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<p>That is very regrettable, and goes to show just how important it is to select the right college because it indeed is an experience that cannot be repeated again.</p>
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<p>No I am not a student at Berkeley. I’ve applied to some private institutions including a few Ivies along with a few UCs. I’ve done a great deal of research into various different universities across the US in terms of personal and academic fit. If I end up being accepted by any of the Ivies with good enough of a financial package, I will most definitely attend. I also am well aware of the current situation at Berkeley thanks to the vast amount of information on this forum, which is to say that if I end up choosing to attend Berkeley, I’ll know exactly what I’m getting myself into.</p>
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<p>Yep. I have spoken to other OOS and they have shared the same sentiment as me.</p>
<p>The good news is the moment I graduate, I’m moving across country permanently.</p>
<p>Just a side note, so it’s not all moroseness, I will probably appreciate this school more once I graduate, as the name is still prestigious and employable on both coasts.</p>
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<p>Just remember that you are not forever defined by Berkeley. I’m sure there will be plenty of opportunities in the future where you will get to put your full potential into overdrive. Keep ya head up!</p>
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<p>Yep. I hope so! I am applying to grad school and am only applying to certain schools in certain locations…this time places I actually want to live! I just hope I get accepted to somewhere I want to go…</p>
<p>I think that was a huge factor for me. I never liked the area surrounding Berkeley campus, yet am pretty much stuck here day in and day out. I never get to see my family, and I even spent my summers here working. Plus my significant other is in my home state, so that’s another thing. I rarely get to see anyone I am closest to. </p>
<p>I’m not sure if it’s Berkeley itself that disappointed me–it’s probably all of these factors combined. I miss my mother, my significant other, my childhood friends, the suburbs, I miss home in general. For awhile I went home every 8 months, which is unthinkable for many of the students who live in Northern California.</p>
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<p>I really doubt it. Berkeley has pressures from the city to keep it low, and it’s becoming more of an issue. I think that once Berkeley has the financial resources, it will downsize.</p>
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<p>Only ~5% of the classes at Berkeley have more than 100. More than 60% are under 20. Perhaps it’s your major.</p>
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<p>Many do. But consider this: they don’t have to take the tough, weeder lower-div courses. They can start out at the upper-divs.</p>
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<p>That’s the problem. The fact that students are graduating in high numbers in the fall indicates that Berkeley isn’t getting all its students to graduate in 4 years or less. When Berkeley can improve this, there will be no need for spring admits.</p>
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<p>Such a vague term – what do you mean, specifically, by “quality”?</p>
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<p>The vast majority of sections are small.</p>
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<p>Really, don’t assume that other people’s experience is the same. The overwhelming majority like/love/are positive about their experience at Berkeley – students surveys have shown this.</p>
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<p>I too have spoken with OOS students, and they don’t.</p>
<p>All in all, people will have different reactions to Berkeley. Some will like it; some will hate it. The same happens at Harvard, Stanford, Cornell, etc.</p>
<p>I’m OOS and I can understand where NeedAdvice is coming from about being away from home, family, and friends…but I feel that jlust a natural result of being away from home and is independent of where you go to school,except if you live really close to home. All I can say though is that Berkeley is really hard… but I doubt much harder than other top schools. So far though, for being away from home and everything I know, I do like Berkeley and am glad I am going here.</p>
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<p>Actually, I highly doubt that more resources will translate into smaller student population - if anything, exact opposite will happen. I can just se e it now: the more money that Cal has, the more pressure that Cal will feel from the voters to accept more and more students. Just think of the populist attacks that having more money would elicit: you would have a bunch of parents on TV decrying the fact that Cal has so much money, yet their kid can’t get in, etc. etc.</p>
