Aren't these stats just depressing?

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of California - Berkeley
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<ul>
<li><p>Out</a> of 361 who applied in the last five years, only 3, or 0.8%, were admitted to Harvard Med.</p></li>
<li><p>Out</a> of 257 who applied in the last seven years, a total of 16, or 6.2%, were admitted to Yale Law.</p></li>
<li><p>This year there were 3 admits to MIT from the EECS department. Last year, there were also 3. There are about 1,000 students in EECS, so that represents the top 0.3%. And EECS is one of Berkeley's strongest departments.</p></li>
</ul>

<p>And if you look at the med and law school stats, most (unsurprisingly) have really high GPAs. Yet they don't get in...the Ivies probably regard state schools as belonging to a lower tier.</p>

<p>I should probably try to transfer out of Cal if I can, eh...</p>

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<p>Uhhh ... Harvard Med and Yale Law have very high standards and noone is an auto-admit.</p>

<p>Also, I attribute the fact that noone gets in from Berkeley to Berkeley being full of shallow gpa-whores. I've never really met anyone really smart here.</p>

<p>If you look at the numbers for harvard law admits the average stat is 4.03 and 171. Since harvard doesn't accept many below 170 (25th percentile at harvard) unless they have something to make up for it (not gpa, more like urm status or some really great soft factors), I'm guessing the band is between 170-172, which is below the median for HLS.</p>

<p>I also point out am article about a girl who won like the award for top senior (I forget the name). THe only thing the article mentioned about her was that she had a 3.93 and was an editor on a minor magazine; hardly yale law school or harvard law school material ... yet she was the "top" student in her class of several thousand people. Sad.</p>

<p>In addition, looking at law school numbers, I thought I had no chance at top law schools becuase the average stats for someone in my class was around a 4.0 and 170-171 for all the top schools.</p>

<p>Since the average for the top schools is usually around 173, 3.9; and Berkeley GPA median for acceptances is above the median for these law schools, I'm assuming that they in general have weaker LSAT scores on average which is why the career center stats are greatly deceving: they reveal no information on distribution or the specific information on each candidate. Since LSAT is the biggest factor in admissions, its easy to see why Berkeley students tend to do poorly at the very top. The same way for Med School; I suspect there are very few top 99 percentile MCAT scores at Berkeley.</p>

<p>Anecdoctally I find Berkeley students to be very undisciplined; many people on my floor freshman year liked to listen to music and study which I found pretty aggravating. I, for one, learn at less than half my normal rate when listening to music. In addition, I also had a lot of trouble talking about current events and whatnot during my first 2 years here with others when I was more naive and tried talking to everyone. A little over half would actually talk back most times, and it was suprising, to me, how many people were uninformed of basic things like what's going on in the world. I gave up on trying to interact on a meaningful intellectual level with the student body after those 2 harsh years. </p>

<p>Still, Berkeley is a top feeder school for law schools and medical schools so I'm guessing people just fill out the bottom of the first tier graduate schools at Berkeley.</p>

<p>I'm guessing that students are above average, but the distribution as such is such that very few if any people occupy the 99th percentile strata necessary for super-elite graduate programs.</p>

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<p>Why don't you pull up comporable data from other schools? Or just act trollish, whatever you prefer.</p>

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<p>Wow - I know one of the people who got into MIT from EECS. Wow...</p>

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<p>Umm listening to music while studying doesn't mean that you're undisciplined...</p>

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<p>You're right; it's more indicative of bad study habits than being undisciplined though I think the argument that someone trying to mitigate the pain of studying with the pleasure of listening to pop music is not really clamping down and doing the studying they need.</p>

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<p><a href="http://web.princeton.edu/sites/hpa/data98-03.htm%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://web.princeton.edu/sites/hpa/data98-03.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>15.1% into HMS...compared to 0.8%. The difference between the two student bodies cannot be THAT big.</p>

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<p>One other school isn't comporable, particularly Princeton.</p>

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<p>There're 1000 students in EECS each class? If not, that .3% should be multiplied by 4 or 5.</p>

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<p>And twit is right, 1000 total students = 250 per class = top 1% getting into MIT which is a pretty fair number.</p>

<p>On the harvard and yale front, these are pretty competitive schools where 4.0/180's, and 4.0/45's won't get you in necessarily and perhaps I underplayed that fact in the beginning.</p>

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<p>Well, I'm shooting for MIT & Princeton as gradschools . I have to start studying my ass off.</p>

