Ariana: Hi everyone! Welcome to the Fall Program for Freshman Info Session. My name is
Arianna Lee and I will be your host today along with my fellow FPF Advisor
Jonathan, oh Jon Phillips! Jon: Hi there!
Ariana: Hey Jon. OK, sorry he doesn't like
being called Jonathan, so please call him Jon. We are very excited that you could
join us and congratulations to those of you who have been admitted to UC
Berkeley! One quick housekeeping note that we'd like to make is that this program
is for newly admitted freshmen who have been admitted to Berkeley's College of
Letters and science or for those who applied to the College but are on the
waitlist, so if that's you welcome! This info session is definitely for you
and let's see so on - oh, I'm sorry we were gonna broadcast the poll results so
thanks... If you haven't had a chance go ahead and submit your answer for "what
is one thing that excites you most about Berkeley?" And...OK, we're we are seeing a
clear lead at one of the answers and I'll go ahead and broadcast the results
and looks like academics is the winner a lot of people excited to study here at
Berkeley and then next is new friends those are those are both very good
things to be excited about here. OK, so next, here are six things that you can
look forward to if and when you join us here at FPF. We'll talk about each of
these things in greater detail. Jon: At FPF our instructors can't get enough of our
students so they don't hire teaching assistants or graduate students to teach
their discussion sections instead they teach their own! Our instructors care
most about the students not research or climbing the ladder. They've signed up to
teach in our program because they're passionate about working with first-year
students.
Ariana: So FPF advisors are like unicorns their unexpected knowledgeable
and magical. Don't believe us? Well, then you'll have to come see us for
yourselves! And you can, as many times as you'd like.
We're just upstairs from your classes all in one space so you don't have to
huff it across campus looking for us. We're also only your
advisors during the fall so you don't have to share us with anyone else. We're
dedicated to our FPF cohorts. You'll have an assigned FPF advisor once you
register for the program and we'll stick with you throughout the semester, and we
will also help you plan your spring schedule and just like our instructors
we just love freshmen!
Jon: FPF classes take place
outside the classroom whenever possible. Berkeley and the Bay Area are rich
environments for hands-on learning and it's not hard to take advantage. Our
instructors are in are in the works with plans for outings and creative
projects for you to put your theory into practice.
Ariana: And we only offer courses that
are appropriate for first-year students while maintaining a broad variety so
that you can freely choose classes within your interests, majors, and
professional goals. You can take popular first-year classes with the benefit of a
much smaller lecture size. Imagine raising your hand in a 50-person lecture
versus a 400 person lecture. That's the difference FPF makes.
Jon: No matter what pre- you are: pre-Hass, pre-med, pre-law, pre-computer
science, by the end of FPF you will be pre-pared!
We the FPF advisors are trained to help you plan a schedule that will start you
on the right track. Many students are tempted to load up on prerequisites for
these highly competitive majors because they're anxious about falling behind.
However, new students often fail to consider the importance of the right
pacing. If you overload on prerequisites in the first semester there's a good
chance that your GPA could take a hit. You want a balance between making
strides toward finishing your major or professional prerequisites without
overloading yourself too quickly. At FPF we also provide first semester sample
schedules for all of these career and major paths as part of our online summer
orientation called Golden Bear advising. You'll hear more about that in the weeks
to come
Ariana: So, Berkeley can be an intimidating
place for a new student. I know it definitely was for me when I was a
freshman. Almost everyone here was big fish in their small ponds, but
welcome to the ocean! At FPF we create a much more collegial atmosphere. It's easy
to see a few familiar faces in all of your classes. Whereas, on the main campus
it could be kind of rare to see even one person you recognize from another class
that you had, since there are just so many classes.
Jon: Taking classes in our program allows you more opportunities to
collaborate with your classmates. This is
a unique opportunity to take classes with just your fellow freshmen without
the pressure of having upperclassmen around. It's common for our students to
draw connections from two or more of their classes as they learn. For example
biological anthropology to psychology to English literature, because our students
are in constant dialogue with the same group of peers.
Ariana: OK, so once you have
accepted your offer of admission to Berkeley you can select FPF as your
first-year pathway all students in the College of Letters and science have to
select a first year-pathway as part of their admission process, and FPF is one
of your three options. In order to secure your spot at FPF you must take these
steps in your my Berkeley app. We usually fill up to our max capacity after the
waitlist offers go out in early May. So as long as you register for FPF by the
May 1st deadline we should have seats available for you. FPF has an additional
program fee of $2050, that's $2050 which is applied just for your first semester and
students who are eligible for financial aid through FAFSA can apply their aid
toward the fpf fee as one of their campus fees.
