First Year Students

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The first year, and especially the first month, at Berkeley can be pretty overwhelming with all the tasks that you have to do. Settling into a new place, taking your prelim and fulfilling all the bureaucratic hurdles can be quite a whirlwind. The information below explains many of the situations you will probably face in your first year, and hopefully will make them all seem manageable. It's in your best interest to read through all this information at least once before arriving; they can provide a handy reference for navigating through your first year.

Location

The Math Department is located in Evans Hall, the tall, grey building in the center of campus. The department occupies the 7th through 10th floors of the building. The graduate office is 965 Evans; the main lounge is 1015 Evans. The main computer lab is in 744 and there are also clusters are in 731 and 838 Evans. There are printers in 708, 838, 958, and 1002 and a copier in 958.

The vice-chair for graduate affairs is Daniel Tataru. Pop in and say hi to him when you get here, as he'll be glad to know you're here.

Email, ID Cards, and Keys

To get a math.berkeley.edu email address, see Kathy Santos in 920 Evans your first week here. She can also give you a key to the computer cluster and the copy room.

To get a UC Berkeley ID card, you have to go to the Cal1 office in Lower Sproul (on the ground floor of Cesar Chavez Student Center). If you are registered and your fees have been paid, you can also get your Classpass there, which lets you use any AC transit bus. Alternatively, you can avoid the lines and have your Classpass mailed to your current address on Bearfacts by going here.

Every graduate student gets an office in the department. The MGSA organizes a lottery and office selection process on the day of orientation (see below). You will be able to get your key on office moving day, which is usually on or before the first day of classes.

Orientation

On the afternoon of the first day of the prelim, there is a departmental orientation for first-year students. Much of the information on this site, such as establishing residency, will be talked about in greater detail, as well as some additional topics. This is also a great opportunity to ask questions about the program. The ever-helpful Barb Waller will email you with a location and time once it's known.

Preliminary Exam

The Prelim is a 6-hour written exam testing your undergraduate math background. It's given once a semester, and you must pass within your first three semesters. Thus, you only have three opportunities to take it, so you should take it every semester until you pass. And most students would agree, it's in your best interest to pass the first time.

Date

The exam is always scheduled for the Monday and Tuesday the week before classes start, from 9am to 12pm each day, in 60 Evans Hall. This room is located on the ground floor of Evans (not to be confused with the first floor or the basement), along the hall on the eastern side of the building. The fall 2008 exam is scheduled for August 18 and 19.

Workshops

There are prelim workshops in the weeks before each exam. These workshop, led by graduate students, include informal problem-solving sessions and summaries of the material you're expected to know. Prelim workshop webpages are available from: 2003 (Algebra), 2006 (Analysis), and 2008 (Analysis). See also these notes from an analysis workshop (in 2004?) courtesy of Anton.

Structure

The prelim is split over the course of two days. Each day, you are given nine questions and have three hours to submit solutions for at most six of them. On one day, five of the questions will be in algebra and four will be in analysis, and on the other day, the reverse distribution will occur. The questions are graded out of 10 points, so a perfect score is 120 points. To put the caliber of the exam into perspective, in the last five years, the minimum passing score has ranged from 53 to 68.

Resources

Here are some helpful study resources:

  • The prelim website, has a syllabus describing the material you are responsible for, copies of previous exams, and statistics of exam performance.
  • Nearly a thousand problems from previous prelims, with complete solutions to most, have been published in the book "Berkeley Problems in Mathematics" by Paulo Ney de Souza ISBN 0387204296. This is an excellent resource of problems.

Residency

If you are a US citizen that will be supported by the department (through a GSI or GSR position) in your second year and later, you must establish California residency within your first year. This is because the tuition and fees for residents are about half those for non-residents, and the departmental budget can support only so many non-residents. If you don't establish residency, it will cost you dearly, because you'll have to pay the difference in tuition out of your own pocket, and that will be several thousands of dollars.

So, here are the steps you need to complete to establish residency:

  1. Make a credit card purchase for something shortly after you arrive in Berkeley and save the credit card statement. It can also help if you save your boarding pass if you are flying to California. This is to establish the approximate date of your arrival in the state.
  2. Once you have a California address, change the official address the university has on file for you. This can be done easily via Bearfacts, under the section 'Personal'. You will need your student ID number to access this site.
  3. Get a California Driver's License or State ID to replace your one from another state, and register your vehicle here. It is very IMPORTANT to do this within your first TWO WEEKS at Berkeley, otherwise you will probably be hassled about this from the Residency Office when you file for residency.
  4. Open a local checking account. If your old bank has a presence in the area, it is sufficient to change your address to Berkeley. Again, do this within your first month. Both these steps indicate your intent on remaining permanently within the state.
  5. Register to vote in California, and if an election comes around, make sure to vote.
  6. File California state taxes your first year here and make sure that you are not claimed as a dependent that year by anyone who is not a California resident.
  7. Keep credit card and bank statements and make regular purchases by credit card or use the ATM regularly to verify that you have spent your time continuously in the state. The Residency Affairs office is most wary of where you spend your time when school is not in session; spending more than a couple weeks of the year in your previous state of residence can impede your establishment of residency. Travel to other locations for academic purposes is less of a problem, especially if you have documentation of your time spent there. But still, plan on spending most of your first year in California.
  8. File an online Residence Classification Petition (available on Bearfacts) and submit the checklist and supporting documentation within a week of submitting the online petition. Instructions are given at the end of the online petition. The deadline for submission for the fall of your second year is usually towards the end of August; see the Student Calendar for an exact date.

