why did I go to Berkeley?

[calimac]

The latest issue of the UC Berkeley alumni magazine has an interview with the new chancellor, Rich Lyons, the first campus head to be an alumnus himself in over 60 years. I see he was three years behind me, and he came from the same town I did. It's right by Stanford, so they asked him, in that case "why did you come to Cal?" (Cal is what sports fans call it. Nerds call it Berkeley.)

He said, "An older brother came here, so it was familiar. And I got to come to football games when I was 12 and 13. That was a big part of it."

Neither of those apply to me. I had no older siblings, and my interest in sports is zero. I'd gone through Berkeley on family outings, but had never been on campus until after I applied. Further, I had a personal connection with Stanford: my father had a post as adjunct professor at the medical school, so in high school I had a faculty family library card, which I made use of in writing term papers for history.

Reasons I went to Berkeley instead:

1. It was further away. Stanford was so close I'd feel obliged to come home every weekend. Berkeley, 50 miles away, was close enough that I could but wouldn't feel I had to.
2. It was urban. I'd spent my life out in the suburbs, and thought a period in a congested urban environment would be good for my emotional and practical education. It was, too.
3. It was larger and had a reputation as being more diverse. This meant I was more likely to find a social niche where I could fit in. That worked, too.
4. It had a reputation as being the most intellectually bristling public university in the country. Maybe in faculty, but outside of my niche I found the students to be the same unintellectual clods I'd detested in high school. That was a disappointment.
5. And speaking of being a public university, in those days that meant the tuition was much lower than Stanford's. I liked the idea of giving my parents their money's worth. The more so as I was a little nervous about going to a high-powered place. My high school teachers had warned us of how much more challenging university would be. I did not find it so; classes were never more than I could absorb.

Comments

[cmcmck]

The reason I chose UKC was that it's in Canterbury and I was intending to study early English literature so it just seemed apt and they were also willing to take a punt on an unqualified undergrad.

[sartorias]

My dad informed me I was to go to USC, and as he was paying, I only applied there. I did get a decent education, and parts of the campus were beautiful, but after I graduated and was paying for my own postgrad work, there was a reason I picked UCSB, up there in radical Isla Vista.

[wild_patience]

I went where I did because it was cheap and close to home. The nuns in my high school had higher standards than some of my college professors, or maybe it was just the quality of the students.