Important Links:

• Kresge Engineering Library
• Engineering Library Services
• Study Room Reservations
• Library Workshops
• Research Help
• Library Catalog

LAURA VOGT: Hi! My name is Laura Vogt and I’m the Communications and Events Manager for Engineering Student Services and the host of your podcast The (Not So) Secret Guide to Being a Berkeley Engineer and this semester I want to focus on some of the resources that we have that you might not have started using last semester but we definitely want to make sure that you’re not forgetting about them. As we get into your second semester of your first year or even if you’re a continuing student making sure that you know about all of our resources and today we’ve got Lisa Ngo from the Kresge Engineering Library which is our engineering library. Lisa tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do for the University.

LISA NGO: Sure, thanks for having me. My name’s Lisa and I’m one of the Engineering Librarians at the Kresge Engineering Library. We have two other engineering librarians one of whom is named Anna Sackmann and the other one is Brian Quigley.

LV: Can you give us just an overall view of the engineering library and what it does for our students?

LN: The engineering library is the primary library that serves the kind of research and instruction needs for the College of Engineering. Most of the students that come to the engineering library are engineering students but we also get a variety of other students and we have books and services.

LV: We’re going to talk a little bit about that. How do students use the library? Is there anything special that they have to do or a library card that they need?

LN: No your Cal 1 ID card is your library card and then you can use your Cal 1 ID and passphrase to get logged into all of our online resources.

LV: Let’s talk a little bit about those online resources. What do you have that students are able to get online?

LN: We have, I can’t even count them. We have thousands and thousands and thousands of e-books. So you know you can access these books 24/7, anytime, anywhere you are. We also have things that you might not expect that the library would have. So we have streaming video, streaming documentaries, streaming music, and then we also have lots of textbooks that you can check out. We try to purchase all the textbooks, for all of the classes, so that we have them available. If students don’t want to buy them.

LV: Oh that’s a really nice service to be able to do. I know those textbooks can get expensive.

LN: Yes, they can.

LV: If a student wants to go into the library, what are they getting if they go to that actual physical space of the library?

LN: We’re one of the most popular libraries on campus and one of the reasons for that is we have five study rooms that are reserved. You can reserve them using the reservation system on the engineering library’s website. Each room comes with a screen that you can plug in your laptop to and a whiteboard. And they’re really popular for students to do group work. Students come in and do interviews there. They do webinars. So they are really, really popular rooms. We also have some drop-in rooms if you don’t have the foresight to reserve a room or if you can’t get a reservation because they’re so popular. And then we also have some board games. If you’re just kind of killing time in between classes and you need to take your mind off things. And we also have a nap pods. So if you’re really tired and you need to just get a nap in between classes or because your roommates are being too loud the night before. We’ve got for nap pods that are in a very quiet area in the library for you to take advantage of.

LV: The study rooms that you have for a reserve, about how many students fit in there?

LN: There three or four of them probably fit up to about 10 students and then we have one that’s a little bit bigger that fits about 15 or so.

LV: That should definitely take care of any of your group work means or anything like that that you need to do.

LN: Yes definitely.

LV: You’ve also got tons of tables and stuff to just hang out in there and have a quiet space to study in general.

LN: I can’t say that we’re the quietest library on campus. Students do you really love working together in groups. But we do have some quiet areas with individual study areas, so if you needed a quieter area to study, you usually can find something in the library, but generally we are a little bit louder.

LV: What if you didn’t need necessarily a book? Do you have other lending programs of non-book items that students could get?

LN: Yes. So in addition to the books, e-books, and textbooks – our really popular programs are the laptop lendings. You can borrow a MacBook that runs either Windows or the Apple operating system and then we also have presentation kits, we have chargers for your cell phones. We lend out calculators and starting this semester we’re going to start lending out noise canceling headphones, so that if you really need a quiet space you can kind of get that and while you’re still in the library.

LV: Do you know about how long those lending terms usually are?

LN: They vary. Laptops go out usually for about four hours but it depends on where you’re checking out the laptop from and then everything else kind of varies depending on what you’re checking out. I should also add that you can check any of those in the library catalog it’s called OSKICat and oskicat.berkeley.edu or you can get to it from the library’s website. You can look up all of those devices and it gives you the checkout lending times for how long you can have an item.

LV: I’ll make sure that I have all the links on our welcomengineer.berkeley.edu site as well. So if you’re finding us through that website, you’re going to find all of these links there for you. What do you hear student stories about what they like about the library?

LN: The students always tell us they love being able to to come to a space where everybody is welcome. Anybody can come in. You don’t need to show an I.D. to get into our library and you know mostly they run into their other students. So it’s just kind of a a place for them to meet up with people to see classmates but then also to kind of study quietly if they just need a space to themselves.

LV: I know you have some really good hours that you’re available. There is a lot of time for these students to come in. Can you tell me a little bit more about your hours?

LN: We are open until midnight most days of the week and then over the weekends our hours are shortened a little bit. And so that really actually compliments the hours of the rest of the libraries on campus pretty well. Moffett library on campus is the one that’s open the longest they’re open 24 hours a day, five days a week, and then we are open like until 9pm for most weekends. During finals, we’re open even longer, so students can stay for a little bit longer during finals. Because those hours kind of vary a little bit, we always recommend that people check our website beforehand, so that they can see what the hours are going to be for the day that they want to come.

LV: In order to have those hours I know that you probably have a lot of student workers.

LN: Yes, the library is one of the biggest employers of students on campus, and so we hire a lot of student workers. We love having our students come work for us too. So if you’re interested in working for the library you can stop by either Engineering or Doe library and we have a board that we have library jobs posted and you can check out which ones you might be interested in.

LV: Do you know if students have to be work study in order to get those jobs?

LN: Most of them do but there are definitely also positions that require special skills that where work study is exempt. So just check the job board and see and it’s not just for the engineering library. You can work at any of the libraries on campus interested.

LV: You have a pretty good, I assume, a pretty good working relationship with all the other libraries on campus like you’re all kind of one big family.

LN: Yeah. We have we have a huge library system. We have 20 plus subject libraries that are around campus and the library provides so much more than just books and e-books. So you can go to an Environmental Design Library and learn about artists books. If you’re preparing for an interview you can go to the Business Library and get all the information about companies and industries and then really get to know the company that you’re trying to apply for and who their competitors are. If you want to learn more about the state of California, the history, we have really rich archives at the Bancroft Library. If you want to see these amazing maps that we have, routes from around the world, different kinds of maps – the Earth Sciences has a maps library that is amazing. So there’s just there’s so much to explore in the library system outside of your engineering world to learn and to bring that knowledge back into your life and  into your studies. It’s really fantastic. It’s a great resource.

LV: What if a student just has questions about trying to figure out where to find things or what’s the best way for them to get this information that they need? How do they do that in the library? What’s the best way for them to get help?

LN: They can always come and see me. That’s my job. That’s what I’m here for. I’m totally here to help you out with whatever you need and to try to help you find your way or to find the resources that you might need for whatever topic you’re trying to do research on. I’m here as well as the other librarians, Anna Sackman and Brian Quigley. We’re usually here Monday through Friday. Just stop by the office and we’re always happy to just chat and say hi.

LV: We’ve got some new students that haven’t been to the library yet. Do you have an easy way for them to try to find you?

LN: We are on the first floor of Bechtel Engineering Center. We did used to have a lot of problems with people finding where the library was, but we actually have a big sandwich board outside our engineering library. Just look for the Green board on the first floor of the Bechtel Engineering Center.

LV: There are some doors that you have to go through and then there’s this awesome spiral sculpture right outside of it. If you know where 230 Bechtel is for Engineering Student Services…

LN: We’re right downstairs from 230. Exactly.

LV: Is there anything else you wanted to tell us about the library that we missed today or something that you want to share that you think makes it this really important resource that we have on site on campus?

LN: I just wanted to say that the library is so much more than just the engineering library. The University library has the big Doe, Moffitt complex but then we also have more than 20 subject libraries spread all around campus. Each library has its own character, its own flavor and it’s kind of a fun scavenger hunt if you want to go and find all the different libraries on campus and visit them all. And then in addition to that you think of the library as not just your second home away from your dorm because we’re so welcoming, but also we’re not just there for your classroom or your textbook. We’re there to help you kind of learn about anything that you might want to learn about even outside of your subject area. So you can go to the East Asian library and kind of get different language texts. The libraries just have so many different collections. The Bancroft has archives. It’s really you know each library is really different. And I really encourage you to go check all of them out.

LV: One of the things I just learned about that I didn’t know is you could do is check out artwork.

LN: Yes, there’s a graphic arts loan collection inside Doe. You can browse their collection online.

You can check out artwork for your dorm or your apartment. You get it all semester and they’ve got some really, really great works in there that is such a great way to like spruce up your dorm room or your apartment for a short period of time.

LV: You can check out different styles.

LN: Yeah. Or if you’re just trying to impress a date for a week you can show you have taste.

LV: Well thank you so much for coming in today I really appreciate you coming in and sharing this awesome resource that we have for students.

LN: Yeah. And you know please come by the Library say Hi we’re always always happy to chat.

LV: Well thank you Lisa so much for coming in today and talking about the library and thank you everyone for tuning in to The (Not So) Secret Guide to Being a Berkeley Engineer.

Important Links:

• Handshake: all Berkeley students automatically have an account
• CareerMail Newsletter– Opt-in through Handshake: Click on name, click on career interests, click on which CareerMail you would like to sign up for – doesn’t have to be a specific major, you can choose any CareerMail you are interested in.
• Check for Career Center appointments on Handshake. They are only released two weeks in advance.
• Big Interview
• Berkeley Career Network
• Engineering Student Services Newsletter Archive

LAURA VOGT: Hello and welcome to The (Not So) Secret Guide to Being a Berkeley Engineer. My name is Laura Vogt, I’m the Communications and Events Manager for Engineering Student Services and I’m doing this series the beginning of the semester on College of Engineering resources for undergraduate students. Now that you’ve been here for one semester as a new student or if you’re even if you’re in your second, third, or fourth year, there might be some resources that you have yet to try or even might not realize that they’re available. And this week we’re talking with Katie Crawford from the Career Center and finding out what resources are available this spring. Katie can you please re-introduce yourself to our podcast listeners.

KATIE CRAWFORD: Sure. My name is Katie Crawford. I am the Assistant Director for Engineering and Physical Sciences in the Cal Career Center. So that means that I manage our team of counselors who are responsible for providing career services to all students in the College of Engineering.

LV: Excellent. Thank you so much for joining us today. I know you’ve done this a couple of times now and it’s always great information for our students.

KC: Yeah excited to be here. Feeling like a seasoned pro.

LV: Let’s start with just kind of an overview of what is the Career Center.

KC: The Career Center is the only place on campus, the only department that is 100 percent dedicated to helping students figure out what they want to do when they graduate. And then we help them step by step, get to that place. So we provide one on one counseling services for students who have questions, from I’m not sure what I’m going to major in or I know what I want to major in but I’m not sure what I can do with that. We help students create a plan and then we help you execute it. So those are the whole gamut of coaching services. Ready made critiques cover letter critiques, interview coaching, just simple job search; one to one we help you create a plan so that you will be successful no matter when you see us. Some students will see us the first day of the freshman year and some students won’t see us until after graduation. That second part is not ideal. That’s why I’m excited to be here today.

LV: And I know throughout the semester we’ve got a lot of Career Center events that you work with Engineering Student Services on and then you also have ones that are just based out of the Career Center. What exciting events do we have coming up that we might want to tell students about?

KC: Yeah, as we speak today, we have our first annual STEM career fair going on. We have our Winter Internship and Job Fair coming up on February 20th starting at noon at the RSS. That is a great opportunity for students to sort of one-stop shop. Make their way to RSS and have the opportunity to see over 100 companies in one day. Now obviously that’s not realistic but many companies that our engineering students are interested in will be at that fair. We have our semi-annual engineering speed resumé critique, so we’ll have employers coming in providing students with resumes critiques here and Garbarini Lounge in the Bechtel Engineering Center. Aside from that, we actually have a whole gamut of events for students that are career focused. And again, we’re the only department that provides only career services for students who are wanting to figure out what they want to do in the future or are focusing on their careers. Students can find all of those events inside Handshake. So you’re probably going to hear me say the word Handshake another six thousand times during this podcast.

LV: What’s the actual website address for a Handshake?

KC:  It is berkeley.joinhandshake.com.

LV: Do you have to do anything special to sign up for it as a Berkeley student?

KC: All Berkeley students automatically have a account on Handshake. So we pulled our information from the steward information system. All they have to do is go and log in to Handshake and they’ll be prompted to answer some questions to help Handshake understand their needs better and fill out a profile, kind of like LinkedIn. And once they do that, they’ll have access to all the jobs and internships that any employer who’s seeking a Berkeley student wants to make available to Berkeley students. So at any given time we have over 10,000 jobs and internships available specifically for Berkeley students within that system. It’s also where we house all of our events and workshops and career fairs and students can sign up for those inside Handshake as well.

LV: I know you also have CareerMail that you send out but people have to sign up for it.

KC: I’m so glad you asked. Yes. So my name regularly pops up in engineering students inboxes. I like to apologize for spamming but it’s not spam. It’s all career related information that we find important. So I send a weekly newsletter from the Career Center. It’s called CareerMail and it’s all events, workshops, panels, and career related opportunities that happen both at the Career Center and around campus and even off campus. I curate that newsletter, send it once a week and students have to opt into it, it’s not automatically sent to engineering students. They can go into Handshake, click on their name, click on career interests and right there, they’ll be able to answer a question that asks what CareerMail they would they would like to sign up for. There’s something like twelve different options based on the industries that students are interested in so they can sign up for the engineering career mail. They can also sign up for things like the social impact career mail or the business related career mail. You don’t have to be a specific major to sign up for those but they’re just meant to help sort of curate a list of opportunities for students because we know on Berkeley’s campus, at any given time, there are hundreds of opportunities for students to take advantage of and it can be overwhelming. So we try to curate ones that are just specifically for engineering interested students.

LV: I’ll put those directions onto our welcomengineer.berkeley.edu podcast site. It will be easy to find. I know we’ve got a lot of students that are getting ready to graduate this semester. Do you have any tips for what those graduate students could do if they’re still looking for a dream job?

KC: Yes absolutely! Like I said, I meet with students one-on-one in addition to planning and facilitating all of the career related events for engineering students. So I meet with students all the time every single day who are graduating in May and are still job searching. So first of all take advantage of the Career Centers resources if you haven’t already. I met a student at an event two days ago who fully admitted he didn’t even know there was a Career Center on campus. He was a freshman, that’s fine, but now he knows. So take advantage of the Career Center resources step one definitely make sure you’re taking advantage of all the resources within Handshake meet with a career counselor if you can. There are many ways to make an appointment with a career counselor and if you’re not able to make an appointment, if there are no appointments available because there there’s only one of me right now. My best advice is to check back early and often on Handshake. We only put appointments out two weeks in advance. They populate throughout the week and I release most of them at 9 a.m. so you can check appointments at 9:00 a.m. Monday through Friday and hopefully snag one that we do have. A couple new resources that are available through the Career Center which I find really exciting especially for engineering students. One is called Big Interview and all of these resources can be found on the Career Center’s website and I’m happy to give them to you if you want to put them on the site as well. Big Interview is a brand new resource for students who are interested in learning more about how to interview. There’s a resume curriculum, a cover letter video curriculum and it actually allows students to do mock interviews, so they can interview online virtually. The questions are curated based on industry and job and then they can either play them back for themselves or they can send it to their advisors or to anyone who wants to give them some feedback. It’s a pretty cool resource and it’s brand spanking new. So we’re pretty excited to be launching that. And then the other piece of advice to graduating seniors is don’t rely on just submitting your resume online.

LV: Is there something specific they should be doing rather than just a submitting a resume?

KC: Yes. So you know it’s 2019. Gone are the days when you can just create a resume a press submit and cross your fingers and hope for the best. And that is because applying online has gotten really easy. So the recruiters we work with are encountering this issue. Two days ago a recruiter at Data Bricks told me that at any given time there are over a thousand resumes on her desk And by on her desk I mean her virtual desk.

LV: But how do you sort through those?

KC:  Exactly, the problem is you don’t. They rely on an applicant tracking system which is like an A.I. that does its best to pass through resumés and find keywords and phrases to guess how qualified a student is. That’s why tailoring a resume to the position description is absolutely 100% crucial. But then once that applicant tracking system has filtered in the best candidates then a recruiter will look at that resume for maybe 10 to 20 seconds. So because of that a lot of resumes could fall through the cracks. What we are encouraging students to do, is do things like take advantage of face time at a career fair and take advantage of info sessions that are happening on campus. Any opportunity that you have to get in front of a human and let that human know you and market yourself about what makes you special and unique. What your skill set is and then follow up with that person and what will happen is that recruiter or that alumni that you’re working with can help the referral process, so that you can sort of move up the pack of resumes and not fall through the cracks. So it’s the networking, where I hate the word networking, I know it’s got a lot of weird connotations with it but we really encourage students to start making connections now through those events on campus as well as LinkedIn and Handshake now has a networking feature and we now have the Berklee Career Network which is a brand new alumni student networking platform.

LV: Would you suggest to the student to try to find a mentor in the specific industry that they’re interested in? Do you think that would help at all?

KC: Laura you’re asking all the right questions. Yes. So if the question is about mentorship that’s a big piece of the puzzle that the Career Center has recently in the last couple of years really dialed in on because we’re seeing students come back in and when they fill out their destination survey they’re telling us in unprecedented numbers that they’re finding their first job or their first internship through a networking connection, through a mentor that they made through just going in and talking to students who’ve recently graduated and are now working in that dream job. That dream industry or that company. So no matter who’s listening right now if you’re a first year student or if this is your last semester it’s never too late to seek out a mentor. Somebody who can help guide you through a process that they’ve already been through and give advice along the way. So we actually have alumni who every day are sort of beating down our doors trying to figure out how they can get connected with students and support them because they’ve been in student’s shoes. They put their blood sweat and tears into these engineering degrees here and now they’re successful and they want to give back. They want to teach students how they can also find that kind of success. If you’re wondering how you can just find a mentor. We used to have to say you know there’s no magic button you can just press and say I need a mentor. But now that we have the Berkeley Career Network, which you can Google Berkeley Career Network and it should be the first thing that comes up but I’ll also send you the link. That is a list of alumni who have opted in to say – yes we want to mentor your students and you can search for them by Major. You can also search for them by company and industry. What’s cool about that platform is if you’re a mechanical engineering student who really wants to work on the infrastructure team at Facebook, you could go into the Berkeley Career Network, look up who’s working at Facebook and if you see somebody interesting, you press connect and when you connect you have the opportunity to send a direct e-mail to that person’s personal email or actually schedule a video, phone, or in person meeting through the software itself.

LV: Oh wow. That is actually pretty awesome. If you’re not graduating this semester or maybe even if you are and you really want to do an internship is it too late to get a summer internship?

If you’re graduating this semester or if not graduating just anyone that’s hasn’t gotten an internship yet, do you think should they give up? Do they still have places to look?

KC: Great question. We’ve had a lot of students worried that it’s too late and I can’t say this enough. It is never too late to find an internship. I had students find them in June last year. So there is never a time when internships just aren’t available. Earlier is better. It’s never too early to start looking but spring is a great time to be looking for internships. It’s why we have a two day STEM fair the second week of classes, full of employers who are looking for internships that Winter Internship and Job Fair on February 20th is a great place to look as well. If you type in just internship and say engineering on Handshake you will come up with easily over 10,000 hits. So there are definitely opportunities out there but sooner is definitely better. So wherever you are right now it’s a good place to start.

LV: The ESS newsletter is sent out once a week and we have sections in there for job opportunities, internship opportunities, company info sessions. So if you haven’t checked out our ESS newsletter, make sure that you’re getting it in your inbox. You can also check on our website. We have it on the archive and I’ll put a link to my archive on the Welcome Engineer podcast page. If students are unable to get in to actually talked to a career counselor, do you have any student advisors that they’re able to meet with?

KC: Yes, great question. As I mentioned, finding an appointment might be a little bit difficult especially in the beginning of the semester when lots of students have career on their mind going to career fairs and applying for things. So the best option is our peer advisors over at the Career Center. They are a group of undergraduate students who have been formally trained in all areas of coaching, that we as full time, master’s degree holding counselors have. And we teach those students to be able to work with students on everything from resume and cover letter critiques to simple questions like – Hey, I’ve never used Handshake before, can you show me some tips? Or I’ve never used the Career Center before, what the heck is all of this, how can I use my resources effectively? Can you help me create a plan for the next couple years? Anything and everything. And it’s all by drop in. Our peer advisors do drop in appointments between 12-4, Monday through Friday on the third floor of the Career Center.

LV: Where is the Career Center?

KC: The Career Center is located on the south side of campus, which I understand can seem like you’re traversing the universe sometimes from the north side, but I assure you it is a 10 minute walk from pretty much anywhere you are on campus, if you’re a quick walker like I am. It’s on Bancroft, right across from the new student union, next to ShareTea and we’re on the third floor. So I might be a little biased, because I supervise our peer advisers in our office, but they’re a really great resource and especially if you have a question and you want to get it answered. Now you can always go there 12-4, Monday to Friday.

LV: Is there anything else about the Career Center that we missed or that we want people know?

KC: I’m sure that I’ve missed something and I say that because sometimes I forget the number of resources that the Career Center offers. If I can leave with any piece of advice it’s that if you haven’t interacted with the Career Center already, then do it. Even if it’s just walking over there and going to the third floor and just kind of looking around to see what’s up. Going to a career fair just to see what it looks like, check out Handshake and look at the events and go to a resume workshop. Check out a Career Connections event, where almost every week we have networking nights, where we bring in 10 to 20 alumni who are working in specific industries and for two hours, students can just casually network with those students or with those alumni. We just had our Tech for Good Career Connections event last night. There’s just so many resources available and the worst thing is when we hear that students didn’t take advantage of them when they were here and then they lose the opportunity to use those resources once they graduate. So yeah come see us, go to the Career Center.

LV: Well Katie, thank you so much for stopping by today and going over all the resources, I know there’s just so much that you do over there.

KC: No problem, I’m so glad to be here. And you know engineering students are my favorite students on campus – obviously a little biased but happy to be here and support all of them.

LV: And thank you everyone for tuning in to The (Not So) Secret Guide to Being a Berkeley Engineer. We’ll be back next week with more campus resources that hopefully you’ve tried out but if you haven’t we’re going to tell you all about it. Thank you.

Important Links:

• Tutoring Schedule
• Contact Luis
• ESS Events

LAURA VOGT: Hello and welcome to The (Not So) Secret Guide to Being a Berkeley Engineer. My name is Laura Vogt, I’m the Communications and Events Manager for Engineering Student Services, and I’m doing a series this semester on College of Engineering resources for undergraduate students. I think there’s a lot of things that, maybe, if you’re a first year student and its your first semester here, you’re worried about just getting through the semester, or if you’ve been continuing here for the last few years, that you just don’t know all of the resources that we have available for you. And this week we’re taking a closer look at the Center for Access to Engineering Excellence, and joining us is Luis Castillo. Luis please introduce yourself and tell us what services you work with and for ESS.

LUIS CASTILLO: Hello everyone. My name is Luis as Laura mentioned and I am Manager of Student Development here in Engineering Student Services. The primary things that I do is working with the different student organizations on campus. All the funding that goes from the College of Engineering to student orgs goes through me. And with that I hope student orgs develop different activities that they do or just come for any advice consulting. Aside from that I manage leadership programs including LeaderShape and then engineering excellence workshops that we do through the CAEE and then a larger role that I take on is managing the Center for Access to Engineering Excellence or the CAEE.

LV: And tell us a little bit more about the Center for Access to Engineering Excellence which we’re gonna call CAEE from now on, a little less of a mouthful. I know it’s a physical space here on campus.

LC: It’s a physical space. We mainly operate out of Bechtel 227 and Bechtel 240. And within these two rooms we provide tutoring for most of the basic course requirements that all engineering students have. And there we have about 30 tutors and 12 Student assistants that work there. Our tutors cover all the different courses. There is drop in tutoring meaning that you don’t have to make an appointment you can just come on by and be served by one of the tutors.

LV: So if students want to know specifically what time they can come in to get tutoring for their specific course, what’s the best way for them to do that?

LC: So you can go to engineering.berkeley.edu/tutoringschedule.

LV: So that’ll be a nice easy way that maybe you can even bookmark the page when you get there. So you can go in there and check it. And as of now it’s updated for the semester.

LC: Yeah definitely it is updated for the semester. And any changes that come up, that will go live on the Website as they happen. So keep in mind that this is the most (updated) information that’s available to you.

LV: And you’ve said that you have 30 tutors so how many courses do you offer tutoring for?

LC: We currently have 50 courses we offer tutoring for. And we have a team of roughly 30 tutors.

LV: Excellent. And so the courses, are they mostly lower division or do you have some upper division in there?

LC: We put our focus on lower division. Just to make sure that all of our students that come in for their first year are covered, but we also offer upper division courses and that comes as an added to whatever students suggest that they need help with. So semester to semester we receive feedback from students as to what courses they wish we offered and then we make sure to include those for the upcoming semester or in that same semester as well if we get the advice from students on time.

LV: Okay. And how do you get your tutors so that they’re prepared for this influx of students that might be having just a problem with the problem set or they might just not be understanding the entire concept in a course?

LC: All of our tutors are trained in how to deliver the material not only as to what is the best pedagogy to do so, but also how to connect with the students, and how to identify the different issues that students may have. But what you can do to help a tutor if you come in is let them know what’s going on. What’s a particular topic that you’re experiencing difficulty with, and how you can see that the tutor can best support you.

LV: And the purpose of tutoring isn’t to come in and just get an answer.

LC: Of course the tutors are there to support you in your learning endeavor but not to provide you with answers.

