Berkeley tougher than Stanford?

<p>I dunno. The California schools seem to despise letting out-of-staters in. Is Berkeley as tough to get in from other states as HYPSM? I've posted this once before but didn't get any response since people just started arguing about whether S or Berk. is the better school.</p>

<p>I was accepted into Berkeley out of state and was rejected from Stanford Early Decision.</p>

<p>I would say yes, albeit to a slightly lesser extent. I've posted statistics before about the average SATs, GPAs, etc. and they all point to the contention that OOS Berkeley admissions are on par with HYPSM. Others, I'm sure, will argue the opposite.</p>

<p>21% of out-of-state applicants are admitted to Berkeley while only 13% of all applicants are admitted to Stanford. However, less than 10% of international students are admitted to Berkeley. So, then, you might say getting in as an international student is harder, however, you'll probably get more financial aid at Stanford than Berkeley.</p>

<p>What does all this mean? Who cares? I don't. Forget it and be glad you're going to such a great school.</p>

<p>i got in to berkeley out of state but didn't get into brown.</p>

<p>Communist, the argument based upon percentages doesn't hold up. If you've ever taken a course in statistics (or applied even the most common of sense), you would realize that the single parameter of percent admitted bears no significance on the relative difficulty of admission. You are making the broad assumption that the applicant pools for Stanford and Berkeley OOS are exactly the same. Do you have any basis for this?</p>

<p>I have a friend who got a good scholarship at Stanford and was rejected by Berkeley for out-of-state.</p>

<p>In most cases, the top private schools will be easier to get in. However, there have been many cases where students who get into these very colleges did not get into Berkeley from out-of-state. I'm sure there are some kids out there from Tennessee or Kentucky or wherever who judges the standards of Berkeley by its, say, SAT average alone and unknowingly considers the school their safety so they do a half-baked job on their UC apps and do a wonderful job on their Common Application. There are some students who greatly benefit from teacher recommendations- to the point its their strongpoint- so it'd make sense that these kids would fare better at top private schools over Berkeley. Alternatively, there are students who have engaged in minor activities but have an excellent academic record, not including freshman year, so they'll likely get a "second chance" with Berkeley admissions. And it also varies by which major you apply. I don't think there's even a question that EECS out-of-state is more difficult to get into than most majors at Stanfurd, period. For those who want to enter underrepresented majors, it might very well be that your admissions chances are on par with California residents. Now, these majors are few and far between, but I'd suspect it happens. In any event, let's not turn this into a "I know one kid who got into Harvard and rejected from Berkeley..." type of debate. It is all dependent on the applicant, how well he/she executes his/her application, if the school's application presents the applicant in his/her best light, and what major/school he/she is applying into. Best of luck,</p>

<p>TTG</p>

<p>"In most cases, the top private schools will be easier to get in."</p>

<p>That's simply not true.</p>

<p>One cannot definitely say that Berkeley is tougher to get into than Stanford. Stanford's much higher SAT profile, much lower admittance rate and much smaller class size make it much harder, in-state or out. </p>

<p>Berkeley IS tough to get in, especially out of state. I'm not arguing against that. But it's not harder than Stanford.</p>

<p>
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no significance

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<p>
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the most common of sense

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<p>The most common of sense tells me there is a high level of significance. Your inability to recognize this would seem to suggest either idiocy or poor choice of words. I do aknowledge that the applicant pools are not the same, but there is no stronger indicator from the available information as to which school is harder to get into than the percentage of those admitted and the percentage of those choosing to matriculate.</p>

<p>No. There's your answer.</p>

<p>If I were, say, a Chinese student who lives in Illinois and wanted to become an applied math major with top grades and good ecs but not superstar (i.e. didn't go to USAMO, didn't get into RSI, won some state awards), would my chances look higher at Berkeley or HYPSM?</p>

<p>Unless you're transferring in, your proposed major is unlikely to have any bearing on admission. Also, the adcoms do not know what your ethnicity is unless you mention it in your essay. Adcoms don't have access to the whole application.</p>

<p>Since you obviously have not mastered the forum's ability to view previous posts, I'll repost a prior statement I made that should end all equivocation on this subject:</p>

<hr>

<p>Though it's a bit old, an AEPE report states, "If residency status were not taken into consideration in the admission process, one could estimate from present patterns, even after taking into account of the smaller yield rates for non-resident freshmen admits, that perhaps about 18% of our student body would consist of non resident students."</p>

<p>Source: <a href="http://academic-senate.berkeley.edu/committees/pdf/AEPE_report.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://academic-senate.berkeley.edu/committees/pdf/AEPE_report.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Since the current proportion of non-residents in the student body hovers around 10 percent, and after taking in consideration the lower rate of enrollment for non-residents, it is roughly twice as difficult to be admitted as an out of state or international student. This assertion, albeit not entirely empirically rigorous, would suggest that out of state admissions are much more difficult than most people think. Additionally, as seen on Table 37 of the Moores Report (which, as some of you may know, caused quite a furor over UC Berkeley's admission practices), accepted OOS students had an average GPA of 4.44 as opposed to the Californian 4.25. Also, OOS students had an approximate average SAT score of 1432, while residents had an approximate average SAT of 1325.</p>

<p>Source: <a href="http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/compreview/mooresreport.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/compreview/mooresreport.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Though the data is a little dated and a few loose assumptions are made, it does certainly lay credence to Sakky's argument (never thought I'd say that!).</p>

<hr>

<p>Implementing the same methodology as was used to computed the average OOS Berkeley SAT - weighting by percentage and assuming SAT distribution within each of the 100 point spreads is symmetric - the Stanford common data set for 2005 yields an average SAT score of 1434. </p>

<p>Source: <a href="http://www.stanford.edu/home/statistics/%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.stanford.edu/home/statistics/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Hence, the difference between Berkeley OOS and Stanford (using the limited data provided by the UC system) reduces to a difference of two SAT points