Worried About College Experience

emvic8100
Sun, 14 May 2017 16:42:38 +0000

Hi everyone, I’m an incoming college freshman who was trying to choose between UC Berkeley and UCLA for undergrad and ultimately chose UC Berkeley. I couldn’t keep oscillating between the two forever, and people persuaded me to choose Cal at the last minute.

For context I live near LA and will be a NutriSci major in CNR or MCB/IB and will hopefully be pre-med.

I don’t blame anyone but myself for the choice, but I think I’m already starting to regret where I chose to attend. I realized that I suck at dealing with stress and impersonality and like sunshine. I’m sure UCLA has a fair amount of the first two qualities I mentioned, but maybe to a slightly lesser extent than UC Berkeley.

I think I liked UCLA better, but I went on Bruin Day, so maybe that wasn’t the most objective view of the campus. I didn’t go to Cal Day; I attended an overnight stay program. I liked the dorms, food and to a slight extent, the campus better at LA. Berkeley’s dorms were more cramped and the food was meh.

The reason I didn’t choose UCLA was because I knew so many more people who attended Cal and were giving me tips on housing and reassuring me that Berkeley would be great. I also knew many more freshmen going to Berkeley than LA.

Had I chose to attend UCLA, I would have felt excited about college. But I chose Berkeley, so I feel numb about freshman year. I don’t know, I just feel like UCLA would have been a more well-rounded place with more fun and all.

I’ve also been feeling depressed lately, so maybe that’s clouding my perception with regrets.

Overall, I’m determined to make it work for myself at Berkeley by studying as much as I need, going to tutoring, managing my time well and making time for friends. But I am worried that I will hate Cal and always have UCLA at the back of my mind when things get hard at Berkeley.

Does anyone have any advice?

I am sorry if I angered any Berkeley students or sound whiny/scared/naive. This is just honestly what I feel right now.

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