UC Berkeley vs private schools (undergraduate humanities)

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of California - Berkeley
1

I want to major in something in the humanities, most likely philosophy or comp lit. Here’s the deal:

I am deciding between Berkeley or a LAC (specifically reed college). I also really, really love Boston College. After undergrad, I want to go to grad school, get a Ph.D, and become a professor at a top university. I don’t want to major in philosophy because some people say its “easy.” I am extremely passionate, spend all day every day reading literature, philosophy, the classics, etc. I want to be in a really difficult and rigorous academic environment that will push me to be the best I can be.
BUT.
My family makes too much to qualify for need based aid, and I didn’t get any scholarships. Private school is full sticker price, and even though we don’t qualify for need based aid, its too expensive (long story), and I would really feel terrible putting that strain on my family knowing I could get a solid education at UC Berkeley for way, way less.

I hear a lot about how the LAC’s and other private schools are better than Berkeley for undergrad, especially if you want to go to a top grad program. People seem to say that the LAC’s prepare you better for grad.
Here is my
QUESTION:
**In the humanities, NOT stem, are the LAC’s that much better for an undergraduate education than Berkeley that it would be worth racking up all of that dept? 200K. **

Thank you in advance.

2

Note: I do really well in large environments (high school was 3000 kids). While the small class size at a private school would probably be pretty cool, I have no problem speaking up, asking questions, being assertive, talking to my teachers and doing whatever I have to do. I am very motivated.

3

UC Berkeley is extremely highly regarded. There is no way that going to an LAC could be seen as better, or could open more doors for you into grad school or jobs. UC Berkeley is by far your better choice. That $200,000 debt would be your parents, not yours, since students are limited in how much money they can borrow for undergraduate degrees ($5,500-$7,500 a year max). It’s absurd to even think of having your parents do that. You are listening to people who have not done the research on who actually gets into graduate programs in philosophy. That information is often on the internet if you care to look it up.

Below are the colleges that current Philosophy graduate students at Berkeley attended for their bachelor’s degrees. Note that Reed College and Boston College are not even on the list. Berkeley IS on the list. While there are some LACs represented, the majority of students went to much larger universities for their undergraduate degrees, ranging from state flagship universities to Ivies.

https://philosophy.berkeley.edu/people/graduate_students

U Penn, Harvard, U Toronto, HU Berlin, U Cincinnati, Yale, UNC, Berkeley, NYU, Hebrew U, Biola U, NYU, McGill, Stanford, Middlebury, SUNY Geneseo, U Toronto, Haverford, U Chicago, Williams, University College London, Oberlin, Indiana U, Oxford, Notre Dame, U Chicago, Cambridge, U Toronto, U Penn, Johns Hopkins, Freie Universitat Berlin, Sarah Lawrence College, NYU, Harvard, McGill, Arizona State, Rutgers, McGill, Harvard, Ludwig-Maximilians-U Munich, University College London, Brown

The online background information for grad students in Philosophy at Princeton and Stanford was incomplete, but some of the universities attended by those students for their bachelor’s degrees are shown below, with Berkeley represented at both places, Reed only at one place, and Boston College at neither place. Whoever is telling you that Reed or Boston College will do more for you than Berkeley is misinformed.

https://philosophy.princeton.edu/people/graduate-students

U Toronto, Cambridge, U Chicago, U Montana, Berkeley, Reed, Stanford, Cambridge, Duke, Brown, Haverford, Oxford, St. Olaf, William & Mary, Universidad de los Andes, Brown, Cornell, Columbia, Johns Hopkins, Oxford, Franklin & Marshall, Biola, National Institute of Technology India, Wayne State U

https://philosophy.stanford.edu/people/graduate-students

Oxford, U Auckland, Oxford, U Chicago, Berkeley, Princeton, U Toronto, U Auckland, Carleton, Tel Aviv U, Emory, U Edinburgh, UNC

Note that at all these graduate programs, many students come from abroad – some of your biggest competition getting into a PhD program later will be global and not students from LACs.

