<p>How hard is it to get the classes you want / avoid a bad schedule?</p>
<p>A main thing for me in choosing between Cal and UCLA is the fact that UCLA is giving me priority in classes for about 13 - 19 units (Regents not sure about the number of units).</p>
<p>Should I really let this impact me? I plan on visiting home at least once a month (I live an hour away from Los Angeles).</p>
<p>I’d say go to LA if you plan on visiting once a month. And it’s definitely hard to get the classes you want unless you’re priviledged – athlete, helper for athletes, disabled, double majors. Even then, classes get filled before your appointment. My friend already had her tele-bears (UCB’s schedule picking if you don’t know) and she didn’t get into any of the classes she wanted, even though a time this early is pretty damn good. I haven’t even had mine yet and we’re in the same grade.</p>
<p>Oh hey! It’s batman, first to comment on a thread by a future freshman telling them to not go to berkeley!! this has never happened before!!</p>
<p>Anyway:
YES, come to Berkeley. The system is confusing at first and waitlists are annoying, but unless you are stupid about it and don’t plan anything in advance, you can always get what you want. Just know the requirements for your majors, spend a couple hours figuring out what classes you need and when you should take them, find out which classes fill up faster than others, and just play around making potential schedules. I have had to waitlist a lot of classes, but I have always been able to get in to them.</p>
<p>This isn’t a good enough reason to pick UCLA over Cal, even if you got Regents at UCLA (I did and turned it down too).</p>
<p>@Batman17: How does tele-bears work? And is it hard to get into classes if you’re majoring English?</p>
<p>@flutteryfly_28: same question to you! D: I don’t mind spending time to figure out what to get and what I want - just how much more or less of a problem will it be if I’m majoring / planning to major in English?</p>
<p>yeah don’t go to berkeley, go to ucla, i agree with batman, that man is a g.</p>
<p>What’s wrong with you people? If you hate Cal so much because your work ethic is terrible drop out, and stop convincing other freshman to enroll somewhere else. </p>
<p>I’ve never had a problem getting courses I wanted, even as a pre-med MCB major. You are giving the opportunity to take classes in many different semesters so there is no reason you won’t be able to graduate in 4 years, or earlier.</p>
<p>@Ankur1521: Is this based on class pickings purely?</p>
<p>You just need to work the system. I’m taking 3 Phase 1 classes right now (chem, bio and physics) and in the fall I got into Bio 1A/L and physics 8a ALL in phase 2…yeah phase 2! I was planning on taking chem 3b and bio 1b in the fall but did a major overhaul during my phase 2.</p>
<p>@anti: And although you can take the classes you want at least sometime during your 4years there, do you ever find yourself having a bad ‘schedule’ because the class you want only has one day open or whatever?</p>
<p>@calbear2012: I’m still not familiar with the phases, how tele-bears works, and how you can work the system. Elaborate please?</p>
<p>^^^^^</p>
<p>What he said. Learn to work the system, or you’re going to get 9:00 lectures in your second choice classes all the time.</p>
<p>
Just because you’re comparing your alma mater to another university doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to give objective advice. :facepalm:</p>
<p>@sentimentGX4: lol I just saw you in the UCLA thing :)</p>
<p>@sentimentGX4: The thing is, Batman’s “advice” is NOT objective. It is completely biased and his anecdotal evidence is nowhere near representative of the average student here. And it’s not just on this thread, it’s on nearly every thread from a prospective freshman unsure about Berkeley.</p>
<p>Why don’t you read my post again flutterfly? I said go to LA IF you’re planning on visiting home once a month. It’s about 80+ dollars to fly from LA to here and then another 80 to fly back. Money-wise, that’s a ****load. But hey, if the kid’s loaded, I really don’t care then. Did I ever say LA’s system of choosing classes was better than Berkeley’s? No. I was merely answering a question about how hard getting classes here can be based on my experience. So before you start raging on your keyboard every time you see my username, try reading my post first.</p>
<p>Whatever, you’re still way too negative and eager to tell everybody to not come to Berkeley. I know you’re allowed to state your opinion but you’re representing all of Berkeley students when answering a question by a prospective student. Most of your statements do not hold true for the majority of students and make it necessary for people to have to argue the other side all the time (like me, anti, calbear, amarkov have had to do in this thread). </p>
