UC Berkeley vs UNC Chapel Hill [environmental science and chemistry]

LionsTigersAndBears
Fri, 01 Apr 2022 16:12:22 +0000

Congrats on having two good choices!

You mentioned that your concerns were around academic reputation, re⁠search opportunities, and post-grad work. I’ll touch on those, but have one more thing to think about (where you want to build your network) I’ll mention at the end.

On academic reputation, both are obviously solid. You’ve probably done this, but I’d take a look at the specific curricula at each school, and see if there are professors at one or the other that seem especially in line with what you want to focus on. Reach out to them and see if you can make a connection. That could help both in terms of feeling out the school from afar, and establishing a possible avenue for working in a lab or on a funded project. You maybe already have that covered with the ARP option at UNC, but it could still be a useful datapoint. I’m not sure if at Berkeley you’d be in Biochem (L&S) or Molecular and Environmental Biology (Rausser/CNR), but one thing to know about Rausser is the SPUR program, for funded re⁠search for undergrads.

I can’t speak to the UNC post-grad options, but Berkeley has a useful First Destination Survey. It looks like, from the last three years, 22% of the Biochem majors and 18% of the MEB majors went on to grad schools. You can play around with the dropdowns on that site to explore the different datasets they have available. As a preview, here’s Biochem for the last three years:

And here’s Molecular and Environmental Biology:

One thing you might want to think about is where you might want to live after college. Obviously, very hard to know that now, and this might be a moot question because of grad school. But a lot of people, especially at state schools, end up building out personal and professional networks in those states. Maybe with family in MD, you’ll want to stay close-ish. Maybe because of job prospects, you’ll want to be on one coast or the other. This shouldn’t be a deciding factor for you, as there are so many variables, but it was advice that was passed to my daughter when she was thinking about where to apply, and it helped her as she was looking at her options.

Also, obviously, if you’re able to visit before committing, that might help you get a sense of the vibe at each place!