Hi everyone!
I am an international student and recently got accepted to all the UC schools from CC as an English major. I am currently deciding between UCB and UCLA. I am from Korean/Hong Kong and school name/recognition ranking matters a LOT. However, I am currently extremely scared that if i choose to attend Berkeley and pursue a major in English I won’t be able to catch up. Can someone tell me how rigorous/hard it is? I’ve seen major requirements for both UCLA and UCB and realized how different they are. Any suggestions in where i’d fit in more academic wise?
Both Berkeley and UCLA have excellent English departments where you can get a good education.
The two curricula really aren’t that different; the major difference is that Berkeley offers you slightly more freedom in what to choose. Both universities require a multi-quarter long survey of Anglophone literature from early English literature through the present; the one difference is Berkeley’s is 3 quarters + 1 quarter of Shakespeare while UCLA’s is a 4-quarter full survey with no full course on Shakespeare (but undoubtedly lots of focus). Both require a research seminar, honors seminar or senior capstone course (your choice).
The divergence comes in with how the electives are done. Berkeley allows you 6 completely free electives, which means you can choose your area of interest in English yourself with the guidance of a professor. UCLA requires at least one course in 3 of the following 4 areas: “gender, race, ethnicity, disability, and sexuality studies” (courses like “Asian American Literature and the Politics of Exile” and “Women Writing Dangerous Women”); “imperial, transnational, and postcolonial studies” (courses like “Empire, Diaspora, and Multiethnic Storytelling” and “Globalization and Postcolonial Literature”); “genre studies, interdisciplinary studies, and critical theory” (courses like “Children’s Literature and Childhood Literacy” and “Literature of California and American West”) and creative writing.
Really, only you can determine where you’d fit in more academically. Do you already have an area of interest in English, or do you prefer to develop your own completely outside of the confines of requirements, or do you like the structure and guidance that a themed structure like UCLA’s gives you?
@juillet heyhey! Thank you so much for such an informative advice!!! I think i’ll fit in more with Berkeley’s way of instructions as i don’t like the structural-ness from UCLA. wow, this was so much more informative than what i found online. ThankyouSOOO much.
Berkeley, hands down.
You said prestige was important to you, so I’d go with Berkeley.
Berkeley has the #1 English department in the world according to USNews. Harvard and Stanford are tied for second, while Columbia, Princeton, Yale, and Penn are tied for fourth. Although these are grad school rankings, the curriculum that you’ll go through, the faculty that you’ll meet, and the opportunities that you’ll have as an undergrad will, in my opinion, be better than UCLA’s. These rankings are usually a good indicator of the strength of the respective undergraduate programs and the Berkeley name will work wonders in Asia.