How to Succeed at Berkeley

Thomas_1
Thu, 14 Jun 2012 11:49:52 +0000

What’s your major?

A lot of people do badly because they overestimate what they can handle. I know it’s tempting to take a lot of classes to get requirements done quickly. Especially during your first semesters you should take as few classes as possible, you’ll need extra time to get used to the environment and explore things. Also, it’s inevitable that other things (social, clubs, research, personal, etc) will pop up and affect your schedule. If you don’t add room for those in your schedule then your GPA will suffer.

In general, doing badly has little to do with intelligence. Sure, you have to be moderately intelligent to grasp the material. But I’d argue that 95%+ of people at Berkeley are intelligent enough, or they wouldn’t have gotten in. You don’t need to be a genius to get good grades. People who do badly, given they have a decent schedule, either 1. Don’t study in the right way or 2. Are not mature enough and have problems with self-control and setting priorities. Here are just some examples:


They waste many hours per day on Facebook or other social networks
They can’t get up in the morning and skip class. Or they come to class and sleep. Seriously, tons of people just sleep in class. How can you expect to get good grades if you don’t even have enough discipline to stay awake?
They procrastinate with classes and then start skipping other classes to catch up. In the end they fall behind everywhere and never catch up anywhere ;)
They think studying is some kind of “social” activity. That’s a big one, SO MANY people do this and it’s a fatal mistake. They study with their friends in some kind of loud coffee shop and end up talking 80% of the time and not getting much done. Study groups can be effective, but only if done in the right way. A great way to have study groups is to let everyone work on the assignments alone, and then compare and discuss results in group.


Even if you’re in one of the most “difficult” majors, you’ll have plenty of free time to be involved in lots of activities and social events if you do things right.

That’s also one the reasons transfer students often do just as well, or better, than freshman admits. I don’t want to offend anyone, but on average, transfer students are less “intelligent” than freshman admits. However, they are more mature, know what they can and can’t handle, and have their priorities right.