University of California-Berkeley Top Questions

If I could go back in time and give myself advise about college I would definitely start with telling myself to be prepared to live in a completely different living situation. You no longer have your mom around to tell you when to eat, what to eat, when to shower, when to go to bed, all that stuff mom's always take care of. But now that you are on your own, you really have to be prepared for everything. I got sick, and there was no mom to baby me, I had to take care of myself. So, I did what my mom would have done and nursed myself back to health. It is all about growing up and you just have to trust that you know what you are doing and what you are doing is best for you. Don't stay up too late, don't go to too many parties, don't beat yourself up about your new classes (because they are harder and different) but enjoy yourself and have fun. There is no college to look forward to after college, so don't stress the small stuff and be the best you you can be.

if i were to go back and speak to my self as a high school senior i would tell my self, relax. If ones goes into college with their head on straight, takes one thing at a time, and takes healthy breaks, they are going to do great. someone told me to really seperate times were you are working very hard and other times were you are really having fun. the thing that i always did was sit at my desk as if i was doing work but then get distracted and go on the internet, which isnt that fun or relaxing, and it isnt getting work done. it is very imporant to take breaks, get out of your chair, and out of your dorm room. excersising is esspecially very important, it keeps you healthy and feeling good. by being active and getting out of your room you will increase the amount of productivity.

I would travel back and tell me to believe in myself more. After I found out I got into Berkeley, I wondered if I had truly worked hard enough in high school to deserve it. I immediately thought my acceptance was a glitch in their system. This is how I felt all through the end of senior year. I remember coming up here for orientation in the summer after high school graduation. I told a boy in my orientation group how nervous I was to come up here, and how unsure I was of making it into Berkeley. This boy then proceeded to tell me to have some faith in myself, that I am obviously smart, and a hard worker, and if I were to continue to work as hard as I did through high school, that I could make it anywhere. I wish that I could have known that everything would be fine in college.

?Katey, the most important piece of advice you need for college is: don?t be afraid. Don?t be afraid to meet people, anyone. They?ll all be in the same situation as you are. Making a whole new group of friends is hard. It will take adjusting. It?s not like high school, but it can be even better if you?re willing to take that first step in meeting and getting to know others. Trust me, it will keep you sane when the work load is astronomical. Don?t be afraid to talk to professors either. I know it can be intimidating, especially with the five-hundred person lectures, but the professors know more about the subject than anyone. After all, they are teaching it. They?re the perfect resource to use, or even just get to know! Don?t be afraid to join a club, even if you don?t know anyone. The whole point is to meet people and do what you love with them. It will definitely build strong relationships. The fear of change is deep, but don?t let it effect you too much. Work hard, play hard and you'll do just fine."

I would tell myself to enjoy my youth a little more and not stress out about little things. I would tell myself that I hadn't even understood the meaning of stress until I came to college and started taking tests worth 40{4a082faed443b016e84c6ea63012b481c58f64867aa2dc62fff66e22ad7dff6c} of your final grade. I would tell myself to really cherish those friends and classmates that I got to see on a daily basis. I would make myself understand that college is not just an escape from high school, and that without a definite plan I could end up lost in the tide of people who don't know what they want to do with their lives. I would tell myself to try harder in my scholarship hunting so that I don't leave my parents in debt by the end of college. I would explain that life is not all about how many goals you can achieve, how many internships you can land, or how many degrees you can decorate yourself with. I would tell myself to follow Shakespeare's axiom to "love all, trust a few, do wrong to none."

Considering, I am a transfer student and I chose to attend a Junior College after my senior year and later transfered to UC Berkeley, I guess my junior year felt like most freshmen feel their first year. I would tell myself that it will be scary being in a completely new environment and being away from home for the first time. However, through time you will learn to love this place and if you can get through this you can get through anything. Also, I would tell myself never to forget why I am going to college in the first place, to better myself and receive a highly recognized education. It will also be a time where you will get pushed mentally but it is to improve yourself, never will you be able to experience so many different ways of thinking and people again. Lastly, be as openminded as you possibly can, you will be surprised what you will discover about yourself and humanity as well. College is like the best rollercoaster you will get on, it will be scary and fun at times, but in the end you will just want to get back on.

