Berkeley - Hardest University in the US to Get An 'A' In?

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of California - Berkeley
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<p>Student:</p>

<p>"Berkeley is an inferior school (at least at the undergraduate level) compared to the top privates."</p>

<p>... I'd say no. I wouldn't say "inferior," which implies mediocrity on an absolute scale, but rather "different." It's a public school. Sure Berkeley's grad programs kick about every school's ass, but its undergrad program is a far cry from mediocre and, more often than not, I'd say actually better than some of the top privates, though that is largely dependent on one's idyllic college and on your definition of "top private."</p>

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i agree, MIT and its likes have people who REALLY want to demonstrate their talents but it should be noted that these universities suffer from GRADE INFLATION... so most of the kids get As because the curve is in their favor.

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But Stanford & MIT are well known for inflating grades (from what I hear 40-50% of grades are 'A's of any kind), and Berkeley only gives a handful of As (around 15% from what I hear)

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<p>I don't think I have ever seen MIT as ever having been described as having grade inflation, nor have I ever run across evidence that most of the MIT kids get A's because the curve is in their favor. If anything, the exact opposite is the case. What evidence do you have that MIT is grade inflated?</p>

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Berkeley only gives a handful of As (around 15% from what I hear).

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So then doesn't it follow that for any person a Berkeley course would be tougher to get an A in than a course at any other university?

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<p>The 15% A's figures you are quoting comes from the technical weeder courses. Trust me, there are PLENTY of other Berkeley courses that are far far easier to get top grades. Slicmlic2001, I believe, has talked about the fact that a lot of A's are given out in political science. Other softer majors, especially the 'Studies' majors, immediately come to mind. </p>

<p>If you want examples of specific courses at Berkeley that are nearly sure-fire A's, just consider all of the "research" or "independent study" courses in which you are basically doing a research project for a prof in return for academic credit (in lieu of getting paid). Examples of this would be courses like Chemical Engineering 196, Chemistry 192 and 196, History/Polisci/Sociology/PEIS 196, I would say that as long as you actually complete the project, you will almost certainly get an A. Even if you can't complete the project, you will still usually be given the option of taking an I (incomplete) and completing the project later, where that I will probably turn into an A. </p>

<p>Granted, not every department has such an option for independent study for letter-grade credit (i.e. many of them only offer a P/NP version). But just because you're in one major doesn't mean that you can't take one of these courses in another major. There are physics and MCB students who have done chemistry or chemical engineering independent study. </p>

<p>{Of course, one might argue that these courses aren't truly "courses" because not everybody who wants to take such a "course" can do so - you have to find a prof who has a research project, or come up with your own project, and he has to agree to select you and so forth. But, hey, since you earn academic credit, I think they count as courses.}</p>

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What evidence do you have that MIT is grade inflated?

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<p>A couple things. First, as I mentioned, MIT has a policy that first year courses can be taken so that the grade only shows up if it's good. If a student fails a course, the grade/course will simply not show up on transcripts MIT sends out. Grade inflation doesn't only mean the grades a school gives out - it also includes the ways in which it reports them.</p>

<p>As for MIT simply giving out more As, check out this link (I couldn't find anything better offhand, but I'm sure if you looked there'd be more detailed information)</p>

<p><a href="http://www.internetcampus.com/plume3.htm%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.internetcampus.com/plume3.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>One notable quote from the article:</p>

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In 1966 at Harvard, 22% of all grades were A's. In 2003, that figure had grown to 46%. In 1968 at UCLA, 22% of all grades were A's. By 2002, that figure was 47%.

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<p>This is the very definition of grade inflation. The 'C' grade was defined to be average, get now the average in most of these schools is somewhere around a B to B+. </p>

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Berkeley is an inferior school (at least at the undergraduate level) compared to the top privates.

