<p>i've been accepted to UCLA recently and am awaiting Cal. I've thought about it, and I really don't know if I'd take Berkeley over UCLA. I have compared them on **************.com and I'm not sure if I would like Berkeley that much (it just seems so overtly nerdy, boring, and the atmosphere isn't nearly as alluring as of now than UCLA). What do you think? YES I AM AWARE CAL HAS BETTER ACADEMICS!</p>
<p>They BOTH are academic superstars. Berkeley is anything but nerdy and boring. Have you visited the campus? There are a billion things to do there and many interesting people to do them with. At any rate, don’t even consider going there if you don’t love the idea of living in Berkeley. It has a very distinct personality that isn’t a good fit for everyone. Choose the place you like-you will get a great education and your degree will be well respected.</p>
<p>the thing is berkeley is very far from where i live so i havent been able to visit. what is the environment like? please try to describe its ‘distinct personality’ thanks!</p>
<p>Why stress now? Wait until you have to make that decision.</p>
<p>All I can say is that I loved Berkeley when I visited. Students were lively and everywhere on campus, people were riding bikes, squirrels were really tame and everywhere (I’m from hawaii, so this was new for me), and the students all seemed intelligent and down to earth.
But if you don’t want to go I’ll take your spot. =)
Good luck to all who applied.</p>
<p>Columbia_student is right. Wait until you are in a position to make a decision. And even then (if you get accepted) you don’t choose Cal, Cal chooses you. Your location per CC profile is shown as LA. If you say Berkeley is too far and you will commit four years of life sight unseen, you don’t appear serious.</p>
<p>i never said anywhere that i wasn’t going to go to Cal due to its location, just that I haven’t yet had a chance to do so and that all I have to judge as of now is what I know as a person living in LA.</p>
<p>Does she means the state abbreviation: LA= Louisiana, not Los Angeles? Cross post- I guess she does mean the city!</p>
<p>lol yes city :]</p>
<p>Never seen UCLA, but have seen (visited) UCB on many occasions. UCB is a huge campus and there are many different types of people from what i could see. The reputation of it being “nerdy” is completely unfound. You have your share of every stereotype you can think of-- they’re all just really smart.</p>
<p>The campus itself has its hits and misses. It’s pretty hilly imo, lots of going up and downhill, but nothing like UCSC. It looks pretty nice and gives off that nice relaxed intellectual atmosphere while being in close proximity to SF. SF is a great city and you’ll find many people commuting back and forth. Berkeley itself is a lot more lively than you think.</p>
<p>It is not boring. If I were were you had the choice, I would check out both schools. It’s where you’re spending the next 4 years anyways. There’s the overnight host program, overnight stay program, visit with your family and go on a campus tour (led by students that earn 11 bucks an hour), or come with friends. call up someone you know that goes here.</p>
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<p>Ummm…nooooo. You’re wrong. I certainly hope you don’t plan on bringing that attitude to UCLA! (especially with the CAPS…ouch, slap in the face to Bruins everywhere)!</p>
<p>Berkeley does not have better academics. What does “better” mean anyway? I think your entire decision is being built upon stereotypes. Maybe you should visit both campuses first(assuming you get into Cal).</p>
<p>In general, yes, Cal has better academics than UCLA. It is also more prestigious. But I would imagine the difference is very small in most programs. The only clear lead that Cal has over UCLA is in the following programs: comsci, engineering (across all fields), physical sciences (across all fields) and pre-business.</p>
<p>Definitely visit both. If what you’re getting from rankings is that Berkeley is “boring”, you really need to see for yourself. </p>
<p>To compare Cal to UCLA: Cal is grittier, yet more intimate. Unlike UCLA, you walk off of campus right into the heart of Berkeley, with a gazillion different coffee houses and restaurants. Also unlike UCLA, the football stadium is on campus, so you can walk to games instead of taking a rooter bus. There aren’t major streets running through campus. There’s more parking available at UCLA, and it’s easier (but not easy) to have a car there. Berkeley has BART which puts you a half-hour away from San Francisco. </p>
<p>Both campuses have their hilly parts. At Cal, you go uphill as you go from the west edge of the campus east. At UCLA, there’s that hike to the dorms, or up the greek rows. Another difference: at Cal, the frats and sororities are mixed together. They’re segregated at UCLA, with the frats lining the campus west side, the sororities on the east, next to some of the priciest real estate in Los Angeles.</p>
<p>There’s the weather difference. You’ll have more blue sky days at UCLA, more blustery rainy winter days at Cal. </p>
<p>Berkeley has Zachary’s Pizza, which is the best Chicago-style deep-dish pizza in the known universe, including Chicago. </p>
<p>You’ll be fine academically at either.</p>
<p>"YES I AM AWARE CAL HAS BETTER ACADEMICS! "</p>
<p>You see that’s such a broad brush, at best misleading and at worst ignorant.</p>
<p>Long, long ago I transferred from Stanford to UCLA. Now, what field could possibly be better at UCLA than Stanford? Let me allow you to think for a minute… have you given it any thought? the field is Linguistics. Not only was UCLA better than Stanford, it was also better than Cal, Princeton, Yale, Caltech, Duke, and on through the USNWR top 10… at the time it was #3 behind Harvard and MIT. That along with wanting to be in LA for personal and business reasons led me to quite reasonably decide to transfer.</p>
<p>As to the current differences between Cal and UCLA, take a look at the Ph.D. rankings. Cal is #1 in the world. Right on its heals is Stanford, then Harvard. If you count professional schools (medicine, business, law), then Harvard and Stanford move up and Cal slips to #3… but professional schools are not exactly ACADEMICS, now are they? UCLA is top 15 in most of the 41 Ph.D. fields, and Cal is top 5 in most. So in your broad stroke way of thinking, Cal is superior academically at the Ph.D. level, no comparison really.</p>
<p>But what of undergrad? They’re really close in their overall ranking (#21 vs. #25), the acceptance rates (21% vs. 22% for '08 admittees), and the testing scores and gpa of admitted students. If anyone took the time to complile the stats of students applying for admission to both, I think you’d find that about 70% of students accepted into Cal are also accepted into UCLA, and about 60% of students accepted into UCLA are also accepted into Cal. It’s really so close at the undergraduate level that it’s silly to claim academic superiority, in general, for one over the other.</p>
<p>Given the broad stroke equivalence in undergrad quality, it comes down to area of concentration.</p>
<p>Next question?</p>
<p>
This is a top reason to attend Berkeley…seriously. :D</p>
<p>
USNWR Peer Assessment score is a survey of academics rated from 1 (marginal) to 5 (distinguished).</p>
<p>Berkeley: 4.7
UCLA: 4.2</p>
<p>
Dunnin, freshman student achievement tells you nothing about a university’s faculty or academic program offerings.</p>
<p>Sounds like the OP prefers UCLA and is figuring out some way to justify going there despite Cal’s “better academics.” Classic head vs. heart. Good luck.</p>
<p>UCB –</p>
<p>there are three levels here –</p>
<p>1) Ph.D. rankings, which is a placeholder for faculty quality
2) Undergrad rankings, which have a trickle down from Ph.D. but no 1:1 correlation
3) specific area of study</p>
<p>I think OP needs to be more specific in order to determine that B is “better” than LA. In my case it certainly was not the case in Linguistics, or later in MBA, where UCLA was higher ranked than Cal for 30 years up until about 6-8 years ago.</p>