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<p>The cake is a lie.</p>
<p>NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!! Lates, House M.D. is DVR’d.</p>
<p>its not holding me back bro!!! its totally doable and i welcome the challenge! i am intimidated but its seriously not whats holding me back.
whats holding me back is the move…and the spring…and the idk…</p>
<p>have fun with house. :p</p>
<p>Lol I got yr point. Plan to visit berkeley this weekend from soCal. If I like the campus, I will go there.</p>
<p>Anyone know how the sociology classes are like at berk? how about the PEIS courses? Like everybody else here, I’m terrified that there is a huge disparity between the level of difficulty at berk compared to my cc…</p>
<p>@ruo_hu</p>
<p>About the people who get high GPA’s during CC “without trying”… a good amount of people at the CC level take the bare minimum in prerequisites, opt for the easier IGETC courses, and shop for easy going teachers. This explains exactly why you hear stories of people failing at upper-division coursework at the university level (because they never gave themselves a chance to build up the coursework momentum).</p>
<p>Then again, some people are genuinely smart and can get solid grades with minimal effort on any level. So, there’s really no general concensus on whether good GPA during CC will translate into good GPA at the schools you transferred to. It’s all relative.</p>
<p>I was a CC transfer student and I will say that Berkeley is a very difficult place to get a high GPA. Below are the details from my personal experience. In general, it is not too difficult to achieve a 3.5-3.65 GPA at Berkeley, but if you are targeting 3.85 or above, this place will make your life miserable. My opinion is that if you can get into this place as a transfer, then many of you should have adequate brains to do well here, but whether you have adequate motivation and discipline is another question. I transferred with a 4.0 GPA and was still able to graduate with a 3.94 with Highest Honors Poli-Sci/Econ double major, but this is no easy task. I studied well at a CC, but I had to take my game to an entirely different level at Cal. Let me just say that professors here do not like to give out A’s. For example, in my Political Theory class of 65 students that was graded with 2 papers, there were only 2 A’s, many B’s, many C’s & a few D’s and even 3 F’s on the midterm. In another one of my courses, during one of the last 2 lectures, the professor briefly introduced this theory for around 5 minutes and said that it will be on the final exam, then he chuckled and said “Don’t worry, I was just kidding, it won’t be on the final.” Well guess what? it appeared on the final as an essay question and was worth 33%. In yet another class of mine, this time a Political Economy class, about just 1.5 weeks before the final, the professor threw in a 700 page reader and said that one of the final exam essay questions will come from it and will be worth 30%. Man, there were a lot of *<em>**ed off faces after she mentioned this! In yet another example, a friend of mine had a Computer Science class, and in the last lecture, the professor gave the class a study guide and said that certain chapters will be covered on the final exam and about 4 chapters will not, and guess what again? all the chapters appeared on the final exam, and this dude got so mad when he saw the exam that he threw the exam in the professor’s face and said “f</em>*k you” and just walked out and left. Let me tell you, the professors here really take personal pleasure, and maybe in pride, in screwing with the students’ mind. And I’ve heard two students ask professors about giving A+ grades. One professor said it was discretionary, and the other said that he will only give out an A+ if you can obtain a 99% in the class or that if you get a 97% or 98% you must really really impress him with at least one of your research. I received one A+ from a professor in this Administrative Theory course when he personally graded my final term paper (the GSI graded half of the students and the professor usually grades harder). The instruction of the final term paper was to utilize all of your assigned readings (you have to cite every source) and make a case on 1 out of 7 available essay topics, but I went way above and beyond the assigned readings and did a full-on in-depth level research with another 15+ supporting academic and statistical sources (the professor ended up marking my paper with an A++ and asked for my permission to keep my paper as a reference example for his future students!). He was a visiting professor/head of Political Studies from this university in Italy and is one of the reps of Italy to debate and formulate policies in the EU. Needless to say, I chose him to write me a letter of recommendation.</p>
<p>All this is to tell you that in order to succeed at Cal, being smart or even very smart is not enough. You must also be motivated, highly disciplined, raise your standards to a level that beats out the crowd, and be wicked and be prepared for all sorts of evil surprises; you may even need luck if you are even thinking about anything towards a 4.0. One of my professors said to me, “Nobody, nobody gets a 4.0 at Berkeley…”</p>
<p>There are posts here that mentions that well you will not have time to get through all the class readings and you should skim and focus on the important pages or this and that, but I actually took the time and effort to read through every page assigned and tried to memorize all the freaking details because some professors will place short answer or definition-type questions on exams with seemingly random terms and easily-missed concepts from the readings. I ran into 2-3 of these on one exam that I swear that I couldn’t recall from any of my readings (I was lucky that out of 10 terms/concepts, you only have to choose 6 to answer). As opposed to grade inflation at some Ivy League schools, this place actually favors grade DEflation. The professors here can care less about the grade reputation of its graduates.</p>
<p>I am not trying to scare potential students off, well maybe a little :), but knowing this and be mentally prepared is for your own good. This place will chew you up then spit you back out if you’re not prepared. CC is only a boot camp for this bloody battle field at Cal. My second semester here somebody jumped off the Economics building one day and killed him or herself. The police tapes surrounding the building was an eerie scene. Also, if you will be an international student, avoid staying in the International House at Cal, cause people told me that a student once hung herself in one of the dorm rooms there. This place is definitely not for the faint of heart. You must prepare like a commando to survive in the Berkeley trenches. Good luck to all future Cal students, cause you sure will need it!</p>
<p>^berkgrad234: What did you major in? What advice do you have for high schoolers looking to transfer to Berkeley?</p>
<p>Berkgrad234 was a Poli Sci/Econ double major (see line 8). Since the post was from last year, it’s not likely the/she is still around.</p>