@Nhatrang, sent you a message regarding remote moving and storage
Hi everyone,
I really want to go to Berkeley, but as an international, my parents are really concerned that US isn’t doing too well with the coronavirus, and would rather have me do my undergraduate study in my home country and then perhaps study as a graduate student in the US when the times are better.
That being said, Berkeley is still one of my top choices and it seems to have so many opportunities, especially for an engineering student! Also, there’s no guarantee I could get into topmost schools in my home country if I do apply.
So while I know it’s really hard to get a gap year approved from Berkeley, if they do approve it, am I allowed to apply to other schools while on the gap year? Does Berkeley explicitly ban such actions? The chances are rather small, but if I do get into top schools from my country, my parents likely will want me to go there.
Any advice/information would be super helpful & greatly appreciated!
@heleena
Berkeley is basically the first to shut down for most things.
We shut down for suspected power outage that didn’t even happen for 2 days, because they waited a bit too long to shut down for air quality last year.
If by June/July, coronavirus hasn’t settled down, they’ll probably make Fall semester online, or delay fall semester. They won’t open the school until it’s safe, and they won’t open for just part of a semester. It’ll be all or nothing.
I have no idea about gap years. I know people accepted in the spring can take classes at community college. I’ve known 3 people who took semesters off.
It’s sort of hard for Berkeley to find out about your dealing with schools not in the US, or to blacklist you internationally. At worse, you might get blacklisted in the US for accepting and then backing out, but that’s unlikely, and since people can back out of a school when they get off the waitlist at another school, probably not a real thing except for early decision people. In summary, no idea.
@Walter924 Do you think Cal EECS for CS is worth the additional $35k per year over UW CS direct admit (We are in state WA)? My D plans to eventually get an MBA after a couple years of working. Particularly if dorms will be impacted and likely online first semester per Napolitano Today interview video.
My son is in EECS and he and my hubby both said it depends but generally no.
@west2east20
Yeah, highly questionable.
And I bet in your neighborhood, people don’t know very much about Berkeley or Berkeley EECS so it won’t give you that much of a boost if you move back home after.
My D’s goal is not necessarily to stay in Seattle, would not want a Microsoft or Amazon, more likely to want a Bay Area company, small or large. But not sure it’s worth us all going hugely in debt for it. She is on the Cal EECS waitlist but accepted to UCLA CS. I think she can get over the UW vs UCLA, but Cal is a harder vs for her, if she gets off the waitlist.
She has 36 ACT, 4.0 IB diploma, lots of ECs, internship doing differential equations and research for a Uni Prof, and recently her band invited to perform at Lincoln Center by Winton Marsalis et al, too bad for Covid. So I assume she has a shot off Cal and Penn wl. But you never know.
@west2east20 Congratulations on your D’s admits, UW and UCLA are both great schools. We are OOS as well (EECS/Haas) but I am going to side with sdhotmama and Walter924, Berkeley has a great EECS program but 35K is alot. That said would this require loans? If so, I say a hard no.
It would be substantially loans, maybe we would sell our house and pull out equity, take out 401k, this is our third child, and I lost my job. So…
@west2east20 Don’t do it. My S is EECS/Haas and even two degrees from Berkeley isn’t worth that amount of debt. I say stay in-state and take it from there, you owe this to yourself and your family. You have done your bit, your D is going to be wildly successful regardless of where she does he undergrad. FWIW, my S chose Berkeley over UPenn, after the admitted student weekend he felt Cal had a better program not to mention more expensive.
I read your recent comments about GPA and med school acceptance rates in the Cal 2024 freshman thread. Congrats on very impressive GPA and MCAT scores.
Have a few follow-up questions specific to premed path.
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You mentioned that you will be graduating in 3 years and a summer. We heard it takes little over 4 years to graduate. How long does it take for bio majors like MCB?
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Is 3.9 doable in other bio MCB majors?
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I keep reading on the forums that MCB and other bio/chem majors have heavy grade curving in the lower level classes and students are more competitive. Due to the competition, there is no collaborative env and do not study in groups. You are not in this major but wanted to know your comments about this competitive env.
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How big are the class sizes for bio/chem lower division classes?
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As UCB does not have a med school, where do one go for volunteer experience?
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What opportunities are available for lab research to publish a paper etc.? Heard some research at UCSF. Is this option available for every one? If not, what other options available?
