Hey guys, I was wondering if there are any other hopeful UC Philosophy majors here. I would be curious to see what your GPAs are and what schools you got into and are hoping to get into. I had a 3.41 on January 30th and a 3.48 as of right now. I got into CSULB and Pomona so far.
Hey, fellow Phil Major.
Applied: All UCs except Merced, a few out of state privates and publics
Accepted: UIUC
GPA: 3.9
TAG: UCI
IGETC: Done last quarter
Good luck to you! You must be waiting on Riverside - I am too. I wish they’d hurry up.
Hello everyone.
Transferable GPA: 4.0
IGETC: Will be completed by the end of the Spring.
Prereqs: 3/3 completed by the end of the Spring semester for Berkeley (1/3 taken at Cal), 3/4 for UCLA (only 3/4 were available to me). The other schools vary on prereqs, too.
Applied to: UC Berkeley, UCLA, UCI (TAG), UCSB, UCD.
Good extracurriculars, good essays in retrospect.
Berkeley is my top choice, UCLA is my second choice.
Greetings!
Transferable GPA: 3.90
IGETC: Completed
Pre-reqs: 4/4 for UCLA by end of Spring, 1/3 for Berkeley. Others vary.
Applied: UCB, UCLA, UCI, UCSB, UCSD.
TAG: Nope. Used my tag as a history major for UCSB. Obviously that is now void.
ECs: Just working full-time for a period and part-time for a longer period
I’m undecided on which school I’d like to go to.
Wow you guys have high GPAs :(( . My 3.41 seems so low now. Good luck to all of you.
Phil Major here, currently have a 3.88 Gpa
Applied: UCB, UCLA, USC, UCSB
GPA: 3.88
TAG: UCSB
IGETC: Done
@jessus It’s not so low. A philosophy major got accepted to UCLA last year with a 3.14.
@goldencub That gives me hope, do you know anything else about the person that got in with that GPA?
@jessus Look through the 2015 UCLA thread. I think their screen name was @Platocrat …?
Out of curiosity, what are you all interested in studying specifically? Which fields of philosophy do you all find yourselves interested in?
Hmm Chewbacca will take getting used to! Can’t say I don’t approve though.
I’ve found that the fields that keep me most interested are metaphysics and epistemology. Continental doesn’t really grab my attention. Some parts of ethics interest me, but a lot of it is dry to me.
@goldencub Epistemology and formal logic.
What field or fields are you interested in?
@Cheolf The change was long overdue.
The ethics essay I was writing last night bored me to tears. Glad to be done with it. I’m sure upper division classes in the subject will be more interesting. I’d be interested in taking a Bioethics class. I enjoy metaphysics, only because there’s a lot for me to disagree with (i.e. Plato).
@JacobfromCA I’m extremely excited for upper division logic classes. Subtopics that I’ve seen on course listings include form and meaning, theory of language, and the logic offerings, naturally. I’d also like to take a few classes dedicated solely to specific philosophers (i.e. Kant). They seem interesting. It’s hard to narrow an interest down to specific fields (even though that’s the question I asked), because different areas are fairly interrelated.
I transferred to UCLA in fall 2014 for philosophy; ask me any questions you guys want about the process.
Just sayin’.
@Cayton how are the classes at UCLA? Is the quarter system a lot more difficult than semester? Could you describe the reading/ writing workload for a philosophy class?
@jessus
I’m just copy-pasting this from a post I made a couple of months ago on this subject:
"UCLA philosophy classes are harder than the hardest CC philosophy classes when it comes to…well everything, generally.
The classes here have about the same amount of reading, but those readings are denser(Though you do get used to it pretty quickly, so don’t worry too much.). A typical class will have about 30-40 pages a week of reading that’s required. The readings are dense and may require you to go through them twice. I think you can avoid having to do that if you read those assignments very, VERY slowly. I’m talking about 10 pages an hour. Don’t be afraid to reread an individual sentence of paragraph; that stuff is meant to be digested slowly.
Subject matter is harder, generally, in the sense that you’ll be covering philosophers in more detail(And more of what they wrote) at the upper-division than at the lower-division. You’d think you’d already know a lot about Plato because you took a CC lower-division ancient philosophy course or two that covered him, but you’d be wrong. It gets so much deeper, lol. Especially, ESPECIALLY in courses that are devoted specifically to a single philosopher. Also, a lot of stuff in the upper-division courses will be familiar to you because you read about it in your CC courses, e.g. Aristotle’s four causes and Plato’s theory of forms. But those lower-div courses are survey courses generally and give you a rough understanding through the readings and lectures of those concepts. In Phil 100A(Ancient Greek Philosophy, upper-division), these concepts are covered once more, but in substantially more detail and you learn other stuff about these familiar concepts that you didn’t know about before.
When it comes to pace, UCLA is just faster because it’s on the quarter system. That’s pretty much it.
And when it comes to overall rigor, the papers assigned have higher standards and so do any exams. You gotta go into more detail and it’s expected with papers that you not only show that you know the arguments that given philosophers are making, but you give your own opinion on those issues and defend them with very good arguments(You seriously cannot bull**** this part in your papers. You will regret it). In addition, you’re often expected to list possible counterarguments in your papers that someone could make to your position(And they have to be good counterarguments. Not easy ones that take no effort to refute) and state why they fail to undermine your arguments."
@Cayton wow sounds scary :((
eeeh, don’t sweat it too much. You’ll be prepared well for upper-div classes if you excel in your lower-divs and go to professors’ office hours for help if you need it.
Also, there’s plenty of guides online on how to write good philosophy papers. I’ve gone through a lot of them and they helped me out a lot.
Also, don’t be afraid to ask questions regarding assignments; you can get a surprising amount of help from TAs/professors if you’re nice and are honestly trying to do well.
Doing all of this is why I’m thriving in this major.
@jessus @goldencub Goldencub, you have a good memory indeed. It was @Platocrat who got accepted into UCLA last year with a 3.14. I wasn’t seeking it out; I stumbled upon the evidence in the 2015 UCI transfer thread. See post #1063 http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/uc-transfers/1747777-uc-irvine-fall-2015-transfer-thread-p71.html
Surely that is reason enough to worship at the altar of pi for eternity.