<p>Hi All,</p>
<p>My daughter get offers from both schools, they are quite different, one is small liberal art school, one is a big public schoo.</p>
<p>My daughter is interested in public health, medical related majors.</p>
<p>I never went to US colleges, has no knowledge about them. I am very keen to hear what's your oppinion on both schools.</p>
<p>Both schools are at the top of their respective category (Berkeley #1 public, Wellesley #1 all-girls).</p>
<p>For med, I would go with fit and feel. Your D will have an excellent academic experience at either institution assuming she takes advantage of her resources.</p>
<p>If she wants to go to med school, Wellesley is probably better since it is a much more protected environment where it is easier to get the high grades every med school wants. </p>
<p>For real-life experience, and for those who are very mature and independent, Berkeley is better. Berkeley is more well known, and will offer just as good a program, but it is academically more rigorous.</p>
<p>Thanks for the advice.</p>
<p>It sounds like the suggestion is that Wellesley is easy to get better grade and easy to graduate?</p>
<p>What if she doesn’t want to go for med, but like to be a nurse practitioner or just a health care worker? You know her mind can be changed anytime.</p>
<p>She is a shy girl, not outgoing. I am wondering Wellesley will not have any environment for her to be social?</p>
<p>BuBBLES, what makes you think Berkeley is more academically rigorous?</p>
<p>Compare graduation requirements for the two schools:
[Degree</a> Requirements | Wellesley College](<a href=“http://www.wellesley.edu/academics/theacademicprogram/requirements]Degree”>Degree Requirements | Wellesley College)
[General</a> Catalog - Undergraduate Education - Undergraduate Degree Requirements](<a href=“http://catalog.berkeley.edu/undergrad/requirements.html]General”>http://catalog.berkeley.edu/undergrad/requirements.html)</p>
<p>Berkeley: “The University sets two general requirements for the baccalaureate degree: Entry-Level Writing (formerly Subject A) and American History and Institutions.”
Individual schools and majors may impose additional requirements.</p>
<p>Wellesley has college-wide distribution requirements for: Language and Literature and Visual Arts, Music, Theater, Film and Video; Social and Behavioral Analysis; Epistemology and Cognition OR Religion, Ethics, and Moral Philosophy OR and Historical Studies; Natural and Physical Science; Mathematical Modeling and Problem Solving.
Wellesley also has a writing requirement, a quantitative reasoning requirement … and a foreign language proficiency requirement.
Individual majors may impose additional requirements.</p>
<p>Apparently, neither school has a thesis requirement for all undergraduates.</p>
<p>According to gradeinflation.com, in 2006 (the last year with data for both schools) the average GPA at UCB was 3.27; the average GPA at Wellesley was 3.32. </p>
<p>86% of Wellesley students graduate in 4 years. 71% of Berkeley students graduate in 4 years. (Source: USNWR)</p>
<p>Wellesley average class sizes: 69.3% < 20; 30.1% 20-49; 0.6% 50 or more students.
Berkeley average class sizes: 64.2% < 20; 21.6% 20-49; 14.2% 50 or more students. (Source: USNWR)</p>
<p>Wellesley is not easier than Cal. That’s a preposterous statement, in fact, the opposite is likelier. Wellesley is a tough as nails and has no “easy” survey courses on film history, music appreciation, astronomy for English majors. Tough going in; tough throughout. However, the women who finish will have superior chances of admittance to all graduate schools, including medicine.
