Notre Dame Mendoza or Berkeley LSA for Undergrad?

Hello! I know many of you are extremely busy people but I would really appreciate it if you could take the time to help me with this decision.

My college application process is now over and I committed to ND but I could still switch to Berkeley as of this moment. While I know both are great schools, I'm wondering if I should reconsider and accept my Berkeley letter rather than ND. While I already got into Mendoza for ND for finance, I didn't apply to Haas for Berkeley and would try to transfer my sophomore year into the program. Would taking that risk at berkeley be better than being at ND? I read some comments from this website and many people seem to place both Berkeley and Mendoza as targets/strong semi-targets, so I'm wondering if there is any difference between the two schools as well. I chose ND because I like the community better but Berkeley does have a better location too. 

My end goal is to go into a IB at wall street but a lot can change, so please tell me what your personal choice/opinion is!

9 Comments
 

Interesting that you seem so torn, because those schools are very different from each other culturally. Berkeley is in the Bay Area and is extremely progressive even within that context, to the point that the name is almost a synonym for progressivism. Notre Dame is in the Midwest and is very conservative. Most kids there are Catholic and they have single-sex dorms run by priests. Weather is way better at Berkeley. On the other hand, there are people for whom Notre Dame is an absolute top target based on their cultural background, sort of like BYU except Catholic instead of Mormon and higher-ranked. Those who've worked with these people can attest that they have a love for the school that verges on cult worship and talk about it constantly. If your main goal is to optimize your path to Wall Street and you haven't thought much about the culture, then that would indicate to me that you should go to Berkeley. 

 

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