<p>anybody else with me? </p>
<p>i'm sorta ambivalent because now i'm definitely going to berkeley. unless i get an acceptance letter from Princeton(hah)</p>
<p>Berkeley's an excellent institution and the education you'll receive at Cal is on par with the Ivy League schools -- if not better. Many of us--myself included--didn't get into Ivy schools. It's not the end of the world. You'll come to love Cal; it's a great place.</p>
<p>And Cal gets a lot of brilliant people because of financial issues. For instance, even if I got into Harvard, which I didn't, I would chose Cal since I would have to pay all of it.</p>
<p>To the OP:</p>
<p>I would say that it's really not that bad. Don't get me wrong. I have stated many times on CC that Berkeley has severe match-up problems with schools like HYPSM at the undergraduate level, and also with the elite LAC's when it comes to undergraduate teaching.</p>
<p>On the other hand, I still believe that it is among a handful of the best undergraduate public schools around. Believe me, there are a lot of Americans who can neither get into (or can't afford) one of the top private schools nor have a strong public school to fall back to. </p>
<p>That doesn't mean that Berkeley can rest on its laurels. In fact, I would be the first to state that Berkeley has the potential to be a far better school than it is, particularly on the undergraduate level. And I have proposed a number of ways in which Berkeley could reform itself, which you could find if you want to search back through my old posts. Nevertheless, even I would give credit to Berkeley where it's due. Trust me. You could do far worse than going to Berkeley for undergrad.</p>
<p>I agree with Sakky here. Berkeley is the best possible "safety" you can have. But you never know, maybe you'll get lucky with Princeton! :)</p>
<p>whatiscollege--
Please take a gap year and try to get into a "good" school again next year, because its the people like you that will eventually bring Cal down. I'd rather have a school full of people with lower sats that want to be here and will actually contribute. If you think you're too good for this school you'll be chewed up and and spit out like collegesenior was.</p>
<p>LoL. I was hardly chewed up and spit out and I tried especially hard to contribute, just through the wrong avenue. I definitely should have tried to get through to the graduate experience by trying hard to network with professors more rather than going so club heavy and volunteer-service heavy with all the obnoxious students like Gentleman Scholar.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I would say that it's really not that bad. Don't get me wrong. I have stated many times on CC that Berkeley has severe match-up problems with schools like HYPSM at the undergraduate level, and also with the elite LAC's when it comes to undergraduate teaching.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Could you clarify what you mean by this? </p>
<p>In the 28-page long flame war you wrote, in aggrement, with several quoted authors that research universities (not necessarily public ones) might not be providing the best "undergraduate teaching." </p>
<p>Yet here you are claiming that the HYPSM "undergraduate level" is "severe[ly]" better than Berkeley's. To me, this seems like a contradiction. I mean, I doubt you think that HYPSM aren't "reseach universities." So something is very wrong here. Either HYPSM are collectively good at "undergrad teaching" or they're not. You can't have it both ways. </p>
<p>If you mean that these institutions are the exceptions to the rule, then I say that is ridiculous claim. Harvard is notorious for its horrible faculty. Yale, not as bad, but still not great. Princeton: very good. Stanford, inbetween Yale and Princeton. MIT, professors busy there too. Overall, there is not that great a difference in faculty interest in teaching undergrads at these schools vs. Berkeley.</p>
<p>Lol. You had a horrible time at Cal. Don't try to make it sound rosy when it suits you. In my book, when someone comes here and hates their life and doesn't have fun and doesn't learn anything, that person has been a failure and has been chewed up and spit out by big bad berkeley. Some of us can thrive here and some of us don't have what it takes. Debbiedowner, you should be on my side on this one. I'm simply trying to save the op from going through the same things you went through. You'd think you'd be backing me up.</p>
<p>I hate the obnoxious people at Berkeley like you who are sadly a significant plurality of the population.</p>
<p>You're right though, some don't have what it takes, you obviously have it. Mucho Congratulations. I'll happily move on to Columbia Law and away from people like you who my superiors.</p>