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<p>For several fields, this couldn't be farther from the truth. In Computer Science (my field of interest), for example, Berkeley is so much better than Dartmouth, Harvard, Yale, and Princeton that there's almost no comparison. When I visited Harvard, I saw that the computer science department there was very tiny, very specialized in somewhat obtuse topics (stuff that's not really touched in undergrad at all), doesn't conduct very much research, doesn't offer much depth or breadth in the undergrad curriculum, and doesn't produce very many entrepreneurs (Gates is the exception)</p>

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there are PLENTY of other Berkeley courses that are far far easier to get top grades

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<p>This might be true, but that's not the point. I'm sure that if you take the right courses, you can get a very high GPA even at Berkeley (just like people in high school who get 4.0s by taking P.E., foreign languages they already know, etc.), but my statement was for an apples-to-apples comparison. For example, comparing CS61C with the equivalent at Stanford. I think you'll find that the Stanford course is much more leniently graded (I can say this with a reasonable degree of experience, as I have taken a few CS courses at Stanford) than CS61C at Berkeley. I'm sure a research-for-academic-credit class will be just as easy, or perhaps easier to get an A in at MIT than in Berkeley.</p>

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A couple things. First, as I mentioned, MIT has a policy that first year courses can be taken so that the grade only shows up if it's good. If a student fails a course, the grade/course will simply not show up on transcripts MIT sends out. Grade inflation doesn't only mean the grades a school gives out - it also includes the ways in which it reports them.

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<p>I agree - but that's a way to COMBAT the strong grade DEFLATION that exists at MIT. The reason why that policy was implemented in the first place was precisely to deal with the old problem of new students coming in and then immediately running into serious trouble. </p>

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As for MIT simply giving out more As, check out this link (I couldn't find anything better offhand, but I'm sure if you looked there'd be more detailed information)</p>

<p><a href="http://www.internetcampus.com/plume3.htm%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.internetcampus.com/plume3.htm&lt;/a>

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<p>I'm aware of this link, and I find it to be dubious indeed. It seems to me that these guys have simply lumped together MIT with the rest of the top private schools, as if they were all one and the same. </p>

<p>The MIT Tech (the campus newspaper) runs plenty of other provocative stories around MIT, including, frankly, a lot of dirt that I'm sure that MIT would prefer to not be made public. I strongly suspect that if MIT was really grade inflated, the Tech would have talked about it by now. That, I woud consider to be a credible source. </p>

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One notable quote from the article:</p>

<p>Quote:
In 1966 at Harvard, 22% of all grades were A's. In 2003, that figure had grown to 46%. In 1968 at UCLA, 22% of all grades were A's. By 2002, that figure was 47%. </p>

<p>This is the very definition of grade inflation. The 'C' grade was defined to be average, get now the average in most of these schools is somewhere around a B to B+.

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<p>Nobody is disputing that Harvard is grade inflated. The question is whether MIT is grade inflated. I think you will find little credible evidence in favor of this notion, and in fact, much to the contrary. MIT itself makes a very big deal about just how difficult and rigorous its courses are, and how difficult the grading is. This would seem to be prime fodder for a publication like the Tech to discuss, if in fact, the grading at MIT wasn't really difficult at all. </p>

<p>And besides, since we're talking about Berkeley, consider this. </p>

<p>"In the late 1950's, the average cumulative GPA for Berkeley undergraduates was 2.50 and has increased to approximately 3.25. A significant increase in the GPA occurred during the Vietnam War when students received a draft deferment if they remained in good academic standing.
Of 79,791 undergraduate course grades given at UC Berkeley fall 2003, almost 50% were A's, approximately 35% were B's, and less than 5% were D's or F's. "</p>

<p>"Rine described the shock he felt during his three years on the Committee on Teaching from roughly 1998 to 2000 when he reviewed teaching records for large undergraduate classes, with more than 100 students, in which no one got less than an A-, year after year. "</p>

<p><a href="http://ls.berkeley.edu/undergrad/colloquia/04-11.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://ls.berkeley.edu/undergrad/colloquia/04-11.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Now, THAT, I consider to be an EXTREMELY credible source. So it seems to me that Berkeley is fairly grade inflated as well.</p>

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This might be true, but that's not the point. I'm sure that if you take the right courses, you can get a very high GPA even at Berkeley (just like people in high school who get 4.0s by taking P.E., foreign languages they already know, etc.), but my statement was for an apples-to-apples comparison

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<p>Actually, I think that IS the point. You say that you want to do an apples-to-apples comparison? Ok, take this one: a creampuff major at Berkeley vs. a creampuff major at Stanford. I don't know that it's any easier to get top grades in the latter than in the former. The grade curves are very high in both cases, but in the former cases, there are lots of quite mediocre and lazy Berkeley students who will tend to occupy the lower-level of the already-inflated curve. {Let's be honest - there are a LOT of mediocre students in the Berkeley creampuff majors.} But in any case, in this particular apples-to-apples comparison, I don't know of any evidence that things would be easier at Stanford. </p>

