Many applicants to the most selective university programs share high grades, high test scores, solid recommendations and generous doses of community service and volunteer activities. Yet, if they want to set themselves apart from the pool of exceptional students, a significant research experience in STEM or the social sciences helps.
UC Berkeley announced that it will begin accepting two recommendation letters from its freshmen applicants beginning this fall.
UC Berkeley undergraduate admissions has not welcomed recommendations since it opened its doors in 1868, yet admission criteria to the UCs (and Berkeley) have been in the throes of change over the last years.
No matter how one might feel about the utility of the English major, it remains to this day the ninth most popular major among the 50 majors recognized by the Department of Education.
What accounts for its popularity might be difficult to determine because the major itself can differ widely school to school, or even within the same school.
Despite the buffets of budget cuts, the UC System is more popular than ever. This year, UC applications hit over 161,000, up 13% from last year. UC Davis, located just 15 miles west of Sacramento, best known for its biology, agriculture, and engineering programs, was up 5% from a year earlier with slightly more than 62,000 applications. This in the face of the ill-conceived Davis police pepper spraying of students protesting student tuition increases. The steady rise of applications-despite the pepper spray gaff-speaks to the resources and boundless educational opportunities Davis offers.
Creating a club, devising an original project, or generating a college essay, often begins with ‘brainstorming’. Brainstorming originated in the late 1940’s when Alex Osborn, a partner at the advertising agency BBDO, wrote his groundbreaking book Your Creative Power. In it, he introduced his creative juggernaut, “using the brain to storm a creative problem—and doing so in a commando fashion.” (p. 22 “Groupthink” by Jonah Lehrer, The New Yorker, 30 January 2012: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/01/30/120130fa_fact_lehrer)
College is expensive. Over a hundred colleges (with UC Berkeley for out-of-state students among them) now cost over $50,000 a year, and the price keeps escalating at a 4-6% clip. Yet college can also be difficult and confusing. Only 30% of the students in public, and 53% in private colleges graduate in four years. Some students never graduate, while others have lengthy and expensive stays. There are a number of reasons students do not have timely graduations, but one that truly impedes progress is indecision over what to major in. Some sources report more than 80% of the students change their major after matriculating, with some changing majors 2 to 3 times. What then is a good method of determining your major?
There will always be endless debates about whether an Ivy League school or other highly selective school is worth the price of admission. Now, however, there is hard evidence about the actual payback for attending a certain school. Not that this information is the last word in these debates, but it certainly supplies the numbers one might want to see when sharpening the pencil and figuring out what are the probable returns associated with attending an UC San Diego instead of a Princeton.
Many students become overwhelmed when it comes time to create a list of prospective colleges. Most have never done anything like this before: How do you get started? What criteria do you need? Among the 2,400 potential schools, which are the best matches? The best starting point, ironically, is not with the colleges but with the student.
One part of the admissions process that is often a bit neglected, is doing the research on potential college fits. Many students, and their parents, pull together a preliminary list of colleges based mainly upon college ratings, rankings, reputations, and opinions; that's human nature. But there is more to the research process than graduating near the top of your class and immediately applying to Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and then UCLA and UC Berkeley as your "safety schools". Today every applicant to a selective US college is facing stiff competition; most knowledgeable students and their families recognize this reality. Whether you believe it or not, even if you're the next Albert Einstein or Marie Curie, it's not a bad idea to research colleges of interest.
