<p>"What percent of IVY students are not at their first choice school? Why does it matter?"</p>
<p>I think it matters a lot to some of the youngsters here. But as grown ups, we shouldnt care too much, should we? :)</p>
<p>I honestly believe once the values of education and the pedigree factor of the education, just like SAT, breaches certain threshhold, the remaining factors to success, such as motivation, character, and ethics far outweigns the academic education.</p>
<p>"I'd respect a Cornell, UChicago, Dartmouth, Hopkins, or Duke student much more than I'd respect a Berkeley student in terms of academics. This is because the average caliber of a Cornell, Chicago, or Dartmouth student is marketedly higher than the caliber of the average Berkeley student. Sure there may be some statistical anomolies and outliers here and there, but overall, the Cornell or Duke student is just smarter. Now maybe they aren't as smart as HYPSM students, but they are definitely smarter than Berkeley students on average. Anyone can get into Berkeley if they wanted to....either though Spring admission, the community college transfer route, demonstrated hardships, or presistence in the application process. IMHO, the ease of getting a Berkeley degree dilutes it's value. If every Tom, Dick, and homeless bum living in a cardboard box can get into Berkeley, I wouldn't be as proud of that degree as I would be proud about a Dartmouth or Duke degree that is much more selective."</p>
<p>You mentioned the admission part, now lets delve a little further to the graduation part.</p>
<p>Which student do you think is "smarter" (very hard to articulate, but you just did that based on, um, your, um, personal definition) - Berkeley grad with 3.8 GPA or Northwestern grad with 3.5 GPA?</p>
<p>I agree with ubermensch. Say you were the valedictorian of your school with a 1580 SAT and you worked your butt off for four years. How would you feel if you end up going to Berkeley alongside that person in the back of your class with a B- average, who never bothered raising his hand, and basically slacked off for four years? All your hard work got you to the same destination as that slacker. Both of you get the same degree. The sad thing is that many out-of-staters must face this situation.</p>
<p>"Which student do you think is "smarter" (very hard to articulate, but you just did that based on, um, your, um, personal definition) - Berkeley grad with 3.8 GPA or Northwestern grad with 3.5 GPA?"</p>
<p>I'd probably think that the Berkeley student was smarter because his GPA is so much higher. But if you were to compare a Berkeley grad with a 3.5 with a NU grad with a 3.5, I'd say that the NU grad is smarter.</p>
<p>"All your hard work got you to the same destination as that slacker. Both of you get the same degree."</p>
<p>Exactly, that's where the common ground between these two people stops - name of diploma.</p>
<p>Once they are in the real world, the dedication previously shown in the past will naturally separate one from the other. No need to feel cheated, if you are the person with 1580 SAT.</p>
<p>Are you implying that I should feel cheated if I see someone who got into UCLA with 1050 SAT? Without being too corny, I would really be excited to see him. After all, he took a less traditional route.</p>
<p>I am sorry to say, but there is something called "grade inflation" at most of today's prestigious private universities.</p>
<p>But setting this fact aside, what would you think should be the comparative GPA between the two graduates?</p>
<p>Berkeley 3.7 vs. NU 3.5?</p>
<p>3.55 vs. 3.5?</p>
<p>3.56 vs. 3.5?</p>
<p>?
