<p>I applied for transfer to UCB for 2012 fall and am strongly considering it as a school I will end up at. I plan to double major in physics and math. I'd like to hear more about students' experiences there and how they like it.</p>
<p>What are your opinions on</p>
<p>-The student/campus/city life?
-Professors/academics?
-Other students?
-Anything else you care to mention?</p>
<p>-The student/campus/city life?
It is what you make of it. If you’re social then you’ll be fine. If not, no one is going to drag you to places you don’t want to be at.</p>
<p>-Professors/academics?
I would say the academics is extremely excellent despite me finding it much harder than HS (shouldn’t be a surprise). If you are a diligent students who always keep up with your work / doesn’t mind talking with your professor, then you’ll be fine. Some profs are better other, so it all depends who you get. </p>
<p>-Other students?
Of course they’ll be much more competitive and intelligent than your average friend in HS. You’re here to compete with the best, so it’ll be much harder to slide through by not doing all your work. Do not expect a generous curve b/c you assume some of your classmates are stupid, but assume that everyone has most likely weeks before an exam. If you come with that in mind, you’ll do well!</p>
<p>-Anything else you care to mention?
Seems like a hard double major to me, but if you’re passionate about it go for it. If you’re excellent in math, feel free to take hard courses in your first semester, but if you’re not, don’t risk hurting your GPA by overloading your schedule with difficult courses. Trust me, you have 8 semesters to complete your study, there’s no need to rush on your first semester just to ruin your GPA!</p>
<p>Mostly talking form personal experience haha! Good luck :D!</p>
<p>Cool, thanks a lot for your input!</p>
<p>A double major in physics and math after transfer may be a tight fit in your 4 semester schedule, since each needs 8 upper division courses (total of 16), although some of the [applied</a> math clusters](<a href=“http://math.berkeley.edu/programs/undergraduate/major/applied]applied”>Course Requirements: Applied Mathematics | Department of Mathematics at University of California Berkeley) can overlap 1-2 of the courses (reducing the total to 14-15). Most transfer students will also need to take an American Cultures course (bringing the total back up to 15-16). So that leaves just 0-1 free elective if you take a typical 16 courses over 4 semesters after transfer.</p>
<p>student life is unexpectedly amazing. no matter what kind of person you are, you will always find someone you can relate to and have fun with. even if you like the craziest weirdest things. there’s someone here that is just like you. and there are people that went through similar things as you did. i think a lot of the students here are very respectful and not so immature or disloyal to their friends for the most part. one thing i noticed especially is that sometimes someone will say something behind someone’s back and then that person will end up getting hurt in the end because it’s them who just showed who they are. </p>
<p>as far as academics, it can be intimidating or stressful but you have to find ways to overcome it. and there ARE ways, even if that means changing your major to find something more interesting to you. you will undoubtedly set yourself up for failing/depression if you’re doing it for the status or to please others. guaranteed lol.</p>
<p>other things…get involved and be social. know that everyone knows everyone. almost. don’t do bad things. and be moral. stuff gets around and people know each other and will hear about you eventually so if you do something crazy and think nobody will find out, they will. it’s not as big of a campus as you think. just be a good person. and that goes for life in general.</p>
<p>also it’s easy to become antisocial sometimes when things get going but make sure you meet friends at least every other day or a few times a week because it really impacts your life.</p>
<p>As far as academics and the students at Berkeley are concerned, let me put it this way: If you end up here then it’s because you were always the best in your high school, far ahead of all the folks in physics and math. That reality, however, is about to change.
Berkeley will overpower you at first, especially since you’re a hard science major. If you get intimidated, then hard luck. But if you’re brilliant and tough, Berkeley will outmatch your expectations and keep challenging you and pushing you everyday. It will make a champion out of you by the sheer talent you will have to keep up with around you and though initially you might resist this major change, eventually you’ll fall in love with it. </p>
<p>That’s what I love about it the most. :)</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>So, since everyone is giving you one perspective (mainly the struggling part), I’ll give you the other side if that applies to you. I would say I was within the top 10 in my high school at science and math. Cal math is far easier than high school math for me. Math 104 is a joke. Math H185 isn’t particularly challenging (though is a bit of busywork). Math 113 and 110… you can get an A in these classes sleeping through the whole semester…
Math 250A isn’t particularly bad either. It’s a more advanced form of 113, but it’s graded pretty easily…</p>
<p>Physics here isn’t too bad either. Even if you fail, the curve will curve you back to an A =].
I remember thinking I failed only to find out I was two standard deviations above average.
Point is, if you’re good, you’ll get a 4.0. </p>
<p>Overall, the difficulty of these classes aren’t too bad. Taking a few upper division math courses, I would say that they are highly overrated in terms of difficulty. With that said, this is my perspective and I believe this perspective is shared by only a few people here. If you happen to be one of these top students, you’ll have it easy here!</p>
<p>Thanks for all the info. Yeah, I’m well prepared for that kind of workload. Besides even if I had room for electives, I’d probably take even more upper division math and physics classes since they are both my favorite subjects and can use all the experience I can get for what I want to do. </p>
<p>I hope Berkeley accepts me, I think my application is extremely strong. The only downfall is I didn’t realize I needed to have 2 semesters of a foreign language in college since I didn’t finish 3 years of one in high school. So I made a note in my app that I was only able to finish 1 semester because I found out too late. Oh, and I’m applying form OOS. lol</p>
<p>Foraminifera, you may be right about math and physics. I was extrapolating hard sciences on account of being an EECS major, which after reading your argument, seems to be a completely separate cup of tea.
I have many juniors and seniors as friends (EECS and L&S CS) and they all universally agree that there is no well defined line between top students and ‘average’. All upper divs are parallel so getting an A would not imply getting an A in the other, and therefore grouping upper divs all together is a fatal mistake. But CS is not your usual high school science, which we’re exposed to from very young age(atleast not for the majority 
), so it could very well be the case that for Physics/Math you’re right.
Besides, I always had the impression that Berkeley had an abundance of challenges to offer academically, but it could certainly be the case that it is limited to EECS, which makes me value my major even more now. :)</p>