The University of California - Berkeley

I applied to only 3 schools when I was in high school: Stanford, Harvard and UC Berkeley, and I don't regret my choice of turning down Harvard and Stanford to attend Berkeley. Berkeley professors are second to none and the quality of education that you can earn from this university is no less than stellar... that is, only if you put yourself to hardwork and make some serious efforts to see your professors during office hours.I have no question about the quality of education that you can get from this school; it's really top-notch, but one thing that I was seriously dissappointed with was the quality of the student body... The Berkeley campus has a good share of "historically/socioeconomically/etc(BS)...disadvantaged" group of students whose academic achievements are far below the school average (their SAT scores are normally in the low 1000s). And we have too many--just far too many--ppl from community colleges... But don't panic; Berkeley has among the highest number of National Merit Scholars in the nation and the entire student body minus the "disadvantaged/transfer" group (let me refer to them as the "bottom 30%" group) is an incredible group of exceptionally intelligent scholars with high school GPAs well over 4.4s and SAT scores in mid to high 1500s range.

2nd Year Male -- Class 2006

Education Quality: A+, Surrounding City: F