<p>Depressed after the elections? Berkeley students still mope around on campus. </p>
<p>Want to change the world? Most of the alumni I speak with, have a strong urge to help out with poverty, social strife, war, inequities, racial relations, etc… etc… even as they are working as investment bankers, engineers, programmers, management consultants, MBA’s, PhD students, law students etc…</p>
<p>If you have a strong desire to change the world, to be an activist passionate about a cause, there is no better place to come to than Berkeley. Even many alumni today, complain why other university students are so ignorant about so many matters affecting us and the world today. What many alumni don’t realize is that Berkeley made us this way. And we didn’t even know it. And we don’t understand why other’s don’t “get it”. </p>
<p>Now I realize, its because they didn’t have the education that only Berkeley can give you. Berkeley will change you for the rest of your life, and you will never be the same person again. And I can’t emphasize how happy I was when I realized this! I still dream of the day I can return to the Bay Area, and picked up where I left off…</p>
<p>After hearing stories on collegeconfidential about how people at Stanford have one-on-one contact with Nobel Laureates and famous polictial figures, I have to ask how Berkeley could possibly compete with that? When I have kids, I vow to send them to Stanford, Harvard, Yale, or Princeton instead of having them waste their time drowning in a public university like I did.</p>
<p>Berkeley has had more Nobel Prize winners than any university other than Harvard and the University of Chicago. You can’t change your past, but you can change your future. At this point, your self perception has been warped. I expected that the UCLA experience would have made you a stronger person, but I may be wrong.</p>
<p>My UCLA experience was absolutely horrible. I had to fight for the professor’s attention and most of the time it was futile. I couldn’t get good professor recommendations for graduate school because they hardly knew me no matter how many times I went for their office hours. In fact, most of the time they weren’t even available. If they were around for their office hours, which they are paid for, they are either busy having coffee or were already talking to like 20 other students. Going to a big public university did not benefit me at all, and sitting in a large lecture hall with 500 other people was not conducive to learning. I hated UCLA and I’ll bet many Berkeley students would say the same of their alma mater.</p>
<p>ubermensch, I didnt know you were a UCLA alum. Why you gotta be like that? An unsatisfied Bruin? You truly are a freak of nature. UCLA is the best school in the world. Well, it is to many of us at least. I dont know what went wrong but as a fellow Bruin I hope you get over it one day. Truthfully, I understand that not no school is for everyone. Too bad you couldnt be happy with all that that big beautiful campus in Westwood had to offer. You gotta admit though that most Bruins dont feel the same way as you do.</p>
<p>ubermensch, as a UCLA alum, why are you now a student at SF City (community) College? </p>
<p>The full office hours were a real rarity for me at Berkeley - except when I took bio courses, in which the office hours seemed full of premeds who kept trying to pry exam questions out of the teacher. In the upper level engineering courses I took, I would sometimes be the only person at office hours. But none of my grad school recommendations were based solely on office hour interactions with professors.</p>
<p>Since we somehow got into the topic of office hours and face time:</p>
<p>Don’t forget - TA’s/GSI’s (graduate student instructors), who led the discussion sections and labs which were supplemental to the lectures (taught by the professors), also held office hours. Often times, they were able to explain things just as well, if not better than the professors. </p>
<p>The GSI’s at Cal were top notch. Some were better at teaching than others, but they all knew their stuff!! After all, they are CAL graduate students!! Go BEARS!!!</p>
Go BEARS!!!</p>