<p>For all you thinking about majoring chemistry or chemical engineering, both offered by the college of chemistry, this is my advice: DON’T DO IT!! You will regret it.</p>
<p>Before I rant about the college of chemistry, let me release my test scores:
Year of entrance: 1996
SAT I: 1380
SAT II: writing, 630; math II, 760, chem 670</p>
<p>The classes were always overcrowded. Chem 1A had 800 students in the lecture section in fall 1996. Even upper division chem and cheme classes had over 100 students. The rooms for classes almost always never had enough seats for all students and there were always 10-20 student that had to sit on the floor during lecture. </p>
<p>The professors and GSIs were horrible. Whenever i went to their office hours for help on homework/projects, they would say something like “have you spent enough time on the homework”, or “most berkeley students get the answers on their own”, and told me to get lost. They only wanted to deal with A students. B and C students were left in the dust.</p>
<p>Good luck trying to makes friends in the college of chemistry, unless you are an A student. I tried repeatedly to befriend my classmates. But the 3.70+ gpa crowd always summarily rejected me and other “stupid” students. The Bs/Cs students were no friendly people. The Bs/Cs students looked at each other with suspicion and blamed each other for their low grades (like Bs and Cs), because classes were graded on curves and only 10-20% of students can get As. Whenever i happened to walk by the As students, they always snickered at my “stupidity” or dropped a few comments about how the Bs/Cs students got accepted to Berkeley. </p>
<p>It’s been nine years since I graduated from Berkeley and I still have occasion nightmares about my experience there.</p>
<p>I hope this gives your guys an inside look at the workings of college chemistry. So if you want to experiment, don’t do chemistry or chemical engineering.</p>