<p>i visited both ucla and berkeley and liked ucla's campus aesthetics and general feel a lot more than berkeley's. however, i'm also drawn towards berkeley's prestige and academic excellence. moreover, cal ranks number 1 for chemistry, the major i'm considering.</p>
<p>anyone have any tips on which school i should go to? if you think knowing a bit more about me would help you give advice, i can tell you that i'm a relatively lazy guy (probably not a good thing since i'm going into the sciences) and that i value some social life (is the berkeley social life nil?). also, i wonder: will attending one school over the other considerably affect my chances of getting into a good grad school?</p>
<p>Berkeley chem is amazing. If you want to go onto professional or graduate school from either subject, you will have to do at least fairly well, and for grad school in chem, have some research, generally, something that rarely comes to lazy students. You aren't really lazy, obviously, just in some ways, with respect to some people. Social life is what you make of it, and many students, yeah, evne the science ones, have at least some social life if they choose to. If you think you'd be happier at UCLA, perhaps you should go there, but they will kick your butt, too, and the department isn't considered to be quite as good.</p>
<p>Well the Berkeley social life is very, very far from nil. It actually stands up pretty well to UCLA, because the campus is more compact and pedestrian, and most students live near campus. It's a lot more of a student town/enclave than UCLA, which is a big campus in an urban area within a car-centric environment. A lot of parties, and different scenes (greek row, coops, northside, town bars and cafes, SF nightlife 20 min away etc)</p>
<p>Berkeley feels like a foreing country if you're from SoCal, but it will grow on you. That's how most of the Cal students from SoCal feel (they are about half of the student body.)</p>
<p>If you're at all into the outdoors (sailing, hiking, skiing etc), Berkeley rules. Great street/off-campus food too.</p>
<p>this being said, you'll have to change your study habits. You won't need to study all the time to survive or even thrive, but you'll have to have some degree of structure and disciplin. If you do that, you will have plenty of time to have a fantastic life outside of school.</p>
<p>BERKELEY!!!! Come on, you need to consider the academics and repuation, Berkeley ranks among the top Universities in the world. UCLA is good, but Berkeley is great, and have the number one Chem program, and thats what you want to major in, its a no brainer...!!!</p>
<p>thanks guys, i really appreciate the feedback.</p>
<p>here are some dumb and superificial questions that i'd like answered:
-as a science major, will my social life be virtually squelched? and which school, berkeley or cal, has a bigger workload? (this might be a dumb question... but bare with me)</p>
<p>-are the girls at cal as hideous as everyone makes them out to be? </p>
<p>-and... are the cal all dorms as cramped and messy as the unit 1,2,3 dorms?</p>
<p>-when does the typical student move out of the berkeley dorms?</p>
<p>If it helps, I chose UCLA over Berkeley. It was mostly a personal decision; I just responded much better to the LA campus, the surrounding atmosphere, the students and social life. I figured the difference in academics wouldn't be a HUGE disparity, easily manageable; and since I'd like to someday live in SoCal, the networking options were much more promising in Los Angeles than in Berkeley.</p>
<p>I think you'll love Cal. You're lazy? Then don't subject yourself to the quarter system! You'll be taking way more midterms and finals. Cal's semester system will let you have some fun and give you some breathing space before you turn on your jets (academically speaking, of course). The social life is great! Very urban. If you consider yourself open-minded and not uptight, you will love Berkeley's atmosphere. Anything and everything happens at Berkeley. I remember when there was a HUGE organized POT DAY where hundreds of people just gathered in front of the administration and started to smoke out at 12 noon! And the police were just sitting there watching! Hahaha...crazy. You can be walking from your class to your dorms and you may run into wannabee politicians campaigning for student gov't, naked people trying to make political statements, seemingly crazy homeless people standing on empty crates and lecturing students about philosophy, your friends grabbing a slice and mingling in the streets. If you're the type of person that says "Ewww" to this type of stuff, than Berkeley is not for you. But if you think all this craziness is hilarious and entertaining, you'll love Cal. Let's face it....you'll find Westwoods all over the place. They're a dime a dozen in LA. But there's really only one Cal! Nowhere else like it!</p>
<p>I just spent a day at UCLA and then 2 days at UCB...</p>
<p>are the girls at cal as hideous as everyone makes them out to be?</p>
<p>The girls are about the same at both schools. The girls at UCLA are really over-rated if you ask me. </p>
<p>-and... are the cal all dorms as cramped and messy as the unit 1,2,3 dorms?</p>
<p>You really need to go see the UCLA dorms... the units are a huge improvement over the highrises at UCLA. The suites at Cal are nicer than UCLA in my opinion. The dining hall food at UCLA beats CAL. Off campus though, CAL is so much better for food.</p>
<p>Oh, come now. Don't want to make this into a pizza thread, but Cheeseboard? That, my friend, is not pizza. Its like some gourmet, wolfgang puck, foo foo flatbread. I'm talkin PIZZA, my friend. Chunky tomatoes spilling over the edges, oozing with cheese all over the place type pizza. Plus, you can't even choose your toppings there! I mean, its good. The crust is great. But I don't call it pizza. I call it a gourmet salad on top of flatbread.</p>
<p>Au contrare, you come now. That is pizza made to perfection. It is fairly thin in the world of pizza, and I am a lover of thick pizza- Cheeseboard had to be that good to win me over! Quality, excellence. Cheeseboard pizza should not be characterized as salad atop pizza- while pizzas often contain gourmet vegetables, they are not stacked and overpowering- they exist within the cheese and compliment the rich cheese and delicious crust to create a full flavored masterpiece.</p>
<p>yea it pretty much is the best pizza ever..they've been lazy lately though. im kinda disappointed in how they've gotten boring with all the roma tomato..</p>
<p>i want the excitement bacK! corn pizza, olive pizza, etc..</p>
<p>Here's the thing...I can't see myself drinking a beer with a Cheeseboard pizza. With all those exotic toppings on it and the thin crust, it feels like I have to have a class of cabernet with it. No! Pizza demands beer, not wine! When I bite into a pizza, I want the cheese to stretch and string from my mouth to the slice! Screw the artichoke hearts! Zachary's all the way, baby!</p>
<p>great! thanks guys. i think i might go for cal over ucla now. but uh, first, another question which i think some of you have addressed, but i'd like it answered more thoroughly:</p>
<p>if i major in chem, am i going to have to work extra hard? and i know it's cal, so i probably will.. but i'd like to know how many hours per day i'd have to work and what kind of work it will be. </p>
<p>of course, i know study time varies from student to student. still, any cal science majors out there that can give me an idea on how big the workload is?</p>
<p>UCLA chem will be no cake walk, if you do go there. I also don't know if someone can't mathematically work out how much you will need to work, or study, or read a day.</p>
<p>We're you talking about Cheeseboard being too filled with Roma tomatoe? I only go a few times a week tops, and haven't had that in a long time. Maybe I'm just missing those days or something. And when I'm older, or start dining with an older audience, I'll see about the wine/beer thing. Right now, I find neither particularly tatstes good.</p>