TAKE MY WORD FOR IT: Edmond Loubeyre (Ch 221) about his educational journey at UC Berkeley, budget management, tuition fees, classes and Death Valley trip

Details: Published: 13 February 2025

"TAKE MY WORD FOR IT" with Edmond Loubeyre (Ch 221)

To introduce myself in a few lines, I am a Gadzart from Châlons (27ch221) currently enrolled in the Master of Engineering at UC Berkeley, in Mechanical Engineering with a concentration in Modeling and Simulation of Advanced Manufacturing Processes.

About accommodation, budget management, tuition fees:

The start of a new educational journey in another country that has a whole different culture that France can be stressful. The first issue to tackle is the accommodation. I was very lucky to have good friends in both my year coming to Berkeley with me and the year above us that just graduated. Therefore, four of us were able to take over the lease of the small city house that the 4 freshly graduated Gadzarts rented the previous year. It is 20 min away by bike from the campus and cheaper than the official Berkeley student housing.

The next issue that can come up especially when studying in the US is budget management. For that matter, I was also very lucky to receive help from the Gadzart community by receiving the Sequoia grant which was of great help. There are also great benefits to living with roommates, we were able to buy a car together so that we could go grocery shopping in cheaper stores and share every spendings. One other major help to pay for tuition fees and my living expenses is the positions that I obtained as a Teacher Assistant at the university also called GSI, Graduate Student Instructor. These positions are very coveted because they offer a tuition fee reduction and a monthly salary, but with some motivation and with the help of some people it is possible. For this semester I am a GSI in the Physics 7B course, which is thermodynamics, electromagnetism and electricity.

About my classes:

In my favorite class at UC Berkeley, which has the same name as my concentration, we started by studying Genetic Algorithms. They can be impressively powerful and simple to use and implement. We therefore coded our own general Genetic Algorithm from scratch. After that we studied advanced manufacturing processes that we modeled using equations like the first principle of thermodynamics, electromagnetisms or basic Newtonian mechanics that we then simulated on Python and finally we adapted and applied our genetic algorithms to those processes to optimize their parameters.

About my Death Valley trip:

Aside from my studies and GSI position I am trying my best to visit and enjoy the Californian and American way of life. My last 4 days trip, which was surreal, was in Death Valley. Death valley is between Las Vegas, and Los Angeles, and it offers incredible landscapes that we cannot find in France. Vast deserts full of colored dunes and rocks, craters caused by past volcanic activities and a salt lake. I went camping there and drove for hours on off-roads tracks (that punctured my tire) to reach a place with hot springs in the middle of nowhere called Saline valley.

Thank you!

I also want to add a short paragraph to thank all the AFAM community for their help and the one from the bay who is very active and organizes amazing gatherings!

I hope this short feedback can help some of you get a clearer idea on what it is to come to study in the US, I would definitely recommend it to anyone!