??</p>
<p>How would you feel when coming fresh out of college, you, a Harvard graduate, receive the same compensation package from Goldman Sachs as an analyst as the next door neighbor John Doe, a Boston University graduate?</p>
<p>"How would you feel when coming fresh out of college, you, a Harvard graduate, receive the same compensation package from Goldman Sachs as an analyst as the next door neighbor John Doe, a Boston University graduate?"</p>
<p>The Boston University person doesn't stand a chance of getting a Goldman Sachs position unless he was extremely stellar. The major difference between a situation like that and the situation at Berkeley is that you don't get really dumb Boston University students getting jobs alongside Harvard students. In Berkeley, however, you'll have dumb students studying alongside valedictorians with 1580 SATs.</p>
<p>ubermensch - so what if you have "dumb" students studying next to you? does that really worsen your education? does his "dumbness" infect your brain and make you dumber? </p>
<p>If you are the 1580 Valedictorian, be proud of that, and work your ass off at Berkeley. Its not the college that matters, its the effort you put into it that makes the college. If you take advantage of everything Berkeley has to offer, Berkeley is no worse than any of the ivies. </p>
<p>Ubermensch - you act like college is the defining moment of your life and determines the rest of your career or something. Many ivy league graduates come off as way too arrogant and full of themselves and employers could even shy away from that. Also, at Berkeley, you could take much harder classes and such and you find that in those classes, everyone is top-notch. Give these "dumb" people a break, since they're just people trying to find a path for themselves, and if you feel stupid just because they're in the same college as you, perhaps you really dont deserve to even go to Berkeley. </p>
<p>Note: I hate self-obssessed people who think it is all about them, them and them.</p>
<p>
[quote]
so what if you have "dumb" students studying next to you? does that really worsen your education? does his "dumbness" infect your brain and make you dumber?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Well, actually, on this point, I think ubermensch is correct. The fact is, education is heavily impacted by your social environment. </p>
<p>Perhaps the most obvious and direct example of this are classes that rely on discussions. Surely we all remember high school English where the whole class sat around and talked about this-and-that Shakespearean play or Dickens book. The fact is, the education you were receiving during those discussions is directly proportional to the quality of the other students in that discussion. If people were well-prepared, and said creative and insightful things, then you learned more. But if people were not saying intelligent things, or hadn't even bothered to read the book, then you learned less. </p>
<p>Consider the impact of discussions not only in college classes, but outside classes. The fact is, college education is far more than just about taking classes. A college education encompasses all the things that comprise the college experience. Ask yourself - how many of your waking hours during the week will you actually be spending in actual classes? Only a small fraction. You will spend more of your time socializing with the other students. If the other students have a lot of intelligent things to say, then your college experience will be enriched. On the other hand, if your students are stupid and lazy, then you end up learning less. All present-day college students and graduates surely remember those infamous midnight rap-sessions. But let's face it - the more intelligent the students were, the more you learned, and vice versa.</p>
<p>Finally, I would point to the tremendously strong impact of culture. It is extremely difficult for most people, but especially for impressionable 17-18 year olds, to stand up against peer pressure. When everybody around you is studying hard, then you will tend to study hard. But if the people around you are lazy, don't want to study, don't want to go to class, would rather screw around and do nothing, then you will tend to behave likewise. You can make the personal choice to study even when the people around you are screwing around and having fun. But it's a very hard choice to make. Most people aren't strong enough to make that choice. Social environment and social milieu have a strong impact on personal behavior. </p>
<p>Now don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that Berkeley students are necessarily lazy or unintelligent. Not at all. Nor do I necessarily agree with many of the things that ubermensch has been saying. I am simply pointing out the fact that the quality of the students around you does indeed have a strong impact on the quality of your education.</p>
<p>Again, if you want to take the opinon of a community college kid (ubermensh) and a Stanford reject (Gutrade), then by all means do so, but just consider your source. These kids sure do talk alot of crap for a couple of dudes who've never steped foot inside a university.</p>
<p>
[quote]
UC Berkley students are spoken in the same breath as... MIT
[/quote]
</p>
<p>DaRaverLA, I think you went one step too far there. From the context of this conversation, I take it you are talking about undergrads at Berkeley (Berkeley grad-students are an entirely different story). I don't know what recruiters you have been talking to, but I think that for a recruiter to think that Berkeley undergrads are equivalent in quality to the undergrads at MIT, well, I think that's a bit of a stretch.</p>