<p>What you seem to be talking about is an apples-to-apples comparison of TECHNICAL courses. And w.r.t. Stanford, I think it's probably true that Stanford is probably easier, because of the Stanford philosophy of cushioning its students. In fact, I have myself noted that Stanford is probably the most enlightened of all of the top technical schools in this regard, and that other top technical schools (MIT, Caltech, Berkeley etc.) should move in that direction.</p>

<p>But from an apples-to-apples comparison, I certainly have no evidence that Berkeley CS 61C is more difficult, from a grading perspective, than MIT 6.004, which is the rough equivalent. </p>

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I'm sure a research-for-academic-credit class will be just as easy, or perhaps easier to get an A in at MIT than in Berkeley.

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<p>Uh, considering just how leniently graded the Berkeley research courses are, I hardly see how this could be true. Practically everybody gets an A (or at worst, an 'I' which ends up being turned into an A later). For things to be significantly easier at MIT, EVERYBODY would have to get an A. That's a pretty strong claim.</p>

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<p>Babak Ayazifar, the EE 20 instructor, attended MIT himself and said that the grading curves there are not as harsh as those at Berkeley. The EECS department here requires the mean grade in each class to be a 2.7, which is about as abysmal as can get. Even with MIT's reputation of harsher grading (I suppose relative to HYPS, etc.), he said the averages there are "definitely not a 2.7"</p>

<p>If other universities like Stanford can award 40-50% A's per class, allow its students to have some occasional spare time to pursue hobbies, extracurriculars, jobs, research, etc. (instead of overloading its students with 800-1000 hour projects as is the case in CS 150/152 here), all the while maintaining a reputation for academic excellence that is equal to, if not superior to that of Berkeley's engineering program, it shows how far behind we really are.</p>

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Yeah, I know what you mean. 91% of Harvard undergrads graduate with honors. If that's not inflation...

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<p>The policy changed years ago - honors at Harvard is now capped at around 60%.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.bus.lsu.edu/accounting/faculty/lcrumbley/HonorsAwards.htm%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.bus.lsu.edu/accounting/faculty/lcrumbley/HonorsAwards.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>But besides, I don't know that the percentage of students receiving honors is necessarily a strong indicator of 'grade inflation'. For example, only about 20% of the students at Stanford get honors at graduation, compared to about 50% at Caltech (all of the people with asterisks next to their names in the commencement list received honors). But I would hardly call that proof that Caltech is somehow more grade inflated than Stanford. A LOT of students at Caltech have quite low grades. Rather, it's that the bar to obtaining honors at Caltech is not that high. </p>

<p>"Of the 1,628 undergraduates in the Class of 2001, approximately 19 percent — 317 students — graduated “with honors.”"</p>

<p><a href="http://daily.stanford.edu/article/2002/5/31/stanfordReviewsGradingAfterHarvardsOverhaul%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://daily.stanford.edu/article/2002/5/31/stanfordReviewsGradingAfterHarvardsOverhaul&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p><a href="http://pr.caltech.edu/commencement/06/bs.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://pr.caltech.edu/commencement/06/bs.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>There's a big difference between a school that is grade inflated and a school that uses a relatively low honors bar. That distinction is often times missed, but it does exist and should be recognized.</p>

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So it seems to me that Berkeley is fairly grade inflated as well.

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<p>It seems to me like the Poli Sci and other "fluff" classes are lumped with the real core classes, causing the somewhat misleading statistics we see here - as I said before I'm not disputing that Berkeley has it's easy classes. What we should do is compare, class vs. equivalent class, CS61A at Berkeley vs. CS106A and CS106B at Stanford vs. 6.001 at MIT and see the grade statistics (mean, distribution, etc.) It's a bit late right now or I'd see if they were available, but I think you'll find a much smaller percentage of people at Berkeley get A's than in those other colleges.</p>

<p>Edit: I guess that yes, I do mean "technical" classes - considering these are the classes that everyone has to take, as well as being essentially the best the university has to offer (perhaps "meatiest" might be the better word), I think they offer the best comparison (the hardest at Cal vs. the hardest at Stanford), or at least the comparison I'm thinking of. And I we'll have to see if the average GPA in MIT "technical" classes is better or worse than 2.7.</p>

