<p>Well, I’m going to be taking the Graduate Records. I have a bit more pressure on me than I probably would have going somewhere else, because I swung a 3.5 at Cal. I’m not sure how graduate schools look at a 3.5 at Cal versus a 3.5 at State U in Idaho, but I have heard conflicting stories that Grad Schools look very favorably at Cal and adjust or give you credit for going there, while other people have said: “Oh, if you swing a mediocre GPA because you went to Cal, you are pretty much screwed.”</p>
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<p>Every class is a game too, after all. None is truly reflective of true enquiry of knowledge. Nevertheless, the point for medical school admissions isn’t so lofty, and it’s mainly to provide a means to get people to compete by a somewhat impartial system. </p>
<p>While classes vary greatly by whim of professors, schools, etc, standardization ideally gets rid of this variation, and further, reduces the extent of time one spends worrying about the nitpicky whims of a particular course. Yes, one would have to have a lengthy exam, maybe even broken into parts. I get the idea from other “large consecutive exam” systems I’ve heard of. </p>
<p>Now let’s be clear – I hate exams in general, but if you have to go through them, might as well reduce to the greatest degree the effects of what I have against them, one of which is that they vary according to the whim of writers in terms of what is emphasized, and can be hard or easy simply because the writer has other responsibilities. This is very true of professors. As far as courses, I frankly favor people working together to solve and understand difficult things, so that they learn how to think about the right things well. </p>
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<p>Realistically, many graduate schools look at things like research experience more than they do at GPA. An EECS professor I know said in as many words that a 3.5 with quality research beats a 4.0 without much, because the kind of intelligence required to ace an exam is not at all in exact correlation with what makes a good researcher.</p>
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<p>Yes, I agree this would be best, and actually ideally, the courses you speak of would be targeted towards preparation for an important standardized exam that requires consolidation of the knowledge. I actually think that having a good standardized test of fundamentals that are relevant to premed students would probably even spur some standardization in how classes are taught. </p>
<p>One point, for instance, which I’ve always been in favor – more rigorous AP exams for things like calculus and physics. The rigor of courses tends to be lax if the exam they prepare for is lax, and fixing the end target tends to fix some of the problems (barring issues that will always exist, of incompetent teachers).</p>
<p>Yeah! Let’s do the Asian system with their one huge test. I’ve always wanted to know how that’s like. I bet it’s intense as hell…</p>
<p>^It sucks… huge fever = bye bye future</p>
<p>Oh, one should be able to take any standardized test more than once, so the “I had a bad cough” excuse doesn’t become a factor. And even with several repeated failures, one may at least try again another year. </p>
<p>I don’t like exams as a rule, but the medical school system in place encourages GPA-mongering in school, plus insecurity and tension a to the differences coming from different schools. I am in favor of positive collaborative learning in school, and an impartial (even if still obviously flawed to an extent) measure for an admissions criterion. And realistically, a good qualifying exam is a straightforward, hard exam, that’s about it. Not a game like SATs. Not a silly multiple-choice test where one crams for nothing.</p>
<p>A nice point that came up on another forum was that people are promoted usually based on their last point of “not failing.” Meaning you do a job well, and go to the next level, even if the “next level” isn’t necessarily very similar to the previous one. This seems to be very true of the admissions process in place.</p>
<p>I mean, I would never advocate this exam thing for graduate school. But the system in place for med school pretty much is a competitive, score-obsessive thing, and at least having it be somewhat impartial sounds like a good idea. Coursework should still be required, and say some minimum GPA that’s high, but I don’t think GPAs should be directly compared numerically.</p>
<p>The hard part about applying to grad school with a good but not great gpa is that you might be competing against other berkeley students. Your 3.5 may be better than the 3.8 from university of whatever, but its not as good as the applicant with the 3.8 from Berkeley.</p>
<p>^ Seriously. Especially if the 3.8 went in some easier major than your 3.5</p>
<p>^^ If both of you distinguish graduate school from professional school, then realistically the “easier major” isn’t going to help an applicant one bit. I’m talking graduate school as in, specialization in a subject unto a level sufficient to conduct independent inquiries. This may make you happy!</p>
<p>This is all exactly why I think the very basis of admission should not be grades, unless everyone is required to go through the same process. Even in the case of something like engineering graduate school, where an engineering degree would be expected, the GPA isn’t the sole or even most important factor.</p>
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<p>In regards to this specific line, a frequent poster and moderator for the MIT forums would certainly say that a 3.5 vs. a 3.8 from the same school need not at all be a clear cut win for the latter, and rather, it depends on research in field like biology. A professor at Cal of CS mentioned the same about his field.</p>
