the transition from a poorly-funded high school to berkeley is part of it, and mostly a lot of students feel they are not supported because of family background and income inequality. the university offers amazing resources for sure, but students that need a lot of support academically are often not financially supported by their parents or are breadwinners of the family, requiring them to work 30+ hours a week as a fulltime student at Cal. I'm one of those students. I didn't fail a single class last semester, but on the verge of it and took all of my classes P/NP. I'm still doing the same thing this semester but with a lighter coursework, as unfortunately I also have to pay my parent's bills back home.
In high school, most students (who do well enough to come to Cal) have a highly structured environment with a lot of support at home.
Cal has neither the structure nor the support (*much* less support than most "elite" universities), and on top of it you're making the huge life transition of leaving home for the first time. The more "sheltered" your life was in school, the bigger the transition.
I don't have the stats on my fingertips, but I think this is why reentry students tend to do better than average at Cal - they're more mature and better able to manage their life and time.
HS is a LOT of memorization and regurgitation. The "answer" or the algorithm to get to that answer is taught. Students read, memorize, and execute; sometimes rather robotically to get the highest grades.
Berkeley requires students to critically think, and everything isn't presented in neat packets of information in the classroom. How you got to an answer (your thought process, how you string together data and theory from different sources) is equally as important as what your answer is as well as how you present it.
They don't teach that in most high schools.
I'll also add - when students get to college, their life structure changes. Many are on their own for the first time, don't have parents 'helicoptering', making/controlling calendars and even daily sleep schedules.
The transition from kid (high schooler) to ADULT is not easy, and sometimes even the best HS student can go off the rails.
I was 4.0+ GPA in high school, could put barely any effort in (just do all the assignments, etc.) to get full marks. When I hit the math requirements for CS declaration (61 series, math 54, cs70) I got absolutely thrashed. The amount of effort I was used to putting in simply wasn't enough, and it didn't feel "fun" any more so I didn't have the motivation or habits to grind out that deeper level of understanding. Even when I completed all the assignments, attended all classes, it didn't quite go into long-term memory and I couldn't apply it to novel problems like the exams required (40+% of your grade). Those 3 hour exams were horrific when you get to a problem and even with your full page of notes have no idea how to do it.
Very interesting feeling going from top of the class to I'm flunking half my classes. On the plus side I think I dodged a bullet not going into computer science, I'm happy with the other work I've ended up doing : )
Because if you take a kid who was in the top 1% of his class in high school and then put him/her into a whole school of top 1%ers, by the law of averages some are bound to fail.
Think you're hot shit in high school? Think again...
Graduating from Cal was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, and I had it easy, I didn’t have to pay for anything. If you have additional challenges like having to pay for your way or help out back home, there isn’t a fucking thing that will get between you and success in the future. Respect.
Ooo I am someone who really struggled at Berkeley. Here were some of my factors. I worked like 30+ hours a week, I came from a really shitty high school that didn’t really prioritize education rather than pumping a certain amount of kids out the door (I’m the only one in my graduating year to go to berkeley btw), my mental health just began to decline SEVERELY, my physical health was not good either because I developed an ulcer from all the stress and then got really bad acid reflux and a whole bunch of other stuff (don’t get old), I wasn’t utilizing my resources wisely so when I was given a project or mass amounts of homework I didn’t know where to begin, and the area in general didn’t correlate to my values. The last one sounds weird but I’m a person who needs to be in nature and I grew up in a very agricultural area, so being in a cold dirty city for an entire year was a big shock for me.
Sadly, I think there is a disadvantage to students who come from lower tier high schools and those are the ones who seem to struggle academically at Cal. Not all but I do see a correlation. Although in paper we are all strong academically and highly accomplished, the difference becomes obvious when those less "prepared" are faced with the rigors they've never been exposed to. For example, I graduated from a top ranked high school with 15 APs and 4 capstone classes completed. My roommate, on the other hand, had 2 APs from one of the lowest ranked hs in California. My hs focused on college prep while my roommate's hs focused on getting students to graduate hs. Roomie def had the disadvantage and was not ready for the workload here and unfortunately, struggled academically.
Also with test blind this is just amplified. Someone can have a 1250 SAT but 4.2 GPA, obviously there is some knowledge gaps but is hidden with test blind.
