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I'll buy the Rhodes Scholars argument. But beyond that, the data you present only tells me one thing: People who attend prestigous private east coast schools for undergrad often choose to attend other prestigous private east coast schools for graduate or professional study...
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Including Stanford as an attempt at washing away geographical effects doesn't really work for me seeing as Stanford is about as east coast as you can get on the west coast
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<p>Oh, I don't know about that. For example, I think there are a LOT of Berkeley prelaws who wouldn't mind going to HLS or YLS. They wouldn't mind one bit. But how many get to? The same can be said for the various other East Coast graduate schools. </p>
<p>Look, the truth of the matter is, whether we like it or not, the bulk of the top graduate schools in the US still resides in the East Coast, just like the bulk of the population of the US still resides in the East Coast. Just think about it - there aren't that many strong West Coast graduate schools, compared to what is in the East. Berkeley, Stanford, Caltech (for tech disciplines), UCLA, maybe a couple of other UC's, maybe Washington, and that's it. The East Coast has greater depth and breadth of graduate schools. Hence, it isn't so much of an 'East Coast' bias as more of a 'quality' bias. </p>
<p>But allright fine, have it your way. Let's take a look at some of the UC Med School Admissions statistics. Now, I think you would agree that I have stacked the deck completely in favor of Berkeley. </p>
<p>The number of students admitted to UCSF Medical School who did their undergrad at Harvard or Stanford is basically equivalent to those who came from Berkeley or UCLA - a remarkable statistic when you consider that UCLA and Berkeley have many times more the number of undergrads and obviously strong geographic preference and in-state residency would indicate that Berkeley and UCLA students would tend to apply to UCSF and UCLA Medical Schools at a higher rate. (For example, merely attending Stanford for undergrad does not automatically qualify you for California state residency for UC purposes). </p>
<p><a href="http://home.sandiego.edu/%7Ee_cook/vault/medical/sanfrancisco/ucsf-med-98.html%5B/url%5D">http://home.sandiego.edu/~e_cook/vault/medical/sanfrancisco/ucsf-med-98.html</a>
<a href="http://home.sandiego.edu/%7Ee_cook/vault/medical/sanfrancisco/ucsf-med-97.html%5B/url%5D">http://home.sandiego.edu/~e_cook/vault/medical/sanfrancisco/ucsf-med-97.html</a></p>
<p>For UCLA Medical School, the figures are more lopsided in favor of UCLA undergrad (again, not surprising). But again, Stanford and Harvard compare very well to Berkeley.</p>
<p><a href="http://home.sandiego.edu/%7Ee_cook/vault/medical/losangeles/ucla-med-98.html%5B/url%5D">http://home.sandiego.edu/~e_cook/vault/medical/losangeles/ucla-med-98.html</a>
<a href="http://home.sandiego.edu/%7Ee_cook/vault/medical/losangeles/ucla-med-97.html%5B/url%5D">http://home.sandiego.edu/~e_cook/vault/medical/losangeles/ucla-med-97.html</a></p>
<p>For UCSD Medical, again, Harvard and Stanford compares well to UCLA and Berkeley.</p>
<p><a href="http://home.sandiego.edu/%7Ee_cook/vault/medical/sandiego/ucsd-med-96.html%5B/url%5D">http://home.sandiego.edu/~e_cook/vault/medical/sandiego/ucsd-med-96.html</a>
<a href="http://home.sandiego.edu/%7Ee_cook/vault/medical/sandiego/ucsd-med-97.html%5B/url%5D">http://home.sandiego.edu/~e_cook/vault/medical/sandiego/ucsd-med-97.html</a>
<a href="http://home.sandiego.edu/%7Ee_cook/vault/medical/sandiego/ucsd-med-98.html%5B/url%5D">http://home.sandiego.edu/~e_cook/vault/medical/sandiego/ucsd-med-98.html</a>
<a href="http://home.sandiego.edu/%7Ee_cook/vault/medical/sandiego/ucsd-med-95.html%5B/url%5D">http://home.sandiego.edu/~e_cook/vault/medical/sandiego/ucsd-med-95.html</a></p>
<p>Now, granted, this data is a bit old. But I doubt that things have swung in the favor of Berkeley or UCLA and against Harvard or Stanford in the last 10 years. </p>
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West coast culture places much less emphasis on prestige than east coast culture does. Someone who graduates from Caltech would be perfectly happy to earn their MBA at a public institution, whereas someone from MIT would most likely insist on a prestigous private institution like Harvard Business School.