LV: So if you come in and there’s a class you really need some extra support in, and it’s not listed on the website, What do you suggest that a student do in that case?

LC: You can definitely let somebody at the front desk of the CAEE know or you can send me an email at lecastil@berkeley.edu and let me know of any extra support that you need. And depending on how many students requests (asking for support), that’s when we decide to put a course on (the schedule). So (if we get) five or more students requests then of course we’ll add it to our tutoring.

LV: And sometimes you might have a tutor that might have experience in something. Exactly. Have you ever just sent out an email saying “Hey does anybody have (this course)?”

LC: We certainly also reach out to our tutors and ask them if they can cover the course that a student is requesting. If a tutor can do that then we’ll go and hire another tutor to cover that course as well.

LV: So it’s not something that has to wait until following semester.

LC: Exactly. Don’t wait until the following semester. The more proactive you can be, the better it supports the services that we provide to you.

LV: And if someone has feedback that they want to give but maybe they want to be a little bit more anonymous about it or just make sure that the feedback gets to the right place. What’s a good way for them to give feedback?

LC: Within the CAEE, There’s a feedback box, its a small blue box and you can provide feedback or additional resources that you wish we offer. And it’s all anonymous and I check that personally every week.

LV: Excellent. And what else does the CAEE do besides tutoring? I know that you were mentioning earlier there’s a lot of other stuff that goes on.

LC: Yes I mentioned our CAEE student assistants manage all the different resources that we offered to students, and those include the success closet, which is basically professional attire to put on when you have an interview, but you may not necessarily have the resource to purchase new clothes for that interview. Aside from that we have textbooks, clickers, calculators, safety goggles, and any other materials you may need for a course, and we’re constantly assessing what a different things can be offered to students that they may not have access to, and that they wish they could.

LV: And if somebody needs to check something out, where do they go to start that process?

LC: You can either do it with myself, and I’m in the office in the back of the CAEE or you can go to one of those student assistants at the front desk, and the front desk staff is trained in all of this stuff

LV: Tell me a little bit more about the hours of the CAEE

LC: The CAEE is open Monday through Thursday from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. and on Fridays, we’re open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m..

LV: Tell me a little bit more about some of the workshops that you’re offering.

LC: Yeah definitely. So we’re offering the LinkedIn workshop, and that’s to help you develop your LinkedIn in a way that recruiters and companies find appealing to them. Also, the Career Center is working with us to provide the best feedback on that workshop, and that’s happening tomorrow February 5th from 1 to 2 PM if you’re interested. Another resource that we’re offering through these workshops is Cupcakes and Headshots, which Laura (is going to be the one that) takes your professional headshot. And that’s happening that same day on February 5th from 2:00 to 4:00 p.m. right after the LinkedIn workshop

LV: And I like that we tell folks how to make their LinkedIn profiles look better and then also give the resources of, “Hey we didn’t just tell you to get a better picture, we’re also providing that better picture for you.”

LC: Exactly and you get to come and have a delicious cupcake too

LV: I feel like the cupcakes are the best thing

LC: And then other workshops we’re offering throughout the semester are gonna be: Finances After College, Leadership VS Management, Deal or No Deal, which is a workshop that Marvin Lopez developed to best negotiate job offers. And then we have mock interviews with the Career Center later on as well. And then to find out more about the upcoming events and RSVP (links) you should go to engineering.berkeley.edu/essevents

LV: And then we’re also we’re boosting our social media presence a little, so if you haven’t followed us yet on Facebook or Instagram were @ESSBerkeley. So you could find out more about events that we’re doing on there. Plus we’re working with other resources here on campus like I was saying in the intro, so as the library has workshops available or new services that they’re offering, we’re gonna make sure that we put that either in the newsletter, or also on social media, and just try to get more of the word out to everyone. So is there anything else that we didn’t talk about the center that you want to add to make sure students know for the semester. I know it’s a really great resource that’s easy to get to. You don’t have to have an appointment. It’s drop-in.

LC: Yeah definitely. And even if you don’t think you may need tutoring, it’s open as a study space with the resource of tutors being there. So if you have any questions from the material that you’re working on that you feel comfortable in, there’s always a tutor there to help you too.

LV: Oh I didn’t even think about that. That’s pretty nice. So if you’re struggling with something.

LC: Yeah if you feel like you’re confident in a course, but you know things may come up at any point in time. Tutors are there to help.

LV: Excellent. All right well thank you so much Luis for coming in and helping me continue my series that we’re doing this semester about resources. Still to come, we’re going to talk to the library, we’ve got the career center. So we’re trying to make sure that you know what resources you have available to you, and make sure you’re getting the most out of your college experience here. It’s part of the College of Engineering. So again thank you Luis

LC: Thank you for having me here. I look forward to seeing all the students listen to this podcast (come to the) CAEE and definitely keep a lookout for all those different resources that Laura will be presenting for you.

LV: And thank you everyone for tuning in to the Not So Secret Guide to Being a Berkeley Engineer. And I’ll talk to you next week. Thank you.

As a Golden Bear Orientation Leader, you become part of a team that works collaboratively to welcome and orient new students to the UC Berkeley community. Fill out the application and New Student Services will be in touch. DEADLINE TO APPLY: February 17. If you want to know more, contact NSS or attend an Information Session.

Find out more online or attend one of the 2019 Info Sessions:

• Monday, Jan. 28, 6-7pm, Unit 2 All-Purpose Room
• Thursday, Jan. 31, 7-8pm, Unit 3 All-Purpose Room
• Tuesday, Feb. 5, 3-4pm, 218 Eshleman Hall (Public Service Center)
• Friday, Feb. 8, noon-1pm, 100 Cesar Chavez (Transfer Center)
• Wednesday, Feb. 13, 6:30-7:30pm, 306 Soda Hall (HP Auditorium)

LAURA VOGT: Hello and welcome to The (Not So) Secret Guide to Being a Berkeley Engineer. My name is Laura Vogt and I’m the communications and events manager for Engineering Student Services and I’m excited to have you here this week. We’re talking with four students that were Golden Bear Orientation Leaders to find out what they enjoyed about the experience and why they think more students should apply this year especially all of you engineers. So thank you Haruka, Tyler, Malvika and Jacob. Why don’t you please tell us a little bit more about yourself.

HARUKA ICHIKAWA: Hi my name is Haruka Ichikawa and I am with third year studying civil and environmental engineering.

LV: and Tyler

TYLER WATERMAN: Yeah. I am also studying civil and environmental engineering. I am a fourth year student getting ready to graduate.

JACOB FISHER: Hi everybody my name is Jacob Fisher. I am a student in the College of Engineering. I am currently a second year studying bioengineering.

MALVIKA SINGHAL: My name is Malvika Singhal, I’m a third year bioengineering major and intended math minor.

LV: How did you find out about being an orientation leader?

TW: Well for me it was honestly from my own orientation leader I just had such a positive orientation experience and they were really just seemed like an amazing person and they really seemed to vibe well with both the students and with the people they worked with. And it just seemed like such a good positive community. I mean orientation really gave me a community. So I kind of wanted to give that back.

LV: Excellent.

HI: Yeah, for me when I went through orientation, I actually went through the previous CalSO model and then my CalSO leader was a student coordinator, which is more like the highest positions that a student can have, for Golden Bear Orientation in its first year and I saw him posting about it on social media and I was like wow that seems really cool. So I decided to do it.

JF: The way that I found out about being an orientation leader is there was a lot of information that was posted in our group chat that we had created when I was a GBO student. So I was in the first class of students that were actually orientated during GBO and during that time we created a group chat and my orientation leaders were absolutely fantastic and they actually encouraged us to apply to be orientation leaders the next year. My freshman year experience although it was definitely a little bit of a learning process, didn’t go as well as I was hoping that it would. So I guess I became an orientation leader and I found out about becoming an orientation leader so that I could kind of make that process just a little bit easier for all of the new students here at Berkeley.

MS: I heard a GBO first through social media because on Facebook people were like plugging it a lot and I was like Oh this looks fun. And then actually in a SWE (Society of Women Engineers) general meeting Haruka came to the front and announced that the orientation squad needed more leaders. And so I was like – okay, well if Haruka says it’s good, it’s probably great because I really trust her. Also, I went through orientation as CalSO and so I’ve heard that GBO would be a lot different. And I remember actually this very clearly like I actually lived across Coffee Strata when the first GBO was going through and I remember during orientation every day these huge groups of students coming through and these signposts. The signposts are the things that really drew me in because it was so creative and like wonderful. I was like – I want to make one of those, I want a part of that and it looked so fun, like a little parade. And I was like – wow amazing. So yeah that’s what drew me into being a GBO leader.

LV: Oh that’s fun. You’re going to be creative and teach new students. Why do you think this is a unique volunteer opportunity?

HI: For me, especially as a student in the College of Engineering, I feel like from my first year I was put in a lot of technical classes and I could meet a lot of students in some measures but I couldn’t really meet people outside of that. But through Golden Bear Orientation, I was able to meet so many people from different backgrounds and different majors. And it’s not just about orienting the new students, it’s also about building a community for yourself.

LV: Oh okay.

TW: Yeah, I have to agree with Haruka on the fact that it’s just I think a lot of times in STEM and in engineering we tend to only talk with each other. And I think orientation offers a unique opportunity to get a lot of different perspectives and to get experience working with people from other backgrounds, who are coming from different places, who might not be familiar with what you’re talking about or what you’re doing and really interacting with people can improve your ability to interact with the broader world. I mean as engineers we don’t live in isolation, we have to interact with the broader world if we want to make things happen. So, I think it’s really been a great opportunity for me to develop those skills that are involved in working with people outside of engineering.

MS: Yeah, like in a sense like being an orientation leader is in that role, is it is a volunteer role but it’s also a chance for you to sort of not only make other students feel comfortable but also have a second chance to like redo your own orientation, perhaps like a go and or maybe the way you want, and so sort of vicariously like lived through the other through the incoming freshmen.

LV: So talking a little bit more about being an orientation leader, what are your responsibilities? What is it that you’re doing?

HI: Well, you have a group of new students, you also might have an orientation leader partner. So either you, or you and your partner, will be leading a group of new students, either freshmen or transfers and teaching them about the values of that the UC Berkeley community thinks is important and also taking them out to like fun activities. We have a segment called Day in the Bay, where you get to choose a location to go to from the Bay Area. So last year there was like ice skating, the Exploratorium in San Francisco, so you got to like got an outing with them. And there was also like super cool late night activities that you get to go to. So there’s like Silent Disco…

TW: and karaoke. Karaoke is always a fun one.

JF: You’re basically in charge of leading students around campus and introducing them to different campus services. So kind of beyond introducing them to campus tours and kind of showing them around campus, you’re also in charge of giving them diversity training, you’re in charge of giving them training on more sensitive topics such as sexual harassment, and you’re in charge of kind of being their first role model on campus as a student here and so you have a bunch of responsibilities involving leading and facilitating discussions revolving around important diversity training topics. You’re in charge of maintaining composure and making sure that they know that Berkeley students, while they are able to have fun, they kind of maintain the sense of professionalism. And you’re also in charge of, I guess you could say, being there for them as a support system because it is their first time being on campus and they most likely haven’t gotten accustomed to the idea of being on campus alone without anybody else from family or friends from back home. And so you’re kind of in charge of basically helping them out with finding friends and finding a support system that they can rely on throughout the rest of the semester.

LV: And so when you have these groups how are they divided up? Is it all a specific major or is it a little bit of from across campus?

TW: So, I think it’s really cool how they’ve kind of done this. If you’re a residential freshman, it’s all going to be people in your residence hall. So it’s gonna be people that you will actually be able to see and interact with everyday throughout your first year. So they’re not gonna be strangers that you won’t see on campus ever again. Which means they’ll be coming from a variety of majors and backgrounds but they’re all gonna be people that like – oh hey – like you see them down the hall on a regular basis. So it creates a nice set up where you can continue that community past just GBO fairly easily because they live with you. And then as far as for non-residential students it is kind of just the mix of wherever they are.

LV: So you even get to create that community with people that are maybe in the same transit thing that you’re having to do. Driving here the morning or take a BART or whatever it is that you’re doing. And then it’s definitely it’s split between frosh and transfer, which also makes it nice.

Students: Yes.

LV: What is the training like to be a leader and what is the time commitment?

MS: For orientation leaders, I believe there are two days in the spring semester that are day long training sessions. From morning to evening you’re basically working with your orientation mentor and going through workshops as a whole entire group of orientation leaders and within just you’re like little group with your orientation mentor. So there’s like an individualized training focus training and then group training in a sense. And that’s for like two full days in the spring semester and then over summer you do like this sort of online training Which is like modules on bCourses.

TW: It is two three days right before orientation starts in August and then the week of August orientation.

LV: When you’re actually here over the summer you said that you have to train a little bit beforehand and then what are the days like? Like how long are the days when you’re actually working GBO?

JF: Oh they’re pretty long, I will say. When you’re actually working GBO most of the programming goes from around 9:00 in the morning to sometimes midnight if you’re leading residential students. And until about 9:00 or 10:00 when you’re leading transfer students. But because of the fact that we have meetings beforehand you have to wake up around six thirty or seven o’clock and be at the meeting around 7:30 which can take a toll sometimes but I believe that the experience of going through GBO and leading the students kind of makes up for that fact. And of course you can sleep a couple of days afterwards when GBO is over.

LV: I know we were trying to talk about a little bit off mic about what the perks of being a GBO Leader are. So I know, it’s not necessarily like actual things that are given to you for being a GBO leader but what do you think GBO has given you? Like how have you grown as a GBO leader or how has it helped you grow as a person?

MS: Yeah, actually GBO has helped me grow so much. I wasn’t very good at public speaking at all or even starting conversations with people that I like, even friends. But after GBO I started noticing that I had the opportunity to break out of my shell and you know sort of really value and focus on you know creating social connections with people outside of networking. GBO has also kind of giving me more of a space to feel welcomed at Cal. It’s never too late to look for that or even find it. When you come in as a freshman, you’re not gonna get that immediately and if it takes time that’s fine for me coming to GBO and being an orientation leader was sort of that process.

JF: Yeah, I totally agree with that. It’s kind of like add onto that. We do get free swag, so like t-shirts and stuff like that, which is pretty fantastic. But yeah, after my first year at Cal, I kind of questioned whether or not I would be able to still find that community on campus and through GBO, I’ve actually been able to kind of develop more of a community and meet new people and make new friends and kind of feel more at home while volunteering as an orientation leader on campus.

LV: Do you have any favorite memories that you want to share?

HI: In the orientation leader role I’ve led three groups now. And just like meeting so many different people that I probably wouldn’t have met if it weren’t for orientation. That’s a great part of it, but one specific memory that I really cherish was my first time as an orientation leader and it was the last day of orientation and one of my students was like, Haruka, what are we gonna do tomorrow? Like, I can’t like see you anymore? And I was like, No like we can still hang out after orientation, like it’s not like our relationship ends like just orientation, but I was really glad that they felt close enough to me to say that and that they still wanted to see me after orientation.

LV: Yes, you made a good impression.

TW: Yeah, I’d say my favorite memory is the first year of GBO. Everyone that was in our like kind of group of orientation leaders because orientation leaders are actually subset into different groups that they interact with their mentor. So there’s a mentor that has a group of orientation leaders and then each orientation leader has a group of students. So in our orientation leader group, we all had this like group chat that was like really talkative all throughout the GBO and then continued well past GBO and we kept hanging out and like having a good time. So we actually created a community among the orientation leaders in our little little group which is really nice and then a lot of us continued on and served in this mentor role the next year later. So it was just like really cool to see how we were creating community among ourselves and then also watching like each write little orientation groups were also doing kind of the same thing, still hanging out with each other past orientation. So I think that was those two things were just like the coolest thing to see that community grow and to see how it’s not just a direct impact. It’s you’re not impacting just one person you’re impacting that person to impact other people.

JF: My favorite memory is always the silent disco. Every time that we have GBO so there’s a silent disco which is basically where everybody has color coordinated headphones and each station correlates to a different color and each color station correlates to a different I guess musical type. So basically everybody’s listening to their own individual music and dancing to their own songs and in their own way but generally if there’s a song that everybody enjoys you’ll see all of the stations kind of switch to the same color and everybody’s listening to the same song. And so even though people passing by can’t hear the music playing You can still see everybody having fun and everybody sometimes when they’re singing along with the same songs it’s it’s a really cool experience.

MS: Yeah. One of my favorite memories last summer, we basically had some time after the intro to Berkeley tour and so we went to faculty glade and all the freshmen got a chance to like roll down 4.0 Hill and like it was a nice day too. So like that added onto like the vibe and it was so nice to see that and know people still we’re willing to be part of the tradition and get involved and know that everyone’s in high spirits and laughing and coming together as a group and so that was really nice to see and be part of.

LV: To go back to the timing of the schedule we were talking earlier. So it sounds like you have to be here 10 days before school starts in August. Have you had any problems or do you have any experience with doing an internship and trying to get back in time or it doesn’t take up any other time over the summer right?

TW: It takes a no other time over the summer. And also if anyone’s taking a summer class we’re flexible with that in that the training does overlap with the end of summer classes but we allow people to attend their summer classes and finish that up and work that with training. Also for internships I feel like in general in my experience with engineering internships they tend to be a little bit flexible on the date. There’s no like final poster you have to submit for a lot of them. So we found that for a lot of people they’re able to like talk with their employer and work it out. Haruka, I don’t know if you have more experience with that.

HI: Yeah, I had an internship last summer and they were very flexible about letting me finish a week earlier than the other interns. So that was very nice.

LV: A lot of it’s about communication then probably with who you’re interning with.

Students: Yes.

LV: What do you think being an orientation leader has taught you about yourself.

HI: Definitely public speaking skills I’ve definitely improved on that and also how to manage unexpected situations because more or less you’ll encounter that at some point during orientation. But it was kind of like a confidence booster for me to know that I can get through those unexpected problems or just being nervous about speaking in public. So I think overall I’ve grown a lot from orientation and I’ve also learned that I am more capable of what I thought I was capable of.

LV: Give you a little bit more faith in yourself.

HI: Yeah.

LV: And is there anything that you want to add about me being the GBO leader that we haven’t talked about?

JF:I definitely think that in the engineering field it’s not really talked about much about becoming an orientation leader or at least we don’t tend to have many engineering orientation leaders. And for me, I think that being an engineer and an orientation leader at the same time is absolutely fantastic because when you’re an engineering student you constantly hear from people-Oh you have to get internships, you have to do this, you have to do that in terms of professional development and all of them are very linked to your major in engineering and through GBO it’s giving me the opportunity to kind of branch beyond my major and beyond the College of Engineering and kind of gain leadership skills in a way that is unique and in a way that is given me the opportunity to kind of learn new leadership skills and kind of be able to develop my own service, I guess my own style of leadership and it doesn’t necessarily directly involved in major but I still get those skills that are necessary for involvement in your major and beyond.

MS: Well when you become an engineer you have to remember that you are helping people, your job is to innovate technology that helps people. How useful can you be or how effective can you be as a leader if you can’t communicate with people. Plus you need to get people interested in what you’re researching.

HI: For my experience, I would say that when I was going into the orientation leader role I expected myself to be just the leader and I like helping new students learn about Berkeley and orient themselves. But then I definitely grew a lot more personally from orientation than I ever expected to. And just to add on to what I said previously like communication skills definitely is another big thing that I learned from orientation. And yeah I feel like by being in orientation and the skills I learned from orientation have helped me later in my engineering classes too. So it was an overall very positive experience for me.

LV: Details about applying to be an orientation leader: You need to fill out the application and New Student Services will be in touch with you. The deadline to apply is February 17th and if you want to know more, contact New Student Services or attend an info session and all that information is available on bit.ly/GBOleaderinfo and you can always check the link on welcomengineer.berkeley.edu. Thank you for turning into this week’s The (Not So) Secret Guide to Being a Berkeley Engineer. And thank you again to Tyler, Haruka, Jacob and Malvika for joining us. We’ll be back next week with more information on upcoming events in the spring and how you can be a part of Cal Day. Thank you.

***This podcast was recorded in November 2018. Since COVID-19 there have been changes to the application process and requirements. Please visit the Office of Undergraduate Admissions for the most up-to-date requirements.***

If you are looking for information about frosh admissions please check out our Frosh Admissions podcast.

IMPORTANT LINKS

• Office of Undergraduate Admissions, UC Berkeley
• Admissions University of California
• Assist.org
• Prospective Junior Transfer FAQs
• Email transfer application/admissions questions to esstransferadmissions@berkeley.edu

LAURA VOGT: Hi, my name is Laura Vogt and I’m the Communications and Events Manager for Engineering Student Services. Welcome to another episode of the (Not So) Secret Guide to Being a Berkeley Engineer. Sharon Mueller and Joey Wong are joining us today to discuss transfer admissions and how you can apply to Berkeley Engineering, what is important on your application and what you need to know about Assist.org. Welcome both of you – thank you for coming on the podcast! Sharon – you’ve been a guest many times but for those that are joining us for the first time, please introduce yourself.

SHARON MUELLER: I am Sharon Mueller and I’m the Director of Advising and Policy in Engineering Student Services.

LV: Thank you for being here! Joey – please tell the folks listening about what you do at UC Berkeley.

JOEY WONG: Yeah sure. Hi, I’m Joey Wong. I’m one of the advisers here in Engineering Student Services and I helped coordinate and manage the transfer admission process every year.

LV: Welcome back both of you and thank you again for being here. And earlier this month I interviewed a couple of folks from admissions about the Frosch applications and admissions. So if you’re in high school and applying to UC Berkeley that’s the podcast for you. Today we’re focusing on transfer admissions which is either from a community college or from another four-year school. First question, what other application dates and deadlines.

JW: Yes all the applications are open now and the deadline is November 30th to apply.

LV: And is there any preference given to students who apply earlier than November 30th.

JW: No, no preference at all. Each application received by the 30th is viewed similarly.

LV: And when will the students know if they’ve been accepted?

JW: This is a good question because historically we’ve released the transfer admissions date near the last Friday of April but this year the University is trying to release that admission information a little sooner. And the target date right now is Friday, April 19.

LV: Friday April 19th? That’s quite a bit early and then.

JW: Yes, Friday, April 19th.

LV: What part does Engineering Student Services and the College of Engineering play in the transfer application process?

JW: We play a pretty big role. We review all the applications, the eligible transfer admission applications and there are a couple rounds of reading. It gets read by staff and then read by faculty. And it also goes through adjudication process as well.

LV: For the students, what exactly is the application process entail? What are the different parts of it?

JW: Yeah there’s personal questions. It’s a big part of it. A four part question where you can submit an answer in essay form. So that’s definitely a good place where you can tell us about yourself. Kind of tell us about your passions and your history and your story and kind of give us a picture of that outside of the grades and the academics that we can we can see as well. So that’s definitely a big part of it.

SM: And I would add that the there is a part for community service or organizations that student’s been part of. There’s a whole extracurricular part at the application and I think what’s important to note about that part, we’re really interested to know for transfer students, what have you done since high school. So we don’t necessarily want to know what you did during high school, it’s really important to ask that you show us what you’ve done while you’ve been in community college or at another college and how have those experiences influenced your choice of major.

LV: And how important are the extracurricular activities in terms of how many you do or is it about the amount of time that you spent. Does it have to be STEM related extracurricular activity? What is it that you are looking for in those activities?

JW: That’s a good question. I don’t I don’t think there’s any particular extracurricular activity that we’re expecting or looking for. I think what we really want to see it’s depth in that activity whatever it may be. If it’s STEM that’s great but if it’s not STEM that’s totally fine too. If you are part of some sort of band or you’re really involved in music we just want to see a lot of depth within those activities and not just, you know, multiple activities that you do maybe one or two hours a week.

SM: Yeah, when you have some depth in a certain activity, often you can show your leadership skills by your continued involvement in that and your continued responsibility with that. So even if it’s not STEM maybe you’ve been playing a sport and maybe you’re the captain of that team that’s shows us leadership. Or maybe you’ve been tutoring science or math for a year or two. That shows us that you have a strong command of that subject. It’s really to supplement your application, but it doesn’t have to be stimulated.

LV: Okay. And are there any letters or recommendations that students have to start getting and gathering.

JW: No not at all. Letters of recommendations are not required for the junior transformation process.

LV: Are there additional forms that they’ll have to fill out once they’ve done their initial application?

JW: There is! Once the new year comes around, there will be a supplemental form that will be due at the end of January that all transfer applicants will be asked to submit and complete. With that supplemental form you’ll be able to fill out a lot of key parts of the application that will be available to review.

SM: Part of that is is reporting your fall grades. So it’s really important that transfer students don’t slack off because by the time we see the application, we’re going to have those supplemental forms and we’re going to see your fall grades. We are also asking for what courses are you taking or are planning to take for the winter and spring. And it’s important to note that all of the required courses, which I think we’re going to talk about in a little bit, those have to be completed by the end of spring of the year in which you are applying. If students are applying this November have to finish all of their required prerequisites by the end of Spring 2019.

LV: Okay.

SM: So all of that’s going to be reported on the supplemental forms. If those forms are not filled out the application will not be reviewed. So it is extremely important that students pay attention to their email, make sure that they put an email on the application that they’re going to keep. And that works because that’s how they’re going to get notified that these supplemental forms are ready for them to fill out.

JW: And also just just checking with your admissions portal. If you if you keep on top of that you should see the supplemental form. It’s definitely a chance at a very good place to provide more and new information if you have in January, whereas if you are filling it out now, things may change.

LV: So it’s really important just to stay on top of it. Just because you finished your application on November 30th like you were supposed to. You still got more after that.

SM: Right. You’re not done with the process yet.

LV: And so let’s talk a little bit more about the essay questions. Is there any one essay because how many asking questions do they have to fill out?

SM: There is one that they all have to fill out and then they have to do three more. And they have a choice I think of 7 or so prompts that they can choose from for those three.

