<p>I seriously don’t know what is your problem with public universities, especially the excellent public institutions you seem to constantly denigrate in about 50% of your posts on this forum. I have no idea if you are a student, or have actually worked as an engineer in industry, but as an electrical engineer who has worked 25 years in aerospace, defense, semiconductors, and now the energy industry I assure you that Berkeley trained engineers are among the best in the world, as are those from Harvey Mudd, Caltech, MIT, and any number of other institutions. I’ve worked with, for and been the boss of engineers from most of these institutions, and seriously, anybody who points to the 25th percentile SAT score as some sort of marker for quality engineering education is really off the mark.</p>
<p>This seems like the same debate I’ve heard year after year regarding public elementary school system vs the private elementary schools system. People have various reasons for their choices then and they have various reasons as they search for colleges now. It does not mean one system is necessarily better than the other, it is what works best for you family, finances, religion, whatever. This has been an interesting conversation and thank goodness for choices!</p>
I doubt it would do any good. For some reason a few people on CC positively come unhinged at the notion that UC is any better than the local junior college.</p>
<p>Good grief, there are people on here with probably hundreds of posts dedicated to bashing the UC system.</p>
<p>No. It won’t do any good. I think it has to do with social class. Private is better than public. And schools with fewer poor people are better than schools with more poor people.</p>
<p>I’m in my 50’s. I work in the business world. The UCs have always been well respected as far as I can see. Definitely everywhere I worked. Then I discovered collegeconfidential. :)</p>
<p>For example, had my D gone to UCSB, there would have been very few alternative ways of getting home for the holidays/weekends other than by car. Yes, there are trains, but they take a long time and are very expensive. Lots of kids bum rides from others, but I still would have sent her with a car to school.</p>
<p>I don’t think it was that bad and I was from San Francisco and didn’t have a car. Within Isla Vista/UCSB, all you needed was a bike. Outside of that, the bus system was decent (and it’s even better since I graduated with the IV Shuttle replacing Line 27). The train wasn’t great but not horribly expensive ($80 round trip to San Francisco) and there were inconveniences (no bus service to Goleta Amtrak - ridiculous), but I usually just found rides with people back home which was easy with Facebook these days. It was cheap and also a way to make some new friends.</p>
<p>Most of the posts “dedicated to bashing the UC” are mere reactions to unabated “noise” from relentless fanboys who are determined to extol the values of the UC and to refuse to admit the differences between being an undergraduate and a graduate student at a school such as Berkeley. </p>
<p>Venture to the College Admission fora, and you won’t have a hard time identifying the UC crowd waving their graduate statistics and PA pompons. </p>
<p>You will also find plenty of people who have no problems recognizing that a couple of the UC schools clearly belong on the first page of the USNews and belong in the top of every lists of public schools. However, that is not what the fanboys want … they want to establish that a school such as Berkeley should be listed in the same sentences as the best of the Ivy League schools or more prestigious schools such as Stanford or MIT, and this despite sharing many few of the metrics measuring the student body and financial resources. </p>
<p>Fwiw, the UC system is fulfilling its mission to offer to the most qualified students in California a very competitive education, and especially those who do not share the attributes required by the highly selective and higher ranked private schools. The different level of TRUE selectivity will not change until the schools change their in-state selection system, and especially cease to admit such a high number of transfers. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, this is probably too tall a task. Now and later!</p>
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<p>And, by the way, Bovertine, before offering an utterly gratuitous opinion on what constitutes 50% of my posts, you may want to make a modicum of effort to actually read … the posts. Have you read what “seems to be” FIFTY percent of my posts? Would you go look for the posts in which I DO bash PUBLIC UNIVERSITIES and amend your “statistic” of 50%? </p>
<p>I hate to break it to ya, but there are TA’s at well nigh EVERY TOP LARGE UNIVERSITY that has grad students! Some teach courses, yes! At Columbia, for example, the core courses are often if not mostly taught by GRADUATE STUDENTS! And Columbia costs way more than UC Berkeley. Harvard also has TAs. And Yale. And Stanford. It works the same way at all these universities. And sometimes the LAC’s have upper level students reading and grading papers in large classes…</p>
<p>Many Cal people are happy with what they have achieved in life (successes through monetary value or otherwise) and they mostly attributed that to the high quality of upbringing, education and experience (molding) that they got at Cal, so you can’t stop them from expressing their great experiences to others. </p>
<p>When they say Cal provides great education, that’s because they - themselves - have experienced that they are/were receiving great education from Cal. That’s not any different from those Columbia or Harvard or Stanford people saying they are getting (or have gotten) great education from their alma mater school. </p>
<p>Your constant bashing for Cal and Cal supporters (and the State Us as a whole), on the other hand, is what is annoying. You may not like Cal and/or Cal supporters but you don’t have to bash them all the time. For you to judge Cal - that profoundly and thoroughly - you have to be a student there or an alumnus. There are important matters that don’t reflect on your statistics.</p>