Alright, thank you for your great questions! We have a lot so we'll try to
get through as many as we can. I think I forgot to introduce Meaghan my colleague
Meaghan DeRespini. She's another FPF advisor. She's actually managing our
questions for us here. And so, let's see... We'll get started with the first one
"Where are FPF class is located?" So I don't know if we made this clear enough
earlier, so I apologize, but FPF classes are located on our own mini
campus. We have our own building we have two buildings that are just across
the street from Unit 2 which is one of the popular dorms. We're literally within
a five-minute walking distance from unit 1, 2, 3, and Clark Kerr, which is really
nice because most freshmen will live there [in those dorms].
The only dorms that we're kind of far away from are the north side [dorms]
which is like Foothill and Stern and things like that.
So that's about a 20 minute walk away.
OK, so the next question is, "Why wouldn't a student choose FPF?" We have the same
question! I think that, I mean obviously, we're biased, we work for...
yeah, but I really
do think that the benefits of FPF are invaluable for any student at Berkeley,
and a lot of times we get students from other colleges who are like, "Hey can I do
FPF?" and unfortunately we have to say, "No it's only for the College of Letters and
Science and actually the greatest need is with L&S students (College of Letters
and Science students) because the college is really big. It's a 20,000-person
college just for undergraduates, and there's about seven thousand
freshmen in the College of Letters and Science. So really the smaller learning
community that we offer at FPF is really a good fit for the college.
Jon: Sure and I can actually speak a little bit more about that question too
so you may not know that we do have a program fee it's
two thousand and fifty dollars and
that covers all the extra advising support and structure support and
smaller class sizes that you're gonna get with our program. But obviously we
know finances are a big consideration and so that's one reason why one
consideration of student would take in when choosing whether FPF is right for
them or not. Another reason too--this leads into--the next question, "Can you
take classes outside of FPF when you're in the program?" So we do offer a smaller,
curated course catalog that is designed with first semester freshmen in mind to
make sure that we offer all the classes that you would need to fulfill a variety
of different breadth, College, and major requirements in Berkeley; however we do
not, we're not able to offer the whole breadth of undergraduate course options
that would be available to you on the main campus. For example we don't offer
any upper division classes, because we don't expect students or incoming
freshmen necessarily need to take those classes, so that is one thing to consider
though. In terms of other classes that you can take outside of FPF, we do
still want our students to take a lot of extracurricular courses and so there are
a number of courses outside of your core classes that you can take outside of FPF
and that would include student-run courses, which are called DeCals, some
Orchestra classes, ROTC units, Theme Housing units, and research units are
some of the examples of courses outside of FPF that you could take while in our
program.
Meaghan: Just really quickly, and for those of you that don't know upper
division versus lower division courses: so a lower division course generally is
considered a freshman sophomore course or something you might be doing as a
prerequisite for a major and generally upper div... sorry, prerequisite for a
major and generally upper division courses are the courses you're taking as
a junior or senior so courses that are usually for students who might be
declared in a major and upper division courses tend to be a little more focused.
So, whereas, the lower division courses might be broad survey courses in a
particular topic like intro to psych, intro to gender and Women's Studies,
those kinds of things upper division courses tend to be a little smaller and
tend to really focus in on a specific, you know, subset of a particular academic
areas. just wanted to clarify that.
Ariana: Alright! So the next question we have is,
"How many students are in the program?" So this year
we're anticipating around 700 students will join us we will max-- we'll cap the
enrollment at 750, and it is-- we do take students on a first-come first-served
basis. We don't require an additional application though. It really is, you
just click on a couple buttons in your My Berkeley App saying that you would
like to join our program on your first-year pathways form. The next question
"Is is this a program for spring admits?"
Jon: I could take this one. So this is
actually a pretty old program. We have been around for 35 years now, and the
program has gone through several iterations. There was a time in the past
When FPF was only offered for students admitted to the spring semester; however
in the past several years there has been a lot of research about the value of a
small liberal arts college experience especially for first-semester freshmen
making that transition from high school to college. So in order to meet that
demand we have opened up our admission to all incoming freshmen and the College
of Letters & Science, and in addition, there are no spring admits to UC
Berkeley anymore. Now students are just admitted for the coming fall semester
but spring admissions is not been a thing for several years actually.