<p>Now realistically, if research experience does not figure into the picture, then direct GPA comparisons become “necessary,” unless another means is developed.</p>
<p>Well, here’s the thing, my major GPAs are both WELL over 3.5, but I had a few semesters where I did less than stellar which brought my cum. down. Didn’t do so hot one of my semesters at Cal because I kept getting sick, and my first semester in Germany, took way too many units of hard classes – overconfidence in my abilities you might say. And they grade HARD over there. Don’t let anyone tell you study abroad (especially full-immersion!) is a walk in the park. Germans live well up to their legacy of being fastidious and thorough and they suffer American indolence/sloppiness poorly. I was expected to be able to read, write, and synthesize at the equivalent of my German peers and no mercy was brokered. Not an excuse, just saying my experiences. My major GPAs were like 3.7 and 3.67 respectively. Two or three B/B+ semesters can really drag you down, even when you are normally an A/A- student. And Cs -hurt-, though I think I only got one C+ the entire time I went through.</p>
<p>Also, keep in mind American Studies Honors is a helluvalot harder than just American Studies the Jock Major. That’s why I get rankled at people who typify AS a fluff major. If you get into the classes with the truly brilliant professors with other truly brilliant Cal students, it’s just as rigorous as any of the top echelon liberal arts or soft science majors – and you are expected to produce decent research as well. Since it is an emerging field, Honors American Studies is a great way to get research experience if you are otherwise too shy or too cramped timewise to do outside of school research. Yes, it is easy to get a B or C in any regular American Studies class, but to get that A or A-, especially with the more challenging professors, you must put in the effort. </p>
<p>German, the department itself, does not grade super hard, but it is quite easy to flounder if you don’t keep up. German is an intense and nuanced language, far more so than English I think, then again, wit and wisdom are dying arts imho, and the effort to write an intelligent paper in German is immense. </p>
<p>Where was I going with this? Oh yes! I am pretty much defending my American Studies and German degrees because I’ve seen plenty of people accuse those of being fluff due to the high levels of jocks and sorority girls especially in the former. There is a fair number of ‘slacker-types’ in German believe it or not. AS in the honors track (where if you get As in the entry level courses for it, they pretty much railroad you in, and getting As in some of the entry requirements is truly no easy feat. People who don’t do go Honors in AS and get a 3.8 or so in the major, definitely deserve an asterix next to their GPA and are looked down upon in the department. Not good for recs.) Of course, there are easy majors at Cal, but you have to look at each student’s experience with a case by case basis. My research duties in American Studies definitely helped keep Strada in business and I had numerous treatments and proposals either rejected or sent back for re-write, even after a heavy load of work.</p>
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<p>Well, you shouldn’t be ranked at those people, because, let’s face it, they’re only stating the truth - which you freely admitted yourself. You stated yourself that non-honors AS is indeed the jock major riddled with athletes and sorority girls where simply passing the regular classes - as opposed to actually receiving top grades - is easy. Hence, when people dismiss AS as a fluff major, frankly, they’re making an accurate statement. If that upsets you, then you should direct your ire at those particular AS professors and administrators who grade too easily and don’t demand enough work. It’s those lazy AS students, and the professors who enable them, that make the hard-working students look bad. </p>
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<p>While that’s a nice ideal, the truth is, nobody is actually going to do that. The information search costs are simply too high. Let’s face it: employers don’t really know exactly which majors are easier than others, and by how much. Neither do professional grad schools such as law, medicine, or business that draw from a broad variety of majors. All they’re going to see about the guy with a 3.8 GPA in non-honors AS is that he has a 3.8. Combine that with a top LSAT score and he’s laughing all the way to Yale or Harvard Law while other aspiring pre-laws with lower grades in more difficult majors are relegated to lower-ranked law schools. AS can therefore serve as key component of a ‘brilliant’ strategy to game your way to a top professional grad school.</p>
<p>are people still reading this thread or just the ones who have time to write essays about a meaningless topic?</p>
<p>If that upsets you, then you should direct your ire at those particular AS professors and administrators who grade too easily and don’t demand enough work. It’s those lazy AS students, and the professors who enable them, that make the hard-working students look bad. – Sakky </p>
<p>I think we hit the crux of the issue here. There is a lot of enabling of the indolent and game-players going on in the educational system because there is no raw standard from class to class, let alone from university to university. That and a lot of professors and instructors are either inherently lazy or dispassionate about the progress of their students. They care more about their research than the actual grasp of knowledge that their students receive. And there are many professors, not so many at Berkeley perhaps, but elsewhere, that do the bare minimum research to get and keep their jobs and then basically pull a paycheck.</p>
