<p>Not to intercede in your conversation with RML, but xfers are primarily a CA university phenomenon. Xfers to Cal are mature students who’ve either been afforded a second chance or a more cost effective route to attend an outstanding four-year.</p>
<p>The average gpa for Cal xfers is around 3.7+ (for UCLA 3.65). And again, these students are mature, having attained all the pre-major courses at their two year (or other four-year), and are ready to step into their majors.</p>
<p>The university doesn’t do this to bypass admissions reportings, as does USC, but in cooperation with the three-tiered structure of California’s higher-educational system, the Master Plan for the state.</p>
<p>One more note, my daughter was accepted to Berkeley, UCLA, USC and others. She chose USC and is now a junior. USC has turned out to be everything she hoped and much more. I am in no way suggesting that UCB and UCLA are anything other than fine schools, but indeed, there are fine students who see USC as their best option.</p>
It’s not relevant to freshman admissions, but it is relevant to the “is it worth it” question. A Berkeley student is a Berkeley student, after all, and it seems only reasonable to consider the strength of the entire undergraduate population. Is it wise to pay more money for larger classes (at the important, intro level), more red tape, less student support, a less uniformly excellent student body, etc.? Advising is notoriously poor at publics – my current university has 2 faculty advisors in history for nearly 300 history majors, and I was shocked to learn from a friend at UNC that his department assigned graduate students to act as advisors to undergrads. (Perhaps the UCs are better about this. I can’t say.)</p>
<p>Personally, I’d say “no, not worth it” in most cases. The average OOS Berkeley admit comes from a family earning ~$157K per year. Chicago gives an average of $18K per year in financial aid to people in that income bracket, and it has (had) relatively bad financial aid among top privates. The California experience is all well and good, but I’m not sure it’s worth the extra money, even if you can afford it. After all, one could practically live in California after graduation on that extra $18K per year. I’m exceedingly fond of publics and am currently attending one, mind you, but paying full OOS prices for even Berkeley should be a well planned decision.</p>
<p>To be fair, I’m extremely skeptical that any school (including my alma mater) is worth $50K per year, so I don’t mean to single out the UCs in particular. An OOS applicant strong enough to get into Berkeley or UCLA likely has a very good shot at merit aid at perfectly decent colleges.</p>
<p>There are many 3.9-4.0 students both Cal and UCLA have rejected from their two-years because of these students are missing just one prereq course. So not only do these students have to be spot on in grades but need to be so wrt coursework.</p>
<p>So someone who wanted a premed curriculum but only had a 3.6 should go Biophysics or something like this becuase he or she would be on the fence wrt admissions.</p>
<p>Alamom, I’d agree with what you’re stating…</p>
<p>I think the actual top-10% wrt all students’ native hss for Cal and UCLA would be 80+%; I don’t know if it’d be the high side or low side within that decile.</p>
<p>This of course includes special admits, athletes, etc, which UC takes special care to include.</p>
<p>And these percentages for Cal and UCLA would be very high even wrt the Ivies, because the latter group has espcially large legacy admissions %'s.</p>
<p>On that same note, I wouldn’t say that USC’s would be 80+% either or whatever it reports. I’d say USC’s would be more legitimately 50-60%. USC takes extra care not to include the bottom 25% of its class among other “adjustments.”</p>
<p>Alamemmom, disregard that rule as i was not referring to that. I was referring to USNews which reported Berkeley having 99% freshmen from the top 10% of their HS class. In other words, i was already counting the enrolled students, which only mirrors my claim that it is nearly impossible to get into Berkeley for those who did not do extremely well in HS.</p>
<p>And, since Berkeley does not superscore SATs, as well as, it does not weigh test scores (SATs and ACT) as much as they do HS GPA, and yet Berkeley has higher average SAT scores than USC has, only says that Berkeley is more selective than USC. </p>
<p>I did not say USC was such a bad school. I think it is a very good school. I just don’t think that it is Berkeley’s peer school as it does not win in a cross-admit battle over Berkeley. In fact, I think the battle is one-sided in favor to Berkeley. </p>
<p>I think you’d be surprised, if you went outside your California bubble, that there are plenty of people for whom USC would be considered a top school and for whom Berkeley wouldn’t be on their radar screen.</p>
<p>And RML, what I am saying is I have an example of a case of an outstanding student who chose USC over Berkeley. So regardless of how you see those schools, there are indeed cases where USC “wins the cross-admit battle” over Berkeley (I had no idea there was a battle going on… I think the students admitted to both see it as two wonderful opportunities to be carefully considered. And I am certain that your opinion is not of the least concern to them.).</p>
I don’t like USC. Neither do I dislike Berkeley. It’s simply that Berkeley happens to be one of the most common schools that is brought up in conversations and compared to ridiculously elite schools such as HYPSM. If USC was being constantly compared to HYSPM, I would bash it to the ground as well. -.-</p>
<p>
Oh come on… Most of those A-G courses are already racked up by high school graduation requirements. I honestly don’t know any California high school that doesn’t fulfill 90%+ of the A-G requirements in its core curriculum. Some high schools even go further by forcing students to do mandatory community service.</p>
<p>RML, why is it never enough for you that there are several good schools? Why does Berkeley “have” to be better than USC? Why can’t they both be good and that’s the end of it? What IS it with your constant need to put every school in some sort of rank order?
