When I attended my freshman orientation at Berkeley, I learned a few interesting things about the campus that I would like to share with you.

• Our 25 Nobel Laureates have special parking spots on campus – a very value commodity, let me assure you – marked by NL signs.
• We have a beautiful glade in the middle of campus with a mini hill called 4.0 hill.  Legend has it that if you roll down the hill at the start of the semester, you’ll get a perfect GPA.
• Our library is the fourth largest academic library in the US, behind The Library of Congress, Harvard and Yale.
• Speaking of the library, there will usually be a group of streakers running through the “stacks” (what we call our underground collection) during the study period before finals.

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While initially hesitant, I have come to love Berkeley.  With over 35,000 students and over 1000 student groups, there is something at Berkeley for everyone.  There are many sports groups – I myself was on the sailing team – and if you don’t want the intensity of a varsity sport, there are many club sports too.  There are close to 200 service groups if you wish to get involved with the community, 100 political organizations, 190 academic organizations and more.  Also, the Berkeley campus itself is tiny compared to many other schools, the residential halls and coops are right on the edge of campus and many of the students live in the areas immediately surrounding the school.  Berkeley definitely feels like a college town and you can enjoy things such as 24 hour donuts (the best!), late night sushi delivery till 2am, countless bars, cheap eats and many cafes.  At the same time, Berkeley has a fairly wealthy community and there are many mid to high end restaurants and shops too.

Academic wise, we have 130 academic departments, which means plenty for you to choose from if you’re still not sure.  We have an excellent business school and economic department, and graduates are frequently recruited into the Bay Area’s finance and consulting industry.  Our Engineering department is very highly ranked and feeds into many of the tech companies in the Bay Area too.  Berkeley also has an excellent undergraduate architecture program, a very large biology department and a great English department.  You can take classes from just about any department and if I had more time, I would have taken a seminar with Poet Laureate Robert Haas and more photography classes.

Getting to admission information, the Berkeley website informs me that 26.6% of applicants were admitted this year and the median GPA was 3.91, while the average SAT score was 2033.  In my time, Berkeley did not require letters of recommendation and judged your application solely on your grades and your essays.  I believe this is still the case unless the college you are applying to specifically requests a letter.  Tuition is $10,333 for in state students and $22,717 for out of state students, which is something to keep in mind when you are applying.  That said, I hope that many of you will consider applying to Berkeley, or Cal as we call it.  It truly is a great school for academics, a place to meet people, a wonderful place to live and it also get great weather practically year round.

Visit http://berkeley.edu/ for more information on UC Berkeley.

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