<p>As far as pressure from the city goes, what I can see happening is that Cal will simply start building/buying campus housing outside the city and will then just run bus lines to that housing. Cal already has a bunch of graduate housing in Albany, which is technically outside the city of Berkeley. I suspect that, when push comes to shove, Cal would do the same thing for undergrads and hence Cal would be able to ‘claim’ that they are not really increasing the size of the resident population in the city of Berkeley. That would be a far easier move politically than actually trying to decrease the number of students.</p>
<p>Don’t get me wrong. I don’t want any of these things to happen. But I suspect they probably will happen whether we like it or not. For the foreseeable future, Cal has weak political incentives to decrease its student population and strong incentives to do the exact opposite. </p>
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<p>I completely agree: indeed, I have stated before that this is one of the scandalous features of Cal. If freshman-admits (in certain majors) have to be weeded, then transfer admits (in those same majors) should also have to be weeded with the same intensity. Otherwise, nobody should have to be weeded. What’s fair is fair. </p>
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<p>Actually, if those figures included grad classes, then they are clearly highly misleading. After all, Cal has numerous grad classes, none of which are huge. {Incidentally, that serves to reinforce the notion that Cal is an indisputably excellent place to study for graduate school.} </p>
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<p>I actually view the city of Berkeley, and the entire SF Bay Area (except for the South Bay) to be one of the most interesting and dynamic areas in the world. While I can appreciate the notion that you might be lonely if you don’t know anybody around, believe me, there are FAR WORSE places to be stuck in. </p>
<p>And yes, that includes Palo Alto. While I believe that Stanford is clearly a better place to go than Cal for undergrad (with grad school is basically tied), it has nothing to do with the desirability of living in Palo Alto, or heck, the entire South Bay in general, which is a completely culturally stultifying place. South Bay is boring. Sure, it’s a great place for work, it’s especially great if you want to found a tech startup (in fact, it’s hands-down the best in the world for that), but as far as actually offering interesting non-work things to do? Not so much. </p>
<p>Nor do I mean to unfairly single out Palo Alto, for I don’t see that place as any worse than most other places in the country in that regard. But that only demonstrates a unique benefit of the city of Berkeley.</p>
<p>Overcrowding wasn’t too much of a problem in my department, but I do think that for graduate school I will go for a smaller atmosphere if at all possible. I was an out of stater too but I don’t at all regret going to Berkeley because of its size. I loved it; it was like a microcosm of the real world. Good preparation I think! But I do think it’s something for out of staters to consider before they move all the way out there for university.</p>
<p>Sakky makes good points in his post. And yes, I highly doubt that Cal will decrease its student population. In fact, more resources gives them an incentive to increase enrollment. As long as they keep cramming people in dormitories and increasing registration fees, while increasing class size, the marginal cost may not increase for them to accept more students. It might be financially beneficial for them to enroll more.</p>
<p>About the small class size, Sakky again makes good points. Most undergraduate class sizes are NOT small. It’s not just my major. </p>
<p>As for being stuck in the Bay Area, I agree that Palo Alto is worse than Berkeley, but there are still many better cities in America to be “stuck in” besides Berkeley. Chicago, Seattle, Boston, Philadelphia just to name a few. The Bay Area isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. After living in various states my whole life, I admit that San Francisco is a wonderful city, but it seems the East Bay is the antithesis of SF.</p>
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<p>And Cal is having pressure on downsizing. Not to mention that if it does become a significant issue – and it will – the Master Plan will become more prominent. But we can agree to disagree – I think it’s as likely that Cal will downsize.</p>
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<p>No, it’s for undergrad courses. </p>
<p><a href=“http://cds.berkeley.edu/pdfs/PDF%20wBOOKMARKS%2006-07.pdf[/url]”>http://cds.berkeley.edu/pdfs/PDF%20wBOOKMARKS%2006-07.pdf</a></p>
<p>Grad course sizes aren’t included. (This is the same data that appears in the US News ranking.)</p>
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<p>The data says otherwise (see the link above). Berkeley offers ~3500 courses to its undergrads; I highly doubt you’ve seen so many of them that you can make such a generalization.</p>
