@2024CuriousDad My daughter is a current Junior. She was accepted during regular acceptance. She decided to take classes in FPF her first semester. It was fabulous. She had great teachers, small classes, and an extra counselor. She earned really good grades. If you can afford it, I would highly suggest FPF.
Thanks @BearMama23 about Bowles. We are now working on all those prompts in the application 
My daughter is working on Bowles as well, but I am never allowed to see the results!
@VickiSoCal @2024CuriousDad Best of luck to your Bears! My advice on the prompts is to be genuine. Keep it real and less formal. There is a student review committee and they are more interested in learning about your studentsā interests and personality than their accomplishments. 
those who are deciding between UCB and UCLA or other schools, help a brother get off this waitlist lol
can anyone see their fall enrollment phase 1 assigned time slot? not sure if everyone got it or is it only because my kid registered for freshman edge
When you say, āenvironmental collegeā do you mean the College of Natural Resources?
First off all yāall (you know, they teach RAs that they have to use yāall. Because weāre Berkeley), I only follow the ask questions thread. So if you have questions for people who go to school at Berkeley, ask there, or @ me.
@2024CuriousDad
Would not recommend FPF.
Very much limits class choice. Iāve heard of people forgetting that they can only sign up for FPF classes and their schedule gets all messed when theyāre trying to sign up for classes and realize it. The push a lot of waitlisted people into FPF, which has pros and cons for the curve. Everything is always curved, even if they say itās not curved. They used to have an FPF SF thing were people would have to commute for an hour on the BART from the dorms to get to classes every day, luckily they got rid of that, but better safe than sorry.
If you make all 5 options double room, you might get a double room, but double rooms and suites are both not worth the price. If you think that you would make a very bad roommate though, get a suite for the added benefit of having the living room count as an extra room when your roommates are no longer willing to put up with you. Rooms are like 85% triples. But double rooms exist. I know this girl with social anxiety, though, who wanted a single but got a triple I think, but she gets along with her roommates now.
Bowles has a lot of traditions, good parties, good communities, a lot of money, never actually figured out where they eat food.
All dorms are southside. Donāt know what kiwibot is talking about. I still highly recommend Clark Kerr, as always. Good community, high proportion of Greek life people and sports people (rugby, rowing, softball, and football). Iāve known at least the faces of 90% of Clark Kerr people for 3 years, and like 25% of names.
@alyssarjonesss No they will not care. They really donāt care. 50 people post every year about dropping classes. I have not heard of any of them get rescinded.
@west2east20 I lived on campus for 2 years. Second year in apartments for 12,000$. 3rd year got offered Panoramic apartments which cost just as much as a dorm (15,000$), but without food, so I stopped being lazy and found an apartment half a block from campus for whatever 800*12 a year is. Not guaranteeing housing means that you canāt sue them if you donāt get offered housing. I have never heard of anyone not getting offered housing if they applied before the deadline (even if they take until May to get back to you).
@goofypirate
For everyone out there worried about everything.
Iām going to keep saying that Berkeley isnāt competitive, whether or not anyone believes it.
Hereās my college stats
I have a 3.9 GPA, double majoring in Economics and Biology, graduating in 3 years and a summer, applying to medical school soon. I work 20 hours a week at Caldining (Clark Kerr), and I volunteer 8 hours a week at the hospital thatās a 15 minute walk away. I do health economics research through URAP with a professor who I took Health economics and public policy with. He says he Ctrl Fs applications for people who have taken his class. (Or you know, before Covid)
Iām currently taking 20 units, including Econometrics, Macroeconomics, Financial and Behavioral Economics, Cities and Public Policy, and Evolutionary Medicine. The randomest class Iāve taken was History of Celebrity (a very good class) and I also took Peace and Conflict Studies. I love my school.
Alright, that covers this page. Sorry Iāve gotten more bluntly cynical as Iāve been answering the same questions on this every year. Great procrastination from reading about Trend Based Asset Flow in Technical Analysis and Securities Marketing. And as you can tell, thereās a reason Iām not an English major.
@confusedstudent827
See above comment by me. Skip to end. I got a 522 on my MCAT. I have met the pre-med advisor. She was nice. Told me to read Atule Gadawande (butchered that) books and that I should get more clinical experience. Donāt forget to take Biochem.
Alright, so my little sister has gotten into Caltech, Berkeley, and SLO.
I have been making a solid effort to convince her and all her friends to go to Berkeley. I have convinced like 2/10.
I love my school
But just go to the cheap school. Schools are all the same.
Living up the street from me in Socal are a bunch of Georgia Tech graduates working at a satellite Internet company. Itās a perfectly good school.
(Itās sort of funny how none of you know how to @ people. If you @ people, they probably get an email about it, unless they messed with their settings)
@sunquebec Still May 1st
UCLA has smog.
Berkeley is trying very hard to convince me to pass no pass my classes.
@rudranil
10,000$ extra for EECS.
Actually, I would say thatās worth it. But then, you know preferences and stuff.
EECS is very very good. With a whole lot of funding. And a whole lot of interested companies.
EECS is like MIT level.
confused student. 30,000$ extra is still not worth it. Bio is fun. But youāre not trying to get a job straight out of college. But CRISPR and nobel prizes and stuff. Nobel prize winner in endosomes. Iāve taken some good classes. Still going with no for you.
@RoseBud44 You saw Ikgās thing? Page 32. Berkeley does not care what your school does during Covid. As I said somewhere, theyāre trying to get us to pass no pass ourselves.
