<p>I am being REALISTIC…not to be mean or anything.</p>
<p>I say keep transfer student numbers below 200 and it’s better than complete privatization.
Too many trash get in here through transfer process…I mean CC grades+essays is all you need? are you kidding me? 3.4-3.7 is the avg on the website…stellar numbers if you ask me.</p>
<p>I hear approximately 3000 transfer kids get in here yearly…lol you gotta be kidding me. That’s almost the size of a Ivy league school… I bet not even single one of those 3000 kids is even good enough to be at any other top 10 not even top 20 school.</p>
<p>My observation when I was at Berkeley was that a lot of students who entered as freshmen spent their first two years having only a vague idea of what they wanted to study, and often not being that motivated in the majors that they do declare. And the attrition rate in the College of Engineering was very high – many who entered as freshmen were scared off by a math, physics, or computer science course. In contrast, the junior transfers were very motivated and were very studious – presumably the “aimless” ones were self-selected out of the transfer applicant pool to begin with. And they refilled the undergraduate student ranks in the College of Engineering and graduated.</p>
<p>not why do the transfers do so well…but ask why so many first or second year students fail out or leave (which is why they need so many transfers). My perception is that UCB is admitting many kids who just can’t hack the standards.</p>
<p>Admissions criteria are nowhere near perfect (no one has discovered the formula that perfectly predicts success at university).</p>
<p>But there is also the phenomenon where many reasonably smart high school students do not really know what they want to do. Then they go to the university because that has become the default choice for a reasonably smart high school graduate. But then they aimlessly take classes, perhaps not really finding anything that motivates them, only declaring a major when forced to, and not really putting too much effort into it. The end result is more likely to be dropping out, failing out, or graduating with a bachelor’s degree that they don’t know what to do with (did not do well enough to go to graduate or professional school, and no idea how to get a decent job).</p>
<p>A related phenomenon is someone entering as a freshman in the College of Engineering because the engineering majors are prestigious and tend to have better job and career options after graduation. Then after struggling in a math or physics course, they abandon engineering, possibly to become an “aimless” student.</p>
<p>Of course, there is no way from an admissions committee standpoint to distinguish which students are likely to fall into the above categories, which is bad for both those students and the university.</p>
<p>If reducing undergraduate enrollment is desirable, it may be better done be reducing freshman admissions, possibly with an increase in transfer admissions. Entering as a freshman is mostly beneficial to the student who has a good idea of what s/he wants to study, and has some advanced standing to the point that s/he would take upper division courses before junior year. Others, particularly the “aimless” types, may benefit more by going to community college, with smaller classes, lower costs, and less institutional pressure to decide on a major quickly, and then transferring as juniors if and when they decide what they want to study.</p>
<p>Such a proposal would likely be politically impossible (Master Plan and all that, plus the fact that community colleges are often looked down on); it would also mean that the community colleges would have to expand (so some of the money the state saves at UC would go into the community colleges). Then there would be fewer GSI jobs at UC, but a shortage of teachers in the community colleges.</p>
<p>Why rip on solely transfer students when so many freshman admits are subpar and fail out of their classes? There is no solid empirical data that suggests freshman admits as a whole get better grades than transfer students.</p>
<p>As for Oxford and Cambridge running smoothly- did you hear about the mass riots in London a few weeks ago on tuition increases for UK public schools?</p>
<p>As of 2008 the UCB four year graduation rate was 61%. That sucks. Top universities are regularly at 95%+, or higher. Clearly Berkeley has a ways to go to figure out what kind of student excels in their environment. Another explanation is that they are on a grand experiment, which is clearly failing.</p>
<p>At the risk of reigniting a controversy spawned in another thread, I have an alternative theory that can explain the apparent paradox: transfer engineering students are not required to take (many) Berkeley engineering weeders. Hence, it is not at all surprising or unusual that so many of them can graduate successfully. If the freshman-admits didn’t have to take engineering weeders, then far more of them would surely be able to graduate from engineering as well, for that is where most of them leave engineering.</p>
<p>If freshman-admits who want to major in engineering are forced to take weeders, then so should the transfers. Otherwise, nobody should be forced to take the weeders. What’s fair is fair.</p>
<p>Well, not quite that high. In the 80’s% is more accurate - Harvard’s is 88%. Berkeley’s is around 63%. Still, there is little doubt that their graduation rate is significantly higher than Cal’s, and it is legitimate to ask why.</p>
<p>Personally, I find the most disturbing comparison to be against MIT. One might argue that HYPS offer coursework that is not particularly demanding if you don’t care about top grades but rather only want to pass; never mind that fact that many Berkeley students - the engineers especially- wouldn’t mind reforming the grading policy so that they could simply pass. But not at MIT. Nobody is going to seriously accuse MIT of offering undemanding coursework. The overwhelming majority of MIT students are majoring in engineering, math, or science for which there are no easy pathways to graduation. </p>
