College Overview: UC Berkeley

UC Berkeley: Review of Cal
If you are considering attending UC Berkeley, make sure that you're ready to work your butt off. Professors expect 110% from you, but after finishing a class you feel like you've actually learned a great deal. I chose Cal because of its stellar academics, interesting and intelligent student body, lively location, and beautiful campus. If you're extremely sheltered or expect A's to be handed to you on a silver platter, Berkeley isn't the school for you (try Stanford instead!).

UC Berkeley: So Many Options...
I think one of the most difficult challenges for freshmen to overcome showing is being faced with so many different student groups, so many different opportunities and not having a good mentor or a good advisor to show them the path. I think that’s why a lot of kids go for the Greek system just because there are Seniors who can say “try this, this is what I did.” Freshmen are really just thrown into this pool and told, here’s where the advising office is and, by the way, the advisors there are...

UC Berkeley: Not Crazy Liberal
My Engineering experience is pretty tough. The competition’s rough. I feel like a lot of the engineers here, compared to other schools, all focus on studying and I guess you could say that’s a bad thing, but they’re devoted to what they study. I guess it’s hard for me because I try to do other stuff as well and I’m not as devoted so it’s been tough for me, but the professors are great and I learn a lot in classes. I’m taking a DECAL right not. It’s the Calling DECAL which is finding your vo...

UC Berkeley: Watch Out for Dorm Life!
I’m from Portland, OR. Coming here, I am one of very, very few out of staters. There are a lot of Californians and basically all of my friends are from LA so it’s been a totally new thing for me. It’s taken a lot of adjusting to get used to, but it’s fun.It’s hard because I wanted my college experience to be more like people from all over the country, getting to know all these different types of people, and it really hasn’t been that.

UC Berkeley: Lot's of Sports!
I think when freshmen come here, they have a choice to be social in an alcoholic drinking way or not. I think it depends on what people get involved in right away. What kinds of groups of friends they hang out with. But I definitely don’t think that there is a lot of pressure to go out drinking as a freshman. Unless you hang out with people who do.

UC Berkeley: Very Diverse
I’d say Cal is really diverse. You get a good mix of everybody. There area lot of international students, definitely a lot of people from California. And there area lot of different majors that are good so you could have a computer science major, a business major, science major, all that in your GE classes, and I’d say in general the students at Cal are really diverse so that’s probably the best part. Actually surprisingly they’re not too liberal at all. Actually it’s more the people around ...