<p>I have a couple of questions about Cal. please help me answer them. thank you!!!</p>
<p>is it hard to transfer in between colleges in Berkeley? like from college of natural resource to college of letter and science?</p>
<p>if i choose a major in the college of natural resource such as nutritional science, but still want to do pre-med track, do i have a disadvantage compared with people who choose biochem?</p>
<p>do UCs look at class ranks in the admission process? </p>
<p>thanks for answering any question :]</p>
<p>In most cases it is easy to transfer between the colleges (unless you are on academic probation or are shooting for a very competitive and capped major without having strong grades to warrant acceptance). However, going into the college of engineering from the other colleges is more difficult, although certainly done in fair numbers. You have to have ‘kept up’ with enough of the engineering classes to be able to still graduate in four years, and you must have strong grades in those classes. </p>
<p>No disadvantage for pre-med by being in CNR. Pre-med is not a specific program at Cal, it is simply the classes that are the pre-reqs for most med school admission. Those are all available to take without preference for being in certain majors or colleges. The basic minimum is Math 16A, Chem 1A, Chem 3A, Chem 3AL, Chem 3B, Chem 3BL, Phys 8A, Phys 8B, and a final ochem often MCB102. Pre-meds are scattered over many majors. The only ‘advantage’ to some majors is that the required classes for those majors are so close to the premed classes that you kill two birds with one stone when you take them. Someone in a very different major would have to take all the required classes for that major, plus all the premed classes. </p>
<p>Only UCB and UCLA practice holistic admissions where they are free to look at many factors. The other campuses of the UC system use a more algorithmic process and do not include class rank at all.</p>
<p>Since the UC application does not include the class rank information and you do not send transcripts as part of the application process, that information is not available to any of the admissions committees. At Cal or UCLA, they may impute or project your class rank if the reader of the application is familiar with your school, but it is guesswork. Since the UC system uses its own method of calculating GPA (ignoring +/- on grades, weighting differently, adjusting all grading to a 4.0 scale) and they do not include classes that are in your high school GPA (freshman year as well as classes that are not in the a-g categories are excluded), the GPA they have access to is not the same as your actual GPA. Thus, they couldn’t figure out your rank even if they had all your classmates data too. What is available is some history that says that successful applicants from that school tend to be at or above a certain UC GPA level, or that those who had top class rankings when they sent in their transcripts had GPAs around xxx. Since they know it is a guess, it isn’t going to count very strongly in the decision even if they think they can guess a rough ranking.</p>
<p>thank you soo much!!! that was really helpful</p>
<p>is chemistry or biochem easy major to get into btw?</p>
<p>Are you applying to the Chem major in College of Chem or College of Letters and Science. As for Biochem, it is under the major MCB in the College of Letters and Science. Any major in the College of Letters and Science does not affect chances of admissions I believe. If you are applying to L&S, they do not look at your major so it would not affect your admission chances.</p>
<p>Chem Major in the College of Chemistry is an extremely poor choice if you’re looking to go to med school; it’s not as poor a choice as Chemical Engineering, but you still have to take Chemistry 4A (which requires work equivalent to 2-3 times its stated unit load) during your first semester, and various other courses later on.</p>
<p>If you’re truly interested in medical school, pick a major you know will be easy. Nutritional Science should be viable; Public Health and Integrative Biology are two others. MCB will generally be a poor choice in that you’ll probably have to do more work than you’d like to satisfy your major requirements.</p>
<p>Med Schools do not care about your major; they care about your GPA, your science GPA, whether or not you satisfied their required coursework, and your relevant extracurriculars. Don’t sign up for something that will distract you from those.</p>
<p>thank you!!!
@jonnosferatu: but biochem or chem majors have almost the same class requirements as pre-med requirements don’t they? so, if i pick those, aren’t i lessening my work load since i complete both in one. if i major in nutritional health, don’t i need to complete that major’s courses too and the pre-med requirements in addition? but i think i get what you mean, because NS is probably easier to get good GPA</p>
<p>It’s the rest of the classes that are likely to be the issue, and you do NOT want to take Chem 4A if you’re trying to get into med school. </p>
<p>Ideally, you want a major with a sufficiently small enough number of specific required courses that you can take the med school reqs and be able to devote considerable time to them and your other science courses. You also want to make sure you’ve got time on the side to focus on some kind of relevant extracurricular - research can help, but I’m told that volunteering at Tang, shadowing doctors at actual medical facilities, EMT training, and the like are generally better unless you’re planning to apply MD.Ph.D.</p>
<p>to answer your original question, no you don’t have a disadvantage if you do nutrisci compared to someone who does biochem. whatever major you are doesn’t really matter as long as you do well in the pre-med courses. </p>
<p>to answer your other question in post #6, i’d recommend seeing how you do in the pre-med courses before making a decision. i’m taking MCB upper division courses right now and i would say if you can do well in classes like Chem 3A/3B & Bio 1A, you shouldn’t have a problem. taking MCB upper div courses is probably more useful for med school anyways; apparently, how well students do in those is an accurate predictor of how well students do when they actually get into med school.</p>