UC Berkeley or Bowdoin College

Colleges and Universities A-Z Bowdoin College
1

<p>Well，I have been deciding between UC Berkeley and Bowdoin College for a long time. They are two entirely different schools and I found both of them equally excellent. It’s really tough for me to make a decision so I would be really grateful if any of you can take side for me.
Here are the characteristics of each of the two:
On UC Berkeley:</p>

<p>On Bowdoin:</p>

<p>1.the undergraduate education is excellent</p>

<p>2.there’s so much interaction and intimacy between professors and students that each student will get enough attention</p>

<p>3.it’s a small college, so the tie between students will be very strong,like that of family members. As a result, college experience will be perfect and unforgetable</p>

<p>4.the place is fairly confined,so we can focus on our study to some extent</p>

<p>5.the teacher’s care, the life quality, the diversity of students are all perfect.(Life rating is 99)</p>

<p>6.the only two disadvantages of Bowdoin,I suppose,are that its location makes exploring the US more difficult and Bowdoin cannot teach students to learn things the hard way. With too much care around, students will be a little bit spoiled</p>

<p>7.However, I have asked some friends in Bowdoin and they told me that it’s not a problem, since Study abroad program and a number of voluntary activities will surely make up for that disadvantage</p>

<p>On Berkeley：</p>

<p>1.UC Berkeley is a big school with so many resources and opportunities;</p>

<p>2.Berkeley locates is a city. The location, weather, food are all perfect</p>

<p>3.the graduate programs are perfect but the undergraduate education gets a lot of criticism</p>

<p>4.there are a lot of 200-400 big classes</p>

<p>5.40% of student body is Asian makes the cultural diversity more difficult to achieve</p>

<p>6.in such a big school, the attention each student gets is pretty small and I don’t like that because it will cause inefficiency of teaching and studying</p>

<p>7.well,Berkeley is a great school with extremely great reputation and it teaches students about the harsher reality. The connection to the society students get are smooth.</p>

<p>Finally, please help me decide. I would be really really grateful for your answer and advice. As May 1st is apporaching, I don’t have a long time to decide my following four years.
Thanks very very much!!</p>

2

<p>Admittedly as a biased view, I would say you should go to Bowdoin. </p>

<p>The only compelling reason I can see to go to Berk is if you want to do hard core research, but even then you have to compete with grad students, which is not an issue at Bowdoin. </p>

<p>I would not base my decision on the weather. You get used to the weather you’re presented with and there are more significant factors that should influence where you choose.</p>

<p>Twenty percent of Berkley California’s pop is made up of UC Berkley students. Portland, the largest city in Maine, is only twenty minutes away from Bowdoin and has a very independent culture (plus, am I wrong or is Berk a really old city? I always got the picture that its native population consisted of a bunch of aging hippies). </p>

<p>Universities will almost inherently have a conflict between undergrad and grad programs in which undergrad looses out. That is (one big reason) why people go to small liberal arts colleges. </p>

<p>The biggest classes at Bowdoin are capped at 50 kids. That rocks. If you’re going to hang out in a class with 400 kids why not just watch a video of the class the next day? you’d have just as much interaction with the professor. </p>

<p>Diversity is a good thing.</p>

<p>Just to add a little nothing, but college ******* does only give Berk an A- to Bowdoin’s A+. Bowdoin also does much better on the usnwr list for liberal arts schools than berk does on the university list.</p>

3

<p>that dotted word is the second word in the web address **************.com…I don’t know why it was flagged</p>

4

<p>***???</p>

<p>10char</p>

5

<p>it doesnt like collegep<em>r</em>o<em>w</em>l<em>e</em>r for some reason</p>

<p>what do you want to study?</p>

<p>In my eyes, i think that it is very important to be actively involved in classes and to be taught by true professors. that was a big reason i chose Bowdoin. And while there is a bit of a difference in lab work, the lab work at Bowdoin is super accesible and easy to land a job. I figure that if i want to study something in specific detail and really love it, that is what graduate school is for and that is when a large research university comes into play.
but at the end of the day, the undergrad level chemistry is the same whether it is taught at berkeley or bowdoin or even Montana state for that matter. It is when you get into super high levels, eg graduate work, that the differences in the programs are really big. because of this i looked for somewhere that i could really have everything in an undergrad experience. much farther than just the academics.</p>

6

<p>It’s true that Berkeley’s undergrad gets a lot of criticism.</p>

7

<p>Won’t UC Berkeley give you an advantage because of its graduate programs, which are very, very strong?</p>

<p>How is Bowdoin in terms of prestigious graduate admissions?</p>

8

<p>i’m too lazy to find them, but there are stats that show that Bowdoin grads do very well in the search for grad schools.</p>

<p>for example, if your thing is business, more Bowdoin grads going on to get their MBA go to Harvard than any other business school. After that, UPenn business school is in third place after some other school i don’t know. </p>

<p>Academia knows Bowdoin rocks.</p>