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<p>Oh, I don't know about that. I really don't know about that. Keep in mind that we're not talking about a 'general' West Coast attitude. We're talking about the attitudes of people who are attending schools like Berkeley and UCLA, which is clearly not equivalent to the 'general' West Coast attitude. I would agree that if you troll around Silicon Valley or Hollywood, sure, you'll find plenty of highly successful people who never even went to college at all, or if they did, went to no-name schools. But that's not what we're talking about here - we're talking about people who choose to go to Berkeley or UCLA.</p>
<p>Let me put it to you this way. If you really didn't care about prestige, why even go to Berkeley? Why not just go to, say, a CalState, which would be cheaper and easier? Heck, you may be able to get your degree done at night at a CalState, meaning that you will actually be able to hold a full-time job while completing your degree. Since you want to talk about engineering, then like I've shown in other threads, and which I reproduce here, engineers from San Jose State don't make significantly lower starting salaries than engineers from Berkeley. The only technical major that does seem to make significantly more is computer science, but this is a chimera, because Berkeley CS is impacted, meaning that only top-performing Berkeley students will even be able to declare CS as a major (and hence, you don't have lower-performing CS graduates who tend to get lower salaries and thus drag down the salary figures, because these lower-performing students wouldn't even be allowed into the major in the first place). On the other hand, anybody at SJSU can declare a CS major. </p>
<p><a href="http://career.berkeley.edu/CarDest/2006Majors.stm#salary%5B/url%5D">http://career.berkeley.edu/CarDest/2006Majors.stm#salary</a>
<a href="http://careercenter.sjsu.edu/download/SalarySurvey2005to2006.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://careercenter.sjsu.edu/download/SalarySurvey2005to2006.pdf</a></p>
<p>So the question is - why would you choose to go to Berkeley for engineering instead of SJSU? Berkeley is more expensive, it's much harder, and it doesn't give you much of a salary premium over SJSU I think it HAS to be for purposes of prestige. </p>
<p>In all my experience with Berkeley, I have rarely found students who weren't conscious of the rankings and of upward mobility. In fact, it is often times remarked (and I agree) that Berkeley is a highly competitive school, particularly in the preprofessional tracks like prelaw and premed. Engineering is certainly no picnic either. But why? Why is it so competitive? Why are the students studying so hard? I think the answer is clear - they're trying hard to advance their station in life. Why aren't more Berkeley engineers more satisfied with just getting a 2.X GPA and just graduating? Why do so many of them fight so hard to get top grades? After all, even if you get a mediocre engineering GPA at Berkeley, you're still going to get an engineering job of some sort. Probably not the best one, but you're going to get something (after all, even the mediocre engineering grads from no-name schools across the country get engineering jobs). But Berkeley engineering students don't want just "any" engineering job. They want a top one. They want to work for Google or companies like that. Again - social mobility and prestige. </p>
<p>Besides, if anything, I could argue that going to a highly prestigious undergrad school can actually make you * less * sensitive to grad-school prestige. Why? Because you already have a highly prestigious degree, and so you may feel less need to get another one. </p>
<p>As a case in point, a lot of people know that John Kerry went to Yale for undergrad. However, less people know that Kerry actually didn't do very well academically at Yale (he got 6 D's), and hence clearly couldn't get into a law school of the caliber of YLS or HLS, and so had to settle for Boston College Law School. (BC Law is a fine law school, but clearly is no HLS or YLS). But very few people know he went to BC Law. When the press was writing about Kerry in the runup to the 2004 election, the press repeatedly talked about his status as a Yalie and a member of Skull and Bones. Hence, to the American people, John Kerry = Yale. John Kerry does not equal BC. Similarly, when people associate Al Gore with a school, it's almost always with Harvard. Yeah, Gore went to * undergrad * at Harvard. Far fewer people know that Gore went to Vanderbilt for both law school and divinity school. Granted, he didn't complete either program, but even if he did, his Harvard bachelor's degree would almost certainly overshadow his Vanderbilt graduate degree(s). Or to give you a notorious example, a lot of people associate the Unabomber (Ted Kaczynski) with Harvard. Again, yeah, he went to Harvard * for undergrad* - press reports touted him as the "insane Harvard-trained mathematician". Yet he actually got his math PhD at Michigan. So, really, he should have been termed the "insane Michigan-trained mathematician", as PhD work is far more intensive training than any undergraduate work. But people insisted on connecting the Unabomber with Harvard.</p>
<p>The point is, it's unclear to me whether somebody from an East Coast top undergrad school is as highly prestige-sensitive as you say it is. In fact, they may arguably be * less * prestige conscious. </p>
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Also, Harvard students are, on average, smarter than Berkeley students - they go in smarter, they come out smarter, and that's that. In terms of education, I'd say that it's not going to make that much of a difference - no matter how great a prof is, a student's success is dependent on their own ability.
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<p>I have 2 responses to that. #1 - brand-name market signalling. The truth is, we live in a world where you have to distinguish yourself from the pack if you want to get a good job. Employers don't know how good you really are, and they know that all prospective candidates are going to make themselves look good, even if they aren't good. Hence, employers have to rely on market signals. College brand name is one of those market signals.</p>
<p>You say that Harvard undergrads are, on average, better than Berkeley undergrads. I agree. So let's look at it from the employer's standpoint. An employer knows that if he draws from the Harvard pool, he will probably get a better hiree than if he draws from the Berkeley pool, due to the simple laws of statistics. That means that the most desirable firms tend to prefer to hire at Harvard, in order to reduce their risk of getting a bad hiree. Sure, the risk can never be reduced to zero, but you can take steps to reduce it. Just like you can wear a seat belt and still die in a car accident, but your odds are improved. </p>
<p>The harsh truth of the matter is that the bad students at Berkeley ruin it for the good students. These bad students go out to the working world and embarrass Berkeley with their incompetence, making all Berkeley students look bad. I know employers who had high expectations when they hired Berkeley graduates and become bitterly disappointed later, to the point that they are reluctant to hire any future Berkeley grads. I tried to tell them that they just had some bad luck, but that's not exactly much of a comfort to them. If Berkeley were to improve the quality of the students they bring in, they would be able to attract better employers who would become less afraid to recruit at Berkeley for fear of hiring somebody bad. </p>
<p>Secondly, much (probably most) of the value of any school is in the networking. It's not so much what you know, but rather WHO you know. Let's face it. Success is often times achieved by just knowing the right people. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, for example, is a billionaire basically because he was Bill Gates's old poker-playing buddy at Currier House at Harvard. If Ballmer had never gone to Harvard, he would never have been hired into Microsoft in the first place. </p>
<p>Now, again, let me reiterate. I am not saying that Berkeley is 'bad' in any absolute sense of the word. Indeed, Berkeley is arguably the best public school in the country for undergrad, its only real competition being Virginia, which is a dramatically different kind of school. But at the same time, we have to recognize that there are other programs out there that do a better job of placing students into top graduate schools or into top jobs.</p>