I love UCSB’s CCS program but unfortunately all the perks are mostly for the freshmen and sophomores and I was told by CCS professors that physics transfers are better off going straight to the L&S program instead since they’d have to retake the core physics track again.
Berkeley is always ranked highly, but I know it more as a huge school that doesn’t care much about its undergraduates. Is the physics education here actually great or is it all reputation/rankings based? I always hear that upper division classes always narrow down to small class sizes but does this hold true for a huge school like Berkeley as well?
Which school has the better physics program for transfer students? Which has the better education? Do you have opportunities for interdisciplinary and entrepreneurship endeavors at Berkeley? Are there close ties to Silicon Valley? Are undergrads welcome to research there or is most of it taped off for grad students?
I guess the main thing holding me back from Berkeley is the fact that the people I know who have attended there are pretty…well, they’re not the nicest people. Very arrogant/above-it-all/opinionated/think they’re always on the right side of things. That and the fact that I hear people are very political and up front about telling you about their political inclinations and opinions…even when you didn’t ask for it and couldn’t care less. I’m a democrat but frankly people there are extremely left and that’s just the kind of thing I’m not really into. I love to have more variety of thought. But if people with other political thoughts of the conservative variety for example don’t have an opportunity to talk because the extreme left shuts them down then I’m not really into that kind of academic environment. I’m very against safe spaces and all of that and somehow I have the impression that Berkeley is very into that sort of thing.
It’s a shame because it’s a huge school in a pretty good location. Santa Barbara is just its own little town with no major businesses or labs nearby. I know LA is technically nearby but it’s not a great commute.
I’d love to be proven wrong though. As many great rankings a school has, I can’t feel compelled to attend if the environment is very against freedom and diversity of thought. Heckling lecturers they disagree with…things like that just really turn me off and make me question the intellectual vitality of a campus. Beyond having a good physics education, I also want to have a good educational environment. Freedom to explore many other subjects and opinions. (I’d love to apply to Stanford but I’m afraid I probably won’t have a great enough GPA or SAT scores for it…and I don’t have anything particularly amazing about my extra curriculurs so im afraid I have to stick to state schools like UCs).