    However, the deadline for applying before fees are assessed is usually June 1. The difference between these two deadlines is that if you submit by the earlier deadline, and are classified as a resident, your fall fees will automatically be computed as if you were a resident and paid for by the department. If you submit by the later deadline, your fees will be automatically computed as if you are a non-resident and then later adjusted to the resident fees. This may mean that you might temporarily have to pay the difference between the non-resident and resident fees (a few hundred dollars), and will be refunded that money later in the semester.

More detailed information can be found in the welcome packet that will be sent to you by the math department and on the Residency website.

International Students

International Students should stop by the Berkeley International Office in International House during their first week on campus. This is a mandatory requirement of your visa. Non-mandatory, but quite useful, is the orientation.

Registering for Classes

Incoming students must register for classes before the start of the fall semester. This is done easily enough via the online registration site for the university, Telebears. A list of courses can be found here. If you are teaching in the fall, the math department requires you to register for Math 300, the teaching workshop. It is strongly recommended that you see your academic advisor sometime in the first week or two of the semester to discuss your classes. The deadline for graduate students to add/drop classes without a fee is the end of the third week of instruction.

Students are required by the university to sign up for 12 units to be full-time. Seminars are a good way to fill up some extra units and to get to know a professor and his or her students better. You can take up to 4 units of seminar each semester.

Do not worry if a class you want to take fills up. There is always room in the class for math department grad students. Just sign up for some other classes temporarily, then talk to the professor on the first day of class about getting onto the roster. Once you are on the roster, be sure to drop the other classes you temporarily signed up for.

Housing

There are several options for housing at Berkeley. These include private rentals and university-owned housing. In general, unless you live in the subsidized housing for families, the prices for university housing are more expensive than those for private housing (i.e. less bang for your buck).

There are many houses, apartments and rooms for rent in the area around campus. Naturally, proximity to campus, size of the housing, and the number of people you share with can all play factors in the price. Housing close to campus can be as much as twice as expensive as comparable housing a mile or two away. Fortunately, public transit (including AC Transit buses and the BART) and biking are both convenient ways to get to campus, which many grad students use. We have a free unlimited transit pass for the AC Transit system, but unfortunately BART is not included. Driving to campus isn't recommended, because campus parking can be a nightmare and very expensive.

Most landlords are reluctant to rent to people they haven't met, so don't expect to get a room or an apartment before you move out here. However, most people manage to find a place within a week or two of moving here. If you have a friend to live with in the interim, or can find a place with a month-to-month lease where you can leave after one or two months, those can be temporary solutions.

There are several resources available for your search for housing:

  • Craigslist. A free classifieds service for everything from housing, to dating, to miscellaneous things people are giving away for free. Considering it started in the Bay Area, it's definitely taken root here as an indispensible place to place ads. Almost everyone with a rental posts an ad on this site, and it's by far the biggest listing of rooms/houses/apartments to rent. This is probably a good place to start your search and to get an idea of the prices.
  • CalRentals. A University office administering a rental listings service. Placing listings is free, but there is a $20 fee for three months of access to view the listings. Landlords who advertise with Cal Rentals often prefer students as tenants.
  • Subsidized University Housing for Families. UC Berkeley offers partially subsidized apartments to married students and students with families.
  • International House. Located right next to campus, the I-House is another popular location for graduate students, especially those seeking to diversify their contacts outside the department.
  • Co-ops. The co-ops are unique living experience, and each house has a different flavor. Several dozen people live in each house. Food, cooking, and cleaning responsibilities are all shared, which keeps the costs lower and distributes the maintenance work evenly among the members. The houses are also located very close to campus.
  • Contact other math graduate students about potential rooming arrangements and housing availability.

Regular departmental events

During the school year, there are departmental teas every Monday and Thursday afternoons, from 3 to 4 in 1015 Evans. The department provides coffee, tea, and snacks. This is a great time to meet and chat with other graduate students and professors.

In addition to many specialized seminars in different areas (see here for this week's seminars), there are three series which are meant to be more broadly accessible:

  • Many Cheerful Facts is a series talks given by graduate students, mostly first and second years. Its purpose is to give graduate students a friendly environment to give a first talk, and as such, they tend to be very accessible.
  • The Mentor Lecture Series consists of talks given by professors for the purpose of introducing graduate students to their areas of research. It occurs on alternate Mondays at 4:10 in 60 Evans.
  • The departmental colloquium is on Thursday afternoons at 4:10 in 60 Evans. The talks are meant to present current research in a way that is accessible to a general mathematical audience.

Student groups

In addition to the many specialized clubs on campus, there are several groups representing members of the department:

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