<p>I somehow get the feeling that we'll see you crying on the columbia boards before too long. A zebra can't change its stipes.</p>
<p>Why would I be crying, columbia law gives me a guaranteed 6 figure salary. </p>
<p>Berkeley gave me on net a huge headache for little benefit and extreme cost; I would've made a 3.8+ anywhere else and have had a more intimate experience and I'd have probably have ended up at Harvard Law instead. And I would be happily naive and ignorant of all the obnoxious people like gentleman scholar in the world. The biggest benefit of all.</p>
<p>Yeah....I would argue that Columbia law is even more "horrible" and full of "obnoxious people" who make up "a significant plurality of the [student] population" than Cal is. (especially if you judge them with a Southern eye....)</p>
<p>As I said, the moolah compensates for that.</p>
<p>Berkeley cost just as much as law school will out of state withot the monetary gain, personal attention, or similar, guaranteed networking opportunties with professors. And the smaller the class the harder it is to be obnoxious since you will see the person on a consistent basis. As proven by game theory, higher payoff nash equilibriums result when the game is played repeatedly between players that know each other's and their own preferences and payoffs..</p>
<p>gentlemanandscholar--</p>
<p>i advise you to not take my words so seriously, but Berkeley is still nonetheless a haven for Stanford rejects. i don't plan on carrying this attitude onward to my next four years in Berkeley so please tone it down. </p>
<p>do you guys know each other personally? polite antagonis and gentleman?</p>
<p>No, he just assumes I'm also a reject to every other school possible because I hate berkeley.</p>
<p>whatiscollege: just curious... what schools did you get into and what are your stats?</p>
<p>i pmed them to you. i'm very secretive. truthfully i knew i was going to get rejected by Harvard and Stanford. but i was amazed by my dismal results from cornell and hmc. MIT i was really hoping for because my interview was great and i'm really interested in math.</p>
<p>i'm pretty realistic, i thought i would get into at least two private colleges</p>
<p>
[quote]
Yet here you are claiming that the HYPSM "undergraduate level" is "severe[ly]" better than Berkeley's. To me, this seems like a contradiction. I mean, I doubt you think that HYPSM aren't "reseach universities." So something is very wrong here. Either HYPSM are collectively good at "undergrad teaching" or they're not. You can't have it both ways. </p>
<p>If you mean that these institutions are the exceptions to the rule, then I say that is ridiculous claim. Harvard is notorious for its horrible faculty. Yale, not as bad, but still not great. Princeton: very good. Stanford, inbetween Yale and Princeton. MIT, professors busy there too. Overall, there is not that great a difference in faculty interest in teaching undergrads at these schools vs. Berkeley.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>You want a clarification, here it is.</p>
<p>When I said 'severe matchup problems', I never said that HYPSM were all uniformly better in terms of undergraduate teaching than Berkeley is. I was talking about the undergraduate experience as a whole. It is true that Harvard and Stanford, in particular, aren't that great when it comes to undergraduate teaching. But they make up for it in other ways that are equally important, if not more so. </p>
<p>Let me enumerate some of the ways.</p>
<p>*Freedom to switch majors. This is something that I dearly wish Berkeley would implement, but I'm not going to hold my breath. One of the major problems that I have with Berkeley is that students are not completely free to switch majors to whatever they want. You go to Stanford, or Princeton, or whatever, you are free to choose any major you want, and switch whenever you want. At Berkeley, not so, and in particular, not so for those who aren't doing well. Switching majors sometimes means switching colleges at Berkeley, which is far from automatic. You can't just start in English, find out that you really like EECS, and then expect to just switch over. Uh-uh. You have to apply to switch over to EECS, with the significant chance that you will be denied. </p>
<p>What's far worse are those engineering students who don't do well and so want to switch out of engineering...but find out that they can't because that means switching colleges, which means that you have to apply to switch colleges, which they can't because of their bad engineering grades. The upshot is, because they are bad at engineering, they are forced to stay in engineering. This is a travesty. It would be funny if it wasn't so sad. </p>
