<p>My daughter is still deciding between Berkeley and U Chicago. </p>
<p>We're visiting Berkeley next week - we'll be in the Bay Area from Wed. p.m. to Sunday. We are going to Cal Day.</p>
<p>We also plan to be on campus on Thursday. A few questions: Is there any way my daughter will be able to sit in on a class on Thursday, who do we talk to in order to arrange this? Any recommendations for other things to do/visit on campus on Thursday before the crush of people on Cal Day?</p>
<p>i dont believe that you need arrange anything in order to sit in a class. just show up and i doubt anybody will notice. you can look up classes here:
<a href="http://schedule.berkeley.edu/srchsprg.html%5B/url%5D">http://schedule.berkeley.edu/srchsprg.html</a></p>
<p>thing to do:</p>
<p>campus tour (i think starting at university hall)
visit VLSB and see T-rex fossil and museum of paleontology,
asian and pacific art museum
UC botanical garden
lawrence hall of science (for botanical garden, and lawrence hall of science, you need to take a bus up.)
homeless people in people's park
telegraph ave.
if your daughter is interested in bioscience/chemistry, i can give a tour of the brand new building stanley hall.</p>
<p>It depends on what kind of class you want to see. If you'd like to check out a big lecture you probably wouldn't have a problem, but if two strangers walked into one of my seminars (which have about 10 people in them) I think it would be kind of weird and distracting.</p>
<p>Thanks - blondeonblonde and eastcoast bound - my daughter would attend by herself. I've sat through enough school in my life. And it was good to hear that you have seminars with 10 people - my biggest worry about Cal is the class size. Any thoughts on it?</p>
<p>Like any research university, there will certainly be some large classes for the first year or two at Cal (two large lecures a week and one small discussion section), but the majority of upper division classes are fairly small. Right now I'm taking two seminars and two lecture courses. The seminars have about 10 people in them and lectures have around 50.</p>
<p>This year, my freshman year, I haven't had a lecture smaller than 100 people but next semester I have two lectures that are less than thirty students. It all depends. If you're going to be here Thursday go to MCB61 at Wheeler auditorium at 9:30! It's one of those classes where each lecture can be interesting regardless of how much background material you've had.</p>
<p>Thanks for all of your help. My daughter's found a number of classes - sent emails to the professors - and they're happy to have her sit in. She's going to try some of the large classes and some of the small ones too.</p>
<p>If you are going to be around on Thur and Fri, try to be around Sproul at lunch time. There is usually alot going on there at that time. She will be able to get a real "feel" for the campus by hanging out around Sproul at that time. You can get something to eat at the Golden Bear Cafe (across from Sproul) and watch it all happen. Have fun and I hope she enjoys it!</p>
<p>Sign up for a dorm tour at Housing Office. You might want to go before CalDay. We went last week and our tour was so huge that we couldn't hear the tour guide. We saw Unit 2 only: common areas, double room, bathroom.</p>
<p>If you are interested in other dorms, you might be able to see them on CalDay, but I'd call and see what you have to do to get a tour.</p>
<p>Suggestion number 2: walk to BART from campus and ride it into the City, just to get the feel of the place. You can get off at Embarcadero and walk around, or continue to Powell and see the cable cars and the new mall.</p>
<p>ow do you take bart from SF? Is BART walking distance to campus?</p>
<p>Also, for BigGreen, I know you can just go to a class you think is interesting and sit in, especially the big lecture ones. I did that last Friday at Santa Cruz and it was amazing. No one bothered me and the class was really interesting. I have focusing problems and thought a class with 200 people in it was going to be seriously painful since i'm used to classes with 10 people in them, and the teacher was so interesting I had no problem understanding the whole lecture or staying awake. If the professors at Santa Cruz are as outstanding as I saw, I think the ones at Berkeley must be even more amazing. Also, there's a website where you can watch the webcam (taped) of some of the courses. They are really cool.</p>
<p>Yeah, BART is just a couple blocks from the west entrance of campus, and a 10-15 minute walk from the center of campus. If you want to take BART from SF to Berkeley, take the Richmond line (red). It'll be on the side of the tracks that says "East Bay"</p>
<p>Get off on 24th/Mission street and get some mexican food.</p>
<p>You know, I wouldn't mind showing your daughter around a bit if needed (yeah, that sounds really creepy, but I mean that in the most helpful way possible); I'm currently dorming in Unit 1, so I can show her around my building and the campus a bit. But, yeah, tours are a good bet, although not as helpful as you would think. It would be a good idea to just approach students and ask them what it's like! PM me if you want my number =).</p>