LV: And so of those is there any one essay question that you think is better than another for them to answer?

JW: Honestly I don’t think so. I mean, I think they all present students with different ways to showcase themselves and their abilities and skills and their stories. It really really is up to the student for you to kind of pick which questions you resonate with more and which ones you can feel that you can answer and you can present yourself truthfully as best as possible.

SM: Yeah and I would say it’s also important that like for instance, sometimes a student will spend a lot of time in a personal insight question talking about perhaps a unique research or internship experience they had. So that’s wonderful, that’s an opportunity for a student who perhaps put that in their extracurricular section, but you don’t have a lot of space in there to actually tell us what did you do there, how did you spend your time. So then they can use a personal insight question to really expand upon that.

JW: Yeah sometimes that’s a missed opportunity for a lot of students where they would mention that they did research somewhere and some time but they don’t actually go in depth on how that research changed or affected them in their lives and how they want to go forward from there.

LV: Are there any answers that have become too cliched, something they ought to avoid?

JW: Possibly, yes, we did get I think a lot of Lego’s.

SM: Students who knew they wanted to be engineering because they always loved playing with Lego’s or something, that’s pretty common. Which is kind of interesting, but we want to know what’s happened since then. Hopefully, something has happened at community college during your college years that has really reinforced that for you.

LV: And is there a style of writing that you’re looking for? Something much more personal or less technical.

JW: No I don’t think there’s any specific style of writing. Hey you have the ability to you know change it up for each personal insight question you could. That’s one way to showcase your creativity and writing style.

SM: Yeah. And I would say you know sometimes I read the personal and like questions and there’s a lot of detail about what they’ve done on our research project and because I’m not an engineer it kind of goes over my head. But keep in mind that there are also faculty reading these applications so they’ll certainly get it so it’s ok if they want to take some of their space and get more technical with it. But I think it’s also important that they don’t just focus on that research project but really focus on how did that project influence them. As I always bring it back to the personal story.

LV: And we’ve said, not in this podcast but in freshman podcasts especially, we talked about how it’s a holistic review process and this one is also a holistic review process. What exactly does that mean to the student?

SM: So that means that we’re not just focused on grades. Yes grades are important but we don’t have a formula for you know this GPA gets this many points and this extracurricular activity gets this many points. There is no formula so the holistic review is as a whole student. How do we feel this student would contribute to Berkeley Engineering and how do we expect the students to participate and connect with Berkeley Engineering and be successful here. So that’s what the holistic review is. I think the grades are really important. But if a student has all A’s but then hasn’t done anything outside of academics. Well that’s a missed opportunity. And I would expect that there had been some opportunities in the students life to engage in some kind of extracurricular activity. So it just means we’re looking at the whole person and not just the academic student.

LV: Okay. Tell me a little bit more about the GPA requirements that we have as an overall, is it different for each major within engineering? Is there a certain target that you should be looking for?

JW: Well as a College we have a 3.5 GPA minimum for junior transfer admission. That doesn’t necessarily mean that you will not get in if you don’t have a three point five. If there are certain cases where you can if you have a returning student in your previous grades from years before are dragging down your GPA overall, in recent years your major GPA in your technical courses have been stellar and proving you can definitely let us know and we flag those applicants to make sure that we pay closer attention to those as well.

SM: How did they let you know?

JW: Yeah we have a great email, esstransferadmissions@berkeley.edu that gets checked regularly and gets answered. So definitely if you have questions there you can send that email and also let us know if you fall you fall under that category of students.

LV: And what kind of life experiences did students have that maybe would make it so that they left and came back to school or is you look at a little bit of everything?

JW: Yeah we see we see all sorts of returning students from veterans to returning student parents and things like that. I mean we know that life happens and sometimes students need a break away from academics and that’s totally fine. You know we take that into consideration as well in our holistic review as Sharon mentioned and in some ways that that really kind of fills out your application and almost completes the application picture of who the applicant is if you have a lot of these life experiences.

LV: Part of our application process is there are some required courses that students have to have before they are admitted. Is there a way to not do the required courses and still have your application evaluated?

JW: Unfortunately no. So the prerequisite courses are required if you don’t have the prerequisite courses required by spring of 2019 you should not apply.

SM: Yeah. And then maybe apply next year right. Once you have those courses done and maybe even some additional engineering or computer science courses done.

LV: There’s suggested courses that the student should take or courses that maybe aren’t even suggested, they’re just engineering courses that are available at their community colleges or four-year colleges. Does that help in the application process?

JW: It does. It definitely doesn’t hurt. So I mean if if there are engineering courses that are offered in your community college that are not necessarily articulated on Assist you know you take advantage and take these courses. They will help in your application.

LV: And if nothing else they may help when you get here.

SM: Yeah right. So even if they haven’t articulated one to one with a requirement they’ll certainly give you a strong foundation.

LV: You had mentioned Assist.org, tell me a little bit more about Assist.org and what it does for our community college students.

JW: Yes. Assist.org is a website articulation that has all the California community colleges and the UC Berkeley school course articulations. However, I think it’s important to keep in mind, that thought has not been updated recently. There should be a message there that that links you to our admissions website at Berkeley that kind of gives you an update on the biggest changes in our curriculum changes and application prerequisite changes as well so make sure that yes review Assist.org but know that some of the information might be a little old and that you may want to double check the Berkeley admissions website that’s linked from Assist to make sure you know all the updates.

SM: I would say that also I would encourage students to let us know in their application if for instance at your community college there is a course number change and perhaps on Assist it has the old course numbers but the course numbers have changed since then. There is a part in the application, I think it’s just called additional information, and that’s really good information to tell us because we too are using Assist and Assist is a couple of years old. So when we’re looking for a Physics 4A and you know that Physics 4A is now Physics 10A, if we don’t see Physics 4A we’re going to think you have not fulfilled the requirements so it would be imperative that students use that space to tell us anything that is not updated in Assist to help us and our review process.

LV: Is there any one major that’s had more teams than others that they should watch a little bit more carefully?

JW: Yeah there’s a couple of majors that have some bigger curriculum changes in the recent past. Bioengineering is one and then also civil engineering has some changes as well in terms of what prerequisites they are strongly recommended courses that they would want.

SM: And that as Joey was saying, at the top of Assist there’s a disclaimer. I think it’s in the red type actually indicating that Assist is out of date and I think it actually links you to the UCOP website and there from there you can click on Berkeley. When you do that and you get to the Berkeley site, in the first paragraph there is a link to update summary. And if you click on that update summary, you will see that the changes for bioengineering and civil engineering. So I think it actually results in students needing to take less fewer courses. So it’s definitely to the students benefit to see what those updates are.

JW: Right.

LV: Does it matter if students have to end up going to multiple community colleges to take all these courses?

JW: It doesn’t. You know if the courses articulated one the one that really we really don’t mind if you take it in different community colleges. In some ways it shows how resourceful you are actually, so that’s good. However, you know it’s important to watch out for some of the articulations that are not one to one. These series articulation courses where you know that you need two or three courses at a community college to equate to one of our courses here that you will need to take all of them their, at one community college. Let’s say for our Chem 1A requirement you need to take Chem 1 2 and 3, that means that if it’s if it’s like that then you wouldn’t take all three there.

SM: Even if it’s Chem 1, 2 and 3 as a group equals Chem 1A and 1B here, but your major only requires Chem 1A, you still have to take all three courses because it means that the Chem 1A content is somehow mixed in all three of those courses. I would say the only exception to that is Math 54. So a lot of schools Math 54 is broken up into two courses one is linear algebra and one is differential equations and that’s a very common break. So if students say do linear algebra at one school and then differential equations at the other that’s okay because those are very clearly separated for most schools so we’ll just put those together and say okay fine you’ve done Math 54

JW: Right. Just make sure that those courses that both those can be equate to Math 54.

LV: If students have more than a certain number of units that you can actually transfer over, that’s okay if they they have too many undergraduate units they just will not transfer over correct?

JW: Yes. So there’s no cap on community college units so you can you can take up plenty of community college units and in 70 units transfer over. When and if you are admitted. Now the units that get students in trouble sometimes are units from four-year universities or out of state schools and things like that because those units don’t go through the cap and they’ll keep piling up and adding up.

SM: Then students could have too many of those units to be eligible for transfer but students who are strictly at community college, while UC does cap at 70 units, all the coursework will still fulfill requirements, even the coursework that they’ve taken beyond 70 units.

LV: Oh, okay. So for some reason when you started community college you were thinking of majoring in English and you got this change of heart and you decided to do engineering, it’s ok that you switched over.

SM: Yeah, totally fine. It’s not unusual for our transfer students to have maybe 90 or 100 community college units.

LV: Do you take into consideration if a student took longer than say two years to get through community college?

JW: No, we actually don’t mind if students take longer to complete the prerequisite courses. However, one caveat with that is when we’re reviewing for the application we want to see that each semester you’re challenging yourself right. And usually that’s the case by taking a more technical course load since you’re applying to engineering. Now if you take three or four years through community college and you’re taking only one technical requirement every semester that is going to make your application you know a little weaker because we want to see semesters where you challenge yourself and where you’re taking multiple courses to make sure that you are able to make that transition and come here and take multiple technical courses here and do well.

SM: Yes, because that’s the requirement here we don’t have a part time program, I mean students are really expected to jump in and take two to four technical courses every semester. So we really want to see evidence that they’ve been able to manage that in community college and for students who perhaps have done one or two technical courses a semester I would want to understand why. You know maybe they’re a parent and they have childcare responsibilities or maybe they’ve had to work 40 hours a week or maybe they had a sick parent and they were taking care of someone. So that’s where students really want to make sure that we have a full picture of them. How have you been spending your time and if you’re in one or two technicals how have you been spending the rest of your time and what other obligations have you been managing.

LV: Do you have any tips about students who still are working on fulfilling their American history as an institution requirement?

SM: Yes so that is actually a requirement that it’s a UC wide requirement so all UC schools have this requirement. And the trick with that is that if you fulfill the requirement before you come to Berkeley, if you did not fulfill the requirement in high school because some students did, then you can fulfill the requirement with one course before you come to Berkeley, but once you’re at Berkeley you usually have to take two courses to fulfill the requirement. So, many times students who have not fulfilled it, who are committing to a UC, will try to fulfill it the summer before they actually start at Berkeley if they haven’t done it already. Because then they can get two requirements done with one of course. There is a course at Berkeley that was just approved for both American History and American Institutions but it’s not a huge course so it’s not like every student here is going to have the opportunity to take it. So in most cases it’s definitely beneficial to the student to try to fulfill that before they start. It’s certainly not a requirement for their admission. That’s just a tip to make sure you are checking to make it easier for when you get here.

JW: It’s also important to note that if you’re an international student that these the American History an American Institution Arment is waived.

SM: That’s true, so let’s say if you’re still holding let’s say an F1 or a J1 visa at during your last semester, you will get waived from those requirements.

LV: OK. If a student has applied at UC Berkeley for the College of Letters and Science as a transfer student are they able to change their major once they get to Berkeley?

SM: They can certainly change their major within Letters and Science and they might be able to switch to say the College of Natural Resources or some other colleges on campus but they cannot switch to the College of Engineering. And that’s also an important point for students who apply directly to the College of Engineering. They can’t change their major. So it’s really important that students apply to the major they want to keep because once they accept their offer of admission, they cannot change their major.

LV: And that’s the same for students that are going here. You only allowed them to change their major before their junior year.

SM: Yeah that’s right. So even students who start here as a freshman they have to they’re going to change their major within engineering. They have to do it before they’re juniors. So it really is consistent with how other students are treated. We expect that transfer students know what major they want to pursue and that is generally true. But we make it very clear that they just they can’t change their major once they’re here. They could transfer out of the College and change to the College of Letters and Science. But students in the College of Letters and Science can’t change into Engineering and students admitted to Engineering can’t change their major as a transfer.

LV: So if you had applied a couple different places and you got into college it’s going to let you get into the engineering program that you want whereas here you applied and got into Letters and Science go with the program that you really want. Don’t plan on trying to change into it.

SM: That’s right. Because you won’t be able to change into engineering here.

LV: Let’s talk about the admission rates. What are the admission rates for the College of Engineering for transfer students.

JW: Well for transfer students previous 2018 year the transfer admission rate for the campus was about 23 percent. For the College in general I think it was about 12 percent. So significantly lower than that. However, we want to point out that out of the eligible students, so students who completed all their prerequisite requirements, submitted supplemental forms, close to 40 percent of the students of those, were admitted. So you know the admit rate of 12 percent is very deceiving and maybe discouraging but you know you should be happy to hear that if you’ve satisfied all your prerequisite require, filled out the supplemental forms and you have a three point five GPA or higher, that you know your chances are pretty good at getting admitted.

LV: So overall those numbers really shouldn’t discourage the students.

SM: No, the 12 percent shouldn’t discourage students because if you’ve taken all the courses that you should have taken, the required courses, and you filled out the supplemental forms you had to fill out, and your overall GPA is at three point five or higher. You actually have a 40 percent chance. So that’s a pretty good chance.

LV: And if you self-support not apply…

SM: then you have a zero percent chance.

LV: Are there any other questions or any other aspect of the transfer admissions process that we’ve missed or that you want to highlight one more time? I was thinking I want to say for sure if something’s happened in your life that you may have started with a really low GPA and you’ve been struggling to come back and haven’t quite hit that three point five. Let us know.

SM: Yeah, send that email.

JW: Yes, esstransferadmissions@berkeley.edu.

LV: And if you had a question about courses that maybe you were unclear in Assist about what course and how it’s going to transfer over or if it will transfer over, can you also email

JW: Yes, esstransferadmissions@berkeley.edu. You could most definitely.

LV: Do you have any tips for maybe some out-of-state transfer applicants that we might be getting?

JW: Yeah. You know, definitely look at Assist to know what the prerequisite courses are for applying and then trying to see which of those courses match up to also the courses available at your university or college. However, you know there is no guarantee that those courses will be evaluated as equivalent. So you know there’s always a danger that if you apply and you believe you’ve finished physics when you really have not to our equivalency of physics that you would you would not be admitted. Unfortunately we can’t do pre-admission evaluations for courses out-of-state.

SM: Students can use the Berkeley Academic Guide  to see course descriptions. A lot of the department websites at Berkeley have syllabi by for their courses published. So with those resources they can they can make their best guess. But we don’t pre-evaluate courses during the application process.

LV: Thank you Sharon and Joey for being here today to talk about the transfer admissions. And thank you to everyone who has tuned in for the Not So Secret Guide to Being a Berkeley Engineer. If you want to know more about Berkeley Engineering and the resources we offer please check out our other podcasts that cover topics ranging from the Career Center to faculty and student tips. And thank you again, I appreciate your time.

***This podcast was recorded in November 2018. Since COVID-19 there have been changes to the application process and requirements. Please visit the Office of Undergraduate Admissions for the most up-to-date requirements.***

If you are applying to transfer to Berkeley Engineering, please check out tips on the Transfer Admissions podcast.

Important Links

• Office of Undergraduate Admissions, UC Berkeley
• Admissions University of California
• Prospective Freshmen FAQs

Freshman Admissions Fall 2018 (2019-20)

LAURA VOGT: Hi my name is Laura Vogt and I’m the Communications and Events Manager for Engineering Student Services. Welcome to this week’s episode of The (Not So) Secret Guide to Being a Berkeley Engineer. And this week I’m really excited to welcome Djenilin Mallari and Henry Tsai from the UC Berkeley Undergraduate Admissions. Today we are discussing students that are applying as incoming freshmen to Berkeley Engineering. Djenilin would you please tell us a little more about yourself?

DJENILIN MALLARI: Sure I’m happy to be here. Thanks for having me. My name is Djenilin Mallari. I’m an assistant director in the Office of Undergraduate Admissions here UC Berkeley.

LV: Thank you and thank you for coming in for the first time over here in our little podcast. Henry can you tell us a little bit more about yourself and how you came with us last year.

HENRY TSAI: Yes. Thanks for having me again. And my name is Henry. I’m also an assistant director of undergraduate admissions at UC Berkeley.

LV: And thank you. I really do appreciate you taking your time and coming over here talking with us a little bit. Let’s start it off with the application dates. I know we’re in November now so those are the important things that we’ve got to remember right.

DM: Yes. So the application opens for August 1st and the submission period is the entire month of November so November 1st starts admitting it is due November 30th 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time LV: Excellent and does it matter when you get your application in and does it looked better if you turn in at the beginning of the month versus the end of the month.

DM: Makes no difference whatsoever between November 2nd November 22nd it has no impact whatsoever on the application.

LV: Just make sure you give yourself time right?

DM: Exactly.

HT: Yeah we do see not a lot but enough where students panic and 11:00 p.m. and then their computer decides not to work or whatever. You know life happens. So definitely give yourself that time.

LV: Excellent. And once students have applied when do they find out if they’ve been accepted?

DM: Sure. So we try to release our decisions by the end of March. There’s no specific date just yet but usually by the end of March are freshmen decisions.

LV:  And that’s that we’ve got a CAL day that comes up in April that kind of welcomes everyone that’s been accepted.

HT: Yeah exactly. And so definitely check out the CAL day website to see when that is. But yeah that’s exactly why we have it at the end of March. And that leads right into CAL day.

LV:  And what exactly is part of the application process either essays or do they have to do letters of reference or letters of recommendation or anything along those lines?

HT: Yeah letters of rec are a part of our process but it’s only for a very small number of students. So it’s not for everyone and it’s not a positive or a negative thing. If you are asked or if you are not asked for a letter of rec so don’t share the link. It’s not going to work for other people when you get it in your email and you can choose to have two people to write letters of rec for you.

One of them we prefer to have a academic person I guess write you a letter of rec so it to be a teacher or a counselor of that sort. And then the other one could be anybody you want who knows you pretty well to answer the other letter of recommendation. And yeah. So don’t worry if you aren’t asked or if you are it doesn’t mean you’re in or out either way.

DM:  it is an invitation that comes out to students after they submit their application. So it’s not something that’s a part of the application initially the students maybe invited to submit up to two as Henry mentioned. With the overall or as I should say the initial application. Some components of it are the academic history. It’s entirely self reported. So it’s really helpful to have an unofficial transcript in front of you for the applicants who are reporting all of those grades each of the classes the types of classes they’re taking things of that sort. They’ll also write a little bit about their extracurricular involvement special program participation awards and honors and then we do have as you mentioned are essays they are called the personal insight questions. Logistically there are eight options from which students will choose four and for each of those four questions students have up to 350 words with which to respond. So those are the components of the application.

LV: OK. And how important are the personal essays to the application process. I had someone asked me that yesterday.

DM: Sure. So we do conduct a holistic review. So while we want to say there’s a formula or any kind of percentage assigned to any one component of the application I’d like to argue that the personal inside questions are impactful because it’s really an opportunity for students to use their own voice to really share with us their experiences talk about their extracurricular involvement their lived experiences to really give us the context with which to understand their entire application. So well you mentioned earlier that components are the academic record extracurriculars all of that I like to frame it as while I can see all of that information the personal insight questions really are an opportunity for students to provide the lens through which to understand all of those pieces.

LV: And when we were talking about the essays is there any one particular question that you think is more important for them to answer?

HT: Not at all. The eight are viewed as equally as as any others. And we would prefer students to choose the ones that really speak to them that would read it and read the question and say oh wow I have a lot to say about this. That’s the one we want them to write. So there is no preference. I’d rather not read the same four for know 100,000 applications.

LV: And when we’re talking about the extracurricular activities I had someone ask me Is it better to do one activity and do everything about it and be really involved in that one. Or do you want to see him spread out and do a couple different extracurricular activities.

HT: We would like to see whatever really kind of fits in the students narrative and in their life really. So there’s no really one or three or five or 10. Usually we do we see students have multiple areas of of interest. And so that’s great. Usually we don’t see just one. So just in general don’t feel like you have to limit yourself or overextend yourself. That’s kind of the message that we would like to get out there. What does it mean for you to participate in these activities. How much time does it take for you to participate in these activities and in-depth so not 400 activities in one day out of the year and that’s it. And so it’s more about the depth and how much you’re gaining out of the activity versus the number and balancing that with your grades and the classes you’re taking. So it all has to make sense for you. That’s that’s kind of the idea.

LV:  And it doesn’t matter if it’s a public service extracurricular activity or if it’s to be in band or debate or the robotics club

DM:  It can be whatever it is the students interested in it could be related to their academic interests or field of interest but it doesn’t necessarily have to be. I like to tell students that it’s not only what you do but why you do it. So you’re able to speak to you in your personal take questions or additional comments you’re able to speak to why you dedicate this time in this effort to this particular activity. So we don’t look for a specific type of activity or involvement. It really is what is the student doing outside of the classroom and why.

LV: OK. Talking more about the academic side of it if we switch gears just a little bit. Is there a specific GPA that we’re looking for?

HT:  No we do not have a minimum requirement for a GPA. But no there’s not one that we’re looking for GPAs themselves could tell us a lot of different stories depending on the student’s context even from if you just have a 4.0 versus another student 4.0 a totally different things depending on how many honors and AP and all the stuff that you’re taking. So no there is not a single number or a range of numbers that we’re looking for.

Now a lot of students take a look at our brochures or look on our website and see an average and that is an average that happens after all the students are admitted.

And we just look at the average is not something where we pay attention to while we’re reading applications oh this student does not fall into this range and so therefore we’re not going to admit that that’s not how it works. It’s just something that we pull out after all the students are admitted.

DM: Yeah I think speaking to that GPA it’s one piece of the hole that we’re looking at with holistic review particularly with the academic record that GPA tells of one piece of the story but we’re also looking at the types of classes students are taking. So I like to remind students that at three point five looks very different between taking just the basic core curriculum versus eighteen point five would say challenging courses like honors and AP classes. So those are usually a combination of those things so we are looking at the overall context of that academic record.

LV: OK. When we’re talking about what classes they should take I know a lot of our students come in with a lot of AP courses. Are there specific ones that you would suggest that they tried to take if it’s available at their school?

DM: Yes. So with students who are interested in the college of engineering it’s also always really helpful to have a really set foundation in the subjects of math and science specifically which I think students usually assume is the case. So taking the highest level of math and science at their school that’s available is always really helpful because we want students to be prepared for success once they get toward campus and are able to address and take on the challenge of the academic rigor particularly within the College of Engineering on our campus so I won’t name all of the AP classes just consider the context of the school that you’re coming from and what is available. And that’s also something that we consider that not every school has every challenging AP math and science course. And so again we are considering the context of this clear coming from but as far as what is available I’m challenging yourself within that is always really helpful.

HT: And another thing I’d like to add is that a lot of times we see students with scheduling conflicts in between AP exams AP classes. So if they have I don’t know 15 AP classes available to you at your school and you take six or seven if you have scheduling conflicts then feel free to tell us that and say OK I couldn’t take these two together because they’re at the exact same time. So some of those little contextual information can help us determine what’s going on. You have 15 and you took you know three or five or whatever what was going on there.

LV: And do you have a list or do you know some way of what schools had 27 AP classes and what schools are only able to offer for.

DM: We do for the most part so we do ask counselors at every high school that we have access to to send us what we call a school profile and in those school profile students are the counselors able to report these are the types of AP courses available. Here’s the number. We also aren’t necessarily talking about IB courses as well included in that number was in what we consider challenging courses but that’s context that we can get from the school profile. It’s also something that students can report to us in the application whether through additional comments sections if they want to talk about their personal insight and take questions that the space as well they usually is context that we receive from the school directly.

LV: Let’s go back and look at that. Talk about the personal essays a little bit. Are there any of the topics that when people answer the questions that it become too cliched that you’ve heard the same story over and over again that maybe people can either expand on it or try to find a different way to answer the question.

HT: So I guess in a sense yes there is a way that students respond that becomes commonplace and the only thing I would say about that is that it’s because students tend to stay very very general. So the information they’re giving us is all big concept and the concepts and big ideas. And so therefore it’s very general. It’s very general. The word says General. So it becomes commonplace. So what we’re what we’d like to see is that students dig deep a little bit and tell us about themselves and their own motivations. Why are you doing something or why did something why is something impactful to you in that case. If they do dig deeper a little bit and give us more about themselves then it becomes not common and it comes unique and it becomes who they are and what they can tell us about themselves. It requires a little bit of reflection or a lot of reflection hopefully and something unique to them. If it’s a true story of them and they’re digging deep then it becomes unique. That alone will make it unique. The cliche the common place is when everything is just super general and you’re just saying I persevered. What does that mean. I don’t know what perseverance means for you right. It’s a very common idea. What does that mean. So it’s when it becomes cliche when it’s general.

DM: And I think if I can add a little bit more I think Henry is also talking a lot about the style of writing that students write in and then in terms of content I think I get a lot of students who asked me that my best friend is my co-president and we have the same exact experiences in the same exact clubs. Is there a concern from an admissions reader reading the same exact thing. I like to remind students that their perception and their point of view and the perspective I should say it really is independent of all of their friends. You might be having the same exact experience as you might be coming from the exact same if not similar backgrounds but you get to speak to your truth and your narrative. And I think that’s really important for students to know that we’re looking for their story and they’re the best person to tell us that story.

LV: And that last year we talked a little bit about some students might get too technical if they’re talking about a project that they’re doing especially in engineering. So that’s still kind of the same idea of trying to explain things in a layman’s terms maybe?

DM: Yeah we never know who’s going to be reading the applications are all trained the same way to read applications to understand and take context from an application but do try to take the perspective of somebody who isn’t quite in that same mindset of oh I know all of this terminology all the jargon that you might know. And I think focusing not so much just on the product itself but really the impact it’s had are your leadership role in it and it’s really talking about that and not so much just a project.

HT: Yeah think of these as the title of these are called personal insight questions and so it’s not a technical manual that you have to recite or anything. It’s a personal insight question so that’s where you have to kind of bring it back if something has to be said about this project that is technical sure put it in there it’s it’s what it’s called. But other than that it should be what is it about that that you got a lot out of that you learn that you influence that you lead that you follow. But in a very impactful way for you all this information is a lot more relevant than as many technical terms as I can throw into 350 words.