4

@mommyrocks

Thank you so much for all the information and for the detailed response. I was pretty sure on Berkeley, but when I began reading a lot on this website I started to get a little anxious about what to do. Now I’m really confident about Berkeley. Thanks.

5

There is no doubt that small, liberal arts schools provide better support and results when it comes to placing students into the top PhD programs. Just research about PhD feeder schools. It is not even close. While Berkeley is a great school, it is large, very competitive and lacks the support services. Thriving-in/liking 3000 high school environment is not same as UC Berkley, especially at the undergraduate level. Also, while Berkeley is cheaper, for in-state, it is not cheap…costs $30-35K per year. Of course, I wouldn’t go to any LAC on full debt. Let me suggest an alternative…find a LAC that may give you some type of aid. Many LACs offer merit aid to attract top students, especially those who have the profile to get into schools like Berkeley.

Don’t get me wrong, Berkeley has the brand and strong job placement for STEM/quant-oriented/business-oriented students.

Edit: BTW, @mommyrocks provided some real good info. You may want to reach out to some of the Berkeley graduates on those lists and ask them. Most of them list email, and will be happy to help.

6

Philosophy is generally considered a more intellectually difficult major because it is a humanities major that also requires logical thinking (i.e. the kind of thinking usually associated with math) in addition to the usual humanities thinking. Many people are strong in one but less so in the other, so they may find philosophy more difficult.

$200,000 debt is generally considered far too much for any undergraduate school. Most of it will need to be parent loans or parent cosigned loans, so if your parents cannot afford to pay from savings and current income, taking on that amount of debt is a bad idea for them as well as you.

Although if Reed would need $200,000 in debt (probably means parent contribution of $70,000 or so total), in-state UC may also be a financial stretch unless you can live at home and commute, or possibly if you live very cheaply, like in the BSC co-op houses.

7

Be aware that this is kind of an elite-or-bust path.

Tenure-track faculty jobs are rare compared to the number of PhD graduates. Hence, any opening tends to attract hundreds of applicants with stellar academic accomplishments. It is particularly competitive in subjects where there is not much major-specific non-academic job demand (e.g. engineering and CS PhD graduates can often go to industry, while philosophy graduates have fewer industry options). Faculty hiring also tends to favor PhD school prestige in major, so you need to go to PhD school that is top ranked in major. And philosophy is supposedly one of those subjects where PhD program admissions are more sensitive to the prestige in major of your undergraduate school (though there is much less transparency on what undergraduate schools they like, particularly with LACs).

It is no surprise that some of the more disgruntled faculty writings come from humanities faculty (e.g. Jacques Berlinerblau’s Campus Confidential, William Deresiewicz’ Excellent Sheep).

At the bachelor’s level http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/info-Degrees_that_Pay_you_Back-sort.html suggests that philosophy is a major with a wide distribution of mid-career pay results – the 90th percentile does very well, but the 10th percentile does poorly (the median does well also).

8

I guess I exaggerated a bit, we would be able to cover most of the in-state tuition, and I forgot to mention I have some family near Berkeley so I could probably rent way cheaper than average.

So, realistically it would probably be UC Berkeley with minor debt if any debt at all, versus realistically say like 100K for a private school.

9

$100,000 in debt is still far too much for undergraduate, and would require parent loans or cosigned loans.

Also, do you have safeties that you are certain of both admission and affordability?

10

@ucbalumnus

I did apply to a couple CSU schools and most of the UC’s, so I guess those would be my safeties :wink:

11

I mean the UC’s besides Berkeley and UCLA

12

You couldn’t pick two more diametrically opposed types of schools in Reed and Cal :slight_smile: Size, teaching philosophy, you name it. That being said, I would not incur debt like you’ve described for an undergraduate degree; save that for grad school. Get yourself into either the top UC you can get into or to an LAC that is generous with $$ (they ARE out there).