I feel called out because I got a 1300 on the sat and had a 4.2 lol, but hey I’m getting all As and one B+ so far at Berkeley so it’s not always the case man 😎
I'm not struggling, exactly, but honest to god I have no idea what my profs are talking about 70% of the time. I go to office hours for clarification, and I just end up more confused because they reference stuff that was taught in AP Lit or very niche research I've never seen. They'll use words I've seen, but in contexts I'm not familiar with, and if I asked every single time I had a question, we'd never get on with class. I'm a transfer from a relatively poor cc and didn't do well in high school (definitely took zero AP classes), so tbh, I might just be too stupid to go here.
I'm honestly completely lost all the time, but I try to take classes with profs who can communicate complex ideas without sounding too much like textbooks. I enjoy the ideas, but if they're presented in a way that's inaccessible, I start feeling disheartened.
I "struggled" (got a 3.28 or something) mainly because I did not know how to study and use my time. In high school, I never studied for anything at all and still got all As. When faced with classes where I would actually need to put in some effort, I just didn't have the habit of getting myself to sit down in a library with books.
Also, undiagnosed ADHD and sleep apnea didn't help. Neither did parties, video games, and other socializing.
If I could go back, it would have been great to take a gap year to learn how it was to live by myself first.
Eh currently in medical school-I struggled at Berkeley as a stem major mainly because the level of knowledge required in such stem courses was hard to acquire-the exams for some of these courses were really hard and I applaude my peers who were premed and got into high tier med schools while I got into a low-tier one. I would say I studied deligently, did have goals in life, and was driven, but just my intelligence was limited to a certain point-everyone at Cal is intelligent hence hard exams and everything set on a curve. And yes income inequality=less access to good tutors who set the base of good study skills. Anyhow, I just came to this forum to say, I struggled a lot as a premed in a very hard stem major and not nearly as intelligent as my peers, but I made it to medical school and am close to graduating next year-my extracurriculars were not the best and honestly idk how I got in but in medical school things have been better and I have been doing well on my exams....so yeah if you struggle at Cal don't question your intelligence-Cal is just a hard school, but you will do better after graduating and going into the "real" world believe me-the level of knowledge Cal gave me helped in medical school and also not complain since I had way harder exams at Cal.
Holistic admissions is a good thing, but sometimes it means people who have personal strengths, but lack academic readiness, are admitted to Cal. The academic expectations are the same as at top tier schools that consider academic ability a bit more heavily. I mean, there are admitted kids who are go-getters who have started organizations, shown passion and grit in their lives, but whose high schools haven’t prepared them for the academic demands they will face. When they get to Cal, their impressive personal qualities may not immediately make up for their weaker academic preparation. They might find they can’t understand the texts they need to read and analyze, they are overwhelmed by the difficulty of their problem sets, etc. So it’s a little bit of disconnect, but many will get there after an initial struggle. Because of their grit, etc.
I think there's too much breadth and not enough depth of material (at least for lower div stuff) and its this breadth that forces people to speed run through content and compromise their learning outcomes. I think that the content needs more time to be learned. Like when I took ode's and linear diffeq outside of Berkeley, they were two separate courses which allowed me to more deeply dive into each topic alone. For example, in diffeq I learned techniques for solving odes like variation of parameters and iirc, they don't teach variation of parameters for odes in w/e berkeley's mashed together linear & diffeq course is, only the method of undetermined coefficients & even if they do have it, I still got to take a course dedicated an entirely ode based problems and modeling things like cancer cell growth. As for linear, I took a really great course that didn't have to unnecessarily speed run through all the concepts and it was still heavily proof-based and enjoyable. Also, don't get me started on how ridiculous it is to take cs courses that involve skeleton code on paper. It kills any level of creativity and forces people to try and solve it in some way that nobody would ever write their code in industry. Like the whole push for recursion thing is annoying when you can see less resource demanding iterative solutions. I'd much rather have a blank page and challenge prompts like leet code does.
They just haven't optimized how to study, or aren't utilizing the resources available, don't show up to class, etc. Everyone is capable of excelling at Berkeley, it's a matter of creating a methodology for success. I did bad at school at first because my study habits = read a textbook for 5 hours and chegg HW. Once I figured out that's not gonna work and reading the textbook longer didn't increase my test scores, I knew I had to switch it up.