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The EECS department here requires the mean grade in each class to be a 2.7,

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<p>Uh, no, that's not the policy. It's a 2.7 * in the lower division * courses, not in ALL courses. Upper division is a 2.9. </p>

<p><a href="http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Policies/ugrad.grading.shtml%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Policies/ugrad.grading.shtml&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

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Babak Ayazifar, the EE 20 instructor, attended MIT himself and said that the grading curves there are not as harsh as those at Berkeley

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<p>But that by itself is not evidence of grade inflation. As others have pointed out here, the admissions standards at the other schools are higher, and hence, Berkeley has a longer tail-end of less capable students who will tend to occupy the lower strata of the curve. In the case of lower-division EECS, let's face it, there are a lot of students in those courses who aren't even enginering students (yet) and are trying to get into either EECS or CS, but who, frankly, aren't that good. Low grades serve to eliminate these students.</p>

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It seems to me like the Poli Sci and other "fluff" classes are lumped with the real core classes,

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<p>I suppose that depends on what you call "real core classes". Surely you realize that the vast majority of students at Berkeley are not CS or EECS students. In fact, at Berkeley, more than twice the number of people graduate with bachelor's degrees in political science every year than in CS and EECS combined. Poli-sci is a * huge * major. </p>

<p><a href="http://career.berkeley.edu/Major/PolSci.stm%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://career.berkeley.edu/Major/PolSci.stm&lt;/a>
<a href="http://career.berkeley.edu/Major/CompSci.stm%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://career.berkeley.edu/Major/CompSci.stm&lt;/a>
<a href="http://career.berkeley.edu/Major/EECS.stm%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://career.berkeley.edu/Major/EECS.stm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>And that's just poli-sci. There are plenty of other majors in which the students will never take any difficult technical courses. The point is, for the vast majority of students at Berkeley, courses like the CS61 sequence will never be considered a "real core class" by any definition.</p>

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<p>From the same website, the GPA for lower division prerequisites is *2.5<a href="which%20should%20really%20weed%20out%20a%20lot%20of%20under%20qualified%20students">/i</a>, and upper division prerequisites (these are courses in the EECS1XX range) is 2.7. Considering that people who have made it to upper division are hardly "tail-end", I would say that even correcting for students who aren't MIT material, these courses seem to be very tough to get an A in.</p>

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What we should do is compare, class vs. equivalent class, CS61A at Berkeley vs. CS106A and CS106B at Stanford vs. 6.001 at MIT and see the grade statistics (mean, distribution, etc.)

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<p>That would be a great thing to find, if you can find it. I don't think it's going to be easy. </p>

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but I think you'll find a much smaller percentage of people at Berkeley get A's than in those other colleges.

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<p>But even that, like I said, wouldn't 'prove' grade inflation. Like I and others have said, frankly, there are a lot of relatively mediocre Berkeley students taking CS61A who really have no business doing so. </p>

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A couple things. First, as I mentioned, MIT has a policy that first year courses can be taken so that the grade only shows up if it's good. If a student fails a course, the grade/course will simply not show up on transcripts MIT sends out. Grade inflation doesn't only mean the grades a school gives out - it also includes the ways in which it reports them.

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<p>You also have to keep in mind that this policy only has to do with the transcripts that MIT * sends out *. In the particular case of MIT EECS (which seems to be the focus of your discussion), a lot of the undergrads will ultimately be shooting for the MIT MEng program. Your 'hidden' freshman grades cannot be hidden from the admissions of this program, or any other MIT graduate program for that matter (as the MIT graduate programs have access to all undergrad internal transcripts). I doubt that they place much emphasis on freshman grades, but the point is, you can't hide those grades from MIT itself. The most popular choice for graduate school of MIT undergrads is MIT itself.</p>

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From the same website, the GPA for lower division prerequisites is 2.5 (which should really weed out a lot of under qualified students), and upper division prerequisites (these are courses in the EECS1XX range) is 2.7. Considering that people who have made it to upper division are hardly "tail-end",

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<p>Yes, but then that means that the other "non-prereq" courses have a HIGHER curve than the average. For example, if CS 40 has a 2.5 curve, then that must mean that other lower-division CS courses must have a higher-than-2.7 curve. </p>

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I would say that even correcting for students who aren't MIT material, these courses seem to be very tough to get an A in.