<p>I am speaking in the context of the number and quality of job offers that are available to both MIT and Berkeley ENGINEERING grads. (I suppose that we are not comparing Berkeley English major and MIT engineering majors)</p>
<p>Check out the listings of the companies that are recruiting at the respective schools. You will hardly find any difference with exception to the demographic preferances.</p>
<p>And I believe that the starting annual salary is same for all the "core schools". Actually, for the matter, some companies pay higher salaries to students who have high GPA, say, over the threshhold of 3.4 or 3.5, regardless of the name of undergraduates. I think SEC pays differently accoriding to the GPA of each candidate. (back in 2001 when I was interviewing at least)</p>
<p>And as far as what the recruiters think on their own subjective ways of each school's grads, it can go either way.</p>
<p>I once saw a survey on which the majority of the recruiters highly ranked U of Michigan's grads for the students' strong penchant for teamwork and capacity for independent thinking, far higher than they ranked the grads of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton.</p>
<p>The perceived image of the brand-name school might matter, but not as much as you think it would in a real world. Hardly.</p>
<p>"The Boston University person doesn't stand a chance of getting a Goldman Sachs position unless he was extremely stellar."</p>
<p>Again, you are using a very, very subjective work such as the one you used above - "stellar". Without putting your word in proper perspective for all to fully grasp upon, your comment is nothing but a poorly worded generalization.</p>
<p>What do you mean by stellar? Like 3.9 GPA? What if he has 3.0 GPA but a string of prestigious blue-chip internships? </p>
<p>To say, ALL the companies would pick the Harvard 3.5 student with ABC profile over the BU 3.5 student with the identical ABC profile is purely speculative, because in a real world, there is no such thing as "identical ABC profile."</p>
<p>We are trying to have discussion that centers around factual finding, objective anecdote references, and unbiased circumstances. Let's stick to this set of rules while we are discussing.</p>
<p>Well, DaRaverLA, since you want to couch things in terms of jobs and salaries, I think it is perfectly fair to respond in kind.</p>
<p>The average salary of 2003 Berkeley EECS B.S graduates was $55814.</p>
<p><a href="http://career.berkeley.edu/Major/EECS.stm%5B/url%5D">http://career.berkeley.edu/Major/EECS.stm</a></p>
<p>The average salary of 2003 MIT EECS B.S graduates was $59706.</p>
<p><a href="http://web.mit.edu/career/www/infostats/graduation03.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://web.mit.edu/career/www/infostats/graduation03.pdf</a> (EECS is known as 'Course 6' in MIT parlance)</p>
<p>Many of the other engineering disciplines are difficult to compare, principally because of the lack of MIT graduates (MIT is a pretty small school, relatively speaking). For example, it's no fair to look at MIT's materials science salary survey, considering that only 1 person responded (even though the MIT Mat-sci salary is higher than the Berkeley Mat-Sci salary, I won't count this because it's only based on 1 data point). But EECS has enough respondents that you can start to make some comparisons. </p>
<p>I would also point out that the EECS surveys are actually skewed towards Berkeley in 2 respects. </p>
<h1>1 - Berkeley EECS graduates disproportionately tend to work in Silicon Valley, which is almost certainly the highest paying location in the world for EECS degree holders. A far higher percentage of Berkeley EECS grads end up in Silicon Valley than will MIT EECS grads, and that actually skews Berkeley's EECS salaries higher.</h1>
<p>#2 - Most of the better MIT EECS B.S. students won't enter the workforce upon obtaining their BS. Instead, most of them will continue to get into the MIT M.Eng (Master's in Engineering) program, which is a program that basically provides near-automatic admission to any engineering student who has decent grades. The upshot is that the better MIT students will not be counted in the B.S. salary surveys, but will instead graduate with M.Eng degrees, and will be counted in the M.Eng survey. Berkeley has no program that is comparable to MIT's M.Eng program. Some Berkeley EECS undergrads will continue to get a M.S. at Berkeley, but to get admission into that program, you have to go through the entire regular grad-school app process, including taking the GRE, getting rec's, etc. And admission into Berkeley's graduate program is far from automatic, and certainly nothing like the relatively simple paperwork and, as long as your grades are decent, near-automatic admission to the MIT M.Eng program. </p>
<p>The point is that the M.Eng program tends to vacuum up the better MIT students, leaving a disproportionate percentage of the less-strong MIT students in the B.S. survey. And Berkeley salaries benefit from the proximity to Silicon Valley. Nevertheless, despite those 2 factors, the MIT EECs B.S. salaries are still higher than the Berkeley EECS B.S. salaries. </p>
