<p>I was recently accepted to UCLA CAS as a chemistry major. I have a few questions about the chemistry major at UCLA versus at UC Berkeley.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Does prestige really matter for graduate school for chem? Will they care if I go to UCLA or UC Berkeley?</p></li>
<li><p>How difficult are the programs are both schools?</p></li>
<li><p>Any other extra information you're willing to provide about either school's chem program.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Thanks so much, I really appreciate any and all answers :)</p>
Does prestige matter for grad school : The answer is it depends. As you probably know UC Berkeley is #1 amongst all programs. UCLA is in the mid-teens. If you go to Berkeley and do well ( lets say top 15%), then yes it’s an advantage. If you go to UCLA and do well ( say top 5% ), then UCLA will be just as good. The competition will be much stiffer at UC Berkeley. So it kind of depends on your personal comfort level and confidence.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>My niece went to UC Berkeley more than 10 years ago - she was a smart kid, but struggled particularly in the first two years, but it got much better in the junior/senior years. No idea on UCLA’s program in terms of difficulty.</p></li>
<li><p>If you get admission into UC Berkeley Chem program, do go down and talk to people there. The reputation of the Chem department is immense. While it is grad. school that ultimately matters, if you have in your resume that you were from the school of chemistry in undergraduate, it still will resonate with people. The contrarian viewpoint : most schools prefer that their undergrads go elsewhere for graduate programs as a general rule. So your chances for getting into the grad. school in Berkeley maybe greater if you are from UCLA !</p></li>
</ol>
Prestige is near nonexistent for grad school. There’s no top 5% UCLA vs top 15% Berkeley comparisons. Grad school senses of prestige is very vague and a university such as UCLA could be roughly equatable to a school like UC Irvine or even lower. If you have even a .1 higher GPA at UCLA than a Berkeley student, given all else the same, you will almost always win. A 3.4 GPA at San Jose State >>>> 3.1 GPA at Berkeley.</p>
<p>2) I don’t want to give you incorrect advice because I do not know that much about Berkeley but I am aware that Berkeley’s Chemistry program is very famous and very prestigious as well. Berkeley has a separate College of Chemistry and Chemistry is one of the subject areas it is most famous. I also hear that the Chemistry BS is extremely rigorous and difficult. (The Chemistry BS is definitely NOT an ordinary Chemistry program in terms of rigor.) I do not know about their Chemistry BA but I would presume both are more difficult than UCLA Chemistry.</p>
<p>I wish someone would have told me this when I was applying to undergraduate universities. If you are worried about attaining a high enough GPA for grad school, don’t fret about prestige!!! Prestige is completely worthless outside of the possible research/internship opportunities that are available at the school. </p>
<p>If you need the GPA boost, I would highly recommend you look elsewhere than both UCLA or Berkeley. There are a large number of wise, intelligent students who undershoot by a considerable amount. Also, look into UC San Diego. It offers a great biological sciences program.</p>
<p>GPA isn’t the most important thing for getting into grad schools, letters of recommendation are. And your letter of recommendation will carry more weight if they’re written by someone who’s better known. They’ll also be more impressed if you stood out in a program that’s known to be more difficult.</p>
<p>On the other hand, even if you’re at a school with a lower ranked department, you may still be able to get into a lab run by someone that’s well known. To a certain extent, it’s the luck of the game. It’s impossible to know exactly how things will turn out, and I think it’s better to choose based on where you’ll be happiest. You definitely shouldn’t choose a place because you think you’ll get the highest GPA, unless you want to go to Law School or Med School.</p>
<p>^I agree with sentimentGX4 that prestige isn’t weighted that much. For grad school, undoubtedly a 3.8 at UCI is better than say a 3.5 at CAL. Of course CAL may have better resources for side activities, but that’s another discussion.</p>
<p>^Average universities such as UC Irvine typically have Honors Colleges w/ research programs and the like to help you mingle with their top professors and stand out. </p>
<p>I wouldn’t say the average professors at Berkeley are necessarily better than the top professors at other UCs and it’s certainly better standing out at an average UC rather than being one of the fish at Berkeley and haplessly pestering your professors at office hours.</p>
<p>Wrong. It’s not about prestige as it is reputation of the program that matters. I doubt that a 3.4 GPA from SJSU trumps a 3.1 GPA from Berkeley that easily. There are other criteria to consider i.e. research, quality of courses, etc. There are more opportunities to do research at Berkeley because it is a research university and the Berkeley National Lab is just above campus.</p>
<p>I think both points of view are valid here; certainly Graduate Schools don’t entirely ignore prestige, but I do believe that achieving excellence regardless of the prestige of a program is entirely relevant. Personally, the reason I ask for these two schools specifically is because I love the environment at UCLA a lot more than at Berkeley but don’t want to get behind because of a possible prestige gap(my initial intention in making this thread was to define the discrepancy, if it exists, of the strength of both schools’ programs). Thanks for all of your responses, by the way, I appreciate it greatly!</p>