Loving the Campus

I want to love this campus as God loves it, and in order to do that, I need to get to know it better! Here are some of the things I'm discovering about Cal:

 

source: oep.berkeley.edu



According to the UC Berkeley website,

"The University of California was chartered in 1868 and its flagship campus — envisioned as a 'City of Learning' — was established at Berkeley, on San Francisco Bay. Today the world's premier public university and a wellspring of innovation, UC Berkeley occupies a 1,232 acre campus with a sylvan 178-acre central core. From this home its academic community makes key contributions to the economic and social well-being of the Bay Area, California, and the nation."

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Student body

Number of students: 36,142 students as of Fall 2011 including 25,885 undergraduates and 10,257 pursuing graduate degrees. (Source)
Undergraduate gender: 53% female and 47% male (Fall 2011).
Degrees granted in 2010-11: Bachelor's, 7,466; Master's and professional degrees, 2,480; Doctoral, 905

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Profile of admitted freshmen

Number of applicants: 50,312 (Fall 2010) (Source)
4,109 students enrolled (Fall 2010) (Source)
25.6% of applicants admitted (Fall 2010 and Spring 2011) (Source)
4.19 (on a 4.0 scale) median high-school grade point for admitted freshmen (Fall 2010). (Source)
SAT scores: Average SAT Composite score of 2031 for admitted freshmen (Fall 2010).
73% from California (Fall 2010) (Source)
63% from California public high schools (2010) (Source)
25.1% are first generation college student with neither parent having a four-year college degree (Fall 2010) (Source)
66% have at least one parent born outside the U.S. (2009) (Source)

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Fields of study

Motto: Fiat Lux  ("Let there be light")

130 academic departments and more than 80 interdisciplinary research units.
Colleges and schools: UC Berkeley is divided into 14 colleges and schools, most of which are subdivided into departments.
Most popular majors (as of Fall 2009): Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 1500 students; Political Science, 916 students; Molecular and Cell Biology, 1020 students; Environmental Science, Policy and Management, 886 students; Economics 828 students. (Source)
Courses offered: More than 7,000 courses in some 350 degree programs; the campus produces more Ph.D.s annually than any other U.S. university. (Cal Facts 2009)




As interesting as all this data is, it is also not necessarily the experience of the people who live, study, and work here. Checking out the Golden Bears blog, I compiled the one-word descriptions these Cal bloggers use to describe their school:

Vibrant

                                                                                                   Exploratorium
                                                           Golden!
                                                                                 Super-CAL-ifragilisticexpialidocious
                                                 Balanced
                                                                                                                        Community
                                                                                  Opportunity-filled
                                                                Unique
                                                                                             Microcosm


I'm interested to hear how the students in Cal Christian Fellowship (the InterVarsity chapter I'll be working with) describe their experiences at Berkeley.