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| Quite Bright | UC Berkeley treats you like cattle up for auction. They refer to you by your number, not your name. If they screw up [which happens FREQUENTLY] the onus is on you to fix THEIR mistake. [ie not getting financial aid until the 6th week of courses] Going to Berkeley destroyed my soul. It truly did. I am a very intelligent, capable person, but that place sucked the life out of me. It is a dump. The administration is incompetent and so are all of its support staff. DO NOT GO THERE! PLEASE! if you want your soul to be destroyed, if you want to be disappointed on a daily basis, then go to Cal. If not, go somewhere else. Oh, by the way...I love that Cal professes to be open to everyone...REALLY? then why is it that 95% of the people with whom i attended class were WHITE? how about the fact that 2% overall enrolled were african american. how about the fact that about 6% overall enrolled were hispanic/mexican american? IM WHITE AND I AM BOTHERED BY THIS! Why does Cal not live up to their statements of being all-inclusive? I guess it's because, at the end of the day, it is still run by a bunch of racist elites who want your money and want to benefit from your future successes. I've seen it. Anyone heard of Professor Bruce Cain? yeah, i had a class with him...all he was interested in was talking about how smart he was and recruiting WHITE GIRLS to be his grad student researchers. Cal is filled with people like that. go to some college or university where they know who you are and care about you for you, not how much money you can help the university generate because you are doing research for a misogynistic professor. PS...if you go there your identity will be stolen, because they dont bother to secure their databases. Look it up. UC berkeley databases were hacked, and now all alumnae of that joint are effed. ENJOY! | Starting Job: Receptionist, Preparedness: D+, Reputation: F |  | |
| | Nov 20 2009 | Alumna Female --
Class 2000 | | Blog it!Blog about this comment from your webpage or Blog, or MySpace account:
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| Quite Bright |
The Good: The biggest reason to go to UC Berkeley is the degree. Berkeley is known around the world and a degree from here has prestige and can sometimes open doors. The quality of education here isn?t bad, either. It?s a vibrant and stimulating intellectual community, with fine educational resources, and a fairly high percentage of the undergrad classes I took here were really pretty good. Some (not all) of the professors really try to make their classes worth taking. If you?re a smart, motivated student it is possible to acquire a decent education here and get decent grades (if you?re lazy or not a good student, don?t come here?you won?t make it). It?s an amazingly beautiful campus, too.
The Bad: Berkeley is overcrowded. Classes are often huge (don?t believe the ?official? student/faculty ratio, which is a joke). Some students are not able to get into their desired major or program. Even if you do get into the major you want, you will find that overcrowded classes will often mean you are ?waitlisted? for classes you really need?sometimes for weeks after the semester begins?and then may ultimately not get in at all. I was one of countless students who had this problem, and it was stressful to the max. The bureaucracy is awful here, too: when you have a problem like this don?t expect any sympathy from the bureaucracy or advising staff, because all you?ll get is catch-22?s and administrative runarounds. Berkeley is huge and very impersonal, so forget about any personal attention for anything else, also. Letters of recommendation for grad school are difficult to get from faculty, because professors spend so much time on their research and their grad students that there isn?t much left over to get to know any of the hundreds of (low-priority) undergrads in their classes. Real help in preparing for grad school or with job placement is almost nonexistent. This is another critical area in which Berkeley fails almost completely, and this is quite serious considering it?s the reason you are going to school in the first place. Berkeley rests on its reputation as a research university and evidently thinks you (the insignificant undergraduate) are lucky they let you come here at all. Don?t ask for anything or expect any concern for yourself as a human being or for your future, when you are an undergrad here. You are just a number (your Student Identification Number, to be exact).
The Ugly: Older, non-traditionally aged students comprise only a small percentage of the college student population, but IF YOU ARE AN OLDER STUDENT returning to school, like I was, DO NOT GO HERE. The administration and advising bureaucracy, unfriendly enough for the regular student, becomes cruel and intolerable. The rules stipulate that they cannot discriminate against students on the basis of race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, national origin, etc. and this leaves?for this huge, unkind bureaucracy with its shadow side?the older student to harass and belittle. Upon being readmitted, one L&S adviser told me that I ?had not done anything with [my] life to justify being admitted and didn?t deserve to go to school here.? The Psych student services director (since retired) welcomed me with jokes about my age and gave me patently wrong information that, had I followed it, would have kept me out of the major entirely. I was excluded from the honors program on a technicality (after being advised by a Psych student services advisor that I?d meet the requirements, and after I?d been working on it for many months)?goodbye research experience for my grad applications! Every step of the way, someone in administration was waiting with ageist comments and to try to kick my feet out from under me, right up to graduation: someone in the Registrar?s office tried to block my graduation by not giving me credit for university requirements I?d already met way back in high school. I should stress that this awful treatment came from administration and not faculty (who were generally quite good). But listen: if you are a non-traditionally aged student this is one MEAN place to go to school. Don?t go here. Period. | Campus Aesthetics: A+, Individual Value: F | | | |
| | Nov 16 2009 | 3rd Year Male --
Class 2009 | | Blog it!Blog about this comment from your webpage or Blog, or MySpace account:
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