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<p>Nobody is disputing that it's very tough to get an A in Berkeley CS/EECS. Nobody is disputing that it's more difficult to do so than at Stanford. The question is, whether it's more difficult than it is at MIT. This remains an unproven assertion. Seems to me that these are both difficult schools.</p>

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That's another thing to consider. In MIT, if I remember correctly, your first semester/year grades are essentially P/NP, and they won't show any bad grades on the transcripts they send out. With Berkeley you're subjected to the curve from the first exam.

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<p>Now that I think about it, I'm not sure how much effect that particular MIT policy has to the rest of the issues presented in this thread. After all, two effects are at play. I agree that if you go to MIT and do pooly in your first semester, the grading policy helps you out a lot, as, like you said, your bad grades will not be shown to anybody outside of MIT. But what if you do very well in your first semester? What if you get straight A's? Those grades are ALSO hidden from anybody outside of MIT. Hence, your excellent performance basically doesn't help you do anything at all (except for perhaps helping you to get back into MIT for grad school, as I mentioned previously - but like I said, the opposite is also true - that doing poorly in your first semester may hurt your chances of getting back into MIT for grad school). </p>

<p>You have to keep in mind that the policy is not voluntary. You can't just decide one fine day that, since you're doing very well, you would like to have your freshman grades exposed. No. You will be graded P/NP * whether you like it or not *. </p>

<p>In other words, while the policy helps the bad MIT students, it actually HURTS the good ones, such that the net effect is arguably zero. And in fact, since this thread is talking about how hard it is to get A's, then we are clearly talking about good students. Hence, in the aggregate, I would say that the MIT policy means that MIT is actually HARDER than Berkeley to get A's, in the sense that you might get A's that nobody outside of your school is allowed to see. Or, put another way, the chances of getting "exposed A's" at MIT are harder than at Berkeley because of that policy. Who cares about A's that nobody can see? </p>

<p>If this thread was about which school is less likely to flunk you out, one could make the case that the MIT policy helps MIT in that protects students from flunking out. {But of course I would counter with the fact that Berkeley has a bunch of creampuff majors which you can retreat to in which you can get passing grades for very little work, but even the easier majors at MIT are not that easy, and furthermore, every student has to complete the difficult MIT General Institute Requirements.} But since we're talking about which school is more difficult to get an A in, the MIT policy hurts MIT. After all, an "invisible" A is worthless.</p>

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<p>You are right about under-qualified students in CS 61A. However, those under-qualified students tend to drop out of the CS major altogether by 61B. There's absolutely no reason to continue weeding students out after CS 3 and 61A. Dan Garcia, the 61C instructor, said that he had no reason to do any more weeding out in his class because it was the final course of the introductory sequence. It's kind of ironic he said this, because he gives the fewest percentage of A's per class of any lower-division CS instructor.</p>

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<p>From Babak Ayazifar's email, which he sent out today:</p>

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at mit at least, i used to see a class gpa of about B in the lower-division courses.

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From Babak Ayazifar's email, which he sent out today:</p>

<p>Quote:
at mit at least, i used to see a class gpa of about B in the lower-division courses.<br>

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<p>Well, frankly, that's not particularly telling. Keep in mind that MIT doesn't have +/- grades recorded on its external transcripts. Hence, a B-minus is effectively a B. But the Berkeley lower-division EECS courses are, according to that link, centered at a 2.7, which is a B-minus, which is effectively a B in MIT parlance. Hence, it's effectively the same grading policy.</p>

<p>But even so, again, you said it yourself - there are underqualified students in the Berkeley lower-division CS courses. Those guys tend to occupy the lower stratum of the curve.</p>

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<p>The 61 series is uncurved to prevent poor students from bringing down the curve and making the class too easy. The whole 61 series is not curved but instead graded on a straight scale. Garcia is the only exception I know of (too bad I took it when it was straight scale). Berkeley's reputed difficulty comes from upper div courses where there are a relatively few number of students who all got As in lower division courses. When you throw all of the lower-div overachievers together in an upper div class, someone's bound to get a bad grade because of the curve.</p>