<p>Hey guys, I have always wanted to go to cal, but recently, ive heard current cal students telling me to never go there and just go to ucla instead because the classes are ridiculously hard (even for non-science/math majors). My quesion: is Cal really that much harder than ucla? my major is philosophy by the way. I figure if cal is only a little harder, than i might as well go up there because i need a change of scenery. If anyone could answer, it wold be greatly appreciated.</p>
<p>p.s. i no i should post this in the cal/ucla forums, but i dont think they would know from a transfer's perspective.</p>
<p>I couldn’t imagine any school actually being SO much harder than one, espec. between ucla/cal because they’re like at the same level I guess</p>
<p>But, as for your major, it probably isn’t going to be a cakewalk anywhere you go! Lots of dense reading, analyzing, etc. But if it interests you, the difficulty shouldn’t really be a deterrent</p>
<p>I mean-think of it this way-there are what 40, 000 total students (undergrad/grad) at Cal and they don’t seem to be leaving-obviously people have to be enjoying it to stay there, you know? There must be something that’s keeping them!</p>
<p>Same w/UCLA-there are like 36, 000 total students or something-that’s a LOT of students! Yes i’m sure it’s hard, but people seem to find a way to balance :P</p>
<p>I’m kinda scared too for the quarter system and whatnot (even tho berk doesn’t have that) but we shall see! Good luck!!</p>
<p>Your best bet would be to try to get in contact with a current Philosophy major at both schools and try to compare the course load that way. People here don’t know because most of them haven’t transferred yet. </p>
<p>I am a Media Studies major at Cal and, for me, the workload is fair. Yes, it’s more work than CC, but that’s expected. I’m not crying in my pillow every night and I don’t have my face stuck in books 24/7. However, every major is different and that’s why you should ask current students in your major.</p>
<p>I’m at UCLA, and am averaging about 600+ pages of reading per week, which is on top of five-to-ten page research papers every other week.</p>
<p>@kc_sunshine, do you know if you can double major in media studies if you have all the prereqs done? If I get in to Cal (I applied as political econ and still want to study this) I want to do media studies too but it’s impacted if I’m not mistaken. How are you liking it?</p>
<p>its UCB, #1 public school in the world, what do you except!!!</p>
<p>Right. That’s what you should except!!!</p>
<p>Ahaha. Sorry, I had to.</p>
<p>Corinnejay-If you search my recent posts, I posed several replies in a thread about the major. Yes, you can double major and a lot of MS majors do because the MS major is only 30 units. If you look here [Media</a> Studies at UC Berkeley](<a href=“http://ls.berkeley.edu/ugis/mediastudies/major.php?page=req]Media”>http://ls.berkeley.edu/ugis/mediastudies/major.php?page=req) you can see if any PE classes will also count toward your MS degree. As long as you have the pre-reqs done and your GPA is over a 3.2-ish in the pre-reqs, you shouldn’t have a problem declaring MS as a double major. </p>
<p>Also, if you search my back posts, please take my comments with a grain of salt. I thought the MS major was going to be different than it actually is, so my expectations haven’t been met. I know people that are very happy with the major. I just wanted to give people a warning that the MS major is 100% theory and, if you want to get any hands-on experience at all, you aren’t going to get it at Cal. You’ll have to get that through internships.</p>
<p>ETA: I bumped the thread for you, so you should be able to see it at the top of the page.</p>
<p>@smc_student: 600 pages a week!!! How do you do that? I’d fail-after 15 pages my attention span goes awry and I have to do something else haha</p>
<p>What major are you?</p>
<p>Unless one of your friends has attended both UCLA and Cal, I don’t think there’s any reason to compare the two. </p>
<p>Just keep in mind, and I’m sure all of you know this, Cal or UCLA isn’t CCC anymore and the workload will increase. I’m a Psychology major and I read perhaps more than 1,000 pages a week (since I have all my Psychology classes, other classes, books I read just leisure purposes)! So to those who don’t like to read, you better get on THAT!</p>
<p>I transferred to Cal a year ago as a Poli Sci major and have found the workload reasonable. Perhaps somewhat more intense than at CCC, but manageable.</p>
<p>I am often hearing two things about the Philosophy major here at Cal, though: That it is one of the best departments in the country and that it is challenging. Supposedly they don’t like to give out a lot of “easy As”… Not saying you can’t do well, obviously. I just looked at the grade distributions on CourseRank and for the Phil courses they have listed, the MEDIAN grade seems to be a B or B+. So, if you can work a little harder than everyone else you should be in the A-/B+ range. I don’t know what the reputation of UCLA’s phil department is when it comes to academic difficulty.</p>