LV: And last year just as a side antidote we heard in the news a lot about a student who wrote his application essay that just said Pick me pick me or something along those lines where it just said the same thing over and over again because it’s a holistic review that’s not necessarily going to get you anywhere right?

DM: It’s not helpful. It really doesn’t help us learn about a student. I like to assume when I’m reading an application a student wants us to pick them right. And so you don’t have to tell me that you’re applying to our school. It says it on its own. What’s the most helpful in these personal insight questions as you said earlier it really is tell us your story tell us who you are. I can’t make assumptions about your application and I would hope that applicants don’t want us to make assumptions and so they get to fill in those gaps and provide those details for us to consider. I say experience is a lot but we’re considering your achievements in the context of your life. Considering your family responsibilities or considering your home life. And like I said you get to tell that story to us so we get to consider all of that in the holistic way in your application.

LV: So let’s talk a little bit more about actually when you’re choosing your major to come to UC Berkeley. I know within the College of Engineering we are really specific about when you choose your major you’re coming in as either electrical engineering and computer science or you’re coming as mechanical engineering. Is there a way once you get here to change so what have you got accepted into letters in science instead of engineering.

HT: Yeah. So it’s going to be incredibly incredibly difficult for you get what we call a change of college from letters and science or natural resources environmental design and change into college of engineering after you get to Berkeley. So if you even though it is very difficult and it’s competitive to get into the college of engineering if you know you want engineering then apply to the College of Engineering. Within engineering I believe you can change it to different majors and things like that within. But again if you think it’s hard to get into Berkeley try to do that change to college it will be very very difficult.

LV: I know relying on CAL day when we meet a lot of students that are trying to decide which college to go to is if you got accepted in the letters and science but you really want to do electrical engineering and computer science. And you got into a different college where you’re actually in that major. We suggest doing that we don’t actually take any transfers or change college into engineering electrical engineering and computer sciences. And then a lot of the other ones are impacted. But I know it’s just it’s difficult. We have a lot of people that apply and a lot of people that were not able to accept so it’s hard to make everything work out right.

HT: And we yeah we get that question all the time on the road which major or which college should I apply to. And then you know let’s just say and they try to be you know sly about it whatever. What if I want to do engineering later. And maybe way back when I don’t know where this myth came from but ever since I’ve been around it’s been seven or eight years now. This hasn’t been the case you can’t or it’s extremely extremely extremely extremely difficult to do a change college. So yeah

DM :I mean if students are open to considering computer science as a major. We do have them in the college of arts and science so that is an option for students who are admitted. But it really does take some understanding of the differences between the two where computer science can be the same between the two majors but it doesn’t quite have that electrical engineering aspect of it and that that’s something that’s really important to students than it really is the decision is up to them of what do they want with their degree and if that’s not here at Berkeley because they’re not admitted already or enrolled in the College of Engineering then that’s definitely something that’s important for them to consider.

HT: There’s also in the College of Letters and Science a computer science major if you’re admitted in the College of Letters and Science and you want computer science that’s something that you will have to declare at the end of your second year. So that means you’re going to need to fulfill their requirements so you’re not in that major right away. Whereas if you’re in the college of engineering you’re in that major right away you’re admitted to that major and there’s no other sort of set of circumstances or criteria that you need to meet to be in that major. So that’s a big difference and where you have to meet another set of requirements to get into college letters and science computer science major. So if you’re debating on which one to get into actually they’re equally hard to get into. One is just in the beginning freshman if you will and then the other one is after your second year hopefully you’ve met the requirements.

LV: OK. I think that third thing to really get out of this is we don’t do change of college for EECS. It’s not we just don’t have the capacity to do it. So definitely take that into consideration when you’re picking what your major is. And I know it seems funny to just single out EECS but that’s the big one right now.

DM: It really is.

HT: Absolutely.

LV: And is there any downfalls to applying to multiple universities within the UC system I know you get to select when you’re doing your application.

DM: Yeah. No not at all. So a lot of students will ask me if I get into this campus will I not get into another one we don’t consider that I actually can’t see we can’t see which campuses a student is applying to unless they explicitly state which ones they are planning to in their application. So it makes no difference and our hope is actually that they are applying broadly within the UC system.

LV:  In the preparation of getting ready to come here if we look at that for their standardized test the students have to take. We’ve got quite a few questions about it is it better to do the S.A.T. or the ACT what extra test did they have to subject test should they do.

HT: Yeah you definitely have to take either the SAT or the ACT even if you are an international student with writing but there’s no preference either one whichever one you feel most comfortable with or take all of them and just send us all of them what we’ll do is we’ll look at the highest sitting scores. So we do not superscore. We just take the highest sitting and for subject exams SAT twos or SAT subject exams they are not required at all. A lot of students do get in without taking them. But if you do decide to take them or you can and you know you’re going to do well then take a math level two and a science that’s related to your major bioengineering take bio and things like that. So again there’s no preference for either one and you do not have to take them. But think of your application as evidence or reasons to admit you. If you have more reasons and you take those SAT 2s and you do well then that’s more reasons to admit you. So it’s not required but it could definitely help.

DM: And to add on to that as we mentioned earlier with math and science being really pivotal and integral to success in the college engineering and checking for that in the foundational course in high school taking those SAT subject exams can be helpful in showing me your academic achievement again in those subjects.

LV: OK but for the AP classes how many AP classes were actually transfer to UC Berkeley? Should you stop at a certain amount because you don’t think it’s going to count for anything?

HT: Yeah I believe Berkeley is a little different than the other UCs in this respect. So all the AP exams that you take that you get a three or above will have or you’ll have units when you come to Berkeley. So there’s no limit. So you could have five to 20 to 30 to 40. And depending on how many AP exams you take you could have all those units. Not all of them will take the place of a course. And it’s up to your advisers and the college to dictate that.

So the other units could be elective or whatever and your college will kind of determine that once you get here. But there is no limit to how many units you can have. Oher UCs might have different policies on that. So definitely check with the UC schools that you want to apply to and see what their policies are.

DM: Yeah. So into that also. IB courses or IB exams we accept a higher level 5 6 and 7 for very very similar things to what Henry said.

LV: Oh OK. So this is when you come in you’re basically are coming in when however many units of classes that you took. All right.

DM: Exactly.

LV: And how likely is it that a student actually going to be accepted? Iknow for engineering we’re pretty competitive.

DM: We are so for UC Berkeley our fall 2017 I guess for 2018 admissions we had about an 18 percent admin rate. And so to contextualize College of Engineering usually teeters between around 8 to 10 percent. It just depends. That’s why I hesitate a little bit within the specific number because it does. It can vary depending on the applicant pool. Every year it does shift a little bit but as you said the College of Engineering overall is very very selective

LV: But that doesn’t mean to not apply right now.

DM: Exactly. So it’s not impossible to get in. So again it’s really helpful in that holistic review or to understand where a student is coming from not just their academics while of course academics are absolutely an important part of the entire equation if you will. We are looking it up at what else a student is doing so with holistic review it is that academic as well as non-academic achievement in terms of what are they doing outside of the classroom what are their academic opportunities or extracurricular opportunities are they taking advantage of. So it’s definitely not impossible to get in. It’s just a matter of doing really well in the courses that you’re taking and really speaking to your experiences and your strengths in your application.

HT: A lot of students ask me that once they hear about the percentages and things like that and I always like to kind of tell them something that’s that’s weirdly profound to them although it’s not to me. Maybe I’ve just been doing this for a long time. But there’s one guarantee here and we can see this as an absolute fact. If you do not apply you’re definitely not going to get in. So that’s that kind of it’s obvious but honestly when you self select out just even if it’s a hard score to get into or whatever you take yourself out of the pool that’s it. So you know if you really have a passion for something and you really want to try to give it a shot.

LV: Speaking on that. If somebody was worried about it’s costing too much to apply to a bunch of different schools. Is there something to help them pay for the application fees.

DM: Yeah sure. So in the application itself some students can essentially apply for a fee waiver for up to four schools. As I mentioned it is all calculated in the UC application. It’s a consideration of the annual family income and the family size. So there are just a couple of things that we take into account. So some students can be eligible for that fee waiver like I said for up to four campuses there are also other fee waivers. I always recommend students talk to their counselors at their school. There’s a thing called College waivers we have our NACAC waivers so I know there are things that students may or may not be familiar with. But again I always recommend speaking with a counsellor at their school.

LV: There’s things out there and resources for you to try to help you. Don’t self select out just because you’re worried about money or anything along those lines. Tell us more about the wait list what does it mean. How did the students get on.

HT: OK so the wait list is something that we use every year in a very specific manner in the sense that we actually use it. Some colleges have a waitlist but they don’t really go to it for whatever reason. For us it is part of our process. So if you are put on the waitlist it is a possibility that you’ll get in. Every year it depends and it’s it varies in regards to who and how many students or how many not who I guess how many students get in and it depends on the how many students decide to come in the first wave when all the decisions go out and students by May 1st need to tell us if they’re coming or not. So how many students say yes. So that basically dictates the waitlist. If it’s low one year then we’ll have more that will admit off the waitlist and vice versa. So it is a tool that we use to make sure we can gather as many students as we can and not over admit. If you over admit then resources dwindle. Right. You got to many students for the number of resources on campus so it’s very important to us in a logistical sense. So that’s something that we use very strategically in helping us manage that process.

DM: So that’s important for students if they are put on the waitlist. The decision that they can make is whether they opt into that waitlist. So opting in means that they’re like okay I’ll stay on the waitlist I’ll wait a little bit for the decision to come out and we may admit students from the waitlist and I think every year again it changes as to who commits to our campus things of that sort. But I think the biggest thing for students to know is that if they are put on the waitlist to whether to opt in or to not opt in if students don’t opt in. It’s very similar to what Henry said earlier that if you don’t opt in you’re just no longer considered for admission to UC Berkeley. But if students are like I’m going to hold out hope and I’m going to stay on this waitlist they do have to opt in and the deadline is very soon after those first decisions come out.

HT: Also to add as we get questions like should I say I want to go to a different institution while I’m waiting on the waitlist. The answer is yes. Don’t give up a chance that you have already in the bag if you will. Somebody has admitted you already say yes to that campus if you can. I don’t know what their policies are wait list and whatnot but if you can then say yes to that campus that when you have a spot somewhere else and don’t give up that spot because a waitlist is not a guarantee. Depending on the numbers that come in every year then you may lose that spot. If you don’t say yes to that campus then you’re waiting on our waitlist.

LV:

And so when do you find out if you’re on the waitlist. When do you start releasing admission offers?

DM: Sure. So we do try to release those decisions in late March but by the end of March and so that’s for everyone for students for whom we are accepting admission for students who were not offering admission as well students were accepted onto the wait list. And then after I think May 1st that’s when where that’s essentially the national deadline for students to accept their offer of admission and after that we have more of an idea. Here are some more opportunities and spaces we have available to admit students into. And so it’s kind of on a rolling basis but it kind of is a rolling basis admitting there after I’m after me. So for students on the waitlist it’s usually wait until after the first and then we’ll still be admitting then. If for varying reasons we’re not able to admit any more from that waitlist that will usually come around June time.

HT: And also when you get information about the waitlist there will be deadlines. So it’ll tell you by this time you should hear back from us and that way you can kind of plan it out and things like that and then follow up if after that part of the deadline has passed then you can always follow up. But the communication for waitlists would include deadlines and when you should hear back.

DM:  And to that point I think we’ve talked about optional essay with the waitlist as I mentioned earlier with opting in. Students do have that. I think it is optional where students can report anything that hasn’t been included in the application maybe something happened between December 1st and the time they received their decision that oh we really need to consider this whether it was a project that they pursue that they didn’t write about or an opportunity they took advantage of or a recognition they received. So there is that option to include a short term brief essay for us to consider in considering them on the waitlist.

HT: And they will be reviewed. So it’s not a wasted space.

LV: Speaking about that what if a student is not accepted and they something happened between when they turned in their essay and when we sent out admissions to make it so that their application would be stronger at this point. Can they appeal?

DM: Yes. So we do have an appeal process that would be included for students again who are now for that admission there are what we call FAQs for any student really for any other applicants. And so if a student is not offered admission if they go into their FAQ there is an option to appeal the decision. And in that appeal they are able to report in a very brief essay again anything else that hasn’t been again and considered in their application of if that wasn’t included in their application or anything like I said that hasn’t been included or something that was new that happened from December to the time that they received their decision. So there is an option for appeals. It is challenging though not impossible to be admitted off of an appeal case.

HT: Yeah really has to be something new and compelling I guess is the term that we like to use. And of course compelling is relatively subjective. But the idea is that we get a lot of appeals and I’ve seen some of them where they just say I really really really wanted to get into Berkeley or you know some form of that. And that’s not really new or compelling.

LV:  That’s all the questions that I have for you is there anything else that we didn’t talk about that you wanted to add?

DM: Not really I think just to echo with holistic review it really is looking at every aspect of the student and the best way we do and the only way we can do that is through the application. And so I just want to reiterate with holistic review we are considering your academic as well as your non academic achievement with academics. We are considering the full picture so your GPA any exams that you take in your overall the courses that you take in the types of classes all of that but then also don’t sell yourself short when you’re talking about yourself and your application in terms of your personal insight questions the experiences that you’ve had and that we consider everything and all of that. And so I think one of the challenges that students face is that RPI accuser personal insight questions are very different in how students are use to writing. It’s not an academic essay it really is their narrative in a very very brief form. So I think the biggest piece of advice that I can share is that it is your time to shine. And this really is an opportunity for you to brag about yourself that we really want to know who you are as a student as a community member as a person your family whatever that might look like. That we are looking at every piece of you and your application.

HT:  And just use your resources. The UC Office of the president has a lot of information on there in regards to how do you how do you present yourself on that UC application including the personal insight question responses and how do you write those. And it’s not an essay it’s not a creative writing piece it’s not it’s not a writing sample and it’s different than the common app and all this stuff is on their website. So use your resources find the Web sites that can help you start with you know UC Berkeley Berkeley dot edu you try that and than office of the president.

So kind of do your research and kind of see and if you’re a junior or a sophomore and start filling out the application and don’t submit it because you’re not done yet but make make an app or fill out an application and just see what the application is like and see what the questions are and how do you fill it out. And that way you can kind of get a jumpstart on hey this is what I have to plan to do in my senior year. So I’ve been telling a lot of students do that and they didn’t know they could even make one. And anybody can make one.

DM: And I think for folks who are listening who might not be applying this year but are thinking about and are trying to get familiar with the College of Engineering at UC Berkeley you are welcome to look like Henry said at the University of California website and you can find all of the personal insight questions listed there. I don’t think it’s ever too early to look at those and consider what you might want to write about and even think about how you might want to set the next however many years you have left in high school. So I think having that preparation is really helpful whether that’s drafting or personal insight questions before you even apply or just getting familiar with some of the things that we look at in the application.

HT: Yeah and again I don’t know if we talked about this but in the application we only see what you put down right so we can’t assume anything and we do not use race or gender or religious affiliation or any of that information in the consideration of your application. So just know that ahead of time that that’s not a consideration. And that’s one of the myths that we always get when we’re on the road. We get asked. You know I’m a woman or I’m transgender or I’m white or Caucasian, Asian or whatever is either a negative or a positive or whatever it is not a consideration that we use when reviewing application.

DM: And with that said you can talk if that’s an identity or those are identities that impact you. Again we’re looking at you as an entire person that while we might not consider that just as pieces of your application if you feel it’s necessary to write about identities have impacted you. That’s something you can do in the application but it’s the decision we made will not hinge on those identities.

HT: Thank you. Thank you for that clarification.

LV: Thank you so much both of you for coming by and talking to us today. I really appreciate it.

DM:  Thanks for having us.

HT: Yeah definitely. It was really fun.

LV: And thank you everyone for tuning into the not so secret Guide to Being a Berkeley engineer. I’m your host Laura Vogt and if you’re looking at going to UC Berkeley and you want to know more about our resources please by all means check out our other podcast. We talk about students have given their opinions about why you should choose UC Berkeley what they liked about their time here. We’ve had the library come in, the career center all kinds of different things will give you a little bit more of an insight history into the resources that we have available for our students. So thank you everyone for tuning in and we’ll talk to you next time.

HT: Go Bears!

LAURA VOGT: Hello and welcome to the Not So Secret Guide to Being a Berkeley Engineer. Today we are discussing the Berkeley Engineering Senior Class Gift Campaign and I’m so happy to have Julia Snippen from the College of Engineer Dean’s Office here with us today! Welcome Julia – can you tell us a little about yourself and how you are involved with the campaign.

JULIA SNIPPEN:  Hi. Thanks so much for having me here.

LV:  Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got how you are involved in the campaign.

JS: Sure absolutely. So I’m the Associate Director of Development for the College of Engineering. Many of you may not know exactly what that is but we’ll talk more about that. It is all to do with fundraising and securing resources for the college. And that is for the entire college no matter what department you’re in the work that I do and the support that I work to Ranglin is benefiting every single student. And it’s a wonderful wonderful job to have. So the senior class gift committee and campaign is something that will start talking about in the fall and winter and then will really start rolling as more of a full fledged campaign in the spring. And it is primarily geared toward encouraging participation from your fellow senior classmates in the College of Engineering to start thinking about philanthropy as you get ready to take the next step of the world

LV: Because we don’t want students to necessarily forget about us once they leave right.

JS: Precisely. This is a really wonderful way to work across different departments and engineering and get no smear classmates bit more and then yes start thinking about what’s your relationship and involvement you’d like to have as well as you know in many ways legacy to the college.

LV: Well thank you so much again for coming in today. So let’s get right to it. Can you tell us a little bit more about the actual committee part of this campaign.

JS: Absolutely. So the committee is open to any seniors as I said from all departments from engineering. What we’re going to do is it’s a relatively low commitment for the fall and winter and then it starts to pick up a bit more in the spring so as you’re considering joining interest that’s something to think about. The main commitment that you’re going to have if you end up joining the committee is a weekly meeting in the spring where we’ll just be checking in on where the campaign is on various events which leads me to the events. We’ll have a kickoff campaign in the spring usually around around mid March or so where the Ides of March of any of you are studied classics. And then there’s going to be a finale event which will take place before commencement. So it’s just it’s another opportunity to say farewell to your classmates and just have a final final hurrah with everyone and reflect back on your experience here. And then on a volunteer basis depending on your schedules I know how busy your engineers are. We do have in the Springs again kicking off more around April will have weekly events informational sessions for your classmates and there will be snacks will be snacks that is always the best way to get people to checkout whatever it is you have to present. And so a quick note on that there were also be committee chair positions available so if you are looking to expand your experience in leadership in marketing and event management there is an opportunity for you and I’ll be leaving a little bit more heavily on those committee chairs to help get the word about out about our events and to help manage some logistics so it’s a different type of experience from research I’m sure.

LV: it’s a great way to if you wanted to work on your soft skills.

JS: Absolutely. I would completely agree with that. And as we all know you know those are things that aren’t necessarily instructive to you in a classroom. So it’s a great opportunity to work on Team Team Building Collaboration and the softer skills like communication and communicating that point you know making a case for why philanthropy is important.

LV: And so what are the funds in this campaign used for.

JS: Very good question indeed. So just to clarify if you are a senior within the College of Engineering I want you to feel control making a gift to wherever is something that you are passionate about. The majority of our gifts. That said the majority of our gifts do go to the Berkeley engineering Fund of which I am one of the biggest fans and that is because the Berkeley engineering fund help support every facet of the entire college. So as you’re wondering what what that looks like the majority of the Berkeley Engineering fund supports student experience so right now I’m sitting in the CAEE with Engineering student services and a great deal of support for CAEE and its programs comes from Berkeley engineering fund. The Berkeley engineering fund also helps support startup packages for new faculty. So think of your favorite professor that you may have. And that’s the thing. Consider how why did they come here. How did we manage to bring them onboard here versus some of our peers our institutional peers which as you may know have a very different funding situation. So it’s it’s really really necessary for us to keep this Berkeley engineering fund robust and strong. It is a source of what we call unrestricted funds which means that they’re discretionary to our Dean. So the more robust that fund is the more able we are to to take care of you know things as they come up but also to ensure that the student experience faculty and also this is very important as I’m sure you know from all of the projects you do and the research that you do labs and classroom upgrades. If we don’t if we don’t keep our equipment up to date if there’s not enough for everyone it’s just not going to be available or as valuable experience.

LV: That sounds I really am excited about all the different things that we do in the center. And I know that we do what we do. Yeah. So when you’re saying that you’re looking for seniors is it specifically just those folks that are graduating in May or also ones that are graduating like the summer?

JS: Yeah. So for those of you who are you know maybe on a slightly different calendar which is totally understandable. The way that we look at it is I would say whichever class you feel you identify most with if you feel that you identify with a class of 2019. You know whether you graduate in the summer or even the winter we have we we will honor that it’s really up to you and where you want to be.

LV: So we’re not looking for people that are specifically walking in Maine which makes it a curse.

JS:Yes. So you don’t have to be walking inmate to be on the senior class Gift Committee if you’re graduating this summer or you’re graduating in December I would certainly count you.

LV: And how many students do you usually have on the committee or what’s your goal of how many people you want to have involved?

JS: Really good question. We’ve had everywhere from you know about 10 people to 20. I like having around 20 of you because it is so great to get to get everyone’s voice in the room and you know we can get better feedback on the campaign ideas we have you know how we’re marketing things for example because I really do want every committee to be to be reflective of how you know what what was your class you’re like and collectively as a college not just different departments. So I really do like to have more voices in the room and also it does help manage the event staffing a little bit as you can imagine.

LV: One of my favorite events that you did one year was give out cupcakes outside of the office. I was able to sneak one.

JS: There you go. Yes. Yeah.

LV: I know you’ve done Bobo Tea. There’s been a bunch of fun stuff.

JS: Yeah yeah. So it will. We’ll work on that together will make those decisions together as a committee of which local vendors we’d like to use. I tend to like we’re reaching out to local businesses around here so the cupcakes you’re talking about are from the cupcake and bakery which was on Durant and they’re actually moving to a new location on Telegraph.

LV: So is there an info section for students who want to find out a little bit more or maybe get some backing for questions going with them?

LV: Yeah that is a great question as well. So we are meeting on November 2nd. That’s a Friday meeting from 9. I’ll be there. We’re still selecting a room. So well we’ll certainly circulate that information but you just want to circle this on your calendar now. Friday November 2nd starting at 9:00 a.m. and I’ll probably just hold an open room till that 10:30 so that everyone can have a chance to come in. I picked that time just because interestingly for the last year the last class year that ended up being a really convenient time. I know it’s a Friday morning but you know you do your one good thing for the day.

LV: And we want folks to sign by October 15.

JS: Absolutely. If you can sign up for the information session just so I have a sense of how many bagels and doughnuts to order by Monday October 15th. That would be fantastic.

LV: And I would be remiss if we didn’t ask a little bit more about the donations for the campaign. So if you’re not able to serve on the committee you don’t necessarily have the time to put into that. If you wanted to just be able to donate. How would you do that?

JS: So you can go to and this is also where you can go to for any information on the committee. It is engineering dot Berkeley dot edu forward slash seniors and you can get all the information on that as well as a link to where you can make your gift.

LV:  And we’ll put a link on our podcast site. Is there any gifts associated with giving?

JS: Absolutely. So every year we have different tiers for different giving levels. But every single senior that makes a gift will receive a thank you gift in return as a nice way to commemorate your final year but also as a way to remind everyone that you meet that you were a Berkeley engineer.

LV: I seem to remember that there might be a contest between departments.

JS: Yes. So we’ll also have departmental challenges on and we may do maybe there’s a trivia night for example and you can do a department contest there see how many people get certain trivia questions right. And then also participation. So by participation I mean we’re measuring how many gifts are coming in per departmental seniors versus dollar amounts so we try to keep it even that way to try and do a little bit of some troubleshooting around. You know I know that some departments are much bigger so we have some mechanisms in place to to make it more even.

LV: And being part of the committee you’re part of getting to come up with these different games and prizes.

JS: Exactly. This can be you.

LV: And is there anything else that we didn’t talk about today that we want to make sure we mention?

JS: You know what I will just throw in there only because I get so many requests from people after they’ve graduated the senior class gift is how you can receive your Berkeley engineering license plate frame.

LV: OH, we’ve had people come in and ask for that.

JS: This is how you do it. This is how it happens.

LV: Fantastic. Yes. Well thank you so much for stopping by today and thank you.

JS: Thanks so much. Great great questions and I hope I hope that many seniors are encouraged to check this out on November 2nd.

LV: And thank you everyone for tuning into the Not So Secret Guide to Being a Berkeley Engineer.

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• Engineering Student Services Facebook and Instagram
• Center for Access to Engineering Excellence Facebook

LAURA VOGT: Hello and welcome to The Not So Secret Guide to Being a Berkeley Engineer. My name is Laura Vogt. I’m the Communications and Events Manager for Engineering Student Services. This week I am delighted to have Luis Castillo on the podcast. He is the Student Development Manager for Engineering Student Services. Luis, please introduce yourself and tell us what services you work with in ESS.

LUIS CASTILLO: Hello everyone, to build on Laura’s introduction my name is Luis Castillo and I am the Student Development Manager here in ESS. I work in the Center for Access to Engineering Excellence and what I do there is that I manage the center the physical space, all the touring that goes on in there, the student assistants that work there and the front desk. I also work closely with engineering student organizations through the funding that the College of Engineering gets for them. And aside from that I also managed the LeaderShape program that we put on every year in which we take engineering students up to the Redwood’s to talk more about their skills as leaders within engineering.

LV: Thank you. And again thank you so much for joining us today. Let’s talk a little bit more about the Center for access to engineering excellence. What is the goal of the center?