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Is there a separate premed advisor/s? Are they helpful and easy to find appointments with them?
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What kind of support is provided for MCAT preparation?
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You mentioned you have a good GPA and applying to med school without any gap years. Per the med school applicant data published on UCB site (should commend UCB for publishing these details for each year), it seems to show that around 20 are able to skip gap years. Majority is taking 1,2, or even 3 gap years and some even 4 years. One gap year is becoming a norm any where but wondering why so many UCB graduates are taking 2 or 3 or 4 gap years?
a) Are they going for PG or something to improve the GPAs or
b) do they need that time to beef up the resume with more ECs as they do not find many opportunities for ECs while at Berkeley or they do not find time for ECs while in Berkeley as are busy keeping up with the GPA? Just trying to understand what we are getting into. -
Is Cal or other UC like UCSD better for premed keeping all those points asked above in mind?
@west2east20 is your S in the MET program - Dual Degree program between college of engineering and HAAS? How has been his experience so far? My D is admitted to Berkeley and interested in pursuing ‘Biology+Business’ which like MET program is a dual-degree program between College of Letter and Science and HAAS. and I have been trying to get some feedback on these dual degree programs? Do they anyway dilute the core science degree? Is there too much pressure on the kid to complete two degrees?
@happyParent2024 i think you are needing to direct your question to @autumnspast
My D is on the Berkeley waitlist for EECS. Good luck!
@happyParent2024 Yes he is MET. His experience has been great, it’s alot of work but there have been a lot of cool experiences as well. They don’t dilute the core science degree but because you also have your Haas classes your D won’t be able to take a lot of electives. That is something my S wishes he could. The pressure isn’t going to be the program, it will more than likely be your D. The kids that do these programs are all very driven and put the pressure on themselves. In his experience, the programs themselves are very collaborative and the students are supportive. But again its a lot of work.
That’s great to know. MET students are directly admitted to this program from Freshman. However, in the ‘Biology+Business’ program, students are not directly admitted but they need to apply to this program in the first semester of the Sophomore. and ‘Biology+Business’ first batch of Junior will be this Fall 2020, so the program is still in very primitive stages. Unlike MET which got $10 Million seed funding, we did not across funding for the ‘Biology+Business’ program. So my D is wondering whether in the two years program from now would have got the required resources and connections with Biotech industry. She is considering Molecular Biology at UCLA as the other option. Any thoughts?
@happyParent2024 I’ll admit that I don’t know a lot about the B+B program or even MCB. @Walter924 might be able to weigh in as well. It is true that MET is externally funded which does somewhat insulate the program from Berkeley’s budgetary woes. That said, MCB and Haas, are two very established schools that have deep roots in their respective industries. The biotech industry is very aware of the quality of student coming out of Berkeley and would snap up any B+B graduate given the chance. The junior admit route is a bit more tricky, from a straight Haas perspective the 2019 admit rate was roughly 33%. I’m not sure how it plays out for the incoming bio students (I suspect that a certain number of seats have been ADDED and reserved for the B+B program). I would have your D look at the UCLA and Berkeley programs assuming she does not get into the dual degree program. If she thinks she will be happy at MCB then the B+B is a bonus option, keep in mind once she is at Cal she may decide that the B+B route is not where she wants to go. MCB by itself is not for the faint of heart… Congratulations and good luck.
Thank you. I agree with you.
@Walter924 could you share your views on this program? And the choice between Cal Vs UCLA?
@happyParent2024
I’m MCB and Econ. I got denied from Haas because I didn’t have a good reason why I wanted to go to Haas. I’m the year before the Biology and Business Program was started. There’s an advisor specifically for the Bio/Business thing in the MCB department named Sarah Maslov I think. I met with her once. Seems nice.
Biology and Business is where you’re biology, you apply to business, might get in, and then they have like 2 seminar classes with a lot of biotech speakers that come in and talk that you can network with, that I think anyone can take.
I didn’t apply to UCLA. Too smoggy.
MCB at Berkeley:
Great advisors with a lot of drop in hours. Emailed one today to have Evolutionary Medicine count as my elective.