The transition into college can be one that is exhilerating and yet frightening. Going to college means that you receive more freedom, opportunities to make new friends, and essentially have the time of your life while you finally get to start working towards your career. Before entering this transition, I wish that I was more prepared for some of the challenges I faced such as leaving your friends, making new friends, and doing well in a competitive school. I think one of the hardest obstacles I faced was having to leave my all friends and make new ones. It was hard to constently be extroverted and open myself to new faces. Not having my normal support from friends was exceptionally hard. On top of everything, school was suprisingly over-competitive. Receiving lower grades was discouraging and overall made the transition process harder. I wish somebody had told me to be prepared to have awkward friendships for a while and expect the new grading to be challenging. You're not the only person who will experience this! Awkward friendships WILL transform into the ones like you had in high school and never be afraid to ask professors and classmates for help!

Hey I know you! You are me from high school, but you most likely believe I am crazy. I know you are adamant about getting into the perfect college for yourself, so I am going to give you a few pointers as an experienced you from the future. Don't ask questions because it will only waste time. I am a student at UC Berkeley. You will need to know a lot of information about this school in order to suceed. Stop worrying about what others, especially your peers, think. It truly does not matter in the least. You need to be self-motivated and driven in order to survive in a town like Berkeley. You will need to come out of your comfort zone and talk to random strangers, who you will find out later are actually Cal students and have a lot of advice for you. You will also need to be completely involved in your school; do not think that you can make visits home all the time because they typically just distract you from school and your extra activities. Well my time here is over and I must go back to the future. Take my advice!

If I could go back in time and talk to myself as a high school senior, I would give all the advice possible from my own experiences during my first semester at UC Berkeley. First of all, I would tell myself the importance of learning to take care of one self in college. No one is telling you when to eat or what to eat. It is up to us to make sure we eat properly and have balanced meals in order to stay healthy and not get sick. I would also tell myself to manage my time better. It is so crucial in college, it is not fun pulling an all-nighter because you delayed writing your 8 page paper, and then not being able to fully function the next day. It is important to allocate your time wisely and not leave everything to last minute. The most important piece of advice I can give myself is that it is alright if you are no longer the best and failing is not the end of the world but a learning experience and as long as you seek out help like tutoring everything will workout for the best.

There is one thing you must do and that is to study as if there was no tomorrow. Studying will be the one and only thing that you must do at college besides eating and sleeeping right. Going to the gym is also essential since the "Freshman 15" is not a myth, by the way, weight lifting is good and all but if you do not run then you will still get a belly. Get involved with as many organizations as possible as long as they pertain to your major or interests, but looking around and trying new things also helps since you might find that you do not love art as much as you do marketing (that is just an example). Also, do not limit yourself to your race get some diversity in your life and who knows you might that certain someone. In addition, take it easy sometimes and take a nap here and there since the night owls on your floor might not allow you to sleep during the night. Overall, if you eat, sleep, exercise and study everything will be fine.

Going back to talk to myself would be a huge advantage. I would firstly tell myself to just read more scholarly articles. Maybe the first semester of college would not have been so difficult if I was more familiar with college-level vocabulary. Plus, reading faster could only be an advantage. I would spend less time reading tediously if I could read a bit faster. I would also remind myself to focus on my work. It is hard to read long, and sometimes repetitively boring articles without drifting off, but it is not impossible! I would tell myself that if I daze out, I would only be prolonging the torture. I will still have to read it all, so I might as well get it done promptly. I would also encourage myself to take more community college classes to broaden my knowledge about different subjects. In high school, I had a lot of free time, which could have been used more resourcefully. I know I had anxiety about college, so the last thing I would tell myself is that I will succeed. It?s easy to succeed if one focuses and tries. Yes, Berkeley is challenging, but not impossible.

I would tell myself not to be nervous about about being on mind and just to stay focus.

Don't worry too much about being alone, there is so much diversity in the people that you meet and they are quite genuine and realistic about life. Balancing your time is very important because you use up your time in a way that allows you to get everything done and you will spend less time worrying about everything and getting stressed out. It also allows you to avoid procrastinating and it definitely draws the lines between the important priorities and the extra-curriculars that are not as prevalent. Do not be afraid to get help with your classes, especially if tutoring is offered or there are review sessions. Attend anything and everything that can help you succeed in your classes! Avoid skipping lectures and make an effort to study with your classmates. Take advantage of what your school has to offer to get the most out of your college. Don't be afraid to try something new just for the experience.