Cal is phenomenal; it is bigger than huge and students can feel alienated by its size. Wellesley obviously is much more intimate and somewhat remote. Boston is only ~10 miles away, but for some it might as well be 1,000 miles.</p>
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<p>Bubbles, do you know anything about Wellesley specifically as an institution, or are you simply repeating cliches about the difference between large state Us and liberal arts colleges?</p>
<p>Wellesley, along with Princeton, has an active grade deflation policy. It is very hard to get uniformly high grades there.</p>
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<p>For real-life experience, and for those who are very mature and independent, Berkeley is better. Berkeley is more well known, and will offer just as good a program, but it is academically more rigorous. <<<<</p>
<p>What a stack of non-sense. Thankfully, you stopped short of calling Wellesley a finishing school.</p>
<p>It is indeed “easier to get to med school” at Wellesley because it is less likely for students to lose focus there. This is evidenced by the higher graduation rate. </p>
<p>As for which cirriculum is more rigorous, Berkeley is somewhat harder according to anecdotal evidence.</p>
<p>Also, dear resident of Xiggilandia, Berkeley is a much larger and open microcosm where everyone has to do his own thing and find his own group of friends to succeed. That is the essence of real life, as opposed to the life in Xiggilandia.</p>
<p>I’m biased because I went to a small liberal arts college for women (not an “all-girls school,” as there are no girls), but Wellesley is a fantastic school where your daughter can get the experiences she needs to go to medical school. But it really depends on her personality - some people thrive more at large public institutions and some people love small, intimate environments. The women’s college aspect gives it a spin, too, although Wellesley being nearby Boston means that she can go to other colleges and have social interaction with young men if she wants it.</p>
<p>Wellesley has plenty of opportunities to be social, and in fact sometimes a smaller school is better for shy kids. Again, it really depends on her personality, but the small close-knit environment may help her make some friends.</p>
<p>Another thing to note is that Berkeley has a top-ranked school of public health; your daughter may be able to take classes there. Harvard also has one and is relatively close to Wellesley, but that will require more travel.</p>
<p>If she thinks she may want to be a nurse practitioner, Berkeley might be a better choice because they have a nursing major. If she went to Wellesley, she’d have to major in something else and then attend either a 1-year accelerated BSN + an MSN program or a 3-year accelerated MSN program; if she majored in nursing at Berkeley, she’d have her RN and then could go straight to an MSN program (or work for a few years and go, or work full-time and attend part-time).</p>
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<p>Rigor is in the eye of the beholder. Rigor depends on the level of preparation and qualifications. And yes, for many Californians the cirriculum is hard at Cal, just as the word is a challenge to spell correctly.</p>
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<p>A much larger … microcosm. Look up what microcosm means.</p>
<p>Hi Juillet, </p>
<p>Could you please explain some of the terms? everything is new to me for college in US.
What are BSN? MSN? and RN?</p>
<p>And I agree with you personality matter when deciding which shool fit.</p>
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<p>Whose anecdotes? Yours? Again, I ask you whether you know anything about Wellesley.</p>
<p>Berkeley is an excellent school. Of course, no university really represents “real life.” And every college requires people to “do [their] own thing and find [their] own group of friends to succeed.”</p>
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<p>Bachelor of Science in Nursing; Master of Science in Nursing; Registered Nurse.</p>
<p>Wellesley does not offer an undergraduate nursing degree.</p>
<p>Microcosm is a little world. There are small little worlds and big little worlds, dear resident of Xiggilandia.</p>
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<p>Wellesley, as a pure liberal arts college, does not have pre-professional job-training majors. Students who take the pre-med courses and change their minds about medical school can apply to nursing graduate programs after college. It’s my understanding that colleges that do offer undergraduate nursing degrees require early commitment, because the coursework is quite extensive. Many universities require nursing applicants to apply directly to their School of Nursing, not their College of Arts and Sciences, right out of high school. So unless your D is looking to start a nursing degree right away, graduate school is most likely in her future no matter where she attends undergrad.</p>
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<p>The answer is clearly “not a damn thing.”</p>
<p>Bubblehead, stop covering yourself in ridicule. Uneducated opinions on schools and a poor command of the written word are not helping your cause.</p>
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<p>yes, you are right. She is not in the Nursing school. She is in letter and science.</p>
<p>Berkeley has a nursing school?! I don’t know about that but our medical campus across the Bay does.
:)</p>
<p>[UCSF</a> School of Nursing | University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) School of Nursing](<a href=“http://nursing.ucsf.edu%5DUCSF”>http://nursing.ucsf.edu)</p>