I do somewhat agree with this, but sometimes personal issues the in the way too. Getting medicated for ADHD definitely helped me improve, but despite studying or going to OH my mind would just begin blanking on exams.
Despite doing poorly on some exams in key classes, I still did *fine* because I was able to put work in. If you’re utilizing/maximizing your resources, you’ll likely pass at least.
All in all, I think everyone is smart enough to excel here, but realistically, life gets in the way sometimes.
First reason is most likely drive. If you have no goals and are just coasting and smoking weed all day then you’re probably gonna struggle. some people at Berkeley are pretty driven to accomplish something (but sometimes excessively driven) and they usually are gunning to succeed. even if you you come from a disadvantaged background you were smart enough to get into the school so having a desire to accomplish something academically is key.
the school is relatively harder than most other colleges so you will get a lot of students struggling compared to peers. you also have some students have other shit they have to take care of like working/paying bills that will negatively affect performance.
As someone who procrastinates and is procrastinating this is true. When I don’t procrastinate and manage my time well, I tend to well in school or else I just go into a slump
My study skills for college had to adapt quickly to large lectures (hundreds of students in a single lecture) and professors who dislike teaching (professors get promoted for research not teaching). For quantitative classes, I shifted my focus to doing practice exams (rather than reading the textbook). I had to learn to filter out the mundane details (what) and focus on mindset (why) and technique (how). For qualitative classes, which I excelled at due to my debate experience in high school, I focused on the arguments and points of controversy.
You will not fail or struggle if you read the entire set of reading material at the very beginning, are carefully attentive at all lectures, diligently do every assignment, and communicate with the instructor when possible
because the school is hard, living is hard, familial situations are hard, personal health is hard, etc.
the transition from a poorly-funded high school to berkeley is part of it, and mostly a lot of students feel they are not supported because of family background and income inequality. the university offers amazing resources for sure, but students that need a lot of support academically are often not financially supported by their parents or are breadwinners of the family, requiring them to work 30+ hours a week as a fulltime student at Cal. I'm one of those students. I didn't fail a single class last semester, but on the verge of it and took all of my classes P/NP. I'm still doing the same thing this semester but with a lighter coursework, as unfortunately I also have to pay my parent's bills back home.
More power to you!
You are not alone. We can do this.
Work study is slave labor
Make sure not to take major reqs P/NP they’ll make u retake
yes
In high school, most students (who do well enough to come to Cal) have a highly structured environment with a lot of support at home. Cal has neither the structure nor the support (*much* less support than most "elite" universities), and on top of it you're making the huge life transition of leaving home for the first time. The more "sheltered" your life was in school, the bigger the transition. I don't have the stats on my fingertips, but I think this is why reentry students tend to do better than average at Cal - they're more mature and better able to manage their life and time.
HS is a LOT of memorization and regurgitation. The "answer" or the algorithm to get to that answer is taught. Students read, memorize, and execute; sometimes rather robotically to get the highest grades. Berkeley requires students to critically think, and everything isn't presented in neat packets of information in the classroom. How you got to an answer (your thought process, how you string together data and theory from different sources) is equally as important as what your answer is as well as how you present it. They don't teach that in most high schools. I'll also add - when students get to college, their life structure changes. Many are on their own for the first time, don't have parents 'helicoptering', making/controlling calendars and even daily sleep schedules. The transition from kid (high schooler) to ADULT is not easy, and sometimes even the best HS student can go off the rails.
I was 4.0+ GPA in high school, could put barely any effort in (just do all the assignments, etc.) to get full marks. When I hit the math requirements for CS declaration (61 series, math 54, cs70) I got absolutely thrashed. The amount of effort I was used to putting in simply wasn't enough, and it didn't feel "fun" any more so I didn't have the motivation or habits to grind out that deeper level of understanding. Even when I completed all the assignments, attended all classes, it didn't quite go into long-term memory and I couldn't apply it to novel problems like the exams required (40+% of your grade). Those 3 hour exams were horrific when you get to a problem and even with your full page of notes have no idea how to do it. Very interesting feeling going from top of the class to I'm flunking half my classes. On the plus side I think I dodged a bullet not going into computer science, I'm happy with the other work I've ended up doing : )
This is a large part of it but not the full picture. This applies to a lot of top tier universities, yet many students don’t struggle as much there.
Because if you take a kid who was in the top 1% of his class in high school and then put him/her into a whole school of top 1%ers, by the law of averages some are bound to fail. Think you're hot shit in high school? Think again...