And weāre not gritty. Weāre optimistic. We provide resources for the homeless people and donāt kick them out of the city (like my hometown in the suburbs). Plus, everything is walkable which is nice. And I basically see someone I know whenever Iām within 5 blocks of campus, which is basically all the time. Then again, I know a lot of people.
Okay, next page. I should really get work done eventually. Will have to remind myself not to watch netflix later. Productivity is important.
Random tip of this. Join NRHH after your first semester. Well funded free food club.
I forget who asked. No one know how enrollment dates are decided. Either AP credits donāt matter or everyone has AP credits so they donāt matter, but my enrollment date has varies substantially over the years. Community college credit might help. Maybe not. Maybe Berkeley credits only.
Other things. Sign up for labs first. They fill up. No one is checking prerequisites. If you take something you donāt have the prerequisites for, no one will notice and 70% of the time youāll be fine. Except for Bio 1A. They check. But anything that they ārecommendā not taking, take it anyways. Like 21 credits. Or Econ 1. Or whatever else you feel like taking. If there is an English class in the English department and itās upper division, and you donāt like English. Donāt take it because there is a reason that English majors are English majors and you are not.
If your mom forces you to talk to an advisor, they will direct you to a website at least once. Berkeley makes it very easy to not talk to an advisor if you donāt want to by putting all the information out there.
@Patsg01
See above.
Things that one learns:
- Never trust a schoolās medical school acceptance rate
- Overall, thereās a 50% chance of getting into a medical school somewhere, with the average applicant applying to 16 medical schools.
- Berkeley has no committee preventing you from applying to medical school
- Berkeley has a weirdly large group of EMTs. They all have sweatshirts. Thereās also an overpriced EMT training thing for 2000$ from 6-10 pm like 4 times a week for a semester.
- Each medical school has an acceptance rate of 2%.
- You do not need to take an MCAT prep course if you can study fine by yourself.
- Berkeley people are good at life, which convinces you to be good at life too.
- Medical school if really really expensive for goodness sake
- Thatās all I know. Iāll get back to you in 10 months. Really long expensive application process.
- Oh wait. MCAt scores are good for 3 years
- Medical schools would rather you didnāt use APs to cover pre-reqs.
- Blood Pressure Project is a good club. They let everyone in. Taking blood pressure is a good clinical experience. They have medical field speakers come in every week to do a QandA session. Very good club. Wednesday nights.
Anything else from anyone? Iām going to go walk the dog. Good job to everyone answering questions. I will follow this thread for all you people who havenāt figure out @ing. Hopefully weāre past the stats of entrants stage.
The other people who used to talk a lot were ucbalumnus who answers math questions, professorplum (who does the parent questions with Blackwell freshman kid), undercrackers.
Now thereās Gumbymom, kiwibot, Ikg and Expedited (I think CS).
@BearMama23 My Son is applying to Bowles and fingers crossed! We are from out of state and my hope is that being a part of the Bowles community will help his transition and be a place where he can form tight friendships & support from other students. Glad to know that your daughter has had a fantastic experience!
Hey Guys,
I am an international student just completing my freshman year at Cal. I am intended econ/pre-Haas Major. I enrolled in FPF for the fall and it was great! If you have any questions about housing, FPF, or anything, in general, you can reach out to me!
How will Global Edge work with the COVID-19 epidemic?
Hello! Is it possible to become roommates with a person outside of FPF?
Hey guys, I was just accepted off the waitlist today! I have a question about AP tests. I learned that one of them has no effect as it not required for my major, so I am allowed to not take it? Or is it required that I do? Thanks in advance!
@Missmerrygoround
They will very likely cancel it if itās in any way (possibly) unsafe. So, if theyāre still letting you sign up, itās pretty safe to sign up. Theyāre 90% likely to give you a full refund if they cancel it (and they WILL cancel it if this is still going on) and any flights scheduled these days generally have refunds. Side note, people overweight small probabilities, (because Iām studying prospect theory today) so if itāll get around that in your head, thereās a 100% chance of them giving you a refund if this is still going on.
@jlee0279 Yes. If youāre not in an out of the state FPF, they will do their normal random assignment roommate. If you want to choose a roommate (although their normal: are you a clean freak and do you go to bed really late/early thing generally works fine), donāt forget you have to choose the same list of dorm choices.
@goin2college0
You donāt have to take it. Didnāt you already pay for the thing? Oh wait covid. Sure.
Berkeley generally doesnāt care what you do after they accept you and they especially donāt care now. The only benefit of useless APs is graduating early or taking the minimal number of units every semester. Both of which have some benefits.
@Armaanaggu
MissMerrygoround and jlee0279 have FPF questions.
So for you, bookmark the page and youāll probably get your inbox cluttered up like I do with this stuff.
For the rest of you, this @ thing also gets peopleās emails cluttered up with this stuff.
@Armaanaggu (or anyone with FPF experience), is there anyway to get some kind of exception to the course rule, and take a class on the main campus? My son wants to take a beginning foreign language and heād have to miss the whole freshman year because languages usually run two semesters long.
@Walter924 Thank you. But just someone was saying you must take all the AP tests you had on your application, which made me unsure.
@scrambro FPF usually has some classes on the main campus. You can look at their course catalog to check if they offer any languages.
@goin2college0
My son had the same concern so he checked with his admissions officer.
His admissions officer confirmed that it is ok not to take all or some of the APs in May 2020. However, he (student) NEEDS to update through āUndergraduate Admissions Update Formā which is under āFormsā on application portal.
My son did so and then got a confirmation a few days later on the portal saying his admission is sustained.