Cal Spring Admission

emilsinclair9
Wed, 21 Sep 2011 02:48:10 +0000

@ Salmos, I ended up majoring in psychology. I’m still here and a senior. However, I have taken a Phil course at Berkeley. I took Ancient Philosophy (25A), and to be honest, I was not greatly impressed. Essentially, borderline grades were decided by attendance, and each week we would have an essay due. To be fair, I did take this class over summer, but basically I thought it was fairly standard.

It was a 5-week course, and each week we would have an essay due, except the first week. Each essay was worth 25% of your grade, so there were 4 essays.

Honestly, the criteria for grading came off as very subjective. The Prof./GSI would write about a paragraph of input per essay and attach a grade, but their input did not strike me as being necessarily correct and often times seemed more like their personal interpretation. Granted, I’m sure I was off at times, but for the most part, I really disagreed with their points. Overall, I don’t have much experience in philosophy at Berkeley, but I can tell you that the average GPA for the major is around a 3.1, which is relatively low, and I can also tell you that the classes, themselves, require an absolute ton of reading (my own experience & friends’).

I would definitely recommend applying and asking others for their opinions! oo one last thing, the philosophy library at Cal is pretty awesome! They have a fireplace, nobody is ever in there, and it’s stacked and stocked with tons of philosophy books.

Hope I helped somewhat, and I wish you the best! Again, I would recommend applying.