VERY confused about Berkeley or UCI

sakky
Sat, 08 Apr 2006 22:34:32 +0000

Alright UC Berkeley disappoints 3 out of every 4 students in my opinion.
First off berkeley is a large school with professors who care more about their research than they do about teaching also pre-med competition is rediculously cutt throat because there are sooo many pre-meds. Next off most students don’t get housing 2nd year and it costs a lot to support yourself for 3 years. There is a good chance that your GPA will not be high enough and you will probably realize on your that you have no shot at med school, when in fact if you went to a lesser school you have easily gotten in. UC-berkeley is basically a large public school with in my opinion lots of cons and very little pros and their graduates are almost always unhappy with their situation. Go to UCLA you will enjoy yourself more, have fun, get a higher GPA, more interaction with professorsand will probably have a way higher chance of getting into med school. Bascially at Berkeley even in the upper level courses you never really see your professors and you will get shi*ty grades and will be very disappointed.



I’m sorry, I can’t agree with this. Not that Berkeley isn’t the way that you’ve described it. Indeed, it probably is. In fact, I have written many a post about how impersonal the Berkeley undergrad experience can be.

Where your argument goes off the rails is that you assume that UCLA is going to be any better. The truth is, while Berkeley is a large school, UCLA is an EVEN LARGER school. While Berkeley indeed has many profs who care more about research than teaching, so does UCLA. The non-guaranteed dorm housing is not the serious concern that you seem to be making it out to be, because the fact is, the dorms at Berkeley arguably cost MORE than a regular off-campus apartment in town. Hence, I don’t see why you are bringing up the issue of cost when you say that “it costs a lot to support yourself”. Those people who really have money problems are probably looking to get out of the dorms as quickly as possible in order to save money, so they shouldn’t care if dorm housing is only guaranteed for 1 year. Finally, you talk about your GPA not being high enough to get into med-school coming out of Berkeley, and how you never see your profs in upper division classes. Yeah, well, you don’t think that doesn’t happen at UCLA?

Look, if you were telling pointing out these problems of Berkeley because you were trying to convince them to go to one of those small elite LAC’s, then I would agree with you. But you’re not. All these problems you have pointed out about Berkeley are also true of UCLA. Hence, these problems cannot be any reason to prefer UCLA over Berkeley. To make that case, you have to talk about what problems Berkeley has that UCLA doesn’t have. Otherwise, the case is unproven.