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<p>As I’ve always seen it, Berkeley is an extremely diverse/interesting city that offers much of the same things that a big city does, but without all the hustle and bustle of Chicago, LA, NY, etc. If you do want more “hustle and bustle,” SF is just a BART hop away.</p>
<p>I’ll add what I’ve noticed is that introductory classes are big but the secitons are usually less than 20 people, except for my stats class. Also english and literature classes at Berkeley that I’ve taken are pretty small. One I’m in now only has 14 kids in it. Last semester I took a literature class with 38. Is there really that big of a difference…no. Kids who want to be involved will be, while others who are more comfortable being quite and doing things on there own will be quiet. Most teachers I’ve had are actually begging kids to come to their office hours.</p>
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<p>Yeah, but the pressure clearly ain’t enough. After all, Cal has never experienced a significant decline in population during any of its modern history. I unfortunately see no reason to believe that the pressure would work now, when it has never worked before. </p>
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<p>Then I would suspect that the Master Plan will simply (sadly) be modified. After all, unfortunately, there is not much of a political incentive to decrease Cal’s population, and a strong incentive to increase it. You know the old saying that it’s almost impossible to shrink a government program. Basically, it’s a ratchet. </p>
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<p>Actually, that’s not quite true. The definition of an “undergraduate” course is: *“Undergraduate class sections are defined as any sections in which at least one degree-seeking undergraduate student is
enrolled for credit” *. Many graduate courses have at least 1 undergrad in them, and hence are counted as “undergraduate courses” for the purposes of the CDS.</p>
<p>Incidentally, this leads to one of the ways to obtain a better education at Cal: try to take graduate courses whenever feasible. Frankly, I think the graduate courses are often times better managed and more interesting than are undergrad courses. Granted, you need to be better prepared, but it may well be worth it, particularly for the more motivated undergrads. </p>
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<p>Nah, I’m afraid I have to disagree. Chicago, Seattle, and Boston are surely interesting cities but as kyledavid80 mentioned, you have to consider the proximity of Berkeley to SF, and which clearly beats the tail out of Philadelphia.</p>
<p>Secondly, while I can somewhat agree that the East Bay is not exactly the best place in the world, Berkeley is indeed somewhat different. It’s a college town. It’s filled with college students. And that is indeed a cool and unique environment. After all, as a young person, you want to be with other young people, and Berkeley clearly has that in abundance. In that sense, I would say that Berkeley is like Cambridge, Mass, but with better weather.</p>
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<p>Actually, I would say that I doubt that the overall size of Cal really matters if you’re a graduate school, as the graduate programs generally tend to successfully shield the grad students from the issues that stem from university size. Naturally, this depends strongly on the grad program in question, but I know of many grad students who say that they never have to deal with the registrar, the financial aid office, or any of the other nightmare bureaucracies of Cal: their program intermediates on their behalf. Furthermore, most of their classes are tiny seminars and colloquia which is clearly a giant sea change from what many undergrads experience. {Heck, I have heard of graduate level seminars that actually have more professors than students, if you can believe that.} </p>
<p>In other words, Cal seems to run a segregated educational system in which the grad students rarely if ever have to deal with the undergrads and can hence ‘float above’ many of Cal’s problems. . Now, certainly, the grad programs are not completely segregated in that some undergrads do take grad courses and engage in graduate level research, but this is not a common experience of most undergrads (as most undergrads can’t or won’t take on this level of responsibility). Hence, I still give very high marks to Cal’s graduate programs and I see no reason for anybody to disregard them simply because of concerns of the undergrad program. </p>
<p>In fact, I can think of several people who went to Cal for undergrad and did not enjoy their experience, but ended up going back to Cal for grad school, and remarking on how far better it was to be a grad student there. Of course one might wonder why they chose to go back to a school they didn’t particularly like. I think it mostly has to do with the fact that they believed the experience would be different as a grad student (and that belief turned out to be correct).</p>
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<p>I think that’s statistically negligible. (Though I’m not aware of any data that shows how much undergrads enroll in grad courses.)</p>