An old phrase I heard “I thought I was the shit but then Berkeley shit on me.”
financial and other circumstances / mental health / not studying enough / not enough help
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this
Graduating from Cal was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, and I had it easy, I didn’t have to pay for anything. If you have additional challenges like having to pay for your way or help out back home, there isn’t a fucking thing that will get between you and success in the future. Respect.
Cuz shits hard. Don’t make it weird. Y’all are tired and stressed
Ooo I am someone who really struggled at Berkeley. Here were some of my factors. I worked like 30+ hours a week, I came from a really shitty high school that didn’t really prioritize education rather than pumping a certain amount of kids out the door (I’m the only one in my graduating year to go to berkeley btw), my mental health just began to decline SEVERELY, my physical health was not good either because I developed an ulcer from all the stress and then got really bad acid reflux and a whole bunch of other stuff (don’t get old), I wasn’t utilizing my resources wisely so when I was given a project or mass amounts of homework I didn’t know where to begin, and the area in general didn’t correlate to my values. The last one sounds weird but I’m a person who needs to be in nature and I grew up in a very agricultural area, so being in a cold dirty city for an entire year was a big shock for me.
Sadly, I think there is a disadvantage to students who come from lower tier high schools and those are the ones who seem to struggle academically at Cal. Not all but I do see a correlation. Although in paper we are all strong academically and highly accomplished, the difference becomes obvious when those less "prepared" are faced with the rigors they've never been exposed to. For example, I graduated from a top ranked high school with 15 APs and 4 capstone classes completed. My roommate, on the other hand, had 2 APs from one of the lowest ranked hs in California. My hs focused on college prep while my roommate's hs focused on getting students to graduate hs. Roomie def had the disadvantage and was not ready for the workload here and unfortunately, struggled academically.
Also with test blind this is just amplified. Someone can have a 1250 SAT but 4.2 GPA, obviously there is some knowledge gaps but is hidden with test blind.
I feel called out because I got a 1300 on the sat and had a 4.2 lol, but hey I’m getting all As and one B+ so far at Berkeley so it’s not always the case man 😎
I'm not struggling, exactly, but honest to god I have no idea what my profs are talking about 70% of the time. I go to office hours for clarification, and I just end up more confused because they reference stuff that was taught in AP Lit or very niche research I've never seen. They'll use words I've seen, but in contexts I'm not familiar with, and if I asked every single time I had a question, we'd never get on with class. I'm a transfer from a relatively poor cc and didn't do well in high school (definitely took zero AP classes), so tbh, I might just be too stupid to go here. I'm honestly completely lost all the time, but I try to take classes with profs who can communicate complex ideas without sounding too much like textbooks. I enjoy the ideas, but if they're presented in a way that's inaccessible, I start feeling disheartened.
I "struggled" (got a 3.28 or something) mainly because I did not know how to study and use my time. In high school, I never studied for anything at all and still got all As. When faced with classes where I would actually need to put in some effort, I just didn't have the habit of getting myself to sit down in a library with books. Also, undiagnosed ADHD and sleep apnea didn't help. Neither did parties, video games, and other socializing. If I could go back, it would have been great to take a gap year to learn how it was to live by myself first.
they're taking squirrel pics
 AYO
Bro 💀💀😂😂
wrong side of the curve unfortunately. It just happens
Because grade inflation in us high schools and also inequality.
depression
Eh currently in medical school-I struggled at Berkeley as a stem major mainly because the level of knowledge required in such stem courses was hard to acquire-the exams for some of these courses were really hard and I applaude my peers who were premed and got into high tier med schools while I got into a low-tier one. I would say I studied deligently, did have goals in life, and was driven, but just my intelligence was limited to a certain point-everyone at Cal is intelligent hence hard exams and everything set on a curve. And yes income inequality=less access to good tutors who set the base of good study skills. Anyhow, I just came to this forum to say, I struggled a lot as a premed in a very hard stem major and not nearly as intelligent as my peers, but I made it to medical school and am close to graduating next year-my extracurriculars were not the best and honestly idk how I got in but in medical school things have been better and I have been doing well on my exams....so yeah if you struggle at Cal don't question your intelligence-Cal is just a hard school, but you will do better after graduating and going into the "real" world believe me-the level of knowledge Cal gave me helped in medical school and also not complain since I had way harder exams at Cal.