Ariana: Yeah and thank you for that question because
we know there's a lot of confusing
information out there like on Reddit College Confidential... a lot of things
that are outdated too. So yeah, just to clear that up. Thanks, John.
Next question is, "How do the courses fit between general education versus
prerequisites?" So if you look on our website we have a full list of the
courses that we will offer for fall 2018, and those courses, so at Berkeley it
really depends on your major, which of those could be a prerequisite and which
of those could be general education and some classes could be used for both. So
for example if I'm a psychology major or a public health major, and I took
psychology, psych 1, at FPF, I could use that for my Social and Behavioral
Sciences Breath for the College and for my prerequisite toward the major. So it
really depends on the course and the major that you would like to do. What
I would recommend in order to figure that out is to look at the major website
for the majors that you're considering now. Take a look at the prerequisites
that they that they require, and then look at--compare that with the FPF course
list. I will say that a lot of the prerequisites for certain majors are not
recommended for your first semester for example Business Administration
(UGBA 10) is not recommended for your first-year. Actually Haas advisors
recommend that students wait till at least their second semester if not their
sophomore year. The same is with econ. Actually economics major advisers would
not recommend that students take Econ 1 or 2 until sophomore year even if
they've taken AP Econ. So those are some examples of classes that we don't offer
pretty intentionally as they're not a good fit for your first semester
the next question is, "Since FPF is
essentially a community of its own, is it more difficult to connect with other
students on the main campus?" I'm gonna turn that one over to Jon because he's
an FPF alum.
Jon: Yes! Before I was working with the program, I was just like many of
you a senior in high school exploring all of my options, and I did end up
choosing Berkeley and FPF. I was really excited about the opportunity that I
thought FPF offered in terms of the community within the program. But
like yourself, I was also worried about feeling isolated from the main campus. My
experience? I ended up loving my time in the program, and I didn't-- I I found that
I was pleasantly surprised. I did not feel isolated at all from the main
campus. A big part of the reason why is because in terms of access to clubs,
access housing, it's all the same as any student who chooses the main campus.
I ended up living in Unit 1 my first year. If you do choose FPF
you'll get the same housing priority for the residence halls as any other student.
So it's very likely going to be the case that a lot of the friends that you
make are gonna be in the dormitories or do doing some other extracurricular
activities. That was the case for me. And so being in FPF was kind of more like
the best of both worlds, where I had access to all the main campus
communities that are out there, but I also had a community of my own that I
always had. And the friends that I made at FPF I really took with me throughout
my entire college experience. It actually made my transition onto the main campus
a lot easier than it would have been, I think, had I started there in my first
semester on the main campus because I formed this community in this one
semester, and got to know these people so well. And because it's 700 students you
end up running into a lot of them in pretty much all of your classes in the
future and so it was really easy for me to form study groups and feel like I had
a sense of community on the main campus after I transitioned.
Ariana: Yeah thanks Jon! Did you want to also answer the next question. It's sort of
related, "What is it like to transition into larger classes on the
main campus after FPF?"
Jon: For sure! So it was in my spring semester--that was the first
time that I had been in a class size that had been above 60 students, and I
was in a couple classes that were that had 300 students in them, so that was
definitely an adjustment for sure. I do think that having that first semester in
FPF just finding my footing in terms of finding my voice and speaking up during
classes during college-level classes that's intimidating in its own right, and
I feel like I got a lot of that practice in FPF, so it made it a little more easy
when I transition to the larger classes. Also just to remember,
even though you might be in a 300 person or even 500-700 person lecture they're
still all gonna have, for the most part, discussion sections which are gonna be
more like 20 to 30 students, and those are facilitated by teaching assistants not
like in FPF, but the good thing about
that is you'll get to know your students there and it'll be a lot easier to have
that small class experience even in a much larger class.