LC: The goal of the center has been to act as a service to all students. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re struggling in the course or anything like that tutors are just there to answer any questions that you may have. You may not have had the chance to discuss in your discussion or more likely in your lecture. So there is there for you to have an open study space but also to have access to tutors and also when midterms come along you might want to review with the tutors from other subjects so you may not be familiar with. So basically as a study space with tutors to guide you through a bunch of process depending on what your interest is or if a course is being a little bit difficult we can also schedule review sessions and thus depending on the tutor and the group of students and they meet with. Overall we not only provide the service of tutoring we provide up a bunch of other services aside to make sure that you are successful in engineering. And we have a lending library and in that lending library we have different items from calculators that you might want to use for test and short term lending tools that you might utilize.

LV: And the tutoring aspect at the center is open every semester correct not just fall and spring?  

LC: Yes it’s open fall, spring and summer as well. So the Center for access to engineering excellence is open Monday to Thursday from 9 a.m. till 9 p.m. and on Fridays we’re open from 9 p.m. till 5:00 p.m.

LV: And you’ve got students that are there staffing the entire time that can help students?

LC: Yes, there are student assistants on the front desk of both 2 2 7 Bechtel and 240 Bechtel and those students are there to answer any questions or guide you to the tutor that you’re interested in meeting or if you’re interested in finding a space to study. They can help you answer any questions or if you’re in need of any type of too they can guide you through it. We cover over 45 courses and we have about twenty eight tutors drawing on to 30 focused in those courses and they are there the entire time that we are open.

LV:  And if you want to come in to tutor do you have to make an appointment?

LC: There is no appointment you have to make.  It is a drop in basis tutoring.

LV: And the calendar is someplace we could find online?

LC: Yeah, if you go to engineering dot Berkeley dot edu and you click on the top tab where it lists student services. It will take you to another page and on that page on the left hand side you can look at academic support. On the academic support you can click tutoring and you are able to see all courses that we tutor on a day to day basis. The schedules for them and also on a weekly basis.

LV:  And when you check in at the front of the room they’ll help you find the actual tutor?

LC: Exactly. All of our student assistants know who our tutors are and they’ll be able to introduce you to one of them so that you may work with them.

LV: The second part of what you do with the center is you do a lot of workshops and events. So let’s talk about the first workshop that we have coming up is deal or no deal.

LC: Yeah. That’s the first workshop we have coming up soon so deal or no deal is loved by Marvin Lopez who is the Director of Programs. Marvin has had a previous experience as a recruiter in industry so he’s able to guide you to different tips as to how to go about different job offers and you may be offered, how to negotiate salaries and how to figure out if you do have two job offers. How to make those two work so that you are being offered the best possible compensation salary.

LV: That’s great. And then it’s important to remember that just because somebody offers something doesn’t mean you have to say yes right away you can have some negotiating power.

LC: So Marvin that has all the insights so please please please go ahead and take the advantage a lot of students think that they know everything that is to know about recruiting and how to go about job offers. But there’s really important things that I didn’t even know that Marvin mentions in that workshop and it is I would say for older students to have gone to it they have taken extreme advantage out of it.

LV:  And then other workshops that we have coming up this year we’ve got a momentum speaker series we’ve got our end at the semester wrap up events. Next semester we’ll have our etiquette dinner again at the beginning of the semester.

LC: Yes. We have a bunch of different things coming up next semester. AT any point you feel like there’s a workshop that you may be interested in that we have not yet offer. Also at the bottom of our page is a suggestion thing and feedback so please let us know if there’s anything of your interest that you feel like we can provide.

LV:  And the best way to find out about our workshops is to you can bookmark our page on the Web site which is engineering dot Berkeley dot edu slash e s s events and I;m updating them regularly. We talked a little bit about LeaderShape. We were going to add a couple events for LeaderShape in October info sessions as soon as we get the dates picked out of what works for our student workers for the program because LeaderShape the applications are open October 1st through…

LC: October 1st all the way to the 31st. So the entire month of October that’s when our applications are open. The actual event of your shape happens from January 13 to 18.

LV: Okay. So it doesn’t take the entire winter break so it’s a short week.

LC: And just to draw some names some of the workshops that we have planned for the spring are study skills, overcoming shyness, the etiquette dinner that Laura already mentioned. Eating for optimal health, finances after college cupcakes and headshots that Laura manages is one of the most exciting events that we have.

LV: It’s a pretty popular event.

LC: And on that same day we also have the LinkedIn workshop. There’s another workshop in leadership and management and definitely we’ll have other things coming up for you keep an eye open and make sure to pay attention to our website for things coming up.

LV: Excellent. And the end of the semester events that we’re doing a lot of them have to be RRR week?

LC: Yes during RRR week we’re we just started last year and we’re doing a bunch of events to help students de-stress. Well one of the events that we offered on those days is puppies on the patio and puppies on the patio is when therapy dogs come by and you’re able to pat them and de-stress from all the different stresses to study for finals and then another event that we have is a board game day. Students are welcome to bring any board games and we open up to 40 just for students to play. Get to know each other and we provide food and drinks just so that you can have a little bit of a time to hang out before you get back to studying.

LV: You also work with the student orgs and the funding and that happens in March or April.

LC: Yeah that happens towards the end of the spring. Which different student orgs apply for funding not only from the college of engineering but also from the engineering student council.

LV: Oh OK. So make sure that you’re reading the newsletter so you know when that is coming out. Because if you only do it once a year.

LC: Yeah.

LV: And our social media is also we’re getting a little bit more robust in our social media sphere on our Facebook and Instagram pages. We’ve got one for engineering student services as well as the center for access engineering excellence.

LC: Definitely we’re trying to put our events more out there in order to engage you better. And if you have any feedback please let us know. We would love to use this information to you this way it’s possible.

LV: Well thank you so much for your stopping by today and talking to us about this.

LC: I thank you for having me here. I’m glad to talk to all of you.

LV: And thank you everyone for checking out the Not So Secret Guide to being a Berkeley engineer and I’ll talk to you later. Bye.

Today we are discussing two great opportunities you will have as a Berkeley Engineer – the Jacobs Institute for Design Innovation and the Berkeley Certificate on Design Innovation. I’ve invited Amy Dinh and Tyshon Rogers to join us today and give us more details on the programs and events that are offered by the Jacobs Institute for Design Innovation.

Important Links

• Jacobs Hall – visit anytime, next to Etcheverry and Soda Hall
• Jacobs Institute for Design Innovation (Resources section)
• Amy Dinh Appointment
• Berkeley Certificate in Design Innovation

LAURA VOGT: Hello and welcome to this week’s episode of The Not So Secret Guide to Being a Berkeley Engineer. My name is Laura Vogt, and I’m the Communications and Events Manager for Engineering Student Services. Thank you for hanging out with us this summer. And now as we get ready to start getting into school we’re going to talk about one of the fantastic things that we have here on campus: The Jacobs Institute for Design Innovation and the Berkeley certificate in design innovation. I’ve invited Amy Dinh and Tyshon Rogers to join us today and give us more details on the programs and events that are offered by the Jacobs Institute for Design and innovation. Amy please tell us a little about yourself.

AMY DINH: Sure. So I’m the students services and programs manager at the Jacobs institute I’ve been here for three years and the institute has also been open for three years so it was very exciting to be here from the start and see our community grow. What I do is basically be a first point of contact for students who are interested in learning more about the resources we have at Jacobs as well as on campus in general if we don’t have what students are looking for. But we basically try to serve as a hub on campus for students interested in exploring human centered design and technology innovation through courses, events, being private student club, finding mentors here, or advising here and also taking advantage of maker space so I try to help students figure out which of those resources they might want to get involved and how to do that.

LV: Fantastic. Thank you so much for being here today. And Tyshon tell us a little bit about yourself.

TYSHON ROGERS: How are you doing. I’m Tyshon Rogers. I’m the student services advisor for the Berkeley certificate in design innovation. And starting July 1st I will also be taking on duties as the student services advisor for the Jacobs Institute and design innovation. And I started here at the beginning of the year. So since the spring semester hit, I started sort of organizing the Berkeley certificate and design innovation. We were moving into our second year of existence and so there was a lot of administrative work to sort of get the program up and running. And you know I’m glad to sort of say that the program is doing great. And we had a really good cohort of students who graduate with a certificate and we’re looking forward to the future and more students sort of participating.

LV: And as we talk about the certificate today we’re going to abbreviate it to BCDI. We can make it easier for me because I keep stumbling over it. So how are Jacobs and the BCDI related to each other?

AD: They are very much overlapping communities. I think a lot of students who come to Jacobs take advantage of all our resources as I mentioned those classes those workshops meet their Maker Space. A lot of them have a question of “Well, I’m really interested in this, how can we explore this academically?” which is where the BCDI comes in.

TR: Well the BCDI program ultimately was created by four colleges: the College of Engineering, the College of Environmental Design, HAAS School of Business and the College of Letters and Sciences or Humanities Division. So it’s split in four, so College of Engineering is where controls about one fourth of the programming but the Academic Committee who is the hub of the certificate program, they also are intimately involved with those sort of methodology and approvals of new courses that are being designed that sort of incorporate this design methodology. So Jacobs for instance new courses emerge and they have to be approved they also go to this academic committee which is always sort of thinking about design methodology and innovation as far as course material is concerned. So that’s one intimate area of development between the two.

LV: Okay. And can you give us a little bit of the history of Jacobs?

AD: Sure. So as I mentioned we’re pretty new. We opened our doors to students in the Fall 2015 and the reason why the institute was started, it was Paul Jacobs who is alumni of the College of Engineering. He really wanted to invigorate undergraduate engineering education and give students a chance to learn through hands on, collaborative, interdisciplinary and project based learning. Basically what students will do once they graduate and go into the real world. He wanted to have them, give them that chance to explore that here while they’re still in school. And so this institute was founded as a way to provide those resources not only to Berkeley students, not only to engineering students but also to students all over campus because he and we believe that design can be applied to any discipline and it really benefits from having all those different perspectives, so when we opened our doors we had all these resources as I mentioned for students to explore design in a hands on way so that they’re not just learning things through lectures and problem sets but they’re also able to say let’s go and make this drone or let’s go and make this interactive website or this cyber physical system based on what we’ve learned and see the real real impact in real applications of what we’re learning. It’s exciting to see how much our students have done and how much our community has grown over the past three years. And we’re looking forward to seeing what the next year will come will bring.

LV: Tyshon, can you tell us a little bit more of the history of the BCDI and where did it come from, where and how did we decide to start it?

TR: OK so ultimately this is what

LV: I know you’re saying like 4 different colleges are involved.

TR: It was ultimately a proposal on how to sort of teach design innovation, or at least what Berkeley wants to emphasize when it comes to this sort of teaching methodology. And you know so the deans of the school sort of like you know went out and got the investments for the program and essentially you know appointed different people for the Academic Committee from each school to bring those perspectives together. In turn those academic committee members sort of develop the criteria. And so you’ll see a lot of this in the language on the website which is BCDI.berkeley.edu. A lot of the language about our teaching methodology is there and what we ultimately want as far as learning outcomes are concerned. And so they developed that approach and ultimately they identified courses across the campus. So it is not limited to the four schools that are participating. They examen courses across the campus to see whether those courses sort of fit into the mold of what they ultimately want zs far as outcomes are concerned. And from that we sort of developed about 50 or so courses that are now part of our crew approved course list. And so usually there are aspects of these courses that follow sort of rolling outcome or either iterative process that will ultimately end up in a position where you produce a certain outcome you gain certain skill sets etc. And by the time you graduate with a certificate, it should be somewhat of a confirmation of having sort of a training in a certain type of design methodology that you can carry on to the professional world. It can be recognized as such.

LV: And so we’re talking about the classes that we have that are available. Who is offering those classes.

AD: It’s actually a variety of different departments. We really try to partner with other departments on campus in order to provide resources to students so the courses that are labeled as DES INV courses for design innovation, those are the ones that are offered and taught by lecturers hired by Jacobs or faculty at hired by Jacobs but actually the majority of our courses are offered by the departments from integrated biology to mechanical engineering to new media and so for those courses we don’t have oversight over the content. We just try to support them by price based and providing this community that they can join. So if you are if you’re part of a different media on campus you might see some departments offering classes here because those classes are related and we want to support that and support your department through that way.

LV: So since we have the design innovation certificate program obviously design is important. Why is design so important and why have we made it such a big part of Berkeley engineering specifically?

AD: Well design is really about it’s a way to solve a problem. It’s saying what is the problem we have. What are some of the, what information can get about it. What are the solutions we can develop for it. So it’s really a problem solving process that can be applied to any discipline, but engineers are problem solvers. They use their design, engineer skill set to solve real world problems so the two ideas are very much overlapping. And, I think especially with the type of design that we try to promote which is human centered design where you’re asking who is the end user that we’re trying to help. What do they want. Let’s learn about them so we can design a solution that is really appropriate for them and it’s something that’s not only functional but also delightful and pleasing and enjoyable to use. I think as an engineer you know you’d want your designs to be very technically, very technically good and functional and that’s definitely still very important and that’s what I think Berkeley students are already good at. And I think the students who also incorporate these additional questions, let’s make it not only just good but also just like as well as possible, are really going to raise the caliber of Berkeley engineering even higher. And so that’s kind of the why it’s important, generally speaking. But it’s also fun. If you if you stopped by Jacobs Hall you’re going to see students doing a lot of really fun and also amazing things like their 3-D printing these intricate 3D art objects or they are designing a remote control vehicle for one of their classes or they are part of a club that’s designing components for their competition vehicle. So it’s important but it’s also just a fun way to learn. And I think it’s nice that we can support that.

LV: So what resources do you provide at Jacobs Hall to do that support?

AD: Yes so I categorize our resources into five main groups. We have our classes. A lot of which are also qualify for getting the BCDI. And those courses range from the intro level, you are new to design and you just want to pick up some basic skills and visual communication and sketching or prototyping of application all the way to senior and junior and graduate level courses where you’re taking all those basic skills and you’re applying them to a topic like remeasure ability or reimagining ability or exploring the world of AR and VR. So courses are one, events is another one, we have a lot of speakers. We have a lot of workshops, we have a lot of co-curricular activities so that students can explore design even outside of the classroom. We have a lot of student groups that we try to support. So a lot of events and activities that happened at Jacobs are student led. And that’s very inspirational and so we just try to support them through providing space. Just basically listening to student groups and hearing what they need and giving them a platform to meet each other. We have advising mentorship as I mentioned so Tyshon and I provide co-curricular and academic advising and just try to give students advice about how to explore design. But we also have technical advising from our design specialists and our design fellows who are staff and volunteers who have a lot of expertise in different techniques and disciplines of design and they are there to talk to students, and give them tips, train them on how to use their equipment etc. And then that leads me to our last main pillar of resources which is our maker space which is basically a term for a lab space that has lots of equipment that you can use to make things. So our maker space has a lot of different areas. We have, for example, a general maker space with 3D printers and laser cutters. We have a wood shop, a metal shop. We have electronic shop. We have an augmented reality virtual reality space that we’re actually opening up in, well it’s a real space, and we’re going to be opening up in the fall so students can take advantage of any and all of those topics. And so that’s kind of our job to tell students what’s available and which of those resources they might want to take advantage of any and all of those topics. So that’s kind of our job to tell students what’s available and which of those resources they might want to take advantage of.

LV: So how do they get involved or sign up to be part of BCDI, the certificate program.

TR: Okay. So ultimately the formality of signing up for the program is a bit fluent but you can ultimately just go on our website, go to the curriculum page and there’ll be a forum that you download, that is the Declaration of Intent Form. On the form, the questions will ask you some basic student information questions and then it’ll also ask you some of the courses that you may be interested in taking, as part of the certificate. So you’ll get an opportunity to, say there’s three different levels within the certificate as far as courses are concerned. You have the design foundation courses which are meant to sort of give you a foundation of knowledge and design in general, then you have the design skills courses and last you have the advanced design courses which sort of incorporate all the process from the beginning of the iteration process to the and where you do major projects etc in these courses. Some of them are extremely technical. Some of them aren’t that technical on that and, so there’s a range of advanced design courses that are suitable for almost everyone on campus and will form or fashion depending on your interest. So ultimately what you’ll do is you’ll download the Declaration of Intent and you’ll review the list of approved courses for the certificate and you would sort of put in the classes that you are somewhat interested in, maybe put in a reasoning as to why you’re interested in those classes, and we’ll give you a choice of first choice or second choice. This information, you know, you’ll send this information directly to us. There’s informational wording on the website that tells you specifically where to send it, what email address to send it to. But we use the information to sort of gather data on students and what they’re thinking about, what courses appeal to certain students. And so the more data we have, the better we can serve the needs on the back and ultimately if we’re seeing you know real high demand for certain courses up front then that gives us some more ammunition to sort of speak towards what we need from the University in a number of different ways. If we need more slot enrollments etc. Stuff like that. Then this all helps the process. So that will be the, you know, the first step that you could take as far as formalizing it. But what I would suggest is that even before you do that you stop by Jacobs Hall. I mean two three four Jacobs Hall and you can come by, you can drop by, or you can sort of book appointment with me. You can book me at Tyshon Rogers.

LV:We’ll put links for this on our web page.

TR: OK. So yeah I would suggest that you sort of book an appointment with me. I usually put 30 minute time slots. But you know from there I can really sort of sit down and talk to you, and sort of we can sort of figure out you know what angle you’re sort of interested in design from so that we can you know sort of really sift through certain forces and their availability how they sort of work with your traditional academic path that you’re taking based on you know what you’re majoring in or what you are considering majoring in. So these are all things that take a lot of sort of like time to sort of sift out that can’t be done by pressing a keyboard and sending something off. So I would advise that aspect of it. But you know once you throw out a declaration of intent you know everything is pretty much a go, we sort of track you from that point on. We sort of put you into our informational system and we’ll send you updates on the changes and the new courses that are coming along, any programs or events that we’re having coming up, if we’re having info sessions we’ll send that out to you, other information about different things going on with the certificate program, we’ll update you on. But it allows for us to track you and gain more information and make it ultimately better for all students.

LV: And what is the benefit of getting the BCDI?

TR: Ultimately the certificate, we see the certificate as sort of a way to sort of confirm a long skill set that’s applicable to the professional world. So if you’re interested in interface stuff, then I think this speaks to whether, you know, you’re an anthropology major, but you’re interested in this type of stuff. It sort of gives you a sort of stamp of approval that you at least understand. Like say the processes behind leading a product development team at a tech company, from my anthropology standpoint. So like you at least know all the you know the sort of iterative processes, you know what goes into the team’s success, or what information they may need. And I think you know ultimately, by completing the certificate, and having that sort of cohort of students who sort of graduate move into the professional world where their sort of skills that they picked up through these courses, so to speak, to that experience and then we create sort of a pipeline that allows for those students to know of other students who’ve recently graduated since taken a certificate that they have this sort of skill set. I think ultimately we hope that the certificate brand becomes viable in the professional workplace. Okay. And I think that’s how I sort of see it, at least the students who are part of the brand, who graduate each year, they’ll know that students come from underneath them were taught in the same method, and that that’s a skill set that they have immediately on the job.

LV: So it’s definitely going to benefit them.

TR: Oh yeah I think

AD: Just to add a couple things, onto declaration, which is another common question we get; is there a design major or minor at Berkeley. And the answer is not yet. There is the College of Environmental Design, which offers a lot of majors to environmental design and they’re awesome and they also offer some soft design majors. There’s also other majors on campus that students pursue in lieu of a Design Major, but because there isn’t one the certificate is a great way for students to have that structure to their studies even if they’re not majoring in design or minoring in design either.

TR: Absolutely.

LV: Yeah that sounds great. So now Jacobs has other courses that are outside of the design certificate or are there ways that they maybe they don’t have time to do an entire certificate program but is there something that can be like a one off class or….?

AD: Yeah yeah that’s a great question. There are a lot of other classes. A lot of classes that we have do fold into the certificate. And since our missions overlap so much, but there are other classes that you can take there that are separate from it, as he said if you don’t have time or if you just have like other things you’re pursuing; we have decals that we support. So decals are the student taught and facilitated courses where students are teaching other students about things that they are passionate about. And so if it’s design related, like the web design decal or the new one, bio-inspired design decal. There’s also some courses that are one to two units so they don’t necessarily fit into the certificate. But for example our speaker series when you sign up and you hear a speaker come by every week to talk about their design practice. That’s also actually a public speaker series. Even if you aren’t taking the class for credit, you can come. Just hear the speakers whenever you have time. So there’s also these other one off opportunities like coming to workshops where Arjay are teaching things like how to make chocolate molds for Valentine’s Day or how to build a balloon fighting robots and have a balloon fighting battle with these little robots. So yeah, if you’re interested in learning about design keep an eye out for those student-led classes. Know that you can take all of our classes a-la-carte and you don’t have, you know, if you want to just take one class, but not necessarily a whole suite. And that’s totally fine. Or you can also just look out for our workshops, and our one off events as ways to learn. Fantastic.

TR: And yes I just want to follow up on the decals that are offered at Jacobs. I would say for incoming freshmen who may have trouble enrolling in some of our design foundation courses. The decal for our for human design and the decal for graphic design are excellent choices to introduce you to the methodological education style of what we do at the certificate program. So those are classes that you can probably get into more likely to get you sort of rolling because you know the first thing you have to sort of like you know get a prerequisite. That way, when your freshman year, your schedule is kind of set in some ways, and there’s not much much wiggle room to sort of just incorporate something that you’re thinking about that you want to do. But if you’re extremely interested in design, you kind of know where you want to go. Those are good entry point for our ideal design patience and learning that process and you can learn it in student groups around a bunch of students who are also interested. This is a really good way to meet other students who are intimately involved in design processes. And you know possibly join clubs etc. meet friends who are thinking along the same lines from different interdisciplinary backgrounds. So I would suggest that that option is there for you. It’s a good way to get into it, if you want to get a feel for it before you you make a full commitment to it, and then you know if you feel like it’s for committing to them then I would suggest that you sort of sit down with your major advisor, and sort of work out a pathway that allows for you to graduate based on whatever timeline that works for you, and is important to you or what’s necessary as far as your life circumstances are concerned and sort of fitting that in going forward. And then we’ll always be available to sort of help you work around certain things. But yeah I would say if you’re not able to switch right and use the decals which are usually in blocks of time that are sort of not conflicting with all the classes and stuff like that. Use those as a way to sort of feel out the process and see what you want to do.

LV: Now that is a great suggestion thank you. How can they gain access to Jacob? You were talking about the maker space. Is there a way to go in and just be able to use the maker space

AD: So to get access to the maker space specifically it’s a three step process and any Berkeley student can have access, all engineering students as well as from other colleges. So the process is all on our website. Just look up maker space pass. Jacob Hall. Go to our our space section on the site you’ll see it. So first up is registration. You fill out a very short form just less like you’re interested in getting a pass. Second thing is you pay access fee for the semester for most students its at 75 dollars. There is a few waiver available to you if you have a financial need. So if that fee is a concern to you, just fill out the waiver and we’ll let you know within a few days whether we can waive that fee for you. The third step is to take an online safety training. It’s a module on bCourses and you just read. There are basic access and safety policies and requests and a lesson that you have written on the mission. And then once you’ve done those three steps then you have access for the semester. Right now our access is on a semester by semester basis so every semester you want access you just do this quick process. And then once you do that you basically are able to get into the maker space. All of our equipment is available with your Cal 1 card by tapping our card reader, you go in and then you at that point just choose the parts of the maker space that you want to get trained on. So for example, I want to use laser cutters. I will sign up for the laser cutter training. I want to use the woodshop, I will sign up for the woodshop training so there is additional training. But getting that makers pass is that initial access, its a three step process and its a-la-carte use, use the areas of space they want to learn about and you can take training for all them if you want or some of it, based on what you want to do.

LV: So let’s talk a little bit more about the communities that we have at Jacobs and part of the community for the CDI. What are the students like? Who actually comes and takes part in it? Tell me a little bit more about that.

AD: Yeah so the community Jacobs, I think, is one of the best parts of working there. So we have students who are very open minded and very interested. I think that’s why they’re kind of saying I want to do something that’s a little bit outside of the box of what I’m studying in the classroom. And so they are coming there and they’re meeting students from other majors, and they’re collaborating on these projects where one student is like an EECS major and he’s like doing that all the electronics work. Another student is the Army major. He’s like all the physical components and then the other person is CogSci and they’re thinking through about the user experience aspects of it and you see a lot of these students working together and getting together and being I think a general positive community. I think that’s another thing that I really like about our students is that people are just really excited to be there, and they’re excited to show their friends and to introduce new students to the space into what’s possible there, and so you see students all the time just kind of bring people over, and showing them what they’ve done. If you get stuck on something, then I think it’s pretty common for students to turn up to another student, ask them what to do or talk to whenever one of our students supervisors staff who are also great and also provide assistance to our users just like our design specialist professional staff do. So very interdisciplinary and very friendly and just very creative and open minded.

TR: Yeah I would say for my experience with students who were participating in the program. They come from a diverse background of interdisciplinary education. And so, you’ll see what are actually the majority of our students come from the college of letters and science. So CogSci are most popular major, for students who are taking the certificate program. And so what happens is that these courses and you have students coming from CogSci, sort of merging and working on projects together that ultimately allows for a level of connectivity that you may not get in a more homogenous course where everyone’s sort of like studying for a test, and they’re almost operating like individuals in a way. The nature of the courses  is that you know you have to work together. So you know collaborative innovation is a really big thing amongst the courses and you’re getting perspectives from people from all ranges of academic life. So I would say what you see is sort of a vibrant community. Students coming out of classrooms talking to each other about you know what to do next. There’s always this like action going on that speaks to a level of closeness and community that we strive for, ultimately.

LV: I like to hear that everybody’s really getting to work together, and you work on these different projects. So the biggest thing that we’ve talked a little bit about how to find out, how to be part of this, and how to do things, all have links on our website but tell me a little bit more of how do people get information that they can take part. All of this.

