<p>Our S visited Berkeley and took a campus tour this past winter on a Saturday. His reaction was mixed -- weather was gloomy, campus was dead (students on break), etc. -- so he wants to visit again next week. </p>
<p>We plan to sit in on an admissions session and then just walk around campus and parts of Berkeley. We recognize summer is still quiet, but hopefully a little more active than winter break. </p>
<p>We'd like to make sure he gets a realistic impression of the town and campus, so we're looking for advice on where we should walk to get a realistic view of key parts of campus and Berkeley after the admissions session at Sproul Hall. </p>
<p>We'd like to see where students would normally go to hang out, eat, shop, etc., and we'd like to check out typical freshman dorms and some areas where some nicer apartments are. </p>
<p>Any general suggestions are much appreciated.</p>
<p>However, it is normally the all-female residence hall, so others which your son might live in may differ somewhat. It is also on the quieter northeast corner of campus, near the engineering and physical science area of campus. South of the campus are most of the other residence halls and probably more “interesting” things (Telegraph Avenue), but also probably higher crime rates. Humanities is in the south part of campus (Dwinelle), biology is in the west part of campus (Life Science Building), and social studies are in various places (e.g. anthropology in the southeast (Kroeber), psychology in the northwest (Tolman)).</p>
<p>Is your son going to be a senior next year or lower? If so, I would recommend just waiting till he applies and potentially gets accepted. Afterwards, he can attend CalDay or the Overnight Stay and he can really see the campus when it’s lively. Trust me, I felt the exact same way about Cal after visiting once but after an overnight stay, my feelings made a 180 degree turnaround.</p>
<p>Son is a rising senior. Although we plan to check out the dorms, at least from the outside and to see where they are located, we are more concerned about exploring the area immediately surrounding the campus than the campus itself. </p>
<p>Also if it helps to specify additional areas to check out while on campus, he will likely be studying some sort of science field, but not engineering.</p>
<p>Residence hall locations relative to main campus:</p>
<p>Stern (all female), Foothill: by northeast corner of campus
Bowles (all male): east of campus
Unit 1: 2 blocks south of east side of campus
Unit 2: 4 blocks south of east side of campus
Unit 3: 2 blocks south of west side of campus
Clark Kerr: 5-7 blocks south of southeast corner of campus</p>
<p>Physical sciences are in Evans, LeConte, Latimer, etc. on the north and east sides of Sather Tower. Biology is in the Life Science Building on the west part of campus. Computer science is in Soda a block across the street on the north side of campus.</p>
Check out life sciences, computer science, physical sciences bldgs, then Bowles and Memorial Stadium
Walk down Durant, checking out Kerr and Unit 1/2/3 dorms on the way.
Lunch on Telegraph Ave. (any recommendations for pizza, Mexican, burgers, etc.?</p>
<p>I’ll also orient him on how BART (on Shattuck) provides easy access to San Francisco and much of the Bay Area.<br>
Open questions:
– where can nicer apartments in a reasonably safe area be found?
– where do students typically shop for groceries, drug store, etc. for basics?
– what libraries or other locations do 1st/2nd year UG’s typically study at?</p>
<p>Does this sound reasonable for a 4 hour visit (1 hour admissions session, 2 hours walk, 1 hour lunch) and provide a reasonably balanced view of the campus and Berkeley from a student’s perspective? Anything important missing?</p>
I can’t honestly recommend any of the places on Telegraph, though if you have to choose, Smart Alec’s is a good balance for being relatively clean, fun, and student-friendly. If you can walk further down, there’s a nice Italian place called Pasta Bene.
Nicer apartments tend to be on north side (near Gourmet Ghetto) and west side. These areas are less popular among students, and therefore landlords have to compete with niceness and lower rent.
Groceries can be easily had at Bears Market (if you have a Cal 1 Card) or Sam’s Market (on Telegraph). The closest Safeway is a 15-min bus ride away down the 51B on College.
Most people study at Moffit or Doe Stacks. However, personal experience says it’s much nicer to study at the East Asian Library and Music Library.</p>
<p>Just so you know, some of the libraries require a student ID to enter (so they won’t let you in).</p>
<p>You could also wander around Dwinelle and see how crazy the numbering of the rooms is - your son will probably take several freshman lecture classes there.</p>
<p>I would also highly recommend that your son drop in on several classes - ask admissions or look at the Berkeley schedule. I’d recommend only visiting large lectures, though, and not discussion sections or small lectures where they might notice. Your son could always leave after 10 minutes or something - nobody will care.
Keep in mind, though, that many summer classes are not taught by professors, but by graduate students, so the teaching style might not correlate with how classes are actually taught normally (for better or for worse).</p>
<p>Thanks for al the suggestions regarding restaurants, libraries, class-drop-in, etc. I checked Yelp and both IB’s and Pasta Bene look good so those are my current targets.
Hopefully we can check out a library or two, but no big deal if not. Good idea to try to check out a lecture hall…</p>
<p>We visited Cal as planned today, and everything went very well. Many thanks for your earlier suggestions on this thread – they were all very helpful!</p>
<p>After parking at the garage near Durant/Telegraph, we arrived at the admissions overview session just in time for the 9AM start, and were fortunate to get seats. The admission presentation was very informative and crisp. </p>
<p>After the info session, having a general plan for what we wanted to see during our informal campus stroll worked out great (we skipped the formal tour since we had a tour on our Winter visit). We wound up wandering somewhat randomly keeping in mind what was nearby that we could stop to take a look at. We saw Memorial Stadium (from the outside), Haas Pavilion (on the inside), the baseball field, the Union, the Recreation Center, the main library (inside), and all the main freshman dorm areas on the outside (except for Kerr). We also noted areas like life sciences and physical sciences to provide some context on how the campus was laid out, pointed out the different shopping areas (Telegraph, Shattuck, etc), the direction of the BART stop, etc. </p>
<p>The campus was pleasantly busy and the weather was picture perfect. We ate lunch at Pasta Bene (thanks for the suggestion excelblue), and even had time for a couple record stores. Entire visit took less than 4 hours. </p>
<p>Our kiddo left with a MUCH more positive impression than he had during our winter weekend visit where everything was gloomy, cold, wet, and deserted. Through the combination of the two visits, I think his impression of Cal is more balanced now, definitely more positive, and Cal is back on his short list. </p>
<p>Thanks again to everyone for your help and advice!</p>