<p>^ Sounds like you already had a bias when you went to visit.</p>
<p>Nah, I only came to that conclusion about complacency after my visit.</p>
<p>No one has got accepted into HYPM so far?</p>
<p>I already saw Stanford and a couple of Caltech responses.</p>
<p>^I heard someone from another thread say she got into Yale and chose Berkeley over it</p>
<p>She got into Yale and chose Brown instead ^</p>
<p>^Oh really nvm then sorry I guess I got my B named colleges mixed up lol</p>
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<p>No, I got accepted to P, but it wasn’t my 2nd choice.</p>
<p>So, Slorg, why did you take Berkeley over Stanford with full ride? I’d like to hear your reason.</p>
<p>Many reasons but the top two are:</p>
<p>1) Also got a full ride to Berkeley</p>
<p>2) Stanford wasn’t nice (to me)</p>
<p>I’d probably have taken Stanford over Cal if it came down to a full ride for either, but…yeah. Iono, I just don’t like Stanford and was quite happy that I didn’t get in, since my dad would have been pressuring me to go.</p>
<p>Doesn’t help that it’s a smallish school and a lot of people from my HS wind up there. I did not like my high school, and the list of Stanford students from my graduating class is pretty much the same as the list of people who went above and beyond towards making me dislike my HS, so I have a strong suspicion I would be rather unhappy if I’d wound up there.</p>
<p>@jonnosferatu, out of curiosity, what exactly did you not like about your high school? like were those people overly obnoxious?
i don’t know, i didn’t really have such a great high school experience myself. I guess I just hated the fact that people grouped up a lot (mostly based on race), although, that probably happens in many high schools, and then a lot of people just did things to put on their resume, although you could totally tell they weren’t interested. which really really really annoyed me if i was in those same activities…</p>
<p>^ Just as many people (if not more) group up here/do stuff to put on their resume for med schools, grad, etc etc. Don’t expect too huge of a difference between HS and college in regards to things like that.
I’m curious to know about your hs too jonnos.</p>
<p>I often wonder how many people think they shouldn’t have come to Cal because it’s too hard. I did pretty well my first semester in the general lower div engineering classes, [math 1b, math 53, e10, physics 7a] but after taking cs61a this summer, I realize how taxing some classes are and how smart classmates can be. All summer, I was thinking to myself, I should have picked cal poly. haha.</p>
<p>It’s hard for me to pin down what I didn’t like besides just not meshing with most of the people (I can count the people I actually liked being around on one hand, and that’s out of all 7 total graduating classes I knew while I was there).</p>
<p>So…I mean, yeah, I think it just comes down to not being able to assimilate into the culture. I don’t know of anyone who entered the school during HS who really DID assimilate, actually. On a related note, since it was a Prep school, the majority of the students were wealthy, materialistic, and very big on “playing the game.” Failure wasn’t something the school really let happen to you…etc… It just wasn’t an atmosphere I liked being in, although it did get better after the start of Junior year because I was finally able to take most of my classes with people who were usually quite fun to be around.</p>
<p>Honestly, the main reason I don’t look back fondly on the 11th and 12th grades is that my Freshman year here was so gobsmackingly amazing. I was a lot happier for those two years than I was for 9th and 10th, but the contrast between that and the twelve months has been…well, mind-blowing.</p>
<p>No matter how hard Berkeley courses are, I want to stay here as long as possible. It’s just weird; you know you’re doing not as well as you want in your classes, but somehow you still love the school lol…</p>
<p>^“This.”</p>
<p>If I could stay for five years, I would.</p>
<p>^ me too :)</p>
<p>Yeah, interestingly enough, CS61A has been my favorite class so far; it’s probably because unlike all the previous technicals I took, it wasn’t a “repeat” or harder version of something I’ve taken before.</p>
<p>wow, i am so glad to hear this! It just makes me feel so much better about choosing cal, that I made the right decision. thanks guys!</p>
<p>Until I get better professors, I want to get out of here as fast as I can. (Well probably not too fast…just because of the economy and all …=/)</p>