TR: Yes. OK for the certificate program. Just check on our website bcdi.berkeley.edu.

And you know just browsing around the Web site as much as possible reading through checking out mainly our curriculum page which gives us a lot about, you know, sort of instructions on courses or courses are available, how you take courses, can petition for courses, or you can do that, you can always stop by Jacobs Hall, and come talk to me about it in general or book me at tyshonrogers.youcanbook.me. And those will be the first steps as far as participation is concerned. Each semester, we have an open house and full session that will publicize through social media outlets through Berkeley calendars.

LV: So we’ve definitely put it on the ESS newsletter so that happens every semester.

TR: We also have a sort of graduation ceremony in the spring. So that will include people who are either graduating in the Fall, most who will graduate in the spring or even students who go into the summer. That’s also a good opportunity actually come in you know to see the ceremony see, you know, what’s going on with the program, and learn more about it. That’s probably our biggest sort of thing, where you can ask any question, we’ll be there to talk to you. The Academic Committee will be there and you really get it done. As far as the process is concerned, and sort of like speak to the teaching and training that’s the foundation of the certificate program.

LV: That’s great. Thank you.

AD: Again for acquiring resources at Jacobs Hall. I would say, if you have and if any of this stuff remotely sounds interesting to you, just stop by, we’re located right next to Etcheverry Hall. Our doors are open any time so stop for just a chat if you want to learn more. My office is in 103 Jacobs and you can also book appointments with me for advising at the beginning of semester. We’ll try to have some winter activities here so you’ll see us at Caltopia, you’ll see us at the Engineering Students Orientation activities event. We’ll have tours of the building etc.. So just look out for those, and just know that this is, just again, something that I think is important to get involved with as a student. Secondly, it’s just really fun, and you’re gonna to get to meet a lot of other cool students. Active student groups. If you are so interested, so the main things to hear about, all the things that are happening are to just remember that you can visit any time during the semester. Once you’re on campus, stop by our office or Tyshon’s office, and also just to check out our website, we have a Facebook and Twitter as well. And when you go to our website the section that you you might want to go to specifically is our student resources section that compiles all the information that we’ve talked about during the course of this podcast, and has links for more information and as well as links to where you can find and talk to me

LV: And I think it would be remiss if I didn’t talk a little bit more about what experience levels do students need to come in and start taking classes, or be a part of the maker space.

AD: Yes. Thank you so much for your question with that, so we welcome all experience levels, so we are a learning institution and we understand that not everyone comes into Berkeley with any knowledge about how to use a band saw or a 3D printer. And so that’s why we have these trainings, as we have these workshops, as we have all the staff who are available to assist you and so don’t be afraid of that. If that’s your concern please come and just learn and know that we are a resource for learning and for making mistakes iterating and until suddenly you are senior and you’re now teaching freshmen how to do the thing because you’ve gained so much over the past four years, that’s getting ahead of myself. There’s all experience levels, all are welcome and we would love to have fashion in transfers come into our doors as soon as they get here.

LV: Well thank you so much for coming. I really appreciate your time. Thank you so much and I hope everyone got a ton of information about the Jacob’s Institute for Design Innovation and our Berkeley Certificate of Design Innovation and I’m excited about it. I think the students are really excited about it. It’s something that’s not book learning that you keep hearing about, that we’re shoving physics.

So thank you everyone for tuning in today to the Not So Secret Guide to Being a Berkeley Engineer and I will talk to you again. Next week. Thank you.

Important links:

• CalCentral – Check your task lists to make sure that you don’t have any incomplete tasks relating to financial aid.
• Scholarships: scholarships.berkeley.edu

LAURA VOGT: Hello and welcome to The Not So Secret Guide to Being a Berkeley Engineer. My name is Laura Vogt, I’m the Communications and Events manager for Engineering Student Services and your podcast host! This week we have Joe Sell, A Special Projects Coordinator from the Financial Aid & Scholarships Office. Hi Joe, welcome to the podcast.

JOE SELL: Hi Laura, thanks.

LV: Can you please tell us a little about yourself and what services you and your office provide for students at UC Berkeley.

JS: So again my name is Joe Sell, I’m a special projects coordinator in the Financial Aid & Scholarships Office. I’ve worked at Berkeley for about three years now, just over three years. So I work in the counseling unit of the Financial Aid Office. So we not only provide you know in person, individual advising and counseling, but we also work with reviewing all student documents, student appeals. We do outreach different departments. We do satellite office hours in different departments, as well, dispersing, packaging financial aid – Basically a little bit everything.

LV: And so what is the best way for a student if they need to speak with a financial aid counselor?

JS: So the best way in my opinion is just in person advising. So students can come to Cal Student Central, which is 120 Sproul. They’re open from 9:00 a.m. until 4:00 p.m. So students can just come check in at Cal Student Central, they can meet with an adviser there. So the Cal Student Central advisors, they work not only with financial aid but they also work with the Office of the Registrar, with billing of payment services, so they really are a wealth of knowledge in all sorts of different areas. So it’s a good place to kind of get the first general questions are answered. At that point if it’s something that needs a little more of an in-depth conversation they can escalate the student to meet with a financial aid counselor on the second floor of Sproul. At that point we can then really kind of dig deep and have more of an in-depth conversation and see if we can answer any deeper questions that students might have. So they can do it in person. They can also submit an online case through students enrolled at Cal studentcentral.berkeley.edu. That’s a way if they’re not on campus and the question answered they can just make a request through that way as well. All of us in the counseling unit are looking to those tickets that we’re helping those questions as well. There’s a phone line they can call. There’s all sorts of different ways to get in contact, in person is the best in my opinion.

LV: If a student is getting financial aid, when can they expect the pay out for that?

JS: The earliest we can versus 10 days prior to the start of a semester. So for example for the fall, we’re beginning disbursing on I think 13 is the earliest that we can pay which be about 10 days before the fall semester begins. Now that’s again provided that the student’s file is complete. So has any requirements that students need to complete over the summer or before the fall begins. They want to make sure they’re taken care of as soon as possible because that could possibly delay the disbursement of their financial aid.

LV: And if there’s paperwork that they need to complete, how do they know what they’re missing?

JS: All of those requirements are on CalCentral. And so really it’s down to checking CalCentral on a regular basis. We send out a lot of e-mails. So really it’s you know we encourage and check the e-mails as regularly as possible but also just keep an eye on their account central as much as possible. Once we have the students there FAFSA application at that point we can find out if there’s anything else they need to do and we can post it on CalCentral, so they know ahead of time. And that way and get that all all done wrapped up before they get here in the fall.

LV: If there’s a student that hasn’t done their FAFSA application yet is it too late to still get anything turned in?

JS: No. So the FAFSA deadline is technically March 2nd each year. Now, that being said students can still submit their FAFSA even now. So the deadline does you know make a termination with some sorts of kinds of awards. But for the most part students can still get a standard financial aid package even if they submit their FAFSA after the deadline. FAFSA actually opens in October. So it’s open pretty early toward the beginning of the year. But yeah different students can still submit their FAFSA and we can still package for aid.

LV: Oh that’s great. Many of our students choose not to take the loans because they don’t want to get out of here with a lot of debt. I know some of them have the option to do work study. What is it? How do they convert to work study and how does that work for them?

JS: Yes so the first way. If students are offered work study. So at the very beginning which are to offer work study for anybody who’s eligible and students can actually accept the work study on CalCentral and that’s kind of their first indication of whether or not they even think they’re remotely interested in pursuing work study. And that gives us an idea if they think they’re going to wonder or not. So what I would say first of all is if students are eligible they may already have a work study offer and there their work package and if they’re even thinking like slightly like maybe I’ll use it in the spring even if it’s not coming be in the fall they can still accept how much of that they think they might want to use. Now at that point if they don’t accept the work study or they only accept part of it the rest of it leaves you roll over into a loan offer. But like you said they can always come back and convert that later if they think they’ll need it. Cal Central has a link they can click on. The rules say for works that your loan or loan to work study and students can specify how much they want to convert. And then CalCentral will actually do it automatically for them. In some cases they might use additional review and it might actually refer them to come to Cal Student Central so we can take a second look at that conversion for them as well. But in general if they’re eligible they can make that request from work study to loan or loan to work study either way.

LV: And what exactly is work study for a student? What does that mean they’re going to be doing?

JS: Work study it functions like a regular job, it doesn’t have to be on campus work study jobs are off campus as well. Students get paid like a regular paycheck. The only difference is that it’s being paid out of a work study budget essentially. But again it functions like a regular job. They get job experience, they still get paid kind of any like any other position that comes out of a federal worksite budget.

LV: Oh OK. So it’s making it so they don’t take on the loan though.

JS: Exactly.

LV: That is the important part of the whole thing.

JS: Yes. You don’t have to pay Word study back. Work study is not a loan. They’re earning that through their employment. So yes it’s a great way to prevent taking out extra debt that they may not need.

LV: And how can they get to work study job?

JS: So they can actually apply through…There’s a link on the on CalCentral that takes them into the work study. There is actually a portal on the financial aid website. They have to have a work study offer in order to access the portal but as long as they’ve accepted that offer in CalCentral than they actually can log in and start applying for the jobs that are work study eligible.

LV: And it’s just applying like applying for any job.

JS: Exactly the same as any other sort of job application. You know one thing we say too is that students are kind of beginning their job search. You know it’s very easy to see you know a job posting that says like we prefer certain you know experiences of certain backgrounds. That may kind of discourage a student from applying for a job. You know really you know a lot of employers may offer that sort of training they need even if they don’t have that background just yet. So it really doesn’t hurt for students apply for jobs if they’re interested in doing so.

LV: And one of the things I think might be nice about the work study jobs, especially with the students that we’ve worked with, is because you’re on a college campus doing work study we understand finals and midterms and having to get projects done. So we’re really willing and able to work around schedules.

LV: Exactly. Yeah. And one thing I always tell my kids do I know my first work-study job I was in the library and I was doing like microfilm machines and like like finding periodicals I know what that meant when I was first applying for the job. But it was a great experience and it was something I could take with me afterwards and again it helped me in providing I’m taking a bunch of additional loans while I was in school.

LV: So so now kind of going back to the financial aid aspect of it. What if somebody has a change in their circumstances one of their parents lost their job, whether it’s a death in the family or anything along those lines?

JS: Yes so we see that a lot especially now that FAFSA is using two years prior tax information income information. So right we realize that the FAFSA doesn’t always give the best picture of what the family’s current financial circumstances are. So students can submit what’s called a parent contribution appeal or student contribution appeal if it’s a student’s income that’s changed. And that really gives them the opportunity to take a second look and to say what is the family’s current financial circumstances. What is their ability to contribute. And see if we can make a different termination for them. So usually we see those for circumstances like you know parents lost their job or there’s reduced hours or wages. It could also be things like if there’s significant out-of-pocket medical expenses or something like that that’s also impacting your ability to contribute. So that form is available on CalCentral. There’s actually a link that will say upload optional forms and so students can find that parent contribution or student contribution appeal there. And really I just say to encourage to read through the form as thoroughly as possible because we do require specific documents to help document the circumstances. But yeah if the appeals complete we can begin take a look at it see if we can make a different determination for them and see if that can maybe help out and again better capture their families ability to contribute.

LV: OK. Well I’m glad that it’s not something that set in stone necessarily then.

JS: Yeah. I said you know the parent country is again for if there’s a change in parents circumstances with student contribution appeals which is used a lot for like transfer students or you since were working full time and then they quit to become a full time student they no longer have that income that was on their 2015 or 2016 tax information. So yeah it’s not set in stone so that has changed we didn’t want to see we can take a second look for them.

LV: And how do students stay in good standing for their financial aid? Is there a certain number of units that they have to take or GPA that they have to maintain?

JS: Yes so the financial aid office we have it’s called satisfactory academic progress or SAP. It’s a little bit different. It can be different than the colleges determination for their academic standing for example. So SAP requires about three different criteria. So the first is that undergraduate students have to have a 2.0 GPA or higher, graduate students have a 3.0 GPA or higher. Students have to complete 67 percent of the units that they attempt in an academic year and then cumulatively during their entire career at Berkeley. And then also undergrad students can’t attempt more than 180 units, so they can’t receive financially for kind of an infinite amount of time either. So we monitor SAP every year and that’s where we determine if students are eligible to continue receiving financial aid each year. If for some reason students are meeting SAP they have the opportunity to submit a sap appeal and that gives us the opportunity to see what the circumstances were that may have kept them from meeting those requirements. Students can provide a written statement that explains what the circumstances were. We want a good idea of what’s changed since then and then what support resources they might be using to make sure that they can meet satisfactory economic progress moving forward. If students aren’t meeting SAP than they do lose eligibility for her federal state and institutional financial aid. So that’s everything from federal grants, state grants, work study, federal loans all that’s kind of wrapped up under SAP. So again if students aren’t meeting SAP then they may want to submit an appeal so we can see what the circumstances were.

LV: OK. And what is a CNP? I don’t even know what a CNP is but I was told to ask about it.

JS: So CNP stands for cancellation for nonpayment. So CNP is an office the registrar policy. It says that if students don’t pay at least 20 percent or more of their fees by the fee payment deadline they run the risk of being canceled from their enrollment.

LV: Okay, If you’re canceled from your moment that means you’re dropped out of the classes.

JS: Basically yeah. And then so then we want to make sure that they can usually re-enroll again. We want to make sure their fees are paid. So how that intersects with the financial aid office is that a lot of students rely on financial aid to pay their tuition fees. And so we’re that kind of folds in his back to our initial piece of the conversation is making sure their file is complete as soon as possible because financially disperses in the 13th for example for them for the upcoming fall. So if everything is complete anyway and that’s well before that deadline so that at least make sure their tuition fees are paid and that we don’t have to worry about the cancellation for nonpayment message. So really just kind of comes down to that proactivity of making sure a file is complete making sure everything is there and if it’s not getting everything addressed as soon as possible or checking in with us we can make sure everything.

LV: So if you’re getting that message I the first thing to do is just to check your task list and make sure that you got everything turned in.

JS: Exactly yeah. And you know if everything looks complete and all the you know there’s no missing documents or anything there’s a word package there and CalCentral message will still be there until we begin disbursing aid. So a lot of times it might still be there beforehand or in that case it’s not as much of a concern. Everything looks complete. Not to discourage from double checking anyway just in case you’re not sure. Come in and make sure you know we can we can check for them but you know if they’re still seeing that message after we’ve been disbursing aid because something hasn’t paid yet we doesn’t get to take a look and see what’s going on to make sure that everything is complete.

LV: And is there a way that students can get emergency financial aid like say if they lost their computer it was broken or stolen or anything along those lines?

JS: So we have a total cost of attendance adjustment request. So it’s another optional form that students can find like the parent contribution of people that we talked about. It’s available until a bit later on in the semester so usually in late September, October is when we usually make it available. So the computer is one example you know students can request that we can offer additional financial aid to cover the costs of a computer once every three years. There are other different items they can request as well. So anything outside of the standard cost of attendance. So when they’re CalCentral students will see a box that shows what’s in their cost of attendance and things like living expenses, transportation, books and supplies, those sorts of things. One really good example that we see a lot is rent. So our standard budget for last year for example for students living off campus is about $999/month but students may have read that it is outside of $999/month. So what we can do in that case is then request a copy of a lease agreement for example and see if they’re paying more than what’s in their standard budget. At that point we can then try to offer additional aid to help meet those costs. Now the specific thing about it is that in most cases it’s going to be an additional loan or work study offer. So unless it’s a rare case where students Grant has been reduced by outside scholarships or something in that regard than they make it of that back but for the most part it’s the loans or work study that we will offer for any of the additional living expenses or the computer purchase or that sort of thing.

LV: But definitely make it so that they can make their ends meet while they’re here.

JS: Absolutely. Absolutely.

LV: What if students have questions about scholarships. Do you have a good database somewhere for scholarships or is it just kind of go and look randomly for a things?

JS: So students you know of course we’re always encouraging students apply for outside scholarships. And one website that I really like is scholarships.berkeley.edu. It’s just one sort of place for students to start, but it is actual database that lets students filter out by their year in school, what they’re studying, their citizenship status, all the sorts of things and give them a long list of different scholarships they can go to. And each link will take them where they can apply and what the requirements are in that sort of thing. So it’s a really great database. They’re always updating and adding new scholarships so you know one misconception is that the only time to apply for scholarships is before you begin your freshman year. That’s not really true. Students can apply for scholarships their entire time during their undergraduate career. And I just I always encourage to keep checking back there because they’re going to always be adding scholarships back.

LV: So if you could give one piece of advice to students about financial aid, what’s your one piece of advice that you want them to take away?

JS: I think my number one piece of advice would be really take an active role in their financial aid. So what I say that I mean you know checking e-mails like we mentioned, checking CalCentral and asking a lot of questions. So don’t be afraid to ask questions if something’s not clear. There’s really no kind of you know bad question really because it can be a little complex. And so we want to make sure that if there is any question has been addressed but again really being proactive making sure everything is done ahead of time and again asking questions if anything is unclear. Want to make sure we can help out with them.

LV: Well thank you so much for joining us today and we’re giving us all this information. I know students are constantly asking me questions about financial aid and I don’t know. So I’m so glad that you came and were able to give us some answers.

JS: Yeah, of course. Thanks for having me.

LV: And thank you everyone for tuning in today and if you’ve got any more questions make sure you check out our website. We’re going to have links for all the websites that we talked about today and maybe some extra hint if we come across them. And thank you for tuning into the Not So Secret Guide to Being a Berkeley Engineer. I’ll talk to you next week, bye.

GBO is a mandatory, weeklong program (August 15-21) for new undergraduates that helps you:

• make connections to your peers, faculty, and staff
• learn more about available resources and experience campus traditions
• broaden your understanding of this diverse and dynamic community
• create a sense of community with your orientation group and trained Golden Bear Orientation Leaders

LAURA VOGT: Welcome to The Not So Secret Guide to Being a Berkeley Engineer. I’m Laura Vogt the Communications and Events Manager for Engineering Student Services. And thank you for joining this week for our podcast once again. And it’s coming, you’re finally going to go on campus and you’re getting to meet new folks and start your college career. So today I’m excited to have Micki Estuesta, the associate director of New Student Services to give us some backstage information on Golden Bear Orientation. Thank you for joining us!

MICKI ESTUESTA: Well thank you all for having me. It’s wonderful to spend some time talking with you all and sharing more about the whole experience the Golden Bear Experience.

LV: So what can you tell us a little bit more about you and what you do for New Student Services?

ME: Wonderful. I’ve been at UC Berkeley for three years and all my time has been a New Student Services. I have the privilege of focusing on my work really on three main areas: pre-arrival communications and programs for incoming students, parents support at orientation, and GBA programs focused on sexual violence prevention and mental health. So those are my main areas and I also have the esteemed privilege of working with all of the colleges.

LV: So it’s not just engineering that you have to work with all the time.

ME: Everybody, everybody. New Student Services, we are serving every every single one of the 9000 incoming students.

LV: Oh, there’s 9,000?

ME: Yes, they keep us pretty busy.

LV; Is it mostly undergrad or do you also do graduate?

ME: Just undergrad. So we serve about 6000 first years and 3000 transfers, so they keep us plenty busy.

LV: I can imagine. Why should students be excited about Golden Bear Orientation? I know why I’m excited about it but why should the students be excited?

ME: Golden Bear Orientation really is meant to be a holistic welcome to campus. Rather than having you just come for a day frantically running around campus for 24 hours in the middle of summer and try to figure what’s going on. We recognize there’s way more to Berkeley than just getting your classes, figure out where food is and knowing what bus system to take. We want you to have that build that communication. Recognize that holistic experience that and before classes even start. We want you to feel like you’re set and you have that community. So everyone is new. I think that’s my most exciting part is that every single person is new. The entire campus is focused solely on those new students and we all really get to embrace the fact that there are no silly questions. Everyone’s coming into a new place at a new time and can really build on that sense of community.

LV: Golden Bear Orientation starts with the move-in. So is there anything that students need to know about. What should they know about the move before they get here?

ME: Well our main move-in day is August 14th, that’s a Tuesday, and there’s a lot going on. The great thing with housing is if you have questions that are available all throughout the summer so I would encourage calling if you have questions but you get to pick your move in time. So whether you’re coming from southern California and sitting on I-5 all day or you’re flying from China and you need to book your flight that you get to pick the best time for you for that day to move in. But I think my advice is being patient. It’s a lot going on. Be patient with yourself. Maybe be patient with your family members who are helping you move in on those days. Because we know it’s kind of bittersweet on that moment and that if you really are worried because you’ve left deodorant or sheets at home we actually visits to Target built into orientation, so no worries if you ever left anything at home. We got you taken care of during orientation.

LV: You’ll definitely be able to pick up anything around here. We’re not in some little tiny town.

ME: It’s perfect yes. So it’s a big day and we actually end the day moving with big night with carnivals and petting zoos and bull rides because we know that it’s kind of stressful for folks and we want them to be able to enjoy and relax little bit before orientation officially starts the next morning.

LV: Oh that’s awesome. And so do the events of GBO, is it required attendance or do you get to pick and choose what events you go to?

ME: We get that question all the time especially the question of Is it really seven days or seven days. And yes that is the case and we really expect that all students participate in all component of Golden Bear Orientation and we do that so we build each part to make sure that students succeed. And it could be simple and easy in that moment to say oh I don’t need this or I might not pursue this, I don’t need to spend time here. But we encourage you to take advantage every single component of Golden Bear Orientation. I like to think going to Golden Bear Orientation like classes during your semester. Your professor might not be taking attendance but you know by the end of that sitting in this process and learning from folks and engaging with your peers and connecting them is going to make you more successful on the final. Also we give you plenty of break time so just because all the components and days are long. We want you to also take a break and enjoy and relax and make those connections too, so it’s not all sitting in a lecture. It’s not all just meals all the time. There’s a big balance of different events going on. And if you have questions if you’re concerned about the attendance, about the time caller office. We recognize we’re building a program for 9000 students. It can’t fit everyone perfectly right. We just want folks to call and ask and we’ll walk you through what your schedule may look like, what it looks like for the week because we want you to succeed. We don’t want this to be a hindrance to your success.

LV: OK. And so do you have an idea of what a student’s day might look like during Golden Bear Orientation.

ME: That is a great question. One thing that everyone will have no matter what is food so they can already number one they’re through the day. You’re going to have large scale events. So the beginning we’re going to start with grouping and you’re going to be your orientation leaders and they are current students who are passionate and passionate about making sure you as a new student have a great experience and you’ll be with a small group of other new students. You’re not going be at all 9000 students the whole time. We have big scale events, but you’re also going to small time, where your group takes you on a tour of campus you’re going to experience the city of Berkeley because we recognize that’s a big part of your time here. You’re going to have time with College of Engineering with your advisers and so there’s so many different components actually on our website and we’ve been sending out e-mails to students is kind of a schedule what what to expect in the different components. Although it’s different for every single student. So every small group has a unique schedule. We also give our orientation leaders a lot of ability to add their kind of flair into their group schedule because they have their real life students they know what it’s like here at Berkeley and we want them to impart their wisdom onto the students in their group.

LV: So every group is going to have at least one student orientation leader.

ME: At least one, yeah. And specifically if you are a transfer student one of your leaders will also be a transfer student as well. So with that shared identity of recognizing your unique experience coming into Berkeley.

LV:  I like the idea that they get to build into it something that they thought was important, something they wanted to make sure that the students find out about.

ME: Yes. So one of our most popular items that our orientation leaders took folks on last year was Boba tours in the city of Berkeley or the best places to nap around campus. Those happened to be some of our most popular activities that our orientation leaders to our groups to last year.

LV; I want to know where these napping places are. The number one question that I seem to get about about Golden Bear Orientation is about the food and I know they’re going to get fed, but what are they getting better are they getting to choose, is it a really strict menu?

ME: So three meals a day breakfast for everyone is going to grab and go at the different residence halls. And even if you are a student who’s not living in university right then it’s all. You’re welcome to go in with our fancy wristbands to identify you as an individual within the program and you can just go in and grab whatever works for you. And then lunch and dinner. We have meals at the residence halls, as well as food trucks on campus. So say for example you’re going to one of the residence halls for dining, that will be the same food at every single residence hall for that meal. Lunch and dinner will vary. And if any folks have extreme allergies, our campus is really great about meeting gluten kosher or any of those kind of needs that students have. My favorite meal though of Golden Bear Orientation is that every single student will have at least one of their meals at a restaurant on Telegraph Avenue. Maybe you need a burrito or you need anything or ice cream or again Boba, whatever you need. So we want students to explore so at least one of their meals will be held at a restaurant right off campus.

LV: Oh that’s a great way to get to explore the neighborhood and surrounding Berkeley area. I know the food around here is fantastic.

ME: Yes. And I know we’ve heard a lot from different students that they’ve now become they found so many of her restaurants through that program that they’re able to go back day after day during their first semester on campus.

LV: And this is one part of GBO that you think is the most important that take away that students need to really make sure that they go and listen and pay attention? I know we want them to do it for all of it but if there was one that you had to really focus on?

ME: There are two different things, I can’t pick between just one. So first is Bear Pact, it’s actually a program that I work heavily on and it’s a performance play that is written and performed by real life students. We’re going to talk about how we can build a safe and inclusive community on this campus. And they actually talk specifically about ending sexual violence and talking about how they can care for themselves as individual students. so it’s pretty incredible to see how students share this message and the hopes that we’re building a safer and inclusive community.

LV: Oh that’s awesome.

ME: On the flipside the other really fun one is Day in the Bay. Everyone of our students will spend at least a half of their day as part of Golden Bear Orientation exploring the Bay Area. So that might mean you’re taking a cruise out to San Francisco or going to the Oakland Museum or if you’re a transfer student you’re actually picking from 100 different companies who will host you for the day. So maybe you’re looking into nonprofits so when that email comes up or transfers they can self select what program or company they want to go see. So we want to get folks out and away from campus as well. So recognizing building a community here but exploring the area around you and learning how to take BART while you’re at it.