Ariana: Yeah and I'll also add that FPF students, we mentioned this earlier, but FPF
students compared to any of their non-FPF peers on the main campus at Berkeley
those who start on the main campus they have the highest graduation rates, which
shows that actually our students are successful through the very end until
they graduate, which is a big bragging point that we have. And also
from our FPF ambassadors who are our trained students who are ambassadors to
the incoming FPF students, they are former FPF students as well, and they
have also said that because they're able to connect with faculty within our
program very easily (they're very accessible), when they get onto the main
campus, going to office hours is not a big deal at all. They're just used to
having very good relationships with their instructors at FPF.
the next question: "Is there a program in San Francisco?
so we did have an FPF San Francisco for
the past two years, but we no longer--we're not offering FPF San
Francisco this year, as we're only taking 750 students total. So we have
just the FPF Berkeley program. The next question is "Do AP/IB credits apply to
courses that we would take in FPF, or would those credits only apply to
courses taken after the first semester?" So AP and IB credits apply equally to
FPF courses and main campus. So our courses are Berkeley courses; there's no
difference. The only difference is that we own them in the program so we offer
them through smaller classes within our own mini campus but the courses
themselves are Berkeley courses. So the same credits apply. The AP and IB credits
applying those gets a little complicated. It really depends on your
major. With the University and College requirements they're pretty
straightforward so if you look at the College of Letters in science
website you can see which degree requirements can be fulfilled using high
school exam credits, but just note that the high school exam credits can't
satisfy breadth requirements. So the Seven Course Breath, which a lot of our
courses at FPF satisfy, those cannot be fulfilled with high school exams. Only
with equivalent college community college coursework. The next question is,
"What does the extra fee cover? Do I get more aid if I choose FPF, or does my aid
just get spread more thinly. That's a great question!
Jon, did you want to help?
Jon: Sure! So we are a completely self-sustaining program and
the extra fee covers the extra advising support that we offer. So three of us in
the room are academic advisors and we work with about 200 students and because
it's actually a comparatively really large number--sorry--a really small number
of students that we work with, we get to know every single one of you all really
well to make sure that you're set up for success for the rest of your time in
college. Once you get onto the main campus for the College of Letters and
Science, you'll be working with an advisor who's working with around
1000 in some cases even more than that, but at least a thousand students.
So it can be much more difficult in those cases to really get to know your
advisor and for your adviser to get to know you, so that's one example of
what the extra fee covers. In addition there's also the smaller class sizes and
more access to your instructor and more instructor support, since our instructors
are all teaching their discussion sections as well as their lectures.
To answer the second question, "Do I get more aid if I choose FPF?" The question of
financial aid is definitely depends on each student situation. In some cases
financially may be able to help cover the cost of the program fee. If you want
to get a sense of how--if you want to see how financial aid might be able to cover it
then there is a way to look that up in your CalCentral login. If you go to your
My Finances page there's a link called "update housing" and in that link
you'll be able to see roughly how much aid will be able to cover the Fall
Program for Freshmen, or to put a more accurately, how enrolling in FPF might
affect your financial aid.
Ariana: Yeah, we're also happy to help answer more specific questions about
that if you receive financial aid through
FAFSA most likely it will adjust in order to accommodate the fee, but
sometimes it really depends on each student's situation. The next question is
does being an FPF pathway affect a student's ability to do first-year
research, "The answer is no. FPF students have access to the
Undergraduate Research Apprenticeship Program. I know that's a mouthful: we call
it "URAP" for short, so students can earn credit as long as
they obtain a position to do research with a professor and they can receive
units for that so that's one of the electives that we allow for FPF students
on the main campus. So yes and we actually have some professors--some
instructors in our program who have taken our students under their wings
within their own research. So for example one of our anthropology instructors does
research on campus and some of our students have helped publish an article
with him, and they met in his FPF Anthropology 1 class. So I think really
the increased interaction with instructors and students in our program
really benefits our students in the long-run.
The next question is "How does FPF
affect student housing? Can Berkeley provide housing beyond freshman year?"
and so those are two different questions. The first one is FPF does not affect
student housing so as Jon mentioned before, the same
priority is given to FPF students just like any other new first-year at
Berkeley, and FPF students they're mixed in with everyone else so they live with
other freshmen on their floors and they can even live with students outside the
program. So let's say you choose FPF but you're friend is not doing FPF,
and you want to live in the same room. That's totally fine! You can apply
together. The second question is "can Berkeley provide housing beyond freshman
year?" We do have new dorms now around campus, and so I know that our
housing has increased, and in previous years they were able to guarantee two
years for any student who wanted housing for two years out of the four within
Berkeley, but I'm not quite sure what the latest is on that so I would definitely
check the housing website housing.berkeley.edu for the latest
but yeah, at least for the first year as long as students choose "any room any size"
on their application to keep their options open they should be able to get housing.
