My S was admitted to both UCB and UCLA for Civil Engineering. He is torn because he likes the CEE program (ranked #1!) at UCB more (the clubs give you a 1 unit credit!) but likes the vibes at UCLA better. His biggest concern is how competitive and rigorous it is at UCB compared to UCLA. Both will be hard (it’s engineering after all!) but he has heard the horror stories on how cut throat it can be at UCB. Anyways, if anyone can shed some light on this or debunk this myth, it would be much appreciated!
Has he been listening to cutthroat stories from premeds?
UCB and UCLA engineering majors are direct admission, so there is no cutthroat weed out process like at some other schools or majors, or for premeds.
Both CE programs are very good but UCB is definitely a notch above. I don’t think its any easier at one over the other. Classes will be almost identical. I know some of the faculty in each program. I had a similar decision many years ago but for grad school. Ended up at UCLA. He should go with where he feels most comfortable.
Thanks @ucbalumnus. His 4-1-1 is mostly from blogs and former UCB engineering students. UCB is known to have ‘weeder classes’ where the professors purposely make it difficult to see which students can survive. I also heard from a Berkeley alumni that the average engineering class grade was 40% which was thankfully curved. Hence the cut-throat environment. It’s probably over exaggerated. UCLA uses the word ‘Bruin family’ a lot so it comes across as a more collaborative group.
If you want to see UCB grade distributions by course, try http://www.berkeleytime.com .