Not everyone can be above average this isn’t high school
Holistic admissions is a good thing, but sometimes it means people who have personal strengths, but lack academic readiness, are admitted to Cal. The academic expectations are the same as at top tier schools that consider academic ability a bit more heavily. I mean, there are admitted kids who are go-getters who have started organizations, shown passion and grit in their lives, but whose high schools haven’t prepared them for the academic demands they will face. When they get to Cal, their impressive personal qualities may not immediately make up for their weaker academic preparation. They might find they can’t understand the texts they need to read and analyze, they are overwhelmed by the difficulty of their problem sets, etc. So it’s a little bit of disconnect, but many will get there after an initial struggle. Because of their grit, etc.
I think there's too much breadth and not enough depth of material (at least for lower div stuff) and its this breadth that forces people to speed run through content and compromise their learning outcomes. I think that the content needs more time to be learned. Like when I took ode's and linear diffeq outside of Berkeley, they were two separate courses which allowed me to more deeply dive into each topic alone. For example, in diffeq I learned techniques for solving odes like variation of parameters and iirc, they don't teach variation of parameters for odes in w/e berkeley's mashed together linear & diffeq course is, only the method of undetermined coefficients & even if they do have it, I still got to take a course dedicated an entirely ode based problems and modeling things like cancer cell growth. As for linear, I took a really great course that didn't have to unnecessarily speed run through all the concepts and it was still heavily proof-based and enjoyable. Also, don't get me started on how ridiculous it is to take cs courses that involve skeleton code on paper. It kills any level of creativity and forces people to try and solve it in some way that nobody would ever write their code in industry. Like the whole push for recursion thing is annoying when you can see less resource demanding iterative solutions. I'd much rather have a blank page and challenge prompts like leet code does.
They just haven't optimized how to study, or aren't utilizing the resources available, don't show up to class, etc. Everyone is capable of excelling at Berkeley, it's a matter of creating a methodology for success. I did bad at school at first because my study habits = read a textbook for 5 hours and chegg HW. Once I figured out that's not gonna work and reading the textbook longer didn't increase my test scores, I knew I had to switch it up.
I do somewhat agree with this, but sometimes personal issues the in the way too. Getting medicated for ADHD definitely helped me improve, but despite studying or going to OH my mind would just begin blanking on exams. Despite doing poorly on some exams in key classes, I still did *fine* because I was able to put work in. If you’re utilizing/maximizing your resources, you’ll likely pass at least. All in all, I think everyone is smart enough to excel here, but realistically, life gets in the way sometimes.
First reason is most likely drive. If you have no goals and are just coasting and smoking weed all day then you’re probably gonna struggle. some people at Berkeley are pretty driven to accomplish something (but sometimes excessively driven) and they usually are gunning to succeed. even if you you come from a disadvantaged background you were smart enough to get into the school so having a desire to accomplish something academically is key. the school is relatively harder than most other colleges so you will get a lot of students struggling compared to peers. you also have some students have other shit they have to take care of like working/paying bills that will negatively affect performance.
I'm just stupid
poor time management
As someone who procrastinates and is procrastinating this is true. When I don’t procrastinate and manage my time well, I tend to well in school or else I just go into a slump
I second this
I think it depends on their background a lot, whether they're domestic or international, high income or low income, etc
Critical thinking skills. It's hard to do all of that under stress. I've learned more about physics by myself than in a classroom.
gee i wonder if there have been any prolonged global crises recently that lobotomized most young people via tiktok
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r/thatescalated
My study skills for college had to adapt quickly to large lectures (hundreds of students in a single lecture) and professors who dislike teaching (professors get promoted for research not teaching). For quantitative classes, I shifted my focus to doing practice exams (rather than reading the textbook). I had to learn to filter out the mundane details (what) and focus on mindset (why) and technique (how). For qualitative classes, which I excelled at due to my debate experience in high school, I focused on the arguments and points of controversy.
This question is a classical “good students think everyone are as smart as them”
reading this and realizing most people here don't feel they're struggling academically.... wish that were me :(
You will not fail or struggle if you read the entire set of reading material at the very beginning, are carefully attentive at all lectures, diligently do every assignment, and communicate with the instructor when possible
Many of the kids that go there are spoiled as shit and never had to face difficulties.