<p>According to [The</a> Philosophical Gourmet Report 2009 :: Overall Rankings](<a href=“http://www.philosophicalgourmet.com/overall.asp]The”>http://www.philosophicalgourmet.com/overall.asp), UCLA and Berkeley are about on par in the reputation of their phil departments. </p>
<p>In addition to the level of difficulty, one thing you may want to consider when you make up your mind is whether or not you like the department. Some departments may have a certain focus, ideology or area of specialty and you can often garner this from looking at the course listings and faculty that are at the department</p>
<p>Another popular major here that is somewhat related to Phil is Rhetoric.</p>
<p>hmm so I guess the one bright side to getting rejected to Cal would be that I could study media studies in practice at UCSD instead of in theory at UCB. But I’de rather be at cal still.</p>
<p>Corinnejay-UCSD’s program is theory based as well (like all of the other UC COMM departments), but they do offer a couple of practical courses. Cal offers ZERO. I really wish I had taken that into consideration before taking the plunge. I love living in Berkeley though so, for that reason, I am glad that I came to Cal anyway.</p>
<p>usdenick:</p>
<p>do you mind going into more detail about the workload for political science at CAL? about how much reading is required each week? are grades mainly based off of research papers or conventional tests (probably depends on teacher)? any information you have would be great, thanks</p>
<p>WOW thnx for all the replies guys! usdenick, do you know if it is possible to switch majors to rhetoric from philosophy?</p>
<p>Well my main interest is the major I applied to so the strenght of their communications program is just a side fact to me. I was in Berkeley today (I live in the bay anyways) and I would love to go there. I guess I’ll know in 5 1/2 days.</p>
<p>MantisTobaggan, the poli sci reading is generally acknowledged to be pretty intense. That having been said, I think most people learn to selectively read. I have been assigned a lot of academic journal articles and for many of these you can easily pick up the main point the author is trying to make and then skim the rest. It is possible to do read every word of every text you are assigned, but I would say that most people probably do not. </p>
<p>The type of work I have been assigned in poli sci is a lot of “analytic” papers. Once you get to upper div coursework, you are no longer just discussing the well-established and accepted facts of poli sci. You are evaluating a lot of theoretical arguments and discussing the merits of each. So, you’ll probably be asked to evaluate these in detail in some of your coursework and need to do some research about the merits of different authors and so on. In-class tests are usually short answer and essay format.</p>
<p>Also, the type of asssignments and readings obviously vary. Berkeley has a really great poli sci department and this is reflected in the quality of faculty and GSI (TAs, which you will interact with a lot because they grade most of your papers). If you are trying to decide between Cal and UCLA in a week, I would advise you speak with the academic advisors in the poli sci dep’ts at each school. Ask them about course availability. A lot of poli sci students at Cal were really surprised when the Fall 2010 course schedule came out because there was a noticeable cut in the amount of courses offered. They may add another course or two later on, but in general I would say it has gotten more difficult to get into classes here. This will be especially true in your first year at CAL, when you are a “junior” for registration purposes. I don’t know the situation at UCLA, so you might want to talk to the academic advisors there about it. This does not apply to all majors. Poli Sci is a very popular major, so it tends to be more difficult to get into the very popular classes.</p>
<p>beowulf, rhetoric and phil are in the same school, letters and sciences, so it should be very easy for you to switch into rhetoric provided you have as many of the pre-reqs completed as possible.</p>
<p>@beowulf</p>
<p>I have a friend who’s studying philosophy at Berkeley. when i showed interest in the past, he said, Don’t even come to Berkeley to study phil. The way they teach it is so dry and boring, all we do is study everyone else’s ideas, there is a lack of creativity…</p>
<p>He added that he should have chosen UC Santa Cruz for philosophy.</p>
<p>I actually had a friend who switched from phil to rhetoric because she also didn’t like phil here at cal. She said it was too abstract. I would try to look at some syllabi and talk to some phil students to get a better idea of the department. Also, do consider phil at other schools or the rehetoric major here if you do decide against phil at cal.</p>
<p>what do you expect?**</p>