<p>Furthermore, the MIT EECS major, the largest major at MIT, offers a highly popular concurrent SB/MEng program for which most students are eligible in which you earn both a bachelor’s and master’s degrees together at the end of your 5th year. Hence, many students who could have easily graduated in 4 years voluntarily choose to delay their graduation for the opportunity to earn an additional master’s. In contrast, Berkeley I believe doesn’t run any such comparably popular program - the concurrent masters programs that do exist generally schedule students to graduate with their bachelor’s at year 4. </p>
<p>Nevertheless, despite all of these headwinds, MIT still graduates a whopping 83% of its students in 4 years.</p>
<p>It seems to me that a more plausible explanation is that transfer engineering students may be more motivated not because of a more stringent admissions process or better preparation, but simply because once at Berkeley, they literally have no other choice but to graduate from engineering (or else not even graduate at all). That is, even if they perform poorly at Berkeley, they are required to stay in engineering regardless. </p>
<p>*As an applicant, it is possible to change your college and/or major during the November application filing period ONLY. You should write to the admissions office at Berkeley in November, but no later than November 30. Any requests submitted after the deadline will not be honored. **Transfer students are not permitted to change majors after admission to the College of Engineering. ***</p>
<p>In contrast, many Berkeley freshman-admits who attempted the engineering weeders and who performed poorly, but not so poorly that they flunked out entirely, could surely have successfully finished the major, albeit with mediocre grades. If you are earning a 2.5 GPA in your weeders, you probably can successfully complete the major. But would you really want to? It’s quite clear that your remaining time in the major will be a struggle, as you will probably be a trailing edge student for the remainder of your post-weeder coursework, constantly struggling with low B’s and C’s. And even if you do complete the major, you’re probably not going to get a top engineering job because of your weak grades. You’re probably better off switching to an easier major where you can be more successful.</p>
<p>But the transfer eng students have no such option. They must complete the major, regardless of how poor their initial engineering grades might be. It is any wonder that if you give people absolutely no choice but to finish, many of them will indeed finish?</p>
<p>Are you suggesting that a transfer student has taken Math 1A,1B,53,54 and Physics 7A,7B,7C equivalents elsewhere should have to retake them?</p>
<p>The transfer students have already completed most of the “weeders” at whatever college they are coming from. It is a fair bet that those who did poorly in math and physics are unlikely to even try to apply to transfer to Berkeley engineering (or get accepted if they do apply). In other words, the entering transfer students have been “weeded out” by math and physics courses already (and if, despite that, they did not learn enough to handle Berkeley engineering upper division courses, they won’t graduate at all).</p>
<p>There are a few courses, like CS 61A and CS 61C, whose equivalents are not commonly offered at community colleges, so transfer students in majors requiring those courses do have to take them at Berkeley.</p>
<p>As far as changing major is concerned, wouldn’t that be difficult for any transfer student, even if allowed? By the time one has junior status (whether transfer or having been attending since a freshman), one would have had to take courses leading to one or only a few majors.</p>
<p>Is that so outrageous? As a comparative example, MIT makes no guarantees to transfer students that all of their coursework will transfer over, as each MIT department will perform a course-by-course audit of your work to determine which courses will be allowed to transfer over. In fact, MIT explicitly warns transfer applicants that they will likely lose at least 1 semester’s worth - and usually much more - of credits. Even more harshly, MIT won’t tell you which of your courses will transfer over *until after you’ve already been admitted. Their attitude seems to be: if you don’t like it, fine, don’t transfer to MIT. </p>
<p>Yet MIT is arguably the most prestigious engineering school in the world, and since we are talking about engineering transfer admissions, their policies are apropos. If the Berkeley engineering program wants to attain a similar level of prestige, maybe they could learn something from MIT. </p>
<p>***Will I receive credit for all my completed course work if I’m admitted to MIT?</p>
<p>No. Transfer students typically lose at least one semester of course work. Credit is assessed by each academic department (not by the Office of Admissions), only after you are admitted.***</p>
<p>Or consider Caltech. Caltech specifically states that credit transferrability will be determined only after a placement exam and a course-by-course audit to be performed only after you’ve been admitted. </p>
<p>The courses for which enrolling transfer students will receive credit will be determined at the time of enrollment. Faculty members review each student’s achievement on an individual basis, and after a placement examination has been taken. It is not possible, therefore, to determine in advance the acceptability of course work taken elsewhere</p>
<p>But if you still object, then fine, let’s go the other way: if transfer students should not have to take those weeder exams, then neither should the freshman-admits. Allow them to skip those weeders in the same manner as the transfer students by allowing them to take the (ostensibly equivalent) courses at community college. </p>
<p>What’s fair is fair. Either everybody should be allowed to skip weeders, or nobody should be allowed. What is untenable is a situation where some students are allowed to skip weeders, but not others. </p>