<p>In terms of standards, what might be A work for one prof may be C, D, or even F work for another. And as far as people laughing all the way to the bank for taking the easy route, yes, that’s a failure on my part to just take advantage and game the system rather than use the university for its intent – to extend and expand my knowledge beyond the very basic education that my general education requirements and high school experience gave me. Though I do have the research credits to back it up. So, there you go. Honestly though? I’m cynical, so I don’t believe there is anyway to win in the long run unless you get lucky. Though, I do believe there should be far harsher vetting practices in all levels of acadameia. </p>
<p>And here we go to the crux of the issue of are people happy or not at Berkeley? I think there are plenty of happy people, who are there for love of learning or their own reasons – and there are many many others who simply go to college because it is what is socially expected and have no real desire or drive beyond that. I chose Cal because it was the best (and most affordable for what the perceived product is) school I got into. I was not warned about how difficult or brutal it was. Then again, when I got in, it was painted as my only ticket to a milk and honey future and that my turning the place down was selfish and depriving another worthy applicant who got denied instead of me of their chance. Guilt-tripping from idealists I suppose. My honest belief at this point in time, is that an Undergraduate Cal degree is not worth much more than another well-ranked Pac-10, let alone UC Santa Barbara or Cal Poly. </p>
<p>Of course, I have become far more enlightened in the respect that who gives a rats behind about those who weren’t able to go because I got in. The same goes for when I get a job. Because I got the position, that meant up to dozens of others did not receive the position. Should I feel guilty for them because I have food on my table, money to pay the rent and for nice things? Hell no. It may seem cold and harsh, but my success comes at the price of others being shut out. That’s true of everyone. If only I knew that then, rather than buying into the idealized world, perhaps things would have been different. I think many of us who are less than thrilled with our experience at Berkeley have the same sort of enlightenment experience during our time there. I think many of us are sold that same bill of goods I was – that Cal is the ticket to a bright future, and that going anywhere else would be slapping the deprived in the face. Well, this commentator says T.S. The schools is frequently not what is advertised, and falls short in many many regards. It should advertise itself for what it is, a brutal, harsh, cloistered, unforgiving and very cold environment, but if you can make it, you deserve every accolade you get. Not this happy, open-minded, tolerant, touchy-feely liberal paradise, which I felt was advertised to me, because it is not that at all.</p>
<p>Um can we talk about how Berkeley’s so much more conservative now a days?</p>
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<p>Well, obviously you’re still reading it.</p>
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<p>One improvement that could be made is - as schools like Dartmouth do now - to print on your transcript, adjoining the grade you received for any course you took, the median grade handed out in that course. Hence, if you earned a B where the median student in that course earned a C, that would be far more impressive than earning a B where the median student earned an A. One could take this idea one step further and calculate a “rescaled” GPA which would be your GPA modified by a weighted factor that incorporated the GPA of the (theoretical) ‘median’ student who took precisely the same courses you did and received the median grade in each course. For example, if you have a 3.2 GPA, and the average Berkeley student has a 3.1 GPA, but the theoretical student who took the same courses you took would have earned a 3.5 GPA, then your ‘true’ GPA might be reported as a 2.8 GPA, to account for the fact that your grades were 0.3 GPA points worse than the theoretical student, and so you should receive a ‘true’ overall GPA of 0.3 worse than the average overall student (3.1-0.3=2.8) </p>
<p>Granted, such a system still wouldn’t account for the varying talent levels of the median students in each course or major. For example, I strongly suspect that the median EECS student is far harder working than the median American Studies student. But it’s still better than what is happening right now, which is nothing. Right now, students are punished for taking difficult courses in difficult majors. They’re incentivized to game their way through easy courses in easy majors.</p>
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<p>Those research credits will probably help if you want to apply to a PhD program. But what if you don’t? What if you’d rather just go to a top law school? Or to a profession that uses GPA’s as recruitment screens, such as consulting or banking? They’re not going to care about your research credits. All they’ll see, at the first cut, is whether your GPA is high enough or not, and if it is not, they won’t care why. All they’ll see is that your GPA is not high enough.</p>
<p>Okay, now that we’ve thoroughly established that the place basically hoses you for being difficult – let’s hear about Clear My Mind’s take on how it has gotten way more conservative in recent years. My beefs are already very clear – lots of institutionalized racism & oppression, lack of any meaningful diversity, cloistered and naive suburban bubble children, and a pervasive anti-intellectual attitude. The faculty may be left-leaning, but the student body is not from what I’ve experienced and seen. And those who are tend to be so off the wall and knee-jerk, you could call them as conservative, dogmatic, and close-minded as their right-wing counter parts.</p>