<p>Hmm, well I'll go into two aspects. First, the practical standpoint. Now, mind you, I'm going to speak from an EECS major perspective.</p>
<p>Berkeley offers a lot of opportunities. The class selection is very broad, and in the EECS major you can basically take any set of upper division courses you want. That means, for example, I'll be taking a Digital IC design course next semester along with a Operating Systems programming course--very different, very diverse, both interesting. There are some spectacular professors--though you do have to find them.</p>
<p>Further, there are many employment opportunities here. Many Silicon Valley and general Bay Area companies recruit from Berkeley. If you're looking to get a solid education and move into the industry in any engineering field, there will be a lot of opportunities here. Of course, you'll have to work hard and do well, but if you do, it opens a lot of doors.</p>
<p>From a social standpoint, Berkeley is big. That can be good if you're looking for diversity, but bad if you're looking for a bunch of similar people (e.g. you like to be surrounded by clones of yourself--culturally speaking). This means there are lots of opportunities to do interesting things that you might not have thought of. For example, I picked up mock trial in college despite having no experience, and found it entertaining, so I stuck with it. You have to be willing to try new things, though, otherwise you may not find what you really enjoy.</p>
<p>One of my biggest pieces of advice for new students is to try everything. Join every club that seems even remotely interesting, because you can always drop it later if it bores you. If you never try it, though, you'll never know it you'd have enjoyed it. Naturally, you'll have only so much time for such activities and you will have to pick only a few to stick with full time, but giving each one an opportunity will mean you'll enjoy college a lot more.</p>
<p>Now, a big advantage of Berkeley for Californians is cost, because it is significantly less than most privates. For out of state students, this isn't the case, and I don't believe Berkeley holds any significant advantage over many privates in that case. A negative of Berkeley is that the city in general, and parts of campus, are poorly maintained. It's not a big deal once you get used to it, but if you're like me from south Orange County (imagine rich, conservative, white suburbia), it's definitely different. However, Berkeley is also really a college town, meaning there are a lot of interesting, small shops within walking distance of campus.</p>
<p>As a comparison, since you've been to UCI, there is one very commercial food / shopping area across the street from UCI. Other than that, you'd have to drive to get anywhere useful. Irvine is just too suburban to be what I'd consider a "college town". Berkeley, on the other hand, is very dense and has a quality public transportation system (AC Transit and BART can get you anywhere it seems).</p>
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Ask any employer or grad school what they think of Berkeley students and you'll see that Berkeley students get little or no benefit aside from a little name recognition, especially outside of engineering, technical, and business disciplines.
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<p>I don't want to stray too far off topic here, but Berkeley is always on the list of schools that major technical firms recruit from. Just being from a reputable college will get you almost nowhere, though. You have to show much more than that. I agree that Berkeley students get no benefit from being Berkeley students, but at the same time Stanford, Harvard, etc. students will not be assumed better than Berkeley students (or MIT, Princeton, etc.) in the hiring process (assuming an engineering field--I have no experience otherwise). What I've seen from employers is that you have to know your stuff--if all your resume has is a 4.0 from HYPSM or Berkeley, you won't get even a glance if someone else has actual experience or other proof of technical skills.</p>