Most normal people would say - UCLA, Berkeley, USC - all good schools. You are always so concerned with finding out which one is better. What’s the purpose?</p>
<p>Id agree with you too that I dont think UCLA, Cal, nor USC is elite. But sometimes you seem to want to tear down UCLA and now Cal for fairly innocuous remarks - your prerogative of course. Sometimes you tear down UCLA without any prior remarks which I find puzzling, especially for a school that has so many things ancillary to academics (also strong) going for it.</p>
<p>My Quote:
</p>
<p>I was speaking (writing) of xfers to UCLA and Cal. </p>
<p>Both schools reject a lot of 3.9-4.0 students from, say, community college because the students lack a prereq course - just one! Cal’s incoming transfer gpa is ~ 3.73 and UCLA’s is 3.65. So therefore grades and coursework have to be spot on, otherwise these students risk rejection. </p>
<p>The reason UCLA’s average isn’t higher is because of the xfer agreements which the university wants in place, to admit more underrepresented students, with closer to 3.0’s. If the school had open competition for all spaces without the declaring-a-major req, the average would be 3.85-3.90 xfer gpa, with all white and Asian students.</p>
<p>They’re worth it if you’re super rich. But if you’re super rich…you wouldn’t be thinking about money. So no, the UC’s are probably not worth it.</p>
<p>I dunno about this. Let’s take Chemistry. Top of the world chemistry reputation from every ranking system (AWRU, THE, QS). 50 full-time tenure track faculty and only 186 undergraduates. Opportunities to do research with faculty AND get course credit for it for years 2, 3, 4, and summers. For a student of chemistry, who likely wants to go to graduate school, sounds pretty darn good value to me! If this isn’t a specialty program, what really is?</p>
<p>drax12, are you a UCLA grad? It should be easy for you to learn some facts about USC. Stop using self-fabricated lies and speculation to defame a fine school. It is not a honorable act.</p>
<p>To the OP, coming to UCs is only worthy if you find yourself absolutely in love with a MAJOR. Other than that, stay away from UCs. Or you can come for Ph.D. programs and professional schools after you graduate from your state school. </p>
<p>California is full of biased nuts, and many of them are in UCs:)</p>
<p>Plenty? I seriously doubt that it is plenty. All surveys which tackles about school popularity point to Berkeley as a more popular school than USC. I have seen surveys where UCLA ranks higher than Berkeley in popularity, but I have never seen one survey where USC was ranked ahead of Berkeley. </p>
<p>There maybe more OOS at USC than there are at Berkeley. But that is not in anyway an indicator of one’s popularity. Take the University of Cambridge, for example. I’m sure there are quite a few Americans at Cambridge. In fact, there were only 4 on my floor in my time at Girton, as opposed to something like 15 Indians. But is the University of Cambridge not popular to elite students in the US? I don’t think so. But why are there so few Americans at Cambridge? </p>
<p>One of the most elite independent schools in the UK, the Harrow School, sent 6 grads to USC just last year alone and only 1 to Berkeley. But when i investigated a friend who went to Harrow, I found out that only 9 out of the 36 Berkeley applicants have received offers, and only 1 enrolled. I bet those other 8 went to HYPSM or Ivies. USC, on the other hand, had 23 applicants from Harrow and 19 were admitted. Those who were admitted at USC have not been admitted anywhere more regarded than USC. So, clearly, USC is seen inferior to Berkeley, and MOST students only pick USC because they were not offered admissions to better schools such as HYPSM, Ivies or Berkeley and the Claremont Colleges.</p>
<p>Warblers, please get your facts straight before posting. There are 186 chemistry undergrads and 43 full chemistry profs. Chemical engineering and chemical biology have their own faculties. Chemistry student faculty ratio is 4.3:1.</p>
<p>I believe that Berkeley losses a few talented students to USC, in the same way Stanford loses cross-admits to Duke or Dartmouth or Brown. But I do not believe that Berkeley loses that MANY or PLENTY cross-admits to USC, or in the same magnitude that Berkeley loses cross-admits to Stanford or UCLA. </p>
<p>Like I said, the Stanford report has shown that HYPSM, most specially, Stanford, are the biggest stealer of Berkeley admits. According to the Stanford report, 26% of Stanford admits are also Berkeley admits, yet almost all of them have chose to enroll in Stanford. Then you have Berkeley admits who also have Harvard, Yale and Princeton offers. I would argue that there should be a lot of them since those who are attracted to Berkeley, an academic powerhouse, are also attracted to the best schools – HYP. Then there’s the tech schools of MIT, Caltech and Harvey Mudd. They steal a looooooooooooot of Berkeley admits too. Then there are the rest of the Ivies – Columbia, UPenn, Brown, Dartmouth and Cornell. Cornell alone shares a lot of applicant pool with Berkeley. Then there’s the other elite privates such as Duke, JHU, Northwestern and Chicago. they steal a lot of Berkeley admits too. And, finally, there’s the other UCs. UCLA is also getting quite popular these days and many Berkeley admits would, in fact, choose it over Berkeley. So, what percentage would USC have in pie chart? My answer is very small.</p>
<p>Actually, there are a lot of “sheltered” kids at Berkeley too who chose Berkeley precisely to experience what life is outside of the “OC bubble”. And, that’s what makes Berkeley unique – it is a true microcosm of American society – it’s very diverse. Berkeley students come from all social and economic strata. USC does not have the monopoly of rich kids. There are a LOT of them at Berkeley too. I even suspect that Berkeley has many more rich alumni than USC has.</p>