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<p>Maybe these are from Cal engineering and Computer Science students, which should be understandable given that Cal Eng’g & ComSci are some of the very best in the world, able to head-to-head with those programs at both Stanford and MIT. I don’t need to reiterate this to you since all survey materials available today (as as well in the past) would tell you that Cal Eng’g & ComSci are in the same sentences as that of Stanford and MIT and better than most of the Ivy schools. Do you really think Columbia’s engineering and comsci are superior to Berkeley’s? You’ve got to be kidding me.</p>
<p>Then there is hope that it will also be understood, especially the true nature of the perceived “constant bashing.” </p>
<p>As usual, facts and perceptions are hardly one and the same. It so happens that people love to elevate opinions that is contrary to their own to the level of contant bashing, and this especially when facts hardly support their rhetoric. And, of course, also present a set of allegations they can’t possibly document with factual evidence. </p>
<p>And, fwiw, consider the constancy of my bashing, should it not be easy to establish my main points of “bashing” and check the facts to turn them into hollow and invalid aspersions. </p>
<p>So, what are the elements in my Berkeley bashing that is both irritating to the UC supporters and also … unfounded? Should be pretty easy to find, if I posted the same information about 8,000 times!</p>
<p>My kids are both happy at USC. Even when my S was applying for admission in 2006, we thought that OOS was just not worth the money for the UCs and were already hearing of kids who were having difficulty getting courses because of cutbacks–then. USC is quite generous with merit aid. S is in EE & has had many opportunities while he’s been at USC. He’s been involved in his 2nd year of speech recognition research, will be presenting a paper at a conference this year, and had a lot of interesting opportunities available at the college of engineering.</p>
<p>My nephew in 2008 was accepted OOS at UCB & UCLA but ended up choosing Claremont, where he is very happy as a pre-med. OOS, the price is similar & he is getting a lot more personal attention & scheduled to graduate in 4 years without stressing about whether his courses are available.</p>
<p>I have no desire whatsoever to go back and read through your posts. I have no idea who you are and I’m already boring of this discussion as well.</p>
<p>Why not enlighten me here with something about yourself? That way I won’t have to go through a mountain of posts to better understand your perspective.</p>
<p>Well, from what I read on another thread, those kids that waited until yesterday or the day before to submit applications had to suffer through the annual event of the UC server moving at a snail’s pace or actually crashing. Thankfully, my S had his submitted one week earlier.</p>
<p>This is an addendum to my more terse reply above. </p>
<p>xiggi-I haven’t read a bunch of posts here comparing UC to a top ten school. But your reaction, and particularly the amount of time you devote to it comes across as really over the top.</p>
<p>I won’t argue with you that UC accepts a larger percentage of its applicants than say a Caltech. The numbers are there, I’m not going to dispute it. I won’t even argue that a school like Harvey Mudd or Caltech, or even a Rose-Hulman may offer a somewhat better educational experience. But you can’t tell that from selectivity alone.</p>
<p>I can only speak about technical courses, I know nothing about anything taught by Cornel West. Let me just pick one thing I’ve read in this thread that is totally contrary to my own personal experience. That is the notion that TAs shape a class and that a professor is necesarily a better purveyor of information. In all of my technical classes, the material shaped the class. There wasn’t a lot of wiggle room. If you took an EE class in analog communication you studied applications of the Fourier series, if you took controls you studied the LaPlace transform, digital communication difference equations and Z-transforms. It didn’t matter if your instructor was a first year grad student or the department head Caltech graudate. And frankly, you didn’t really rely on the lecture, most of it you learned by working problems, or working in groups until you hammered it out. And all the professors had office hours as well as the TAs, and some of the TAs were far better than the professors in explaining the information. </p>
<p>That’s just one example where I don’t get what you’re talking about on here.</p>
Ahh - memories! I spent a quarter at UCSD in '69 or '70 under an intercampus visit program UC had. Lived in Pacific Beach, hung out a lot in Mission Beach, and hitchhiked through La Jolla to the campus. I don’t think there even was bus service. But U-U-Dad is right - back then, the campus was surrounded by a lot of nothing. I haven’t been there enough in recent decades to know what it’s like now.</p>
<p>Cal is very doable without a car, because BART is right in downtown Berkeley, a block from the edge of campus; with BART, access to SF is easy and quick (about 15 minutes). The city also tries very hard to be bike friendly, with bike lanes and routes - though parts are hilly (I am referring to Berkeley; SF is way hillier). There is so much going on right on campus that there isn’t much need to leave town - among other things, Cal Performances brings in top musicians, dance troupes, acting troupes, etc. and students get reduced prices or can usher; the music and drama departments also have numerous free and inexpensive performances.</p>
<p>I heartily agree that students don’t need cars at Cal. But: 15 minutes assuming that 1) the train pulls up right when you enter the station, 2) there are no traffic delays, and 3) you get off at the first stop in San Francisco. And the station is actually a few blocks from the western edge of the main part of campus, more like a 10 minute walk from the heart of the campus, long enough for a shuttle route. A pity that the shuttle is no longer named Humphrey Go-Bart. </p>
<p>It isn’t 15 minutes by BART, but I’d bet that, with the possible exception of 2 a.m. it is always faster to BART than to drive from SF to Berkeley. In these days of dead man’s curve on the Bridge we do almost anything to avoid driving into and out of SF.</p>