<p>I would also point to the fact that there is a hidden story even behind the numbers. The fact is, Berkeley engineering is a tough gig. Talk to any Berkeley engineering student, and I think they will tell you the same story - a lot of weeders, it's tough to stay in engineering, and a lot of people who want to be engineers don't make it to graduation. Some of them flunk out completely, whereas others simply switch to an easier major. The same thing happens at MIT too, but to a far lesser extent. Think about it. Engineering is arguably the most difficult major at any school. A far far higher percentage of the students at MIT are engineers than is the case at Berkeley. MIT has far fewer 'cheesepuff' majors than Berkeley does, and these majors afford 'graduation protection' for people who just want to get their degrees without having to work very hard for them. {I'm not going to name those majors, but I think we all know what they are}. Yet the fact is, MIT still manages to graduate a higher percentage of its incoming students than Berkeley does. MIT's 6-year graduation percentage is 91%, but Berkeley's is 85%, despite the fact that Berkeley has lots and lots of relatively easy majors, and lots of students in those easy majors. </p>
<p>Hence, the upshot of that is that a randomly selected incoming MIT freshman who intends to major in EECS has a higher chance of ultimately receiving an EECS degree than will a randomly selected incoming Berkeley freshman who intends to major in EECS. The brutal truth is, a significant portion of incoming Berkeley engineers will not make it all the way to completing their engineering degree. </p>
<p>Now having said all that, don't get me wrong, DaRaverLA. There really isn't all that much daylight between us. It is clearly true that much of anyone's fate is really in the hands of that person, and the college is certainly not a final determinant for anything. I am not saying that brand-name rules all. I agree with you that Berkeley students who make up their minds to take advantage of the opportunities and commit themselves to working very hard will do very well. </p>
<p>Yet the point is that going to a better school is still desirable. The fact is, if you want to be an engineer, than going to MIT is probably better than going to Berkeley, because doing so will probably improve your chances at success. Now, is it all-encompassing? Does it determine all? Are you 'doomed' if you end up at Berkeley? Of course not. That's ridiculous. However, let's be frank. MIT, on the aggregate, is in fact a better engineering undergraduate school than is Berkeley. This is why many (not all, but many) Berkeley engineering undergrads would rather be at MIT, yet few (not zero, but few) MIT undergrads would rather be going to Berkeley.</p>
<p>"Yet the point is that going to a better school is still desirable."</p>
<p>Whew, I just re-read your points because of the abundance of information you have nice presented here.</p>
<p>I think we are digressing to a different topic here. I wasnt arguing which school was better or worse. Rather, I was arguing about a much simpler point - "the perceived reputation" of respective students among recruiters as evidenced by job salary and the number of opportunities. </p>
<p>As far as the argument on which school is better, there are simply just too many different criteria to be considered - peer evaluation, nobel prize winners, finance resources ranking, and as you have mentioned, graduation rate. Personally, I would solely consider the "peer evaluation" factor alone. (MIT is #4 and Berkeley is #6, I believe).</p>
<p>And as to your research about the salaries, there is a flip side of your argument as well. Although I am not in any way affiliated with UC Berkeley beside having gotten accepted to the program back in 1995 (I am a UCLA grad), I would like to point a few counterpoints to your findings just for the sake of this discussion I am thoroughly enjoying here.</p>
<ol>
<li>Salary Discrepancy</li>
</ol>
<p>You MAY be right. </p>
<p>But there COULD be also other factors in the salary information, such as "relocation expense". If MIT students are to accept a job offer in Sillicon Valley, I think most companies pay around $5000~10,000 relocation expense in the form of signing bonus, which COULD have skewed the salary higher for the MIT grads. I would think that there would be more cases of MIT grads moving to West Coast than those of Cal grads moving to East Coast. We agree here?</p>
<p>Saying that most Cal EECS grads settle in Sillicon Valley is a little far-fetched notion without actually seeing the distribution of job and salry data in terms of location. </p>
<p>Better yet, I would like to see the salaries given to the two graduates in the same location, by the same firm, and in the same year to further bring a new dimension to this argument.</p>
<p>From my personal, unbiased experiences, I have not seen a single company that has different pay scales for graduating students on the basis of the name of school. There MIGHT be a company or two which hires exclusively MIT and Caltech students and bars other top engineering students from applying, but if this is indeed a case, then I would really like to see the name of such "exclusive" companies. </p>
<p>And even if some companies hire only from MIT, there could be some demographic factors asociated with the decision in the same way that we see most Sillicon Valley-based companies recruit at Berkeley and Stanford as the "core schools."</p>
<p>For your information, the graduation rate also incorporates the transfer students into the consideration. Thus, the graduation rate cannot be used to gauge the level of dedication by the students at respective schools.</p>
<p>I entered UCLA in 1995, but it took me six years to graduate from school (graduated in 2001). With this fact alone, I should be blamed as a scapegoat for bringing down the school's overall graduation rate in four years.</p>