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<p>Yet isn’t it convenient than 61B is skippable: and (perhaps not so) coincidentally, CS 61B happens to be by far the harshest weeder of all of the lower division CS courses. </p>
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<p>I’m not even particularly sure that it would be difficult to transfer t</p>
<p>Whether it’s difficult or not is not the issue, the issue is that transfer students cannot even try to switch out. Yet freshman-admits surely can and do. Shouldn’t it then be the choice of the transfer students whether they want to stay in engineering or switch elsewhere?</p>
<p>Or if not, then we simply have to concede that the “engineering graduation rates” of transfer and freshman-admits are simply incomparable. You cannot compare those students who are allowed to skip (many) weeders, but are also prohibited from leaving engineering from those students who must take weeders, but are then free to leave for other majors.</p>
<p>A course-by-course audit looks very similar to [what</a> has already been done by Berkeley (and other UCs and CSUs) with courses at California community colleges](<a href=“Welcome to ASSIST”>Welcome to ASSIST). For a given campus, major, and community college, the web site lists what courses at the community college are considered equivalent to courses required by the major.</p>
<p>In other words, for the relatively common case of transfers from California community colleges to Berkeley (or other UCs or CSUs), the course-by-course audit has already been done, and need not be done individually for each transfer student. Of course, a transfer student from somewhere else is likely to need an individual course-by-course audit. MIT and Caltech, which take very few transfer students and likely have national applicant pools, probably do not think it is worth it to do the course-by-course audit at every possible transfer source school; instead, it makes more sense to do so for each student.</p>
<p>It is also worth noting that MIT and Caltech freshman math courses are different from those at Berkeley. MIT’s 18.01 appears to be like Berkeley Math 1A and 1B in one semester. They also have 18.014 called Calculus with Theory, which is the same material with more theory. Caltech’s freshman calculus also appears to cover the content of Berkeley Math 1A and 1B in one semester. Given that, it is not hard to see where one can “lose a semester of credit” when transferring to MIT or Caltech. Berkeley Math 1A and 1B, on the other hand, are much more similar in content and pace to freshman calculus at the vast majority of schools. Would you suggest that Berkeley compress Math 1A and 1B into one semester (and stop offering Math 16A and 16B) in order to be more like MIT and Caltech?</p>
<p>However, there are cases where someone transferring to Berkeley may also lose some credit, due to the Berkeley course being less units than the community college course(s) that matches the same course content. For example, at many community colleges, the courses equivalent to Math 1A, 1B, and 53 are 5 semester units instead of 4 semester units, while Math 54 is split into two semester long courses totaling 6 or more semester units.</p>
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<p>Really? When I took the predecessor to CS 61B many years ago, I thought it was one of the easiest CS courses. Given the use of Scheme in CS 61A, which students (freshman or transfer) are less likely to have previous experience with than Java or similar languages, I would expect that CS 61A to be more of a “weeder” than CS 61B.</p>
<p>I agree with most of alumnus’s points. I’ve only taken CS61A so far, but from what I hear from other students, 61B/C are way harder than A. This is probably more opinion based though.</p>
<p>Berkeley could make transfers pass final exams, but that really doesn’t seem fair. Why? I bet if you ask any junior that was a freshman admit to take all the finals he’s taken in the past over again, he probably wouldn’t pass all of them. How many people wlll be able to apply Green/Stoke/Divergence theorems to creative problems when they haven’t used/seen them in 2 years?</p>
<p>Many finals in the arts and humanities are also essay based on readings. How would transfers deal with them when their readings were different?</p>
<p>I also want to point out that Caltech’s first math class for freshman is a whole different beast from Berkeley Math 1A and 1B and is way harder than MIT’s 18.01. It would probably be comparable to MIT’s Calculus with Theory class. Both Caltech’s first math class and 18.014 use Apostol, which is arguably one of the most rigorous versions of introducing Calculus.</p>
<p>sakky, what you’re missing is that UC Berkeley is part of a system in the State of California explicitly designed to make top-quality higher education accessible to the masses. Broad transferability of courses between the CCC, CSU and UC systems is an integral part of that mandate. As long as the courses are of reasonably-equal quality and content (and there’s been no evidence presented which suggests otherwise), it benefits the people of the State of California to encourage students to transfer from community colleges into the UC system.</p>
<p>For one thing, it’s much, much, much cheaper for both the student and the state.</p>
<p>Can Berkeley not satisfy the mandate of the State of California by having 50% in-state students and the remaining from other States and international?</p>
<p>Is the mandate to accommodate in-state that well-defined? if not, then Berkeley is free to increase In-state students to 50% or even higher to further uplift its prestige nationally and accumulate more money in the process.</p>
<p>Then that seems all the more reason to allow freshman-admits to also be able to skip the very same weeders that the transfers do, by also being allowed to take the (supposedly) equivalent community college counterparts, right? As you said, the course-by-course audit has already been completed, right? So there should be no problem with this alternative pathway. </p>
