<p>OK, I've been hearing that Berkeley is a very competitive, semi-hostile environment. Not a supportive place. A friend who visited said he got the idea that everyone he talked to there had accepted Berkeley as a second choice, and they didn't seem happy. I've also heard that while people will work together at some other schools, and share their success, in Berkeley it's not likely to happen. Pretty cutthroat.</p>
<p>Please don't flame, I would just like to know to what extent actual Berkeley students think this might be true (especially as compared to the other big California schools).</p>
<p>Berkeley as a second choice? I know someone who went there over Columbia and Cal Tech.</p>
<p>It depends on your major. Some are more competitive than others. Pre-med majors are especially competitive. But it is like this at virtually every school.</p>
<p>I have a brother at Cal, and he along with most of his friends, love it. There will be people at every school who can't handle being in an environment where everyone is smart. Visit, and choose what's right for you.</p>
<p>it can be a very supportive place. some people on my hall worked together to get the similar schedules so they could work together for the next semester.
most of the people ive met are willing to help if you ask. </p>
<p>i think students dont share their successes cause they dont want to brag. no one likes the smart ass who thinks he/she is better than everyone else. especially when theyre not. </p>
<p>however, as mentioned countless times before, competition can be tough in many majors.</p>
<p>Berkeley's a big place...sure it's academically competitive. Some students are cutthroat, most are helpful and friendly. Partly depends on your major...engineering is a very supportive environment.</p>
<p>competition's really not that bad. i don't know how reputations get overblown like that. business and pre-med are some of the more competitive majors, but i'm a business major and everyone's pretty nice and supportive. you get the occasional haashole, but on the average, people are chill.</p>
<p>i don't think berkeley's a second choice for many. i know many, many people who turned down ivies/stanford/caltech/etc. to attend. berkeley is nothing like ucsd, where it seems like almost no one wanted to go there as their first choice. (in fact, ucsd posts the results of their student surveys online, and one of the questions on it asked if the students were rejected from their first choice. about 80% said yes. now that's what i call a second choice school.)</p>
<p>As someone who didn't completely fall in love with Cal (and still hasn't, even after being accepted and 1 visit), I'm wondering if people like me who never had Berkeley as their first choice (but got rejected to their #1) end up not choosing it at all. I'm still puzzled myself why so many people say it's their #1 and they'd trade their firstborn to go there, other than reputation (which I really think is overrated) and (for CA residents) cheaper cost compared to others. Any convincing reasons for Cal? </p>
<p>Sorry for the threadjack and overly long post, I'm just considering that I like Santa Barbara's atmosphere more (from what I've seen in person), and wondering why so many seem to automatically latch onto Cal (and UCLA) > all.</p>
<p>(And for the record, I really have no absolute #1, but I've been rejected to 3/4 of my top choices so far)</p>
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i know many, many people who turned down ivies/stanford/caltech/etc. to attend
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<p>You know many people who turned down Stanford for Berkeley? I assume you are talking about undergrad, and to that, I would say, really? I believe somebody presented data that indicated that Stanford won 90% of the ug cross-reg battles with every other school in the Pac-10. </p>
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OK, I've been hearing that Berkeley is a very competitive, semi-hostile environment. Not a supportive place. A friend who visited said he got the idea that everyone he talked to there had accepted Berkeley as a second choice
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<p>Look, I don't think it's necessarily a terrible thing to concede that Berkeley is a second (or even 3 or 4th) choice for most students, for frankly, almost every school is not the first choice for most students. For example, not counting specialty schools like Juilliard, every school loses the cross-admit to Harvard. Even Yale, Princeton, MIT, and Stanford lose the cross-admit battle to Harvard. </p>
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engineering is a very supportive environment.
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<p>The students are supportive. But the workload and the faculty, not so much. Just think of how many people get weeded out of engineering every year.</p>
<p>I wouldn't necessarily say that the faculty isn't supportive. I can only speak from personal experience, but every interaction I've had with Engineering faculty has been positive.
Re: workload, that's a personal thing. It's up to you to figure out the number and intensity of classes that you can handle.
Again, re: competitiveness, I can again, only speak from experience, but in all the classes I've been in so far, there's been nothing even remotely cut-throat. (and I've taken humanities, engineering and pre-business classes here).</p>
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I wouldn't necessarily say that the faculty isn't supportive. I can only speak from personal experience, but every interaction I've had with Engineering faculty has been positive.