<p>But in reality, I simply took 1 1/2 years to work for my company which had produced a nice sum of money for me to buy a new car and afford me more trips to the "BodyShop", a must-see nudie bar in Sunset Strip in LA.</p>
<p>Now, whether the extra 1 1/2 years I took off is actually a good thing or not in terms of enhancing the profile of UCLA in general is unknown:)</p>
<p>Now let me deal with your points in turn</p>
<p>*Graduation rates:</p>
<p>It is obviously true that some people leave Berkeley (or UCLA) for some time not because of academic difficulty, but because they found something interesting to do for awhile, so they temporarily leave school. However, the same thing happens at MIT, or any other school. The question then becomes, why would Berkeley (or UCLA) students do that MORE than MIT students would do that? </p>
<p>And in particular, it's not like it's only happening in certain years. For example, you might say that in one particularly unusual year, lots of Berkeley students left Berkeley for a couple of years to work on some project. Fine, that might explain that one year. But the fact is, the data is consistent - in every year since data has been available, MIT students graduate at a higher rate than do Berkeley students. You can look at all the USNews rankings ever since the ranking started, and you will see that MIT consistently graduates a higher percentage of its students than does Berkeley. So it's not a matter of just one unusual year - it's consistent every year. So you then have to explain how is it that Berkeley students always seem to consistently manage to find more of these interesting projects, year after year, than MIT students do. Otherwise, the inescapable conclusion is that MIT is simply better at graduating its students than Berkeley is.</p>
<p>Finally, even if you say that it's all a matter of 'special projects', then these students, whether they are MIT or Berkeley students, who go to special projects will eventually return and graduate. So you can look at 'eventual' graduation rates as an indicator. Yet the fact is, again, MIT beats out Berkeley, in terms of incoming students who eventually graduate (no matter how long it takes them to graduate). And it's not just in one year, but in every year since data has been available. Go do the research with the Common Data Set for both schools and see for yourself. </p>
<ul>
<li>salary discrepency</li>
</ul>
<p>Well, no, I have to disagree with your signing-bonus gambit, because that is not considered to be a formal part of the salary. Any form of compensation that has nothing to do with salary is not counted. </p>
<p>Case in point - look at the MIT data again, with the link I provided. Look at the salaries for the MIT management students, particularly the MIT MBA students (the Sloan MBA students). Management is known as course 15. You will see that MBA students have a number listed of $91338. Note, that that is simply a PURE SALARY figure - no signing bonuses, no relocation bonuses, no nothing. And the fact is, a great chunk of MBA salaries always consist of things that are separate from salary. In particular, look at the official compensation figures given by the MIT-Sloan employment reports. The two MIT links map to each other - basically, we are only talking about salary here, nothing else.</p>
<p>Hence, I have shown that MIT is only publishing salary figures (and nothing else) when it comes to its Management students. Hence, it seems unlikely to me that they would publish only salary numbers (and no bonus) for Management students, but yet publish salary+bonus numbers for EECS students. Why would MIT want to be inconsistent this way? I would think that if anything, MIT would want to publish salary+bonus numbers for both Management and for EECS. Either that, or if MIT wanted to be inconsistent, then MIT would want to publish only salary for EECS, and salary+bonus for Management (to make the Sloan School look better - after all, there is tremendous competition amongst the B-schools to show that their students make more money than students from other B-schools). </p>
<p>*
[quote]
Saying that most Cal EECS grads settle in Sillicon Valley is a little far-fetched notion without actually seeing the distribution of job and salry data in terms of location.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Here is my direct quote:</p>
<p>"Berkeley EECS graduates disproportionately tend to work in Silicon Valley, which is almost certainly the highest paying location in the world for EECS degree holders. A far higher percentage of Berkeley EECS grads end up in Silicon Valley than will MIT EECS grads, and that actually skews Berkeley's EECS salaries higher. "</p>
<p>Now, did I ever say that 'most' Cal EECS grads would go to the Valley? No, I said that a disproportionate number of them would go (but not necessarily 'most'). I think that it is indisputable that a disproportionate number of Cal EECS grads will go to the VAlley, relative to MIT EECS grads. And it is also indisputable that the Valley is one of the highest-paying, if not the highest-paying large geographic region in the entire country for EECS students. Hence, Berkeley EECS students enjoy a geography-based salary advantage over MIT EECS students. Nevertheless, MIT EECS students still make more, on average.</p>
<p>*
[quote]
Better yet, I would like to see the salaries given to the two graduates in the same location, by the same firm, and in the same year to further bring a new dimension to this argument.</p>
<p>From my personal, unbiased experiences, I have not seen a single company that has different pay scales for graduating students on the basis of the name of school...
