<p>Well, just to counter badoink’s statement: I’m a third year at UCLA, and I’ve rarely seen the dorms/Westwood completely “dead.” The one exception is long weekends, since a large portion of UCLA students are (unsurprisingly) from So Cal so a lot of people do tend to go home when we have three-day weekends.</p>
<p>One reason why it may have seemed dead is because there’s so much to do outside of the little UCLA/Westwood bubble. Westwood is a great college town and very safe compared to most of LA, and there’s always stuff going on around the campus itself (free movie sneaks, free concerts, sporting events, etc.), so you can easily keep yourself entertained by just sticking to campus and the surrounding areas. However, even without a car you can still get to Venice Beach or the Santa Monica Pier to enjoy the gorgeous So Cal weather, or to the Getty Center (beautiful!) or the LACMA or the Griffith Observatory (which has been featured in tons of movies, btw) if you like museums, or to the Third Street Promenade for shopping (or Rodeo Drive for window-shopping, ha), or to Grauman’s Chinese or the El Capitan theater to spot celebrities at a movie premiere… and the list goes on. </p>
<p>Ultimately Berkeley and UCLA are both great schools, and having either school on your resume will be impressive… as cardboardboxes mentioned, I’d pick which school to attend by thinking about where you’d like to live for the next four years. If the things I listed sound like fun to you, come to UCLA. If you’re more of a Bay Area person, go to Cal. Firapira mentioned that the school’s atmosphere and the recreational activities it offers won’t be important in the long run, but I disagree with that statement. Obviously getting an education is the most important aspect of college, but hopefully you won’t be spending ALL of your time studying… that would be a pretty miserable way to live. To everyone who’s making the decision whether to attend Cal or UCLA: do some research, and unless one school is significantly stronger in your major, base your decision on the type of atmosphere you want or the things you’d be interested in doing when you’re not hitting the books.</p>