<p>And since you’re always the first to reply and phrase your opinions as though they are factual and true for everyone, people like sentimentGX4 are going to interpret all of us as attacking your “objective answer” when it is more like us correcting wrong, biased claims made by a bitter and miserable student who wants to take it out on Cal through these forums.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t care at all about this if it didn’t affect so many high school kids’ decisions so directly.</p>
<p>though batman made a good initial point that it would be less hasslesome if you go to la if you intend on visiting your parents monthly (why you would do that is beyond be, but whatever), his generalization about how hard it is to get the classes you want and his horror story about his friend is definitely not the usual berkeley experience.</p>
<p>i’m completing my first year here, and both semesters, i got all the classes i intended to take, there was one shuffling of discussion time, but other than that, it was great. </p>
<p>ultimately, what i think, regarding at least your time before declaring, is that after your first semester, you’re almost guaranteed your phase 1 classes, and phase 2 you may have to juggle around, but other than that, don’t fear this “i got none of my classes, even for phase I.” It’s definitely an outlier to the usual situation at berkeley</p>
<p>Well, I guess I’m wrong when I say that athletes, etc. get the very first tele-bears and my friend not getting into her classes. Oh yeah, my telebears is on the 26th and I’m expecting to get into every class I want. Don’t go to LA because their schedule system is totally crap compared to Berkeley. Yeah ignore my first post because I’m completely wrong and being totally subjective. Definitely come to Berkeley. Listen to flutterfly. The opinions from flutterfly represent every student at Berkeley.</p>
<p>And let me just say something regarding the above post: It’s not that you don’t get ANY of the classes you want. That’s near impossible. But to get the schedule you want/the classes you want? That’s the hard situation I’ve seen again and again.</p>
<p>I got the schedule I wanted, minus one discussion section, which was easily moved regardless. It’s all about planning what you need to Phase I, what you can risk to Phase II, and having back-up plans if it doesn’t work out perfectly.</p>
<p>But let’s try to be reasonable here. Here comes a new guy, unfamiliar with the system of choosing classes at Cal, and you come with a blatant generalization about the difficulty of getting the classes one wants, and then bring up a horror story about your friend not getting any of the classes she wants.</p>
<p>If it wasn’t clear enough to you, let me try and rephrase it. You might not get the perfect schedule, but you won’t get the absolute worst thing in the world either. You’re not guaranteed to have everything go your way, but you’re also not going to ever be in such a bad situation that you won’t be able to declare by the end of your sophomore year (unless you switch majors repeatedly).</p>
<p>Yes, athletes and disabled students are given the earliest slots, then positions are sequenced by factors like seniority and units earned. However, thousands of undergrad course slots exist and these will never be filled by small numbers of athletes. </p>
<p>You have to be flexible. You can’t look at the calendar, plan out the ideal semester with the times, sections and ideal set of courses then expect to have that work out. Planning out a schedule that gives you the shortest walks, all the best professors and the optimum times of day may give you your wish list, but your reality will be different. </p>
<p>You will end up in the less ideal sections with worse times, for some classes. An elective you wanted to take that semester will be filled and you will have to pick another that is lower on your priority list. Sometimes you have to go to plan b, decide to take a given class the following semester and advance something else into this semester. The reality for many, as stated by quite a few posters, if that while batman is correct that you have little chance of getting your one absolute ideal schedule, you have an excellent chance of getting a workable and acceptable schedule. </p>
<p>It may involve waitlists or flexibility as your telebears time approaches, adjusting your plans to the remaining open seats, but most students can work with the system and get through their four years. You may be rightly frustrated if you get a particularly bad telebears time one semester, or if you miss out on a class you really wanted to attend one semester, but you overall are able to work it out.</p>
<p>rider730,
I have been wanting to do this for a while but this post really got me to do it. I have been lurking around here for a while as I am a Cal alum and my son might go to Cal. You are one of the most helpful, patient, articulate, reasonable and level-headed posters in the Cal forum. Those skills will go a long way in real life perhaps more so than the academics from Cal.</p>