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<p>Grades at Berkeley are not always about studying sadly :/</p>

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<p>how might you mean?</p>

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<p>Certain professors are easier (test only what is in the book assigned) and better (taught the class many times so can really get to the crux of what needs to be understood). I took chem 3b twice, once with Jain and once with the jewish guy and there was a huge difference. Jain had never taught the class before and was on some sort of probation for failing too many chem 112a students or something (my memory of this is really foggy). Jain ended up giving too many A's so he would get booted back up but his bad teaching and unrepresentativ tests was bad for learning. The jewish guy wasn't easy by any means but he was fairer and a great teacher.</p>

<p>Gaming is as important at Berkeley not only for your GPA but also for learning.</p>

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<p>How is top 1% for MIT a "fair number?"</p>

<p>Berkeley's EECS is ranked third in the nation, behind Stanford and MIT.</p>

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<p>Yeah, you're right, Berkeley is really under-represented at top graduate programs.</p>

<p>Its reputation isn't that great for its undergraduate programs (even boalt gives berkeley undergrads no boost to their gpa for having gone here while it does for harvard).</p>

<p>Berkeley's students aren't great. Its academic program is sporadic in quality, has no problem giving undergrads bad grades with arbritary professors, and getting A's while pulling a normal workload requires a lot of work because of it. In addition the size of the classes makes getting great teacher recs all the more difficult; most if not all undergraduate programs, jobs, internships, activites are impacted much more than they are at comparable public universities and at private colleges. And students who go here don't benefit from the fact that there is some grade deflation relative to the ivies yet it seems many grad schools do not take that into account. </p>

<p>It sucks, you just gotta deal with it.</p>

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<p>So I should try to transfer out...</p>

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<p>
[quote]
This year there were 3 admits to MIT from the EECS department.

[/quote]

I don't think you understand that graduate admissions is much tougher than undergrad admissions. Both MIT and Berkeley EECS departments, which are tied for #1, accept 200 and enroll about 100 new students per year, about half of which are international students from the best universities around the world, such as Tsinghua University (China), India Institute of Technology, Seoul National University, Sharif Institute of Technology (Iran), and so on. This leaves about 100 acceptances for U.S. students in both EE and CS combined, so let's say 50 spots for each major. They're the top graduate programs, so they have their pick of the cream of the crop. Even if they only accepted students from the top 25 undergraduate programs, which is not the case, you can easily see that each school only has 2 students on average. I think it's believable that only 3 Berkeley EECS graduates went on to MIT's program, but that doesn't mean only 3 were admitted. For example, this link shows that at least 3 EECS graduates attended MIT in 2004:</p>

<p><a href="http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Programs/ugrad/honors/s04grads.htm%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Programs/ugrad/honors/s04grads.htm&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p>

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<p>But the law school and med school numbers are very weak.</p>

<p>To be fair I wouldn't take the Career center's site's stats verbatim.</p>

<p>It really offers nothing more than general information.</p>

<p>I know a few people at elite places now that hated Berkeley and I'm sure they would be less likely to respond to career center surveys, I'm sure I won't after school.</p>

<p>So you have self-selection among the applicants.</p>

<p>And also realize lots of people with crap stats that have no chance apply to harvard and whatnot anyways just to see. This is especially true of asian people who have been taught that brand name is everything, and berkeley is half asian after all.</p>

<p>You have self-selection there among rejects as well.</p>

<p>In addition I pointed out it may jsut be the student body sucks in general and doesn't have the natural talent necessary to get into top schools. Good grades have more to do with work than intelligence in many cases; especially for easier majors in the humanities. Since intelligence doesn't matter, weeder standardized tests such as MCAT and LSAT scores are much less likely to be correlated to gpa, which I suspect is why Berkeley students are weaker. </p>

<p>In addition, places like Princeton are small, intimate affairs with lots of smart people together with a high faculty to student ratio. This creates positive externalities. If all you're friends are working 2 jobs and have 3.9's, you're more likely to pull yourself up to their standard.</p>

<p>Wheras at Berkeley most people are just lazy slackers and losers. I use to be pretty disciplined but I've felt myself become continously dumber since getting here due to the lack of feedback to my work (due to large class sizes). The lectures and discussions are slow and prodding and the level of your peers is quite low intellectually IMO. Its a self-reinforcing malaise.</p>

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<p>There's the collegesenior/blahblahblah we know and love!</p>