<p>Berkeley offers ~7,000 courses. So ~3500 are undergrad ones, ~3500 are grad ones, roughly. This goes to show that they expend more on grads – they have the same # courses, but undergrads outnumber them by 2:1.</p>
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<p>Well, I’ll tell you this. In chemical engineering, it is quite common for most grad-level ChemE courses to have at least one undergrad in them, even if on just a P/F basis. These undergrads are often times those students who are engaged in research projects with a particular prof who then decides to take that prof’s graduate class.</p>
<p>Granted, I don’t know what the status is of other disciplines. But I doubt that ChemE is really THAT unusual.</p>
<p>I agree with Sakky that the South Bay is boring. There really is not much to do when I attended high school in that area with friends as underaged people.</p>
<p>Sadly unless there is a big overhaul with the whole UC system, Cal will continue accepting more and more students. And for those students who say transfer students do just as well as fall admit students (since GPA is nearly the same), considering that freshmen admits’ GPA is weathered during the first two years due to weeder courses. By the time upper division courses rolls around, the grading is much more forgiving, while the new transfer students have a hard time adjusting to the new environment. Of course, this is a generalization.</p>
<p>While I agree the UG may not be decreased, I don’t see where Cal can expand. I’ve read in numerous articles within the past year that the campus is at maximum capacity. I don’t see it expanding any farther out into the neighborhood, especially if it involves buying land at Berkeley prices…and even then where can they expand. I recently read an report about the mechanical engineering department complaining about the increase number of students in that department. I would think that if the campus tried to expand anymore many more departments would follow suit. Plus the city of Berkeley isn’t going to be very happy at any attempts to further expand. If the city had its way it would probably be around 27K. There is a possibility though that if Berkeley builds a sizeable endowment and decreases to improve UG quality. If the state tries to threaten state funds, they only provide 35 percent, I cant see them going much lower, and UCB could threaten back saying they’ll admit more OOS…although this is probably farfetched.</p>
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<p>Heck, there isn’t much to do even if you’re “overaged” (if that’s a word). It’s not like the place is rife with cool bars and clubs and a swinging night-life. Far from it, in fact. In fact, being overaged makes it feel worse as you know what you’re missing. </p>
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<p>Well, like I said, I don’t think it’s going to be that hard for Cal to expand, whether the city likes it or not. Easiest thing to do is to simply create campus housing that is technically outside city lines and hence won’t count for the purposes of determining city population. Like I said, Cal has already done that with the new graduate student housing complex in Albany. Cal could do the same with new undergraduate housing. Then Cal would simply be akin to a resident city employer. </p>
<p>For example, if, say, Wells Fargo wants to increase employee headcount at its Berkeley branches, and these extra people would presumably commute in and out of the city, Wells Fargo doesn’t have to obtain approval from the city to do that. Heck, the city would probably like it as it would mean more economic activity for the city (i.e. more people buying coffee and lunch in the city), but without the commensurate strain on city resources (because they’re not living in the city). Hence, Cal could similarly pitch an increase in ‘commuter’ students (who live in student housing in Albany or Emeryville or some other closeby town) in the same manner. </p>
<p>Secondly, we need to keep in mind that Cal right now owns a LOT of city land that is not fully utilized. For example, much of the Berkeley Hills to the east of the campus all the way to Grizzly Peak Blvd is actually technically owned by Cal. While much of that land is occupied by LBL, giant swaths remain unused. For example, there is a huge multi-acre patch of land between Memorial Stadium and LBL’s ALS that is completely undeveloped. In principle, Cal could convert this land into working space. (Just like how Harvard is currently converting its Allston space that it has owned for decades but with which it has heretofore done little). </p>
<p>The bottom line is that I, sadly, don’t see any impediments for Cal to keep growing. The greatest problem is that the political forces that impel it to grow are stronger than the ones that would make it shrink. It’s the same reason why government budgets in general are hard to shrink, as every government program creates a strong political constituency (i.e. the government employees and the program beneficiaries) that will overwhelm the relatively weak political forces that attempt to constrain government growth.</p>