<p>You can't be locking in students like that. Expecting new 18 year old freshmen to know exactly which engineering major they want to study is simply unreasonable. </p>
<ul>
<li>Student selectivity.</li>
</ul>
<p>Another major issue that I have with Berkeley is that, quite frankly, the quality of the students needs raising. The fact is, there are just too many students who aren't very good. They don't study very much, and they don't want to study very much. Don't believe me? Take a walk down frathouse row and you will see some students who have barely even showed up to class for several weeks, and have instead been on a long drinking binge. </p>
<p>Their attitudes serve to reduce the value of the brand name of Berkeley. Employers hire these guys and then find out that they're just lazy slackers and so it makes all of Berkeley look bad. Furthermore, they serve to demoralize and tempt other students who might otherwise be working hard. You see these guys going around partying all month long, and then you get tempted to party all month long with them. That's a problem. </p>
<ul>
<li>Lack of help for the poorer-performing students.</li>
</ul>
<p>I have always said that Berkeley is a pretty good school if you are doing well and if you are mentally confident and self-assured. But what if you're not? What if you're doing poorly? Berkeley's attitude then is to throw you out like yesterday's trash. </p>
<p>Now, I freely admit that certain students probably should be thrown out (like those lazy frat boys I mentioned above). However, there are plenty of other students who could have done just fine if they were just given a little support. But they don't get that support. So they end up with a bad experience. That's not good for anybody. Just a little bit of support.</p>
<p>Let me give you an example. Take MIT's LFM program, which is the dual degree SM + MBA program at MIT. This program ain't no joke. You're getting 2 MIT degrees in the time that it would normally take you to get 1 degree. Yet at the same time, the LFM program tries to ensure that its students are handling the work. This is particularly so for those students who are international and so whose English skills may not be very strong. The issue is that a lot of these students are embarrassed about their weak English skills and so they won't ask for help even if they need it. That's why LFM aggressively sends feelers out amongst the student themselves to see who might be falling behind, and basically deputizes LFM students to check up on each other to make sure that everybody is doing allright. Keep in mind, this is a specialty MBA program we're talking about. The average age of LFM is 28. So these aren't kids here. Yet the program still goes out of its way to protect each individual student from academic pressure. Yet Berkeley expects 18 year olds, fresh out of their parents' care, to fend for themselves, and then blames them when some of them prove to be unable. </p>
<p>The worst part about it is that Berkeley has apparently managed to convince many students that this is the right way. For example, whenever I've tried to defend some of these students who aren't strong enough to fend for themselves, I hear students viciously impugning those students for not being strong enough to stand up for themselves, and so they therefore deserve to be flunked out. Come on, have you no compassion? That's just kicking a guy when he's down. </p>
<p>I believe that Berkeley ought to provide the tools to ensure that every single student can graduate. Now, if a student willfully chooses to not do the work, then, sure, kick them out. But there are cases where students have problems. For example, they can't speak English fluently. They have personal issues like romantic problems. They have homesickness. But Berkeley doesn't seem to care about that. I know one girl who started getting serious menstrual cramps right in the middle of her engineering final, such that she couldn't continue. The prof didn't care, and flunked her on the exam. </p>
<p>Now, don't get me wrong. I am not saying that HYPSM don't have their problems too with their undergraduate environments. However, I think that a neutral observer would have to agree that they are, on the whole, less serious than what Berkeley has. </p>
<p>That's not to say that Berkeley is a bad school. I never said that. Berkeley is still one of the better places to go for undergrad. It's just that I find it hard to recommend Berkeley over HYPSM for undergrad, unless money is a serious issue.</p>