Hello everyone! I’m a high school senior and have been admitted to CMU’s Dietrich College for the Fall of 2017, and was recently accepted off of the waitlist from Berkeley for admission into L&S, but for the Spring of 2018. I have visited both schools (I did a camp at Cal and an overnight at CMU) and like both schools a lot, but I can see myself fitting in more at Berkeley. However, I’m nervous about coming into Cal a semester late, and I’m not sure it is worth it to skip out on a semester of freshman year. I was wondering if you have any advice regarding making a decision between CMU and Cal for psych? Please let me know 
Thank you!
Price difference?
@bouders they would cost about the same; the difference in price is minimal so it wouldn’t be a determining factor, and I also have yellow ribbon that I will be able to use for two years (my brother is receiving it for two years of his college education)
I wouldn’t worry too much about Spring entry. College is not a race. A few extra months will increase your maturity level which will help you cope with the demands of university. Some rest and relaxation is always good too so that you are refreshed.
Both schools are equivalent tiers and have similar strengths. Consider where you would like to live post-graduation, although neither will preclude you from getting a job on the opposite coast, you are more likely to get a job on the west coast with Cal and the east coast with CMU. All else being equal, go where you feel you fit in better, which sounds like Cal. It has better weather, too.
@bouders That’s really helpful! Thank you! Do you think the job aspect is true if I will be pursuing graduate school after as well?
Psychology is my field, and both CMU and Berkeley are very good and will serve you well for career opportunities or graduate school. You should choose whichever you feel most comfortable with.
It is true that college is not a race and that an extra semester will allow you to relax a bit. It is also true that starting in the fall with the majority of the other freshman is a lot of fun and socially, probably feels a whole lot better. At a big school like Berkeley, there are probably a lot of other freshman who begin in the spring, but most will begin in the fall. It’s up to you whether or not that matters.
@julliet Thank you so much for your thoughtful response! Do you think the large class sizes at Berkeley are very disadvantageous for a major like psychology?
Objectively, probably not. In my biased opinion, I do think so.
Objectively speaking, a student who is independent and ambitious is going to learn regardless of the circumstances. You’ll go to lecture, listen attentively, take good notes, complete the assignments, and visit office hours. You’ll probably get involved with research and develop relationships with some of the top psychological researchers in the world at Berkeley. Your upper-level classes will likely be smaller, too, and that’s when you’ll get the focused discussion and deep work. Really, where the real development will probably be done is within your lab group once you start doing research with a professor. That’s where you’ll learn writing and thinking and research design skills.
My personal opinion is highly biased by my own preferences and experiences. I studied psychology as an undergrad at a small liberal arts college. One of the benefits there is that I had small classes from day one, so even my introductory psychology, statistics, and research methods classes were small and focused. There was lots of class discussion and critical thinking, and I got lots of assignments other than multiple choice tests. Pretty much every class required some kind of long 10-20 page literature review paper, so by the time I graduated I was really good at those and had already acquired the skill (really important for graduate school). As an upper-level student, some of the seminars I took only had 5-10 students so we got really focused attention and development. And since my college had no graduate students, I sort of served as the closest analog for my professors. Even at a place like CMU, where there are grad students, there are likely to be fewer of them so you may get closer to your professors in a research group and get more advanced tasks to take on, since there are fewer grad students and postdocs to do it.
I also served as a TA in large lecture classes at my graduate institution - the introductory psych classes there ranged from 100 to 200 people, and the intermediate 200-level classes were usually anywhere from 50 to 100 or so people, so quite smaller than what Berkeley’s would be but still a bit large. Again, the ambitious and driven kids were going to do well anywhere; they sat in the front, asked questions, engaged with the material. The easily distracted kids surfed Facebook and did online shopping during the class. But the atmosphere is still different…there’s less discussion that can happen because 100 kids trying to all talk at the same time doesn’t work well, time-wise; you have to go out of your way to develop that close relationship with the professor; and the assessments are mostly multiple choice tests or maybe very short (3 pages or less) writing assignments that don’t really develop the deep critical thinking and writing skills a social science major needs. I’d had some students in a class I co-taught that had made it all the way to senior year without ever writing a literature review.
@juillet That’s really helpful! Thank you so much! Sorry for picking your brains, but do you think that compromising the benefits of smaller class sizes is a worthwhile trade-off for the esteem Berkeley has in the psychology community? (I know Berkeley is tied for the number one spot on US News’ list for Psychology programs). Additionally, I will be coming into Cal with many AP credits that will place me in more of the sophomore classes, as opposed to freshman classes, and so do you think that would impact my class sizes?