[/quote]
</p>
<p>That's not the right way to look at it. It's not just about comparing salaries within a particular company. It's not just about who gets to apply and who doesn't apply. The key variable that you have neglected is how easy it is for students at a particular school to get into that company. Sure, once you get into the company, it's all the same. But that's not the point. The point is that it is easier to get into certain companies in the first place by graduating from certain schools rather than other schools. </p>
<p>For example, take school A and school B. Let's say that a company hires students from both schools, and they pay the same salary for those students that it hires, regardless of which school they come from. So are the 2 schools equivalent, for the purposes of getting into company A? Hardly. You also have to look at the percentages of the students who get into that company from each particular school. </p>
<p>Let me give you a more concrete example. The most prestigious management-consulting company in the world is McKinsey. McKinsey is a huge company that hires from many business-schools around the world. And yes, everybody that McKinsey hires right out of B-school will get the same salary. Yet the fact is, it is widely understood that it is easier to get into McKinsey if you come out of certain business schools (most notably Harvard Business School) than it is from others. Every year, something like 15-25% of the entire class of Harvard Business School will take jobs at Mckinsey. Yeah, that's right, the entire class. That's an astouding percentage. Can you get into McKinsey if you come from a less-prominent B-school? Of course you can. And some people do that. And if you do, you will make the same salary as the other McKinsey people. But the point is that it's simply harder to do that. It's harder (not impossible, but harder) to get hired by coming out of a no-name B-school than coming from an elite one. Furthermore, the more elite of the B-school, the easier it becomes to get hired. </p>
<p>*
[quote]
For your information, the graduation rate also incorporates the transfer students into the consideration. Thus, the graduation rate cannot be used to gauge the level of dedication by the students at respective schools
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Believe me, I am very well aware of what Berkeley is about. I don't want to sound conceited, but I doubt that there is a lot about Berkeley that you can tell me that I don't already know. Just trust me on this one, you don't want to challenge me on how well I know Berkeley.</p>
<p>Now, speaking to your point, if what you are saying is that Berkeley has lots of students who aren't really dedicated, then that's just another reason to choose MIT over Berkeley. After all, why would you want to go to a school where a lot of students aren't dedicated to graduate? Just from a purely social standpoint, you will benefit from a school where the students feel dedicated to their school and are highly motivated to complete their studies, rather than a school where a significant chunk is just floating around, and who don't really feel much of a bond to the school. </p>
<p>*Again, prestige</p>
<p>You yourself invoked the peer evaluation ratings from USNews, and so you can see that MIT has more prestige than Berkeley does. I personally have reasons to doubt some of the validity of those prestige rankings, but, hey, you are the one who brought it up, not me. And even with those rankings, you see that MIT is better than Berkeley. If Berkeley and MIT really did have equivalent reputations, then MIT and Berkeley should be tied in the prestige rankings. We see that that is not true. </p>
<p>But anyway, the entire point is not to sit here and bash Berkeley unduly. Berkeley is a pretty good school. Yet the fact is, when it comes to tech education, it is not as good as MIT is. The prestige rankings (peer evaluation) indicates this. The salary numbers indicate this. The yield ratings indicate this (in that more Berkeley students would rather transfer to MIT than there are MIT students who would rather transfer to Berkeley). Berkeley is obviously a better non-tech school, but on the other hand, if you don't want to do tech, then you probably aren't interested in MIT in the first place, so it's a moot point. </p>
<p>I have no problem in saying that Berkeley can provide a good education and that Berkeley is a pretty good school. But to say that Berkeley students are (or are viewed) as good as MIT students are, I think you're reaching a bit.</p>
<p>Berkeley big.
MIT small.</p>
<p>Berkeley public.
MIT private.</p>
<p>Berkeley very selective.
MIT even more selective.</p>
<p>For UG education, smaller, private, more selective better.</p>