LV: My most exciting thing I’m looking forward to is we get a full day with all the new incoming engineer students, which is pretty awesome.

ME: And your schedule is looking pretty good. I think they should be very excited.

LV: I think we got quite a few times that they get to do and so do you have any tips for students of how to make the most of their time at GBO?

ME: I think engage, ask questions and really spend time with your small group and make those connections and support from those students because they’re going to be the ones in your residence halls and your classes and you’re going to have really appreciate your having this kind of carefree time with them before classes even start. Take advantage of your break time. We know that it’s a busy week and we want you to be successful once classes start. And that means when it’s break time you can go sit and do your own thing and maybe listen to a different engineering podcast that just came about that day. I think the best advice is get some good shoes. It’s a long week but also, Berkeley is on a hill. I remember my first week working here. I was pleasantly surprised by how many steps I accumulated in a day. You will get plenty of those. So get some good shoes and know that like I said earlier everyone’s new and so take advantage of that there’s no silly questions. And this whole campus is built for you in that one week. It’s just all about you. So taking advantage of that and having a good time.

LV: And you have an orientation leader that’s been here for a year.

ME: At least one year. We have seniors, we have orientation leaders who have continued, summer transfers. We have they are really a reflection of all the many student identities and experiences. And so they are also going to want to make sure you get connected with other folks too because they want to share their story. They want to give you the opportunity to share how you got to Berkeley and what you want to get out of your time here.

LV: Is there anything else that you want to add that we didn’t touch on yet?

ME: I think the main thing is if you have questions or you need support know that Berkeley is a place that has support systems, whether that’s within the College of Engineering, if you have academic questions or housing if you don’t know where your housing unit is or are our office of new student services. Because I think Berkeley is a place that if you ask questions people will be there just for you. But that requires you to ask, to explore, to engage a little bit and then always check your email.

LV: Yes…always check your email.

ME: and enjoy the summer. I think that’s, that’s it is we. We know that it’s going to be a lot once you’re right here and we want it to be an incredible time. But take advantage of being with family or friends or pets when you’re at home now or exploring. So just take advantage of your time here and enjoy those folks who hopefully helped you get to this place.

LV: Well thank you so much Micky for coming in today.

ME: Well thank you for having me. Can’t wait to meet you all in person in August.

LV: And thank you everyone for tuning in. And we’ll talk to you again next week for the Not So Secret Guide to Being a Berkeley Engineer, goodbye!

• Visit career.berkeley.edu to begin researching the best ways to create your resume and start getting to know the Career Center.
• Beginning August 1 sign-in to Handshake and visit the events calendar and signup for the Career Center’s weekly newsletter.
• Create or update your LinkedIn profile.

LAURA VOGT: Hello and welcome to The Not So Secret Guide to Being a Berkeley Engineer. I am Laura Vogt, the Communications and Events Manager for Engineering Student Services. Today I’m so happy to have Katie Crawford from the the Career Center with us. Katie, please introduce yourself and tell us what the Career Center does for the students of UC Berkeley.

KATIE CRAWFORD: Hello thank you for having me again.

LV: And let’s have you introduce yourself for all of our new students.

KC: Sure. So as Laura said, my name is Katie Crawford. I am the Career Counselor leading our engineering team at the Cal Career Center. So that means that I am the career counselor who sees all of the students within the College of Engineering including freshmen through graduate students and also run all of the programming career related programming for this population.

LV: What are the Career Center’s goal for Berkeley students?

KC: So in an ideal world the Career Center would love to see every student on campus graduate and walk across that stage with their dream job. That dream internship or their dream graduate school acceptance. So in an ideal world that’s what would happen and that is the reason, the sole reason we exist. We’re the only department (on campus) that solely exists to help students find their dream jobs and dream careers.

LV: So your point of being here, everything that you do, that’s what your endgame is.

KC: Yes. So we are very, very student centered office. My position is extremely student centered and everything we do is meant to help prepare students to figure out what they want to do and then once they figure it out we help get them there.

LV: I was trying to think of like how to separate subjects to talk to you today. And when I think about the Career Center I think of three main things that you do, and you’ll probably want to add to my three things, you have the career conference that you do with Engineering, the Career Fair and career workshops. So you want to tell us a little bit about each of those.

KC: Sure. The first item that you mentioned is our Engineering Career Conference. This year’s will be the sixth annual Career Conference for engineering students. So that’s for any student who is either in the College of Engineering or interested in the College of Engineering or engineering positions. So that’s a day where students can come in and primarily we we target juniors and seniors although freshmen and sophomores are also welcome as well as graduate students. And we have a couple of keynote speakers we provide breakfast and lunch. We provide a couple of different workshops that are all put on by employer partners from different areas of engineering and those topics cover everything from sort of career exploration within engineering, all the way to interviewing techniques with a recruiter at Intel or how to approach a career fair with a recruiter at Google. Then we end the day with another keynote and then networking with Cal Engineering Alumni and a lunch. So that’s a great opportunity to really kick start recruiting in the fall.

LV: And that’s one of the only things that we do on a Saturday but it’s because it’s a full day. We want you to be able to be present for the entire time and not have to run off to another class or anything.

KC: Exactly. So that is a full day. But it’s a very very worthwhile and we get great evaluations every year from students. So we’re excited to be there. We hope you are. The next thing that Laura mentioned were career fairs. Career fairs are open to all registered students, freshman through graduate students again. They are great days to come in and meet with feasibly hundreds of recruiters and alumni who are working at companies and they have jobs and or internships in their pockets. So they are there, they pay money to be there, in order to gain access to you our students. And so those start on September 5th is our first stop, second week of school. So we hit the ground running. Recruiting starts very early in the fall for all schools. We are not excluded from that. So that is the EECS Career Fair on September 5th and then we have a string of career fairs that are going to happen throughout the semester. And you can find them all in Handshake, which we’ll talk about more in just a little bit.

LV: And for the career fairs, kind of going hand in hand that we have these set of workshops that you do.

KC: Yes. So a point to be made for all freshmen and transfer students and really all students is we have about 14 career counselors for about 40000 students. So although we do one on one appointments with students, we do a lot of targeted programming in order to make sure that even if students can’t get in for a one on one career counseling appointment, that you’re getting all the information that that they need. So the way that we tackled that and scale that is by providing lots of workshops and programming centered around resumes, cover letters, how to approach a career fair, and how to follow up from a career fair. We have a resume critique event where employers actually come in and look at resumes. So it’s not just us counselors. We also have connections events for students to get connected with alumni. So all of those events can be found in Handshake and they’re a crucial part of making sure that you take advantage of the Career Center.

LV: We’ve talked about Handshake a couple times now. So I think we should probably dive into that a little bit more. What exactly is Handshake and why should our students make sure they’re taking making use of it.

KC: Well Laura a handshake is when one person extends their hands and the person takes it and shakes it. No, actually, Handshake is the Career Center’s platform. So if you think about CalNet, which every student knows about by now, as your academic portal, Handshake is on the other side. Their career portal. It is where employers can post jobs and internships and students can find them and apply for them. It’s also where the Career Center puts all of our events, workshops, career fairs. There’s a calendar feature where they can actually go in and RSVP for things a couple of weeks in advance. It’s also where we house all of our resources. So it’s what should go up on your dashboard right next to Cal Central and Facebook or I don’t know if students use Facebook anymore, whatever else you would have in your dashboard. It’s definitely something we encourage students are on and go on often.

LV: Does Handshake also have some resume tips or anything along those lines?

KC: Yeah great question. We have a resources section under the Career Center tab where we house a couple of different items, one of which is our Job and Internship Guide, which is sort of like your job and internship – I don’t want as a bible – but it’s definitely it’s a book that walks you through everything from how to job an internship search, how to write a resume, how to prepare for interviews and everything in between specifically for Cal students. So that’s in their Handshake, as well as, a couple other things within the resources section including Vault and Going Global, which are two other items that also have resume advice as well as other pieces of career advice.

LV: How many of the workshops that you’re doing are actually, I know we do a lot together with Engineering Student Services, right. How do we decide what the topics are going to be? What do we know people need to come and listen to?

KC: Every semester we actually at the Career Center get together with Engineering Student Services and we put our heads together and we look at the timeline of when employers are looking for our students and we look at what students are coming in with questions on and we provide programming on that so that we can provide it to the masses. So resume is a big one. Looking at how to take your experiences and freshman maybe sitting here thinking what experience do I have. So we help those students translate what experience you do have on paper. So that’s a big one. And then other topics throughout the semester are spread out based on the timelines of the employers actually.

LV: And I know one of my favorite events that we is we have the Cupcakes and Headshots which were making headshots so you could put it on LinkedIn and so we need to make sure that your LinkedIn profile looks good not only with your headshot but with everything else you put into LinkedIn and so on the same day you can go to the LinkedIn workshop and then head on over and you’ll see me and I will take a headshot of you.

KC: Yes. This is such a fun event that Laura and I have collaborated on for a couple of years and I think sometimes students think that I’m being paid by LinkedIn to be such a cheerleader of LinkedIn. But it is truly one of the most powerful tools that college students have at their fingertips and it’s free. So that’s a great day to come in if you’re just not sure you’re utilizing it effectively. If you’re one of those students who has the ghostly shadow photo not an actual photo it’s just a great day to come in and ask questions. Learn how to maximize LinkedIn and get an awesome professional photo taken by Laura

LV:  I know we’ve had some of our students when they make up their own business cards and things along those lines, you can use your LinkedIn is the address that you want people to check you out.

KC: Exactly yeah. Not every student is going to have their own personal website. That’s a huge undertaking. But what LinkedIn does is it creates a platform that’s really easy to fill out. It’s just like filling out a profile on any other website and it can be as verbose or as basic as you want it to be, although we obviously encourage students to have a really great filled out profile. But yeah. It’ll almost act like your personal website but there’s so much more to it.

LV: It’s kind of nice in the sense of a resume you’re constantly having to add to or take off because you don’t want the resumes to get too long you’ve got to put all the highlights in the top on those that because it’s in this chronological delivery system for you. It makes it a little bit easier that you can leave some stuff off or you can leave information on you don’t have to constantly take things off.

KC: Exactly. Yeah there’s no length requirement for LinkedIn. So you can have as much on there as you want and to be honest sometimes students come into our office for counseling appointments and think a lot of their experience is irrelevant and they don’t include it. And we very much look at that experience and encourage students to include a lot of it because there is no length requirement and you can also include links and photos and attachments like presentations that you’ve done or you know a photo of you doing research with a professor. All of those things should be on your LinkedIn and make it so much more colorful than that boring two dimensional black and white resume that you’re thrown around at a career fair.

LV: Do you have any resume tips for students as they’re working over the summer. Hopefully have a little bit of extra time right now that maybe they can start working on that resume especially since we have those career fairs that started the beginning of the year?

KC: Yes. That is such a great question. And this goes for freshmen, transfers and everyone in between. We strongly encourage that you go to a Handshake, check out our Job and Internship Guide with samples, as well as if you go to Vault and look. So Vault is available through handshake as well in the resources section and inside the career advice section. They’ve got a lot of resources. I will tell you what I tell lots of students please don’t recreate the wheel. You are not the only student who is creating a resume for the first time or maybe just polishing one up for the first time. Google, the Internet, is chock full of really great advice and resources. You don’t have to come see a professional career counselor or a career coach like me in order to start the process. Engineering students are very inquisitive and we have some of the most incredible students in the world here. I trust that they know how to google and I can use some of those resources to create something really great and then bring it in and we can help you make it even better.

LV: So you have something to start from you’re not just staring at a blank sheet of paper.

KC: Exactly. Just get on your computer open up Microsoft Word. If you’re savvy you can open up LaTeX or InDesign or whatever it is that you want to start with but then look up examples, resume writing is weird. We don’t learn how to write that way in school so to learn how other people have done it is a really great way of starting and you can use LinkedIn to look up people in your and your same major who are at your school at Berkeley or somewhere else and look at how they’ve explained their experience. Either at a community college or even in high school. So that sounds a little stalker-y. That’s the feedback that I get sometimes. But I assure you on LinkedIn it’s not seen as stalking it’s seen as a professional development.

LV: The whole thing on LinkedIn is it’s trying to create this network so you can’t create them at work unless you’re looking for it. So if you’re was anything that you piece of advice that you had to give students this summer, what’s the one piece of advice that you want them to come away with.

KC: Yeah so I have had a couple appointments this week in my office who have students who have come in and said you know I’m a rising sophomore, I’m a rising junior and I just want to strategize over the summer so that I can hit the ground running when I get back in August. And those are the most exciting appointments that I get. But the exciting part is you don’t have to come see me to get that same advice. It’s all on our website. So comb through our website career.berkeley.edu, utilize any of the resources that you have even if you can’t get into a Handshake yet, because a point to be made is that for right now junior transfers and incoming freshmen will not have access to Handshake until August 1st. There may be a little time lapse between when this podcast is released and when that happens. But even now you can still go online and find lots of great resources to at least help you polish up a resume and start once you do have access to Handshake, please, please go into that event section and sign up for events. Once you RSVP you will get access to resources and things of that will make available before the event. You’ll get updates on times and space and you’ll also just get reminders of that happening and the career fairs as well.

LV: I would be remiss if I didn’t talk about your newsletter.

KC: Yes. I’m so glad you brought that up Laura. Once you gain access to Handshake, I want every listener, or reader I know a lot of students actually read these podcasts, and actually go into Handshake, click your name scroll down to career interests, and when you click on that there’s a question where you’ll be asked what career newsletters or we call them CareerMail, would you like to receive and when you sign up for the one that’s labeled technically it’s labeled Engineering/EECS. I believe that will make sure that you get our weekly newsletter that I care eight and that is not a self-serving statement. It’s a newsletter where we make sure that students know about all things that are happening on and off campus that are related to engineering career opportunities. So and it’s obviously and it’s free.

LV: So why not take advantage of any bit of information that you can get.

KC: Yes absolutely.

LV: Well thank you so much for coming in today. I really appreciate your time.

KC: Yeah thank you so much for having me again. We’re so, so excited every time we get a new group of students coming in into the College of Engineering we’re excited to meet you all soon.

LV: So thank you everyone for tuning into the not so secret Guide to Being a Berkeley engineer and I will talk to you again. Thank you.

• Contact your adviser or make an appointment: engineering.berkeley.edu/ess-advising

LAURA VOGT: Hello and and thank you for tuning in to The Not So Secret Guide to Being a Berkeley Engineer. My name is Laura Vogt, and I’m the Communications and Events Manager for Engineering Student Services. You’ve finished Golden Bear Advising, went over your schedule with your ESS Adviser and this week all of you will be registering! So what’s next? This week I am delighted to have two ESS advisers here to talk about what you should be doing now that you have registered. First, Chaniqua Butscher, please introduce yourself to all our new students.

CHANIQUA BUTSCHER: Well hello everyone. I’m happy to be here. Congratulations and welcome. I am Chaniqua Butscher and I am the ESS adviser for Mechanical Engineers with last names through O, nuclear engineers as well as energy engineers. So welcome to you all.

LV: And how long have you been on campus?

CB: I’ve been on campus a whole 12 years now in a variety of capacities. This is by far my favorite and I thoroughly enjoyed working with engineering students.

LV: And welcome to the podcast. We’re excited to have you here. And Olivia please introduce yourself.

OLIVIA CHAN: Hi welcome. Congratulations as well. My name is Olivia Chan. I’m also one of the engineering student services advisors. I advise Electrical Engineering Computer Science, last name P- Z, environmental engineering science, and engineering math and statistics And I’ve been on campus for five years.

LV: Thank you both so much for coming today and going over a few things that students should keep in mind over the next few weeks before they’re on campus.

CB: All right. So I think I’ll start off talking about the fact that you all have phase one coming up I know that’s very exciting for you. You’re going to have the opportunity to sign up for up to 17 and a half units during that phase once that period is over. You won’t be able to make any changes to your schedule until what’s called the adjustment period comes up and that’s going to happen on August 13th at that time you’ll be able to go back and make any changes that you feel necessary or even add up to 20 and a half units

LV: And the 20 and a half unit is a big thing because we talked with Kathy Barrett earlier about shopping and dropping.

OC: So we don’t necessarily want them to take twenty point five units through the semester.

CB: Right. So the 20 and a half is potentially if you were going to maybe shop some HSF classes to give yourself the first week or two to decide hey let me just see which one of these classes I’d like to keep on my schedule. Once I kind of go to a couple of those classes decide this is the one that really suits my interests best and I can drop down to a more reasonable unit load especially given that this is my first semester. So anywhere from 12 to 16 units

LV: And Olivia can you tell us a little bit more about the waitlist?

OC: Yes so waitlist enrollment once enrollment opens waitlist will be processed four times daily. So wait lists are processed in sequential order according to Reserve caps associated with each course. Students are who are further down the wait list and meet the reserve cap requirements will be enrolled assuming there’s space in the section before students higher on the wait list who do not meet the reserve cap requirements. So if you aren’t moving up on the wait list you’ll want to check for the following. Make sure that you are exceeding unit limit. So again during phase one you’ll be enrolling in up to seventeen point five units. And then during the adjustment period you can roll in up to twenty point five. So if you aren’t moving up and you if you’re trying to add a class and it is exceeding one of those unit capacities then that’s one of the reasons why you aren’t moving up on the wait list. The other thing you will want to check for is are there any enrollment holds on your CAL Central. So if there are enrollment holds you’ll want to go ahead and contact that department to get it removed.

LV: And one of the enrollment holds that I think some of our students might see is if they haven’t finished their Golden Bear advising so to do that you just need to contact your ESS adviser and figure out why it’s not registering or why we put that hold on you. And speaking of contacting your ESS advisers. What other reasons would you want to have contact with your advisers?

CB: Well for those of you that have actually finished my module 4 of golden bear advising you actually are able to sign up for an appointment with your ESS adviser and a reason why you might do that would be say you took a course at another institution you want to see if it counts as one of your requirements here. You could contact your ESS adviser to talk about with that course evaluation process looks like you might also contact them to get any clarification on policy to understand what you probably can wait for would be like a four year plan certainly that can be addressed in the fall when you when you arrive on campus or if you are considering changing a major thinking about figuring out what that process looks like you could certainly hold those questions for a later time when you’re actually on campus.

LV: Do students actually have to come in for appointments or do they have other options.

CB: So students we understand that you’re not all here in Berkeley at this time so you can certainly sign up for an appointment and indicate that you’d like phone appointment leaving your phone number in the notes section. For those of you that are locals certainly you can come in for an in person appointment and you can always e-mail your adviser. I’m understanding that we certainly are busy right now replying to all 500 plus freshmen that are coming in and transfer students that are coming in at this point. So it may be a little bit delayed but you can contact your adviser in a variety of ways.

OC: So just as a reminder appointments are 20 minute blocks and we expect students to arrive within five minutes. If after five minutes you would have to reschedule your appointment.

LV: OK. And to make the appointment it’s engineering dot berkeley dot edu slash ESS and we’ve got a big blue box on there for you to click on to schedule that appointment. And if you’re wanting to do a phone appointment it has a notes section so you can specifically write in that note section if it’s a phone appointment

CB:  And please include your phone number.

LV: Oh yes that would be good. And so going back to the registration process that we’ve got going on one of the things that I know a lot of students might have questions about is the swap function and what’s the reason behind that. And I think I figured out the best way to explain how to use the swap function is if there is a class that you really want to take. But you can’t get into it because it’s full and there’s another class at the same time that kind of fulfills the same requirements but it’s just the second class that you want to take it’s not the number one choice. Sign up for the class that you can get into. And depending on where you are on your unit limit sign up for all your classes that you can register for first and then go back and do the swap function because if you do the swap function before you’re at your limit it counts towards your unit limit. So sign up for all your courses first and then go back in and do a swap function for that B choice class that you signed up for and do the swap for the A choice class. So that puts you on the waitlist for the Class A. And as soon as it becomes available it automatically swaps you out B into A. You don’t have to do anything for it. This does make a difference when school actually starts and you’re here on campus because you might get swapped out if you haven’t gotten rid of that function and it doesn’t tell you there’s no nothing tells you that you’ve been swapped. So make sure you’re checking your schedule regularly to see if that swap function actually kicked in for you.

OC: So just as a follow up in terms of why you should wait list a class versus why you should swap a class. So you should wait list a class if you feel like you have a chance of actually enrolling in getting into it. You should swap if you are afraid of not being able to enroll in the class but you do have a backup class that’s at the same time. So also kind of going back on wait lists. Another thing just to add is if you can get into a course in terms of looking where you are on the wait list if there is an open spot in the section that would get you enrolled in the class. You should take that over enrolling in or wait listing in a class or in a section that you may or may not get in.

So if there is a spot available if you can get into a section you’ll want to go ahead and roll that because there’s never any guarantee that you’ll move up on the waitlist and out of the waitlist to get into the class.

CB: So yes this does mean that 8am sections. that nobody’s signing up for to go ahead and jump in on that. And you can switch things around later. Just get in the class to start.

LV:  It’s all about flexibility. Most of these students had been going to school pretty early anyways. I think most high schools started like 7:30.

CB: It’s amazing how soon that gets forgotten.

LV:  Or just the idea that I don’t have to do it anymore. And the other thing I was wondering about the waitlist is is there a way to judge what’s a good number if you were doing a wait list like if there’s one person on the waitlist it seems pretty safe if you’re going to end up being like number two on the wait list doesn’t like that seems a little bit safer. But is there something that you can you should look for that you’re like oh no that’s just way too many people on the wait list it’s not worth it

OC: So the wait list or process depending on the department and again depending on reserve capacity. So for example you may actually move down. You may start off being on wait list number two and then move to waitlist number seven. And it’s because let’s say this is designed for seniors and so seniors will have priority in rolling into the class which then may push you further down the wait list.

LV: So that’s a good to know if for some reason you’re like I thought it was number one and now I’m number 12.

OC: Right. So if you have a concern about it check the reserve capacity see what the enrollment reservations are.

And if you still have questions go ahead and just contact the department

LV: For a lot of the humanities courses I know the classes are usually a lot smaller.

CB: So I mean generally there’s about a 20 percent attrition rate when it comes to dropping classes. So if you’re in a class where there are 100 students then you can bet that if you’re maybe between number one to number 20 on the wait list you have a pretty good chance of getting into that class. Anything beyond that you may have a less of a chance. And also with smaller classes just generally of course your position is just that much more critical. Larger classes you tend to have a better shot at getting into off of the wait list.

OC: But again this is why and we also asked students to have backup classes because there are some classes that definitely are more popular in terms of students trying to get into it.

So we want to make sure that that you have options.

CB:  And I don’t know if this is worth mentioning but I will since we’re talking about it classes like the 61 that are webcast and there are these massive enrollment numbers. Traditionally historically they have been able to accommodate all students because it is a webcast course and they’re not depending on physical space to accommodate all students. So you may show up as in the hundreds you might be number 200 on a wait list but it doesn’t mean that you don’t have a shot getting into the class it just means that they’re waiting to see how the enrollment sorts out. And once they know what numbers are they’re dealing with in the end they go out and let everybody else into the class.

LV:  And so since our podcast is what’s next. I think one of the big things of what next is that you’re going to be doing Golden Bear prep which is a U.C. wide program similar to what you were doing with golden bear advising. So to complete the Golden Bear prep you’ll be invited to a task in Cal central to complete that part of your Golden Bear experience so the Golden Bear experience it seems like there’s three parts to it you’ve got the advising the prep and orientation. And I’m excited. Next time we’re actually going to get to meet everyone during Golden Bear orientation we have a full day planned and then a half day plan so we get quite a bit of time with our new students.

CB: So another good way that you can utilize your time this summer to prepare for when you arrive in the fall is to go back and listen to episode 2-0-3 Preparing for Berkeley engineering this summer by Tiffany Reardon. It’s my understanding that she she goes over things like refreshing your math skills and accessing free online coding sources

OC:  Like code academy dot org for all of you EECS students out there.

LV: And all of our will all of our students have to take a coding class of some kind right.

CB: Yes.

OC: Yes.

LV: So if you haven’t ever done coding before she’s got some resources that are fantastic just to get you introduced to the idea of what exactly coding is

CB:  And also another pretty basic topic like preparing your resume for LinkedIn.

LV: Yeah. Our first career fairs are that first week of school. I mean this career stuff starts right off the bat

CB:  Starts right away for sure.

LV: Well thank you both for coming. Is there anything that we miss that we want to talk about?

CB: No I think we’ve covered it all of those questions in our appointments.

LV: Well thank you so much anyone for coming in today and doing the podcast with us and give a little bit more about what’s next and what to think about this week as you doing registrations and the adjustment period. I know students are constantly, I mean the scheduling it’s just going to change through the whole summer until you get to that final drop deadline which is the fourth week of school.

CB: Right. Right. So be flexible. Understand that things are probably not going to go exactly according to the plan that you have and it will work out just fine because everybody else is in the exact same situation.

OC:  And we are here to support you. That is part of our job.

LV:  And we want students to finish in four years so our freshman will finish in four years. We want transfers to finish in their two years. We make the plans and we have the classes to support that as well. So don’t be concerned that you’re not going to be able to get the classes that you need.

CB: Right.

LV: And thank you everyone for tuning in today. I really like having this chance to get to talk to you a little bit more and give you a little more insight into the College of Engineering.

And we’ll talk to you again next week. Thank you.

Follow along with an illustration of the tips with our slide show for Top Tips for Registration.