Dear Joanna, I wanted to let you know that you're doing great. You studied hard and though you missed being a valedictorian by a smidge and didn't get the high SAT scores you wanted, don't stress. In college, you're going to have fun and freedom. You're going to learn so much about your chosen career path and yourself everyday. Going to college really is a new beginning. You'll take what you've learned from high school clubs and apply it to college clubs and though there will be differences, you'll gain experience and get to talk to people older and more experienced than you, learning from and becoming friends with them. So don't worry about college because, like everyone told me, college is what you make of it. You are going to love it. Remember to study hard because college is a blessing and opportunity for you to invest in your future. Luckily, networking and making friends is vital to staying happy in college. Granted college is stressful but you'll be surrounded with people just like you to share your problems and your giggles with. Love you and good luck!

Drop everything you've learned about about life and the social norms that come with it in high school; life at Berkeley will not reflect life at a middle-class, suburban high school. Don't be afraid of what seems scary and different, but embrace it as a collection of new opportunities to enrich your knowledge of the world and what you can do to help make it better. Those homeless men begging on the street? Talk to them. Get to know their stories; they're much more like you than you think. Get involved in the homeless clinic; you'll see that your life is intertwined with theirs and it will be much richer if you welcome them into it. Discover your roots and the person you would have been had you lived instead in inner-city Oakland; get involved with the community around you, especially the youth. To summarize, embrace new experiences even if they aren't exactly what you had planned for yourself. You can't predict what college life will be like but you can take action when and where you decide it's necessary -- just follow your heart and instincts.

College is supposed to be "the best time of your life." But what does that mean? To some people, it means the time to party hard and make decisions that you might regret in the morning but are fun in the meantime, the time to shed the chains of parental control that have been holding you down and "live" in the form of public drunkenness and random hook-ups. But that's only what it means to some people. Buried deep, deep inside of you, you know that that's not what "living" means to you. Yes, the freedom to get crunk at frat parties to crappy autotune hip hop does sound fun now, but dig a little deeper and you'll discover what you really find to be fun, and just as important, meaningful--to you. College is a time to discover who you are, not who you thought you were or who your friends want you to be. It is the time to figure out what "living" means to you. Further down the line you'll see that college doesn't change people; rather, it helps them to see who they truly are. Who are you?

Past-me, do not concede or compromise with the pressures outside of yourself. Choose the right school , the one that will give you the education and resources you need and that will take you to where you want to be in the future. The 'you' years from now should be 100{4a082faed443b016e84c6ea63012b481c58f64867aa2dc62fff66e22ad7dff6c} yourself, and not merely the expectations of other people. Don't be afraid to assert yourself in what you want, because if you're not living life for yourself, then you aren't living at all. On a lighter note, you should definitely take into account the environment of the school you're going to attend. If you're not very athletic, don't choose a school that's been built on a system of hills. The environment is a vital factor on how great your enjoyment of the next four years will be, and also affects how you will live your life at your college. Lastly, enjoy college, and don't stay inside playing guitar or video games. Go out and have fun, make lasting friendships, join clubs, participate in fun events, get involved, and I promise you'll have a blast.

CHRISTINDARAVY SAVONG!!! College is hard because you seriously need to be RESPONSIBLE and ORGANIZED. Since I have the chance to talk to you, or me again, I will tell you what I would have done. One, do not be lazy! Remember when I said I was going to volunteer at the hospital, but was too lazy to organize my academic schedule? Yeah, I regret it because now I don't know if I want to be a Physican, or maybe a Pastry Chef. Confused with which path to go? That I am. Basically, I want you to expand your knowledge and experience with different and possible career choices. So go volunteer at different places and be commited and make connections by keeping contact with your supervisors. Also, get a part time job. You are going to work for almost of your life, might as well start now. By having a vigorous academic schedule adjusted to volunteering and a part time job, you will learn how to become a responsible and organized person. Most importantly, you will become a more confident person who trusts your own decisions. I want you, or us to be passionate with our career.

Study hard and don't procrastinate. You may be at the top of the pyramid in high school but at this university you'll be at the bottom. However, there's more to life than your studies. Make time for the things that will last like strong relationships with those around you.

While academics is the most important thing to focus on, widen your gaze. Don't be afraid of the professors, take advantage of the office hours that they specifically set aside for students. The professors are interesting people with experiences that can be relevant to your life and current research programs that can not only suppliment your knowledge in the field, but will make your resume seem all the more appealing. Take advantage of social events, friends you meet in college can be the backbone of your contacts later in life, and can be great partners to share the academic experience with.