There are a lot of very average students in the school as well as a lot of very unenthused ones. 20-25% of the student body are transfer students after all who have much less difficulty getting into Cal versus normal students.</p>
<p>You will meet smart people but without a dorm experience to place you in a common setting, you will have to make a great effort to befriend them.</p>
<p>Academically, Berkeley is a very mixed bag. If you are taking a difficult major you will have to deal with a lot of weeders and bad professors as a consequence (since its often very difficult to graduate on time while avoiding bad professors in prereqs). Depending on your major, I doubt you will ever have a class with a nobel laureate unless you put in a lot of effort. Most only teach graduate classes.</p>
<p>The weather is nice. The campus is ok, with crappy lecture halls and a few modern ones. </p>
<p>Most if not all of the clubs are pretty much half empty. There are a few super-clubs on campus but if that's not your thing you're out of luck. </p>
<p>CalX would overgeneralize and have you believe Berkeley is a great place to study but I still believe the students that enjoy it best are from the demographic I listed above.</p>
<p>A lot of the students I've talked with that are Alumni from Berkeley and at top law schools don't seem to hold a very high view of Berkeley in general but that's just my experience. (I had to go to great effort to look them up because Berkeley has such poor career and alumni services).</p>
<p>I like it. There are some dislikes, but there always are..</p>
<p>Shiboing, your posts content and opening message are so very ironic. For every bit CalX is over-positive on one-end, you one-up him by doing that and a bit more for the other.</p>
<p>I'm going to join the ranks of Calx and other Cal supporters in time. You gotta take pride in the institution that gives you your education ;)</p>
<p>Shiboing Boing may or may not be right, but regardless, i plan to enter Cal with a positive attitude and an open mind. i'm paying for this education i'm about to receive, so i'm gonna make the most out of it.</p>
<p>no school is perfect, and none of the schools to which i applied felt like perfect fits to me [i hear tell of people who have an out-of-this world spiritual CLICK experience, but it never happened for me]. with that in mind, my expectations aren't ridiculously high. BUT at a school like Cal where there really are so many resources and opportunities [even if they are somwtimes half-assed and hard to reach], there should be no excuse for a motivated student being utterly dissatisfied. this isn't a private institution; they don't hold your hand. here, you're on your own. but i get the feeling it's more a taste of the real world than anything else, and that's really what we have to prepare for anyway.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Yup, I think you have the right idea for Berkeley. :)</p>
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The vast majority of students don't or can't live in the dorms for more than the year. Not only is it inordinately expensive, the dorm experiences varies very greatly.
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<p>You can live in the dorms for your entire college career, but at Berkeley, most students outgrow dorm life and move on to things like apartments/houses, fraternities, co-ops..</p>
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Ihouse houses some very mature students so I can understand why his experiences there were better than elsewhere but for the most part dorms are 1 year stops for most people where you'll make largely temporary acquaintances, and then head off for 3 years into fairly crappy private housing with 2 or 3 close friends.
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<p>If living at the International House is better, then why haven't you lived there? It's accessible to any upper div student at Berkeley. I lived there for three semesters, made a lot of great friendships that I still nurture and moved out to a 1bdr with a girl from IHouse. </p>
<p>I don't "overgeneralize", the fact is you have had a far more difficult time making friends on campus than me or just about everyone I know who went to school at Cal. </p>
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You will meet smart people but without a dorm experience to place you in a common setting, you will have to make a great effort to befriend them.
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<p>I don't want to dismiss your point altogether, everyone has a valid personal perspective to present. If you're saying that Berkeley is a big place where it's harder to make friends than at small private schools where most students live in a confined physical space and go to class with the same small group of friends, fine. I am just saying that from my perspective, social life at Berkeley was phenomenal, not just because of the incredible number of social "channels" and venues, but also because for a large school it is a fairly intimate environment, a perfect balance of college town setting within a highly stimulating broader urban and rural environment.</p>
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There are a lot of very average students in the school as well as a lot of very unenthused ones. 20-25% of the student body are transfer students after all who have much less difficulty getting into Cal versus normal students.
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<p>The acceptance rate is 23.5%. For a school of its size, this is a phenomenal amount of selectivity. As well, I disagree about the transfer students being inferior, to the contrary. I have found many of them to have interesting profiles. By and large, they tend to be less affluent students who can't afford to pay UC tuition for 4 years, and as newbies they come in being more enthusiastic than the general student population who has been on campus for tow years already.</p>
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Depending on your major, I doubt you will ever have a class with a nobel laureate unless you put in a lot of effort.
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<p>I did, as an undergraduate, and it wasn't much effort at all (other than having to go to class, doing homeworks, and taking exams...) Did you ever consider the fact that this option isn't even available at most other campuses?</p>
<p><em>Outgrow</em> dorm life is a very biased view of it. I'm sure most students would want a 4 year type dorm system to develop relationships.</p>
<p>IHouse is expensive as is all public housing on Berkeley's campus. I could care less about your analysis of my friend-making habits. If your analysis were true I would be completely friendless outside of Berkeley but I have a rather large network outside of Berkeley too. And I am not alone in my opinions, other posters have mentioned the same things I have about terrible, antisocial roomates, poor peers in clubs, and generally unenthusiastic students in classes. I've met many people that I probably would've been friends with had I had a more common and consistent setting with which to meet them, but they were few in number and many understandably were in different phases of their lives. I seriously doubt your overdramatizations of how "great" you Cal friends are. I've talked to a lot of people and very few have many "good" friends outside their small clique. I doubt you would have your network either if you had not had the stable environment provided by IHouse. Not everyone can afford to pay an extra premium for something a basic college should offer anyways, especially now with insane tuition hikes for OOS students.</p>
<p>I have never ever heard anyone use the word "intimate" with Berkeley (Undoubtedly you will blame it on my "poor" social skills). Perhaps it is you who had the rare experience at Berkeley.</p>
<p>In general the only time I have ever heard about transfer students is when people speak derisively of them as weaker students. From my experience, which is a rather small sample, they did prove in general weaker students.</p>
<p>Considering how much OOS students pay, a lot might be expecting to be in many classes taught by nobel laureates. This is an expectation that should be debunked. </p>
<p>I think one's enjoyment of Berkeley will be increased by lowering one's expectations dramatically. If you only expect a high school experience, you might like Berkeley. If you were expecting a rigorous experience on multiple levels: academic, social, and personal--as befitting a school with Berkeley's prestige--you will likely be sorely disappointed.</p>
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Not everyone can afford to pay an extra premium for something a basic college should offer anyways, especially now with insane tuition hikes for OOS students.
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<p>How is Berkeley in a unique situation here, exactly? Berkeley does what other schools do, they charge money for housing.</p>
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Considering how much OOS students pay, a lot might be expecting to be in many classes taught by nobel laureates. This is an expectation that should be debunked.
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<p>People really expect to take class after class each year with nobel winners? That is foolish. Taking some classes seems far more reasonable, and this can and does happen to people, especially if they seek it.</p>
<p>I think you would be disappointed just about anywhere, shiboing, and hope one day your bitterness subsides. And do you realize how sad it is that you pretend not to be collegesenior/liberalcensors/etc?</p>
<p>Studies show that transfer students do better than their "regular" counterparts.</p>