The Biology 1A/1B classes are each taught by 3 different professors each semester, so you learn from people who are doing research in the particular area and what they’re researching the Lab GSIs are all career Bio lab people, so they’ll be like “don’t listen to the lab manual, this way’s better” or “the mice are cleaner than your food, it’s more fun if you do the dissection without gloves and feel the texture”. Great class
Chem has a great teacher called Pete Marsden. He’s hilarious. Tries really hard the whole semester to not swear and fails. He writes really good lecture notes on the chalkboard in different colors. For both Ochems, they have a system where they post homework and the answers, and it’s never due, but if you do it and understand it, the Tuesday quizzes aren’t bad. You just have to keep up on the work. Ochem is secretly just a lot of drawing arrows and pictures. I don’t know why everyone thinks it’s so scary. My UCLA friend though thought her OChem class was hard.
Biochem (3 teachers) is straight memorization. Anywhere you go. Memorize amino acids, memorize photosynthesis and cell respiration. Anything they said you don’t have to memorize in intro Bio, you now have to memorize.
These are specific to my track. There’s like 7 tracks or something. Biochem seems both the most boring, but also the most likely to actually get you a job.
Physiology (3 teachers) nerves, digestion, cardiovascular, respiratory, learning about body systems
Genetics/Genomics/Cell Bio (3 teachers): Mostly a review from Bio 1A, with stuff on the Human Genome study and tracking diseases to areas of the chromosome, and a cool part at the end where they each had a lecture on cancer and infectious disease. I learned that typanosome parasites are the reason why African Americans get 3 times more kidney disease.
Physiology and Cell Biology lab (3 teachers): Every track has an 8 hour a week lab. 1 hours of lecture, 7 hours of lab. Reminded me of high school where I really got to know the people in my class. The teacher and GSI for that class are writing me a letter of rec. You get to know the professor through a journal club where you present on a journal but you are forced to go talk with the professor about the article for like 2.5 hours. It covered basically every biotech thing in the first unit in one continuous experiment of isolating NFAT and seeing if it bound to calcineurin, then there was a microscopy unit where we stained things pretty colors, and then a somatosensation unit where there were cockroaches and leeches. I learned a lot of lab techniques.
And then there’s 2 electives. There’s also Chem and Physics. Bio people don’t like physics. Otherwise we would be engineers.
I won’t go too far into Econ, other than they have a ton of interesting electives if you avoid things with math
https://www.econ.berkeley.edu/undergrad/current/major-requirements
Hawkins teaches anything Finance. He used to work in several places on Wall Street and for a few banks so he has good stories and the material (how to make the most of your money) is useful and has great practical applications.
Business:
Econ 1 is taught by Moretti, the foremost labor economist. Has been on Planet Money. Wrote a book called the Great Divergence about how college graduates are flooding to places with other college graduates, so poor cities are getting poorer, and rich cities have higher wages for both college graduates AND high school graduates. We read a few chapters of the book in his class (he gave us the pdf).
Econ 2 is taught by the Romers, a couple who were advisors to Obama and are on the committee that decide if we’re in a recession. They’re a big deal.
UGBA 10 3 professors: There’s a stimulation were your team competes against other people in your discussion section to make the most money. Tips: Auto is a better market and get a lot of debt because they never make you pay it off. There was a funny Omar guy who was like the Environmental Secretary or something in Mexico, this motivational speaker guy who was really into people pairs and wanted a class called the Power of 2, and someone else. The readings were interesting. Teachers were sort of weird. I like the Econ teachers better. They might rotate the teachers.
There you go. Any other questions? I can talk about Econ for 5 paragraphs.
I know someone who actually majors in Biology and Business, he spent the semester with the 8 hour lab flying around the country interviewing at firms. H’s thinking about applying to medical school.
I went to the Cal Day Berkeley Bio and Business Program thing for you.
Bio Business has a 38% acceptance rate in the one year they’ve been around.
You don’t have to apply to Haas. Apply directly to BioBusiness program.
25 students a year. The first group was smaller.
These 3 people who just got into the program are very successful.
They’re all part of startups. Doing research. They’ve all already had an internship or 3. One was at Merrill Lynch. Scary successful people.
Apparently there’s a sports medicine internship at Berkeley where you do ultrasounds and stuff. Did not know that. Would have been useful to know. Now you guys do.
I got denied from Healthcare Consulting Group 3 times.
biologybusiness.berkeley.edu
Thanks a bunch for a detailed and candid feedback on all the courses in MCB/Business. and Hats off to you for attending this Cal Day call for Biology+Business program. Very helpful. Truly appreciate it.