You’ll be thinking through decisions. Typing your thinking out helps.
Here’s some things to think about to start:
Big college: So. Many. Niche. Classes. I took a History of the Celebrity class and a Peace and Conflict Studies class. There’s City Planning Classes, Archaeology of Food in the US, Biomimicry, Drugs and the Brain, etc. For major requirements, there’s more elective options than liberal schools, some of which might be that tiny area that you’re interested in. For example, I’m hoping to take two Health Economics classes.
Homeless people: All of you suburbia people, get out of your comfort zone, learn about humanity, don’t be isolated in your socioeconomic bubble. Talk to some elderly hippies and mildly crazy people. Billie is the Dinosaur man who dresses up every weekday and can have an intellectual discussion about feminism or Tolstoy. Common Terry might yell at you about oil and conspiracy theories but he’s a pretty nice guy if you ask how his day is. Thomas sits and does crossword puzzles on Sproul. BTW Sproul will keep you up to date about everything that is going on at Berkeley, ever, so take a flyer every now and then. Plus there’s bake sales always going on, so buy easily accessible food that supports something.
Protests: They don’t happen that often. The news helicopters are annoying. Protests were bigger in the 60s. Berkeley people aren’t passive. Some of us have strong feelings and we are willing to do something about it. We’re idealists who believe that we can make the world a better place. Plus, if anyone messes with us, mistreating employees or something, someone will protest and fix it. It makes the administration more inclusive of students. They keep us in the loop; there will never be accusations of a cover up.
Liberalism: There’s definitely an outspoken republican minority. But not everyone is liberal either, and there’s a good number of people who go to church. I will get a number on that later/tomorrow. People are moderate, with strong opinions on some things, usually different things. Which is interesting for debates. Anyone can find their group to agree with them or find someone who disagrees with them.
City: It’s not really a city. It’s more of a town. No skyscrapers or office buildings. Just a lot of apartments, victorian style houses, and good places to eat. I am not going to be able to try all of them in four years. There are also, of course, a lot of coffee shops. Find your favorite. So many possible parameters.
Academics: Are hard. You won’t be bored. You won’t get all As. Learn how to fail, but everyone around you is also not getting straight As so it’s alright and it’s a good experience. It makes you that much more excited when you get an A. Grad schools supposedly weight Berkeley GPAs slightly higher because of that.
The one thing that you need to like about a college is the people. You can’t get used to hating everyone, not relating to anyone. Find out the most you can about who goes to school, who from your school also got in or is going. Berkeley has a lot of really cool people who have started businesses, joined startups, started nonprofits, created cool things, and are really inspiring to be around. Your friends inspire you to try and get internships, or research, preparing you better for grad school. Everyone is smart, so no one brags. We aren’t competitive, don’t talk about grades much, although we do talk about cool stuff that we’re learning in classes and have philosophical discussions. We’re not fake happy (except for me and only sometimes); we’re real, sometimes cynical, but we believe that the world can be better. There’s people from all over, from Lebanon to New Zealand to China to France.
Students at Cal in engineering are often skipping lectures at Cal. And then getting Cs until they learn to focus better. Freshman in CS and engineering are almost forced to only take three classes first semester freshman year. Other state schools like GaTech, will let you load up starting immediately and you may get a chance to work on research sooner at a smaller Cal campus like Santa Barbara or a public school like Georgia Tech, for techy students.
When you’re learning about nuclear chemistry, you’re learning about Seaborg discovering Berkelium, Californium, and Lawrencium, discovered at Berkeley by Berkeley scientists. Same goes for a lot of other topics. Berkeley scientists discovered so many cool things and some of those people are still teaching your classes. The scientist who created CRISPR (gene splicing. Super cool) teaches Bio 1A. And you have the opportunity to do research with these people, work with them, and learn from them. Learning about all of these cool projects and startups and research, gives you ideas of what you can do for your projects later.
Pro: Top Dog
Con: This year’s basketball team
Pro: World- Class/beautiful campus/Bay Area/home to so many nobel laureates/weather
Cons: big, hard to find your niche, large Greek system with too big a presence, hilly campus, far from East Coast parents (ok - pro and con)
Big pro: If you are into theory of computing, Simons Institute is right there, with a lots of talks, workshops, bootcamps, … run by scientists from all over the world.
My D got her research assistant position through talking to a presenter at a workshop there. He didn’t have any position opened, but referred my D to another professor who did. She was an RA at the lab until graduation, and published a paper based on the research.
https://eecs.berkeley.edu/resources/undergrads/eecs/study-plans list four courses for first semester frosh in EECS. Other engineering majors’ course plans are similar.
The freshman I know at Berkeley were told to take Calculus 3, physics and one other class at Berkeley, usually a CS class. They were told to only take three classes, now some may not listen to those guidelines, but some students, I know did listen. Not sure if it all works out in the end, if one only takes three classes like that, and it may be a bad idea in fact if the student is prone not to understand time management.
Who told the freshman you know?
“were told” is not the same as “are almost forced” in:
My D was not “almost forced” to anything. Her first semester (number of units): LATIN 1 (4), COLWRIT R4B (4), COMPSCI 61A (4), COMPSCI 70 (4); second semester: EL ENG 20N (4), COMPSCI 61B (4), MATH 128A (4), MATH 172 (4).
She started her RA the summer after the second semester.
On the department web site linked above, the suggested study plan for EECS majors with Math 1B completed (i.e. 5 on calculus BC) starts with four courses (Math 53 (calculus 3), CS 61A, EE 16A, and a reading and composition course).
UCLA has that cool thing where they invite cool people to their big hall. Claremont Mckenna does something similar.
UC Berkeley does the same thing but much more low key. There’s one unit seminars in most majors where cool people from a specific field come in to talk every week. There’s one for Integrative Biology and one for Politics at least. Then there’s also smaller lecture series which are posted on boards everywhere or you find out about if you are on a random emailing list. Like, the Entomology club has a brunch and lecture every Friday at 10am with some really specific bug research lectures. If you go looking, there are a whole lot of cool people coming on campus, not just the big comedians, Cuco, No Vacation, or far right commentators, which we also get.
The people at Berkeley are like all of the smartest people in your high school class in one school. Berkeley classes are honor/AP classes. It’s not that everyone’s a genius. It’s not as hard core as you might expect, but it is difficult and requires some effort.
@Walter924 CalTech calls this the “Pizza class”, as they serve pizza and bring in experts to talk to students in small groups about careers in various fields. . GaTech offers it too, in various clubs like Big O for computer science.