<p>when you dormed at reiber, were the majority of your floormates freshmen or transfers? were there any juniors/sophs <– or have most of the juniors/sophs moved out of school housing & into their own apartments w/ friends ): ?</p>
<p>what have you two (Eshug and Pinkerfloyd) heard of the civic engagement minor?</p>
<p>Pinkerfloyd, </p>
<p>Thanks for the insight. Do you have any concerning International Development Studies? I got in as a Comm Studies major and would like to double or at least minor in something else. Philosophy was on top of my list. Again thanks and if I was there I’d buy you some Diddy Riese.</p>
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<p>there was only one freshman on my floor last year. 1/3 were second years, 1/3 were transfers and 1/3 were shy asian kids who didn’t really say much. it was really social and in the beginning everyone was friendly and eager to make friends. if you’re worried about making friends, don’t be. you’ll find plenty of likeminded, generally nice people to know. and if you don’t, you can always go greek…</p>
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<p>only that all the cool, civically engaged kids are doing it.</p>
<p>I’m curious about any additional comments you may have about the philosophy program itself. I’ve been accepted into UCLA, and if I get into Cal, it’s going to be a tough decision between UCLA, Cal and UCSB. If you’ve taken any of the ethics or political philosophy classes, how were they? In your experience, what are the major’s strong and weak points? From what you know about programs at other schools, if you were to have chosen a different school for undergrad, which would it have been and why?</p>
<p>How much do you know about the whole pre-med bio, chem and physics scene? You seem like a hard worker and you pulled off only a 3.6 in a Philosophy major which is really good for anything else but unfortunately, just considered kinda barely okay for medical schools. Do you (or anybody you know) know how tough the premed classes are here? I got in but I’m afraid that if I choose UCLA over, say UCSD or Davis, I might end up blowing my chances of getting the right GPA.</p>
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<p>fosho.</p>
<p>don’t know much about IDS. i know someone who studies it. she isn’t the most cerebral girl in the world and she gets by alright. if you’re looking to pick up a minor, my advice is to either 1) find something that REALLY interests you and do that or 2) do education for the GPA booster – </p>
<p>1 if you check out the minor requirements, get the syllabi from recent course offerings, read from texts listed, etc. and afterward still find yourself as interested in the subject as you were before your brief exposure. </p>
<p>2 if you plan on going to grad / law school. (my understanding is that most pre-med students have enough on their plates than to mess with silly liberal arts degrees)</p>
<p>Hi pinkerfloyd, just got accepted as a phil major. It sounds like one of my biggest fears has actually happened to you: your interest for philosophy has started to fade? How did this happen? the workload? the material? the professors? </p>
<p>Also I pretty much have the same study habits that you had in CC, for my phil classes anyway, papers the morning before, never studying for tests but still maintaining solid As, and only doing the readings that i found interesting. So my question is, were you forced to change your study habits in order to adapt to a more rigorous environment? Also was that 3.6 the result from a lack of effort on your part or was that a HARD earned 3.6?</p>
<p>Pinkerfloyd,</p>
<p>Law school for me. You know what eff’ DR, I’d buy you some El Taurino.</p>
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<p>i know that pre-med is competitive as ****. based on what friends tell me, it’s not as cutthroat as it first seems… people still help you out with notes if you miss a lecture… other people work together on problem sets / whatever pre-med people are assigned for homework… if you did well in community college, given that you put in the time, you’ll probably do well here, too. </p>
<p>i got B+'s in my first few phil classes… i figure that’s due in part to slacking and in part to getting used to what professors wanted - which was, well, different…
my 3.6 major factors into a ~3.75 overall because of those easy A’s. depending on your respective test scores, with slightly above average performance in classes that actually beg your effort, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t end up with a competitive cumulative GPA when all is said and done.</p>
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<p>again, if you succeeded in CC, you’re equipped to succeed here. the consensus seems to be just that *more<a href=“quantitively”>/i</a>, not necessarily harder stuff is being asked of students here, compared to there.</p>
<p>edit: wait… i mean, obviously the more specialized the course, the harder it might seem – being that it’s more specific and built on particular aspects of the foundations you’d learned in lower div… you know what i meant…</p>
<p>Thanks! 
That doesn’t sound too bad then. At first, I really wanted to go to Berkeley if I could but then I realized I wanted to be a doctor and I didn’t want to risk it with their competition but this whole UCLA acceptance has thrown me off a bit and I kinda really wanna go here now. If it’s mostly quantity, then I’m sure I can handle UCLA. I also hear the cut-throat competition here isn’t as bad as Berkeley so it’s nice to hear it from you. :)</p>
<p>Do you know if switching majors to Biochemistry or Neuroscience would be tough?</p>
<p>edit: Oh, I understand that part. I stay on top of all my work but I just don’t want crazy competition on a curve to bring me down too much.</p>
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<p>phil professors here are, for the most part, brilliant. some are better / more engaging than others, but all definitely know their ****, and most know how to convey it to you well / succinctly. </p>
<p>the workload feels crazy at times, but is nothing absurd. going to office hours with BOTH your TAs and your professors (but mainly your TAs) will help you in ways beyond your feeble understanding. </p>
<p>the material… isn’t boring, but - as you’ve heard a million times from everyone around you - it holds no practical utility in the ‘real world’… and beyond that, i just find myself not really caring about the concept of self beyond what i perceive, much less about god, or whether identity is a relation between objects, or names… i. just. don’t. care. i took 3 ethics courses and those were ****ing awesome, but the rest of it just leaves me bitter knowing that i could have ended up with a higher GPA in some other major. </p>
<p>i was forced to change study habits — start every paper the moment it’s assigned (usually 5-8 pages, assigned 7-10 days before it’s due). i find that you don’t have to do much until you have the prompt… only then can you really know what to look for in the text. go to office hours and take time to make amendments to your outlines (outlines that you should absolutely be making, every time). if you actually start work when it’s assigned, you’re golden. that’s seriously what separates the A’s and A-'s from the rest of the class… well, that, and a little smarts, maybe.</p>
<p>thank you very much</p>