Berkeley culture for humanities majors?

parent365
Sun, 02 Apr 2023 21:05:14 +0000

Granted this is coming from a perspective of 30 years ago, but the humanities and social sciences at UC Berkeley were very collaborative. The only thing I would say is that it really helps to be a good writer in the non-STEM disciplines as you are graded on both content as well as writing style (diction and structure, well defined thesis with data to support that thesis, strong conclusions, evidence of organized thought throughout, etc.).

Another plus for Berkeley is that every field at the school is likely very well regarded in terms of its academic reputation, so no matter what you major in, you will get a top-notch exposure to that discipline. I never felt “looked down upon” by peers for studying the humanities and social sciences, although maybe the increasing professionalism of college students today might be different from how it was back in the Mesozoic Era of my youth.

Finally, I think the “Berkeley is so competitive” angle gets way overplayed. You never hear that said about UCLA, and yet the 2 schools admit students of pretty much the same “caliber” (how ever that’s defined). I think the competitiveness of Cal is more “urban legend” than truth. Berkeley is a challenging school and hand-holding at the undergraduate level is fairly non-existent, but students at Cal are not hyper competitive and out to run one another into the ground.