Transfer

Colleges & Universities University of California - Berkeley
1

<p>Hey
I’m a first year at Wellesley College and I was thinking about transfering for Fall '06 and UC Berkeley is on my list of schools I’m thinking about applying to.</p>

<p>My question is: how hard is it to transfer in? I’m originally from New York, so I know that will not help. Wellesley’s a competitive school, and I’m doing well (As and one B+)- do you think coming from Wellesley will help me? Any advice? I’m very active on campus and was really active in high school and my SAT scores were high.</p>

<p>One of my concerns about UCB is that it’s a big university and Wellesley’s a small liberal arts school. About how big are the classes? Are they more lecture, or discussion driven? How accessible are the professors, or is it mostly TAs?
How’s the social scene? How easy is it to meet people? is there a lot of drinking? Smoking?</p>

<p>thanks!</p>

2

<p>It’s fairly hard to transfer in, but possible. Your coming from a competitive school helps, of course, and your doing well there is great, too. UCB does make Wellesley look very small. The classes vary widely, from 15 people to a almost a thousand. The largest lectures you will have to attend will be with 250 or so fellow students, if you happen to be in one of those classes. They can also be much smaller, some smaller than 15. What major(s) or areas of study are you planning on doing? The lectures are lecture driven, but all of the professors I’ve encountered allow for intelligent interruptions. Each larger lecture class will have a discussion session lead by the TAs (or GSI - Graduate Student Instructor, as they’re called here). I’ve found all of my profs and GSIs to be extremely accessible, if I put in the effort of seeing them or communicating to them. They are helpful. The social scene? It’s hard to say. It depends on where you live and what you want. There are so many things to do, places to go, it’s almost overwhelming. I’d say it’s fairly easy to meet people, but not extremely easy. I haven’t been able to meet to many people that I’d want to be friends with for life, but most of the people I might are fine, as in I don’t dislike them. Hey, I probably even like most of them. Drinking is there if you want it, and smoking is, too, but most people don’t smoke, and I’d lots of people drink somewhat on occasion. Some people are doing this just about every night, some never. You can find your niche.</p>

3

<p>Thanks for replying :slight_smile:
I was thinking about either being a Philosophy major, or an environmental science major (kind of different, i know)… UCB classes dwarf Wellesley’s biggest classes, though… but I think I could deal with that.</p>

<p>The reason I asked about the social scene is because I’m assuming it’s going to be harder to make friends coming in as a transfer student than a freshman because of orientation and whatnot. I mean, I know that transfers attend orientation, but it’s different.</p>

<p>Oh, another question- how PC is this campus?</p>

4

<p>Well, there are tremendous resources for any department I know about, and Phil and Environmental Science are no exception. As to being a transfer, many people will be in the same boat as you, so to speak. Most of them would be from California community colleges, but not all of them, and they will all be new to here. If you live in the dorms, it will be a lot like being a freshman, I would imagine. I have a few transfer student friends. Often times I can’t tell who’s what, and I don’t care that much. Sometimes you can tell a person has more life experience, such as one of my friends in particular, and he took significant time off of school before going to cc. </p>

<p>Anyway, to me, the biggest classes don’t feel that big. One can sit towards the front and ask things of the prof or GSI. One can schedule smaller classes, particularly easy in a few departments, and each department has its huge classes, which are popular because the subjects appeal to lots of people and the profs are supposed to be good, such as Existentialism in Literature and Film with Dreyfus in the philosophy department. John Searle and other famous faculty member have classes which fill up quickly, which I would imagine happens at every school. </p>

<p>You should look into Rhetoric, which is sort of like Continental philosophy, or critical theory, unless you’re more interested in analytic philosophy, in which case philosophy would be the major for you.</p>

<p>How PC is the campus? Well, it probably has more of a reputation of being PC than a practice, but I don’t know- fairly? It’s clearly liberal, but I’m sort of moderate, ranging from apathetic to annoyed, and it’s tolerable, as long as people act reasonably, which usually is the case. What is annoying is when people think they’re being revolutionary or rebellious when in fact they are just going with the majority opinion on campus. Are you really being political, in the strictest sense, if the majority agrees, and few, if any, disagree?</p>

5

<p>Wellesley’s kind of notoriously overly PC, and I’m trying to get away from that, but I’d still like to be somewhere that’s fairly political… and I guess the more diverse the better in that respect, because I wholeheartedly agree with you about what actually is political.</p>

<p>Thanks again… it’s sad that I’m procrastinating on a paper to get information about other schools.</p>

6

<p>I’m procrastinating on two and not getting information about anything useful. :)</p>

<p>For the record, there is a fairly vocal club, the Berkeley College Republicans, on campus.</p>

<p>I don’t like final papers. Where else are you considering?</p>

7

<p>Yeah, but at least it’s earlier there…</p>

<p>ok this isn’t even about UCB anymore. I really need to turn off my internet.</p>

8

<p>Alright, good luck!</p>