13

If you can get merit aid, I would consider a highly ranked LAC or a strong Honors College before Berkeley/UCLA for Philosophy at the undergraduate level due to very few classes under 30 students (most will be in the 40-60 range whereas discussions are very important in Philosophy); you need to find one that would offer you big scholarships. I’d definitely pick a LAC over a CSU though due to the prestige-sensitive nature of Philosophy PHD admissions. Unfortunately the combination of needing merit aid and Jan 1 deadlines mean your choices have become limited.
Look at Kenyon: they have merit scholarships (up to full tuition), no supplemental essays, and an excellent reputation.
Holy Cross is quite good for Philosophy also and has a Jan 15 deadline.
If you don’t get sufficient merit aid, then UCB and UCLA will provide you with a high level education, not as personalized and writing intensive as LACs but still with excellent content.
I would strongly consider both UCB and UCLA at the PHD level though (remember that intellectual cross pollination means you can’t get your undergraduate degree and graduate degree at the same place).

14

Thank you so much for the recommendation! I never thought about applying there, but I’m going to send in an application right away. I didn’t realize how many awesome scholarships Kenyon has, especially for someone like me. I have been studying jazz guitar for a long time, and I guess they have music scholarships, even for non music majors.

Do you guys think that the smaller class size and extra attention from professors would be worth the massive extra cost? (if I were to receive no merit aid). I’m not ruling out that I’d get merit aid, but I want to be as practical as possible. There’s got to be a lot of people who didn’t go to private school and still ended up becoming very learned and successful in their chosen fields.

15

PhD programs worth attending should be funded (tuition waiver plus living expense stipend), so students should not have to take substantial additional debt. Large debt for “grad school” can only realistically be taken for professional programs with strong well paid post-graduation job prospects (that will allow paying off the debt), such as MD medical school or top 14 law school (even then, very large debt can limit one’s career and life choices, since there are physicians still paying down medical school debt almost until retirement).

16

Not at $100,000 of debt. The most you can borrow over four years without a cosigner is $5,500, $6,500, $7,500, $7,500 (total $27,000).

17

There are some lower cost LACs like University of Minnesota - Morris (about $23k billed costs for non-residents, though books, travel, and misc add a few thousand dollars extra), but they may not be high enough on the prestige (in philosophy) scale to give the best opportunity for PhD program admissions.

18

No, you should not take on more than the federal loans as described above, regardless of the university.

Search CommonApp for colleges with a Jan 15 or Feb1 deadline that have merit scholarships.
I think that Carleton has a Jan 15 deadline but I don’t think they have merit scholarships. Macalester and Grinnell may, look into it.

19

So it seems like the majority of people on here are very skeptical of Berkeley for undergraduate. Would anyone be willing to elaborate as to why?

Is there anyone who has attended UC Berkeley who feels this way? Or maybe someone who went to a private school and ended up in grad school with Berkeley alumns? I’m just surprised because growing up in California UC Berkeley was always looked upon as a totally amazing school

20

It IS a totally amazing school and the best and brightest CA students attend.
However humanities rely on small classes with discussions and lots of writing/rewriting, which is impossible in large settings. It’s as if STEM majors had no lab… Humanities majors need to grapple with texts and ideas, ping pong them with classmates, writing lots of papers, drafting and redrafting several times a semester, guided by a professor.
In a large university setting, you’ll have a discussion once a week with a TA in some cases, but many classes with 40-60 students don’t have that set up yet are too large for a real discussion class (the ideal discussion class is 16-24 students, which is why many honors colleges cap their classes in that range.)
However that benefit is NOT worth debt beyond the federal loans.
So your job is to find a university that will offer the small seminar/discussion class format AND cost the same as UCB.
In the end, there’s a way worse fate than attending UCB for undergrad. :slight_smile: