unlimitedx

"Blondie's Pizza sucks after you've tried Cheese Board or Zachary's. So that's good news, more things to look forward to!"

100% true. once you try cheeseboard everything else suddenly tastes subpar.

calrule

Indian, the hyphy movemnet is dead.

RIP

LeftistHominid

^vc08, are you in Bowles too?

kenf1234

Me too, generally. But there's a great deal of variability at both places. You'll have good days, where the pizza is outstanding, and bad days, where the pizza is very disappointing. That's what's nice about Zachary's, they are very consistent.

RaNe

Alright, here's my experience with OHP & Cal Day:

I arrived at the Oakland airport on Friday afternoon, and rode to Berkeley via BART and AirBART.
There was an escalator that took you from the subway station to downtown Berkeley.
That was a great moment for me.
When I got off the escalator, it felt like I was in another world.
A guy was playing his accordion right by the escalator, and that was interesting.

So we took a long walk up to Unit 3 so we could place our luggage down and get some food for dinner.
Afterwards, I ate at Crossroads.
The food was very delicious, with a nice variety.
As I was walking back to Unit 3, I saw a guy on his roof eating a meal, and that made me laugh.

I met my host, and he showed me around his floor and dorm room.
He was very cool, and knew a lot about Cal so I learned much from him.

Later, OHP guests met in this one lecture room, and the Dean of students, James Poullard, came and spoke to us.
He was very humorous, but at the same time he came up with many great points, such as "If you're coming to Cal just because it's the #1 public university, then you're coming here for the wrong reasons."
When Mr. Poullard called on and asked certain people in the audience at random why they applied to UC Berkeley, some just said "Because I just checked the box."
He then talked about how the opportunities at Cal are limitless, and that not taking advantage of the resources there will take away the point of attending.
Great guy.

The hike to the Big C was phenomenal.
I was excited the whole time during the OHP, and I never got tired during the hike.
It was at nighttime, and when I got to the top with the group, the view was utterly astounding.
You could see San Francisco Bay with the Golden Gate Bridge in the distance, Berkeley and the Campanile in plain view, and all those dazzling lights.
Unforgettable.

I returned back to the residence hall and met people on the same floor as my host.
They were in the lounge room, playing a board game and just relaxing.
It was very, very cool to see that, because they were very social and outgoing.

The next day was Cal Day, and I spent a lot of time walking around with my friends.
The campus was loaded with people, but it wasn't too bad.
We went to this one store that had 3 stories, like a block down from campus.
There was a sale going on on a lot of the clothes, and I bought a bunch of Cal T-shirts.
I like the surrounding area because there's all these nifty shops and restaurants that have quality stuff.
We had to leave for the airport at 2 PM, so we didn't get much time to explore everything at Cal Day.


I absolutely loved the trip and have decided to attend Cal this fall.

.:Indian:.

Yeah, I thought so as well - I've heard different from a few people (i.e. brian!)
It's still a retarded movement...as is the abomination that is "hella"

Sounds like you were there at the same time I was, RaNe - did I meet you?

RaNe

Hmm, I dunno.

I remember meeting two girls at the lecture hall sitting in the back, and I also met one guy interested in business but thinking about USC too, and there was also this one guy who liked physics. There's more, but what do you look like and did you speak out during Mr. Poullard's lecture?

.:Indian:.

Hmmm, I had my Blue Cal Hat on most of the time - didn't get called on during JP's lecture....

I'm a guy, btw

moey

hey! does anyone know the difference between the OHP and the OSP ?

.:Indian:.

OSP is for the Alumni Scholarship applicants (I got invited to that too, but it cost more ($90 vs $55 for OHP) and I'd already RSVP'd for OHP by the time I got the OSP email...)

They're really similar, IMO.

hydralisks

Indian, I'm also a prospective bioengineering major but was not able to attend the overnight program. Would you mind sharing some more details about what you heard (about Cal's bioE, specifically)?

.:Indian:.

Oh, yeah sure Hydralisks

Allright, so Cal Day - the 12th. I skipped the Chancellor's thing to get to Stanley Hall leisurely by ~8:45ish.

1) Bioengineering for Pre-medical students.
So Dr. Steve Conolly, the Vice-Chair for Student Affairs or some such title, introduced the topic, told us all to stand up and pat ourselves on the back for being admitted into the hardest major in the UC system (like 100 people/class). Apparently, BioE surpasses EECS and Engineering-undecided this year with the smallest admission percentage. Cool.

Then, he introduced Dr. Sanjay Kumar - M.D., Ph.D (he went to Hopkins for Med. school, then Harvard for his Ph.D) who talked about Pre-med for about 15 minutes. Basically stuff like how the specific concentration (there are 6-7) of Bioengineering Premed specifically includes the prereq. classes for Med schools.

Then, he introduced a graduating Senior, who was a Bioengineering student with his concentration in Premed. The kid was basically a mascot for the program; he talked about research he did/the community among the students/etc. He's deciding between Yale Med. and Hopkins Med. (So it seems like pretty good chances for Pre-med)

Then that presentation ended.

9:40 - 11ish
Steve Conolly came back up to talk about the BioE program as a whole, basically that they had restructured it. He went over a little bit about the different concentrations, then talked about the course curricula for all the different concentrations. All seem really similar except for slight variations in Upper div. courses, where the concentration finally takes effect. He also talked about research opportunities in the area - most prominent, of course, is UCSF. He also went over a few faculty members - one guys in particular, Dan Fletcher: oh my effing god. Undergrad B.S. in Princeton, First Ph.D in Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship, Second Ph.D in Stanford, 2 Post-Docs in Stanford + Berkeley. Now he teaches at Berkeley. I shook his hand twice

The Student Panel was next, composed of 4 students - 3 Seniors, and 1 Sophomore. The first talked a lot about research, cause she was never really into it, and then she came to Cal and fell in love. She's gonna pursue her Ph.D somewhere next year. The second talked a bit about Study Abroad, and how she went to Scotland in her Junior year - I didn't really get a chance to talk to her..
The third talked about Co-op's, which sounded kinda interesting. It's basically a 6-month internship at a company (Industry), but after the 3 months that the summer interns stay, he stayed on for 3 more months (with a competitive salary, apparently). Basically, it's like full-time work experience as a student (you don't go to class for that time - he basically balanced it out with his huge cache of AP's).
The Sophomore talked about clubs and organizations - BioE Honors Society and BMES, essentially. He was a pretty cool guy - I talked to him for awhile after their presentations.

After that, the students offered their respective advice - Conolly asked them about their "scariest" thing at Berkeley: basically for some comedic relief. One girl talked about the homeless folks

After that, from 11ish - 11:30, some students put out posters of their research - pretty interesting stuff. They all obviously loved Berkeley!

I went to lunch then, and came back by 12:40 - so I missed the majority of Conolly's lecture on Noninvasive imaging (basically talking about his research with low-cost MRI's - something on the order of $65,000 instead of $1.5 million.

From 1 PM - 1:40, i went to Terry Johnson's lab technique demo-lecture. it was some pretty cool stuff, but he kinda ran out of things to do after the first 30 minutes

Then, from like 1:45 - 2ish, I visited Dr. Fletcher's "hands-on look at cell movements" - just a bunch of microscopes places about. Here's where I shook his hand, and impressed his grad student with my knowledge of Actin/Myosin fibers in muscles (they were emulating Actin's force-pushing on glass beads)

All in all, a pretty good overview of BioE at Cal - have you decided on Berkeley?

hydralisks

Ah, sounds great! Thanks for sharing the info. I just sent in my SIR last night so I guess I'll be seeing you around?

.:Indian:.

Yeah, definitely
Where you thinking of rooming? I'm pretty set on Unit 1/2

hydralisks

I think I'll be headed to either Unit 1 or Foothill.