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<p>Then let the freshman-admits decide. If the transfer students are allowed to skip CS61B, as you implied, by taking the coursework elsewhere, then freshman-admits should also be allowed to skip CS 61B via the same coursework. </p>
<p>The fundamental tension remains unresolved: why are transfer students allowed to skip weeders while freshman-admits are not? If it is indeed true that transfer students are taking equivalent coursework elsewhere, then freshman-admits should be allowed the same option. I still have yet to hear a reasonable explanation as to why that should not be permitted. </p>
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<p>The answer is then you would be requested to study the material. The placement exams would not be a surprise; the transfer students would be fully apprised that they are coming. I hardly see how this is any different from taking the SAT’s. How many college juniors/seniors who represent the bulk of SAT test-takers are still studying the basic algebra and geometry that will appear on the test? They prepare for the exam by restudying the material.</p>
<p>Nor am I asking that you perform well on the exam. I am simply asking that you pass. </p>
<p>Is that really such a controversial proposal? In this specific thread, we’re taking about engineeringtransfer students. If you are really attempting to propose to transfer into EECS, but you can’t even pass a final exam on basic circuits or physics even after being provided with time to study, then maybe you’re not qualified to transfer into EECS. </p>
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<p>Then the freshman-admits engineers should not be required to learn that material either, and especially should not be weeded out because they didn’t learn that material. After all, weeder material is selected under the presumption that the material is necessary for future engineers, or at least future upper-level engineering students, to know. An aspiring EECS upper-division student should know how to calculate circuit analysis equations from the weeder circuits course from years ago. If he doesn’t, then maybe he shouldn’t be in the upper division, or that circuits course shouldn’t have been a weeder. After all, why weed people on material that they don’t actually need to know? </p>
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vMany finals in the arts and humanities are also essay based on readings. How would transfers deal with them when their readings were different?Many finals in the arts and humanities are also essay based on readings. How would transfers deal with them when their readings were different?</p>
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<p>Those are unnecessary, for I’m talking specifically about weeders. To my knowledge, there are no humanities/arts weeders in the sense that a significant percentage of students will actually flunk out or be otherwise be deterred from continuing in the major because of the harshness of the grading. </p>
<p>Again, the fundamental tension is that transfer students are allowed to skip (many) weeders that the freshman-admits are forced to take. Why? Either everybody should be forced to take all weeders (or equivalent placement exams). Or nobody should be. If the transfer students can take community college courses to skip weeders, then freshman-admits should be allowed to skip weeders by taking the very same community college courses. Otherwise, the transfer students should not be allowed to use those courses to skip weeders. What’s fair is fair.</p>
<p>Well, actually, that’s not true even on a broad basis. The mission of the University of California proper is not actually to provide higher education to the masses at all. Only a minority of students in California, whether high school or community college students, are even UC-eligible at all. If you were simply an average student, you can’t even apply to UC. And most Californians - that is to say, ‘the masses’ - were average students. </p>
<p>Furthermore, even those students who are UC-eligible do not have the right to attend Berkeley specifically. Students are perfectly free to attend UCRiverside or Merced - indeed, that is the reason why Merced was built, was it not? To attend Berkeley is to, presumably, be one of the most qualified students in the applicant pool, even amongst those who are UC-eligible who already represent a select group of students. Rejection from Berkeley doesn’t mean that you won’t receive a high quality education. It just means that you may have to go to another UC, which also presumably offers top-quality education. </p>
<p>Take UCSF. They offer no standard undergraduate programs whatsoever, offering only the opportunity to earn bachelor’s degrees to the vanishingly rare graduate students they admit who have yet to finish their bachelor’s degrees. Instead, they run one of the most selective and elite professional health and science graduate schools in the world, and certainly cannot be said to offer higher education to the ‘masses’, however defined. Yet they’re still an integral member of the University of California system, and indeed, one of the wealthiest and most successful members. </p>
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<p>Fair enough. Then that’s all the more reason to allow freshman-admits to skip weeders via the same pathway. If it is really true that those community college courses are of equivalent quality, then there is no reason that freshman-admits should not be allowed to take those courses as well. Berkeley and the state would benefit as well, for as you said, community college courses are cheaper to run than are Berkeley courses. So everybody would win. </p>
<p>Well, that’s the key. I don’t believe that Berkeley has an actual well-defined mandate to accept a given percentage of instate students. The University of California system as a whole has a strict numerical mandate, but not Berkeley specifically.</p>