• Day of registration troubleshooting
• Exams
• Humanities and Social Sciences Requirement
• Early Drop Deadline – Open the accordion for “Enroll in/Drop a class” and click on the pdf for Early Drop Deadlines
• CalCentral registration support
• Video and PDF Tutorials for planning your schedule and how to find classes:
  • Cal Central Swap Tutorial pdf
  • Enrollment and Adjustment

LAURA VOGT: Hi my name is Laura Vogt and I’m the communications and events manager for Engineering Student Services in the College of Engineering.  Welcome back for this week’s Registration Tips episode of the (Not So) Secret Guide to Being a Berkeley Engineer! This week we are excited to have Monica Bernal joining us –  Welcome Monica – why don’t you tell us about yourself?

MONICA BERNAL: Hey my Berkeley Engineers! I’m very excited to be here. So I’m Monica Bernal, and I’m one of the college advisors in the College of Engineering, and I currently advise all of the MSE students, so I’m very excited to meet my material science engineers out there! I co-advise our EECS students, which are electrical engineers and computer science scientists, with two other advisers, and I’ve worked on the Berkeley campus for seven years this mid August! So we’re very excited about getting that milestone. And this will be completely my first year in the College of Engineering which is an amazing college to be in. So very cool.

I love hearing about all of your projects, and internships, and the amazing student clubs that we have going on campus so I definitely have to say working with engineers is the highlight of my time here at Cal.

LV: Registrations beginning next week. I believe that we’ve done all the prep work. We’ve got you finished for Golden Bear Advising. Transfer students have their appointments on Monday, July 16th, and freshmen are on Wednesday July 18th. So make sure you check your CalCentral for your registration appointment time.

All of you should have completed your Golden Bear Advising by now, and have heard back from your ESS advisor about your proposed schedule. If you have not completed advising, then you have a hold on your registration, and you have to go in and finish it before you are able to register. We have a link on our website for your courses, it’s going to take you directly to where you need to go to get that advising done.

Monica, Can you give us a little explanation of why we put a registration hold on student accounts that they haven’t completed GBA

MB: Golden Bear Advising is there to benefit you, and it just walks you through some basic introduction things, like how you can do it at your own pace, get familiar with the university, student life, and in addition, your college. So everyone who’s entering Berkeley whether you be a transfer student or first year participated in GBA and so really the reason we block you is because if you don’t do GBA, I’m not going to lie, your schedule is going to be a hot mess. It’s going to be a recipe for disaster in your first term, and your first term is really critical because not only are you a new student at Berkeley, many of you transition to moving away from home for the first time, having roommates, living in a different city. It’s so much more than the academics it’s really acclimating to a culture and new climate. And we find that just students who participate in GBA are more likely to be successful. You’re more likely to have a schedule that’s going to work for you, and know these tips and tricks.

LV: Let’s get into what everyone is really here to find out, our last minute tips for registering, and what we think is important to keep in mind as you make your first semester schedule. You can follow along, we’ve got a PowerPoint set up to give you a little bit of an illustration, and some pictures of what we’re talking about at times at welcomengineer.berkeley.edu. Monica why don’t you kick us off.

MB: So number one, all colleges on campus have different requirements, different deadlines. This means is we have distinct colleges. You might have a roommate who is in the College of Natural Resources, Letters and Science, CED, The Haas School of Business, if you’re a transfer student. And the key thing to keep in mind is to not take advice from other students who are not in your college. And this is just critical because each college has different things in mind. The curricula of COE is unique to engineers, and engineering, and our coursework, and, of course, we do have engineers who take classes in the College of Letters and Science, and take courses in environmental design, but at the end of the day, you are registered/listed as a student in your own college, and so those are the deadlines you are responsible for knowing

LV: And the number one question that I hear a lot of times from people… is how heavy of a schedule they should have their first semester. So by all means go ahead and register for more classes, go in and test them. But we really don’t want you to have to over exert yourself this semester. Get to know the classes, get to know what your study schedule is going to be like. A lot of you are on your own for the first time, you’re gonna learn how to do laundry, and make sure you get enough sleep. So, definitely a minimum of 12 units. Correct me if I’m wrong.

MB: You are correct. 12 is the magic number for our college, and that’s critical because there are other students who are at different colleges with different minimum requirements, but… you have to hit 12. And then we checked you for that 12 units, and at the end of that add/drop deadline, which is the fourth week, so at the end of the fourth week, or early fifth week, your advisers go in and we run a report to check that everyone is in that minimum of 12.

LV: If you’re already thinking about changing your major, you’ll need to make an appointment with your ESS adviser during the fall semester. Until then you need to prioritize your current major when making your fall schedule.

MB: Every single semester, the College of Engineering has an expectation that you will be taking a minimum of two technical courses, so three units or more, towards your declared Major. So that is the major they came in. So for my MSE students you come into Berkeley as an accepted declared material science engineer, every schedule, every semester, I’m going to check your schedule to see that you have two technicals towards that MSE degree. So, for instance, if you have right now, on your schedule, engineering 7, and math 53, and a reading and comp, you are gold and you have two technicals towards your major, and then you have that third course that’s going to give you 12 units. Now, if you write me, and say Hey Monica, I just learned that there’s a MSE/EECS joint Major. That looks amazing. I want to drop engineering 7 for CS61A, I would actually say no, that’s not an appropriate schedule, because you’ve not been accepted, or you’ve not applied, nor been accepted to the joint Major, and the 61A is not applicable to your current program, unless you wanted to add it on as like an additional fourth course basically. So really, when we’re talking about students who want to do a change of major, which really means you probably want to go into a joint or a double. Really plan this fall based around the major you’ve been accepted into with those two technicals, and then you can come in midway through this semester, and we’ll talk about what that can look like, and we’ll adjust your spring schedule. But for right now, fall has to be what you’ve been accepted into

LV: Our fifth point for today, it’s one that I had a lot of questions about when we had students on site that were registering because it was a little bit confusing. Chemistry 1A and 1AL are two different courses, but chemistry 1A has a lecturer. So just because you see that lecture with 1AL, that’s not the lecture that goes with 1A, it’s two different things you’re going to end up taking two different courses so you’ll end up with two different lectures that say chemistry on them but one’s for one. And the other is for when I go and make sure that you have to prioritize chemistry 1A over 1AL. So this semester for some reason you’re not getting the chemistry 1A that you want to get. You can’t take the lab. You’d have to wait to take the lab until next semester. Make friends with 8 a.m. Not everyone’s going have to take an 8am class but a lot of you are going to have to. And if you’re not in a class, you might be in one of those killer 5:00pm 6:00pm discussion sections. So the key here, your first role here, without a doubt, is to be a student. And I know that many of you will have a work study job, or you will have tutoring, or you will have commitments outside of the classroom. But really we will work hard for you to make those commitments work. But your focus has to be the academics, and so sometimes, even though it’s the least desirable, if you really wanna take the class, that 8AM discussion section is what’s going to be open.

LV: And number 7 kind of pulls right off of that. If you have a choice in enrolling in the course, a lab, or discussion, or choosing something where you’re going to be put on the waitlist, enroll in the course if you need to take the course. There’s a reason why you have it on your schedule, enroll in the course. Don’t put yourself on a waitlist just because it’s a better time.

MB: I mean unless you’re like a gambler by nature. And you already have two technicals. Let’s say this is your third technical course, because you’re only required to have two. And let’s say you have a third course, you’re already at 12 units, doing your two techs, and you want to gamble, go for it. Put yourself in it. Because you’re in a perfect schedule. But if you are trying to still hit your two technicals toward your major, and get your 12 units, please enroll in that class. There are a million students who are trying to get into courses. And I say that, not to scare you, because typically if you take the section that’s in front, you’ll be able to get into classes. I know that’s one of the biggest myths about Berkeley is that you can’t get into the classes you need, and you won’t be able to graduate in time. Our students in engineering especially, do tend to graduate on time. But you’re not going to, kind of take the courses that are in front of you, that might create a little bit of an issue. So we do say, you know, like I said, no one might want that 8am discussion section but there’s seats available, you should definitely take it because it’s better to be in a class than in a wait list.

LV: And number eight, avoid time conflicts, don’t try to take classes at the same time. I don’t really understand how it works. I just know that it’s difficult. And you might end up having that final schedule at the same time. And your instructors don’t have to adjust for that.

MB: That is 100 percent true. So I think the biggest reason we want you to avoid time conflicts is because your finals will have conflicting times. If you were in two classes at the same time, your faculty has no obligation to change their final for you. So unless you are 100 percent sure have already gone on the first day, and got the syllabus, and know that one of the classes will be a 100 percent webcast, and that the final will be like a take home, and you said you won’t be missing a sitting time.

Your professors are under no obligation to offer you a separate final exam. So yeah. Also, there’s another weird little funky rumor that’s if you have like three or four finals on one day, the reg office will let you move one. I have no idea where that came from. If I could scrub every single bathroom wall that is written on, I would. But if you happen to make a schedule that you love, and you realize all four of your finals are on the same day. Guess what, you’re taking all of those four or five finals on the same day.

LV: So let’s talk a little bit now about the swap function. This is new. It started last year and the first confusion that I think folks have is, you can’t swap if you’re in math 1B and you want to swap lecture 1 for lecture 2, because the system looks at ends like you’re in math 1B already. If you want to swap a discussion or lab section, there’s a way that you can do that under clicking options on your enrollment card, and it’ll actually let you change discussion or lab section. You don’t actually have to swap to do that

MB: Swap is great to use when you’re going to be waitlisted for something and you’d rather have it but you can get into something less ideal. So like a great example for swapping something would be that… I’m in Slavic reading and composition 5, you know, and it sounds interesting, but I would really love to be in this English R&CB that’s on Jane Austen. Like I just find out there’s a waitlist, so I’m kind of using the swap function, so that if I come off of the waitlist, I can get into the other classes and I think that’s the easiest way for students to use it personally.

LV: That definitely makes more sense. I think that would be the best use for it because if you go from one to the other it automatically does it for you, so you’re not having to constantly track to see if something’s opened up in that Jane Austen class and you can get on the waitlist earlier.

MB: Exactly. So I think that’s like the the easiest way for us to swap. And there’s some really great videos I actually recommend watching some of the students CalCentral videos tutorials on swap because you can kind of visually show you how to do it. Show you how the swap function works and I think that’s the most helpful

LV: Register for all the classes you are going to register for, and then go back, and do the swap. That way you just put you over your unit limit.

MB: That is like the pro-tip of the podcast, with our registration podcast, pro tip number one be in the schedule you need to be in, and then use the swap function as a perk.

LV: Exactly. If you’re having problems registering for a class and you keep getting an error check the “i” button that we showed you in the video and GBA and schedule planner, because there might be a reserve cap that you didn’t realize was there before, or there’s something else in those notes that are telling you why you might not be able to register for it. Remember what Sharon had said earlier. We got like 8000 messages, most of those had to do with reserve caps.

MB: Exactly because students oftentimes, since you’re like hey I’m an engineer, I should have priority in this course. And what you’re not realizing if you check the “i”, you’ll realize wow, engineering does have priority. But this is like a 700 people class. Only 400 seats are reserved for engineers. The other 200 are reserved for L&S undeclared students, and one hundred for like seniors who really need it. And so sometimes what it is, there absolutely was a priority but those seats were already filled. And that’s why you’re getting this error message, so what can really help you kind of revamp your schedule, and then go back into your GBA notes, and see like OK what were my alternative classes that my advisor recommended in the scenario. And so those alternative classes aren’t just there for fun just to be like, hey alternates like it’s good. Those are there because sometimes you know certain classes do have reserve priorities, and unfortunately, they fill up. So we want you to be prepared to feel like you know I didn’t get the ideal schedule, but I have a schedule that works. I’m in compliance with COE, I’m on track to graduate. I mean and those are really our goals. So one of the things about college is you have to be flexible, but at the end of the day you’re still going to be meeting all the goals you need to graduate on time.

LV: The math 53 is not a prerequisite for math 54. We talked about this a lot in GBA, and we made it so that you can look at the different schedules, but you can take those classes in which every way that you want to, but you just need to be aware that math 53 is either a prerequisite or concurrent requisite for things like physics. So you’ll have to make sure that you’re taking the math class that’s required.

MB: Definitely. And one thing for some of you who’ve been playing around on guide.berkeley.edu. That’s our online course guide so you can see descriptions of all the classes on there. One of the things you want to remember, for instance, if we’re looking at math 53 versus math 54 in the guide, there’s a little blue hyperlinking you and it will actually show you basically information on those courses about repeats and things like that. So, for instance, it will also show requirements. Let’s say for, math 53, the requirement is math 1A, math 1B, so similar for those physics courses. So although, in GBA, when you’re doing the engineering specific, we kind of try to point those out. You can always go into a guide, and click that blue hyperlink, and not only will it tell you repeat rules, it will tell you any course requirements for a course, and this is a great pro-tip when you start exploring upper division courses. So shout out to all of our amazing transfer students, some of you are going to come in right off the bat and be ready to take upper division coursework. And if that’s the case, feel free to head over to guide.berkeley.edu, whether it be MSE, Mech E, any of our amazing Civ E courses. Basically, if you’re unsure if you’re ready for a course, just go ahead and click that hyperlink, and it’ll show you the pre-reqs or the co-reqs, and co-reqs just means that it can be taken concurrently. So for instance physics 7B can be taken with math 53, you’re still golden or you can complete it first, and you’re ready to be in the course. So go ahead, and check that out. I think that’s a great tip just to make sure. Sometimes students are concerned if they’re going to be prepared. And there are even some upper division that actually have very few, if any, pre-reqs. So there’s a lot of options out there.

LV: And just to kind of build on that a little bit for our Frosh students, when you complete the GBA, the courses that were suggested to you were based on the math course that you were told is that you wanted to take. So if you downgrade the math course make sure you double check that pre-req, its pretty important.

MB: Absolutely. And I just want to say, another of our favorite jams here in engineering is, like downgrading your math course. Yes. I live for that, because you know, as some of you have had amazing AP math teachers or IB teachers they’re simply fabulous but you know what, taking it at Berkeley is a whole different world. And really a lot of times sometimes your AP test scores although fabulous, and great preparation for taking rigorous courses. We absolutely salute you, and encourage all of our intended students to take AP courses. There’s still nothing quite like taking math in Berkeley so if you feel like you really just kind of want to come in, and you know, learn from the best and brightest, and make sure what you were taught in your AP course was really setting you up for success. We highly recommend taking this step back and taking math 1B, Math 1A, you will still graduate on time, we have students who come and who take precalculus, math 32 is our amazing amazing amazing 4-unit precalc class, and they graduate on time in four years, and go on to be some of the most amazing engineers on the planet. So don’t feel like scared to be like, oh my God! I’m only in calculus or OH MY GOD I’M ONLY precalculus everyone’s so much better than me. You’re going to graduate on time. That’s absolutely not the case. Some of our best engineers came to Berkeley and took precalculus here and that’s what helped make them so fabulous.

LV: And last but not least if you run into problems on the day that you’re doing your registration, please immediately send a ticket to Cal student central right away

MB: One of our new amazing features this year is when you are having registration problems on whether it be July 16th or July 18th, the registrar and Cal student Central has really stepped up the bat, and they’re going to have all hands on deck to help answer your questions. So we would highly recommend that you are experiencing that issue, for you to send in a help ticket immediately so you can get a response on what is going on with your registration. That being said we definitely want you to first though go to schedule planner and click that little “i” just to make sure it’s not a course-based restriction.

LV: We want you to go to the sis.berkeley.edu, and on the upper right hand corner is a link that says “Help:, has all kinds of things for you to click on, to report an issue to get more enrollment FAQs. It’s a pretty robust thing here. You can also send an e-mail to sashelp@berkeley.edu. And as we get going on the days, starting with the transfer students on the 16th, we are realizing that there’s problems or a lot of questions coming in, we’ll have answers as we get them, and we’ll make sure that that’s the best place for you to go, so check out our engineering.berkeley.edu/ess and click on registration troubleshooting. We also have a link on this podcast if you want to be able to get there fast. Maybe find it ahead of time, and bookmark it so that you can find it the day of

MB: Do it, its amazing. Our director gets those updates from department heads and department chairs we go in and we we make those notes for you all. So that is great but like Laura said, be flexible, your registration requires you to be just like you’re doing some yoga, like just be chill, be bendy, know that there’s other alternatives. There are five different ways to make a schedule. So yes, I know it seems stressful, because it’s your first time, and maybe your parent is looking over your shoulder. You know tell them to go get iced coffee for you. And just, kind of, be flexible and know that it’s going to all work out. At the end of the day, we will definitely help you get into two techs and 12 units.

LV: Monica thank you so much for joining us today.

MB: Yea, I know this was overwhelming. Probably did not answer all of your questions, because you have a million great questions, but also trust that we will meet you at Golden Bear Orientation. So, all of your advisors will be there that first week before classes start to meet you freshmen and transfers, and we will have a small group advising. You can ask the questions that we didn’t get to hear. So even if your adviser is busy answering a million schedules, when you show up in August, before school starts, you will definitely have a chance to meet your advisor, and ask additional questions, and even during that time make adjustments to your schedule. The schedule you have, like Laura said, on July 16th, July 18th, isn’t final by any means. Still plenty of time. All the way up to that fourth week midweek deadline to make adjustments.

LV: So thank you again for coming today and thank you everyone for tuning in. If you have other questions please e-mail us at ess@berkeley.edu. You can also email your adviser all summer long, they’re here and willing to answer questions, and thank you all so much for tuning in. Bye.

MB: Bye. Go Bears!

Important Links:

• Chris Pine’s Learn to Code
• Tau Beta Pi Test Bank
• edX
• Khan Academy
• Coursera
• Research
• UC Berkeley Career Center: Resumes and Cover Letters

LAURA VOGT: Hello and welcome to The Not So Secret Guide to Being a Berkeley Engineer. And like we promised last week, today we have a new guest, Tiffany Reardon, she is the Associate Director for Retention Programs for Engineering Student Services. Welcome to the podcast Tiffany! Tell us a little about yourself.

TIFFANY REARDON: Hi. Thank you so much for having me. My name is Tiffany Reardon and I work here at Berkeley in the Center for Access to Engineering Excellence and I run the PREP program and the T-PREP program and several of our scholars programs.

LV: Thank you again for joining us today. This week I wanted to give students some tips for getting ahead this summer and I know with your work you have quite a few tips about to make the most of their summer and how to be prepared for Berkeley Engineering. Do you have an overall theme of what students should be doing this summer to prepare?

TR: OK so that’s actually a great question. So I guess maybe it would be helpful. What to do and maybe what not to do. So what you should do is you should relax pace yourself. Get ready. You know if you’re relocating if you’re moving. Enjoy your summer.

At the same time be productive in your summer so be productive. There’s a number of resources free resources that you can take advantage of online that will help you prepare. Now as you mentioned all of our incoming students are working on their Golden Bear advising so at this point they either know exactly what classes are going to take or they kind of have a general idea. Listen to your ESS advisers. Right. If your ESS adviser tells you hey maybe you might want to start and you know math 1B and you’re saying no but I got this you know five on my AP you know exam really maybe take what they say to heart. I know a lot of students that will say well you know I’m going to AP out of all these classes and I’m going to start and say math 53 or math 54. And so if you have an opportunity to take one A or one B and your adviser is telling you that that might be a better option. Don’t think of it as you know you’ve taken the AP class for nothing. Don’t think of that at all. Think of it as your AP class is a great foundation that you have coming in and taking a class at UC Berkeley will cement that foundation. Not only that if you look at our of course undergraduate guides which are all available online you’ll see that they all start in Math 1A. So you’re not going to be behind. You’re not going to be behind you’ll graduate on time that’s not an issue. Lot of students will say well I’ve AP out of everything. I actually have a couple of students that have contacted me and said that they’re planning on taking classes over the community college classes over the break. I wouldn’t suggest doing that. Really I wouldn’t suggest doing that because 1 you’re going to burn out by the time you know any summer class you take. I don’t care what the subject is any summer class you take is going to be very very condensed. It’s going to be very very rushed.

And quite honestly you know you really you should be taking this time to learn things but learn things not for the grade. Learn how to learn. And also think about how you best learn. Right.

So some students learn by visual learners some students learn by watching lectures. Some students are you know they learn by their tactile. It just depends on what your learning style is. A lot of our students that come to Berkeley as community college transfer students might think you know what I’m ready to go and I’m going to take a community college class or I’m going to take a Berkeley class let’s say EECS for example. So a student that’s majoring in EECS might say well I might as well just get 61 out of the way and get a head start. I don’t think you should do that. And the reason why I don’t think you should do that is because if you think about it you’re not going to be on track with your other incoming class and your other incoming cohort.

And that’s actually true. You know if it were up to me I would tell all of our incoming students no, start classes in fall, because we want to make sure that you have the cohort of students together that you will take classes with. And that’s part of the reason why we don’t do spring transfer in the College of Engineering spring transfer or freshman spring admins. It’s because we want all of our students to come in together as a cohort your engineers you have to learn to work together. That’s that’s something that you know to to really consider.

LV: And a lot of our students or actually I think all of our students at some point are going to have to take a coding class whether they’re doing computer science or not coding is important across the board. So if someone hasn’t ever coded before do you have something for them that they can do over the summer.

TR: Absolutely. So there’s a number of fantastic resources online all free so we have we have all these links for you all to learn. There’s a great book which is Chris Pine learning to code. This is a great book. It goes under it goes over Ruby on Rails. So if you get the Chris Pine book you can get it on Amazon. It’s not that expensive. You even get a used copy. It’s a great book because you can teach yourself Ruby. Right. So you can spend the time you know during the summer pacing yourself if you are going to be taking 61 in the fall you’ll be learning python. This will give you some coding background. Now maybe you have been coding you know since you’ve I don’t know middle school. Right. There’s some students that have been coding for a long time. You can watch all of the lectures online. If you go to youtube there’s there’s many many lectures that you can watch online. And I encourage you to do that so you can get used to what to expect in lecture. You know you’re here in Berkeley and the the kind of the learning expectations and the professors student experience is much much different as a transfer student from community college. As a student from high school it’s a much different experience. Your expectation in high school and your expectation in community college is that you are given information and you deliver an answer a correct answer. Well here at Berkeley it’s a bit different. In engineering we are training you to be engineers and engineers are problem solvers and you know the way that you become a good problem solver is the methodology that you use to come up with the solution. So a lot of our students that work in technical jobs do very very well on their technical interviews because they are used to this. They are used to the you know the problem solving that’s why you’ve probably heard those funny questions that some of the tech industries give you know interview questions well those interview questions might sound ridiculous what they’re asking they’re asking is if you know how to problem solve. And so that’s what you need to learn. So those of you that and I’m sure a lot of our engineers out there have always liked puzzle books and logic and stuff like that do that. That’s great. You know keep that up. It’s wonderful. Other resources that you can look at aside from the past lectures online. There are test banks online as well. So you kind of get a sense of the questions. Coursera Khan Academy Khan Academy if you’re taking math 54 you can take a linear algebra class online or you can look up some linear algebra resources online. There’s all amazing things to do. But but I really encourage you not to take a class and not to enroll in a class because really you want to start fresh here at Berkeley and you want to refresh but it just really doesn’t make sense for you to take a class and you never know something could happen.

And you know maybe you don’t do so well and then you get off to a bad start and you don’t want that

LV: And we want our students to keep their minds active and engaged but we don’t want them to be tired and overworked by the time they get here.

TR:  Yes. Yes. We want you to be fresh when you get here in the fall.

LV: And I know more so for transfer students maybe they can start thinking about putting a resume together. I know our career fairs kickoff I think the first week of school..

TR: Yes. All of our students whether they’re transfer students or freshmen especially our transfers as you mentioned our recruiters would love to come here on the first day of school if they could. Believe me they have so many positions that they cannot fill. Get your resume ready. You can go look at the Career Center’s website. They have some fantastic resume templates LinkedIn is a fantastic resource. Connect with me on LinkedIn. It’s a great resource in the fall semester when you get here. We’re going to have an event called cupcakes and head shots where we will actually give you a free head shot you can put on your profile. But take a look at some of the profiles and get used to that. Get used to documenting your achievements and look at some things that other people have listed on their links and profiles. And you know think about what it is that you want to accomplish when you get here at Berkeley you know kind of why you’re here coming to Berkeley. And you know again I can’t stress enough the need for talented engineers. And so your resume should really reflect all the achievements. So you know some students I talked to will say well I don’t have anything to put on a resume. OK. Every single admit that’s listening to this. That’s not true. You do have stuff to put on the resume. Remember your UC application that you wrote to get into this place. OK all the extracurricular activities the work experience the honors and awards put those on your resume. For those of you that are you know saying well I’m only a high school student. Well of course you’re an incoming freshman right. Put those down. Transfer students I know you’ve done a lot. I know you’ve done a lot at your community college. In addition many of our chance for students are vets. Many of our transfer students are returning students. Many of our students have had careers you know maybe before coming college put all those things down. Take a look at your transfer application and that’ s a great starting point to you know build your resume you’re LinkedIn.

LV: You know putting those together because you have to remember the resume is like this living document you’re constantly going to be going in there and really adding things to it. Taking things off of it making it better the more experiences that you get.

TR: Absolutely. Absolutely. And so get into the habit of doing that because there’s nothing worse than you know you have an opportunity that comes up and then you have to start from scratch. And given that you have this extended period of time where you’re not taking classes this is a great opportunity you know to work on your resume this summer and we can also include the link to the resume templates from the career center. Because a really really nice. They’ve done a lot of work in capturing those.

LV: So really our point for today about some preparation is not to over prepare but definitely take some time if you don’t know about coding. Learn a little bit about coding if you want to brush up on your math skills then go take a look at some of the tests or listen to a lecture and brush up on some of your skills.

TR: That’s absolutely true. And we really look forward to seeing you in the fall come visit us in ESS the center which we have is right across from where you’ll meet your ESS adviser. We have tutors we have workshops cupcakes and headshots. We have a lot of great stuff. Looking forward to meeting you all.

LV: Thank you so much for coming in today and talking to us. Really appreciate it.

TR: Thank you.

LV: Thanks and we’ll talk to you next time.