The Polar Opposite Conundrum: LAC vs Berkeley

vicissitudes
Sat, 05 Apr 2008 04:20:49 +0000

I disagree with vicissitudes. You most certainly can get a great education at Cal, you just have to assert yourself more (e.g., meeting with professors, etc.) than you would at a smaller school. That’s why the OP D’s personality will be key to finding the best environment.



I suppose it depends on your major. You definitely have to put in more effort, but my experience mostly revolves around the majors that are very research-oriented (i.e. the sciences/engineering). Even if you put in the effort, you still may not a get good education. The lecturers are often terrible or cannot speak English, the professors are sometimes condescending and not helpful, the GSIs are hit-or-miss (they are really good or really bad), and mostly, I find it disturbing how poorly organized/taught some of the classes are, and how utterly useless a lot of the lectures/textbooks can be. A class of 300 dwindles down to 200 people attending the lecture by the 4-5th week, and if it’s webcasted, maybe 100 people. Sometimes the class just makes it very difficult for you to learn the material. Office hours are usually much more helpful, but again 1) you have to put in the effort and go to OH on top of lectures/homework and 2) sometimes the office hours are so crowded with people that you can’t really get a question in! Especially a day or two before a homework assignment is due (and let’s face it, who does homework a week before?). Trust me, you can put in a lot of effort and still find it frustrating to try to learn the material. You’d be surprised at how unhelpful some of the bad professors/GSIs are. You could be in their OH, ALONE, and ask them a question, and their response would be “you are supposed to know this” or “we went over this in class” or “go review it in your book.” Well, if I knew this or understood the book, I wouldn’t be in Office Hours now would I??

From all the seniors I’ve talked to, every single one of them has expressed the sentiment “I can’t want to get out of here.” I’ve had maybe one person say to me “I wish I could stay longer.” If you talk to some engineers, most of them are just in it for the money. Very few engineers are in engineering because they actually enjoy engineering. It’s sad, but I think the more marketable the degree, the worst the teaching quality. It evens up the majors in a sadistical kind of way.

Look, even if you dismiss all of that as my opinion, let’s face the facts. Berkeley’s focus is not undergrad. LACs only have undergrad. Berkeley’s professors are hired based on research. LACs hire professors based on teaching ability (they don’t have research). The majority of Berkeley’s graduates do not go to graduate school (you can look this up on Berkeley’s Career Center website). As far as a marketable degree, yes I would say Berkeley is among the top 20 Colleges/Universities. As far as an institution of education, I would say Berkeley is not even close to the top 50.