The next question is, "What's the biggest class size in FPF?" and that's 100.
So 100 seats: that's compared to like a chem lecture of maybe 700 on
the main campus or maybe a Math 1A lecture on the main campus could be 300-400
students, but we never have lecturers go over 100. Usually our lecturers
are around 50 or 60. The next question... Jon, would you like to answer?
Jon: Sure so the next question we have "What is the deadline to choose FPF either for
currently admitted students or for wait-listed students? And so for
currently admitted students the deadline to choose FPF is going to be May 1st
and for wait-listed students once you hear back (if you are wait-listed) soon
and you are admitted to Berkeley then you will have 1 week, 7 days, to make
a decision as to whether you want to accept your offer of admission. And then
once you accept your offer of admission, then you can choose FPF as long as space
is available. As Ariana mentioned, once we hit a certain mark around 700 we
won't be able to take any more students and so it's really important if you are
a wait-listed student and you do want to choose FPF that you make that
decision as soon as you feel comfortable making it.
Ariana: Alright so the next question
is, "I hear it's hard to get classes you want at Berkeley. How hard is it to get
classes in FPF?" In terms of Berkeley in general, signing up for classes that
you want it really depends on what classes you want and what major you're
going towards and certain majors at Berkeley and certain
courses that lead to those very competitive majors and impacted majors
it can be a challenge getting them especially in your first semester.
So basically every student is given priority to enroll in classes depending
on how many terms they have attended, and as new students to Berkeley, you are
going after the sophomores juniors and seniors have already enrolled in classes.
But at FPF there isn't that kind of competition so it's really just among
FPF students who are choosing classes in terms of getting the classes that you
need in order to make progress for graduation there isn't a problem within
FPF. But we--in terms of competition for classes I think with FPF students
generally they're able to get the classes that they want, and it would
depend on your particular situation. So we we try to coach our students in terms
of which classes they should choose right away so that they are enrolling in
the more impacted classes so we will definitely help our students with that
during the summer.
Jon: Alright the next question, "Are FPF class is easier than
classes on the main campus?" So all of our classes are approved by the same
Academic Senate as any main campus class and our instructors go through the same
hiring process as instructors on the main campus and so in terms of the
difficulty of our classes we'd say that they're generally the same, but in terms
of class difficulty on any college campus it depends a lot on the specific
instructor, and so it's hard to give a across-the-board blanket answer to that
question. But generally it depends more on the instructor and all of our
instructors-- many of our instructors do teach on the main campus some just teach
in FPF because they really want to work with first semester freshmen and are
interested in that student development piece. In terms of the difficulty of
classes it definitely just depends I'd say.
Ariana: So the next question is, "What
types of places around the Bay Area do FPF classes visit?"
Some excursions that we've had in the past are the SFMOMA
the Museum of Modern Art. We've also had outings to the San Francisco the SF Aquarium?
Jon: I think so yeah. We've had excursions to visit Alcatraz and
different movie theaters sort of historical movie theaters or historic
districts in San Francisco and so those are some examples of what we've had in
the past that we may also offer again this coming fall.
Ariana: We also have areas just
right within Berkeley that our instructors could use just like the
Berkeley Art Museum, which is really nice it's been remodeled and
relocated. It's a really beautiful place. There's also the Botanical Gardens...
So our instructors are generally encouraged to use the resources in the
area for these excursions.
The next question is, "What are the other two pathways?"
So if you look on your first-year pathway form in your My Berkeley App
you're going to see FPF, Traditional campus, which is just going to the main
Berkeley campus, and the third is the Global Edge London program so that would
be doing a summer at Berkeley and then going to London for your fall
semester. So that's... I think that brings us to the end of questions. But Meaghan is
currently answering questions on chat so we'll stick around for a few minutes to
answer any last-minute questions that you have over chat, but we will go ahead
and conclude the audio portion of this session. Thank you so much for
joining us! We hope that we addressed your questions here and if you have any
other questions or want to chat with us like a phone appointment or come visit
us please go ahead and email fpf@berkeley.edu
and we'll be happy to meet with you. Thank you! Jon: Thanks!
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