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<p>I think it would be most informative to have somebody who actually got weeded out of engineering (and I think we all know that there are plenty such people) and ask them whether they would consider the faculty to be supportive. </p>
<p>That I think is the key problem. The faculty can smile at you and give you all the support you want, while still flunking you out. Personally, I would rather have a faculty member who was a complete ass and never provided support to anybody, but still gave everybody A's.</p>
<p>hey! i'm kind of in the same boat! except for me it's UCI v. UCB. (i know, UCI gets such little respect, and so many people would say UCB is the no-duh choice). i'm not really into a very competitive/stressful atmosphere. i'm interested in business (but not even sure..), and i heard it's very hard to get into that program. the fact that i'm so unsure about what i want to be makes me so unsure about which college i want</p>
<p>i don't know where berkeley gets its really competitive reputation from. i'm a business and econ double major and have found the competition to be not bad at all. and getting into haas is not like you have to slave away for a year and a half. just don't slack off, that's all.</p>
<p>and saaky, i personally do know a number of people who turned down ivies/stanford/caltech/etc. though i will admit that i think i tend to become friends with the "smarter" kids at cal (i.e. in business because that's my major or in engineering because that's my bf's major).</p>
<p>I have found that it's the opposite of a semi or even completely hostile environment. I don't think I've come across anyone, not in my classes, or my suite, or my GSIs who are anywhere near semi-hostile. I kinda think it's how you interact with people.</p>
<p>Having said that, Cal isn't for everyone. I really think you have to visit, fall in love with it, and love everything about it for it to be right. But that could be said about a lot of things.</p>
<p>I think Berkelely can definitely be considered a semi-hostile environment if you're majoring in engineering/cs. The faculty ranges from pretty helpful to stuck-up and not very helpful. A lot of them tend to have accents and they can't teach very well (heck, they can't form English sentences very well). The classes are unnecessarily difficult and textbooks are often useless. There's tutoring and office hours (professor and GSI) which are helpful but you really have to make an effort to go, and not many people do. I do agree that students are pretty supportive and if someone on your hall has taken a course they would be more than happy to help you out.</p>
<p>Of course, most of this applies to engineering/cs. There is support but you really have to make an effort, and even then it's not always helpful. I do think the private schools like Stanford have better support. That's what happens when you have so many undergrads.</p>
<p>I think the whole "hostile" thing is a misunderstanding of a real thing: tough grading on introductory math and science courses. It's not that the students are cut-throat nasty to each other, it's that the school itself is setting a very high bar, and actively trying to weed out students from pre-med, etc. Some might view that as hostile, but it's really just high standards.</p>
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and saaky, i personally do know a number of people who turned down ivies/stanford/caltech/etc.
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<p>As do I. But the question is not whether you know some. The question is whether you know a lot, and particular * a lot who turned down Stanford*. In all my years, I have met maybe 2 people who turned down Stanford for Berkeley for undergrad, and one of them is questionable (in that I'm still not sure whether he actually got into Stanford or just on the wait list). </p>
<p>The bottom line is that there doesn't seem to be that many people who turn down Stanford for Berkeley for undergrad. The number isn't zero, but it's not large, and to actually know many such people is rather unlikely.</p>
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Of those who replied. It's a voluntary survey and thus isn't accurate. (Yes, I read about that too.)
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<p>Uh, so what? All cross-admit yield data is, by its very nature, voluntary. After all, you can't force anybody to tell you all the schools they were admitted to and turned down. Name me a single cross-admit survey that isn't voluntary.</p>
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Some might view that as hostile, but it's really just high standards.
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<p>Actually, I view that as a distinction without a difference. What you call 'high standards' basically means that a bunch of students will get tagged with bad grades, and in particular, with worse grades than they would have gotten if they had just gone to another school. </p>
<p>You brought up pre-med, so let's talk about that. The sad truth is that med-school admissions provide relatively little compensation for grade inflation/deflation. It is far better to get an A at an easy school than it is to get a C, or even a B, at a difficult school. Similarly, it's better to not take a difficult class at all than to take it and get a C. Sad but true. The upshot is that Berkeley premed weeder curves are unnecessarily difficult, for med-schools don't sufficiently reward you for the difficulty. </p>
<p>I think that's what people mean when they say that Berkeley is hostile. The students themselves aren't hostile, and the profs are also not hostile, but what is hostile are the grade curves, especially in the weeders.</p>
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I think that's what people mean when they say that Berkeley is hostile. The students themselves aren't hostile, and the profs are also not hostile, but what is hostile are the grade curves, especially in the weeders.
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<p>Yes, that's what I said. And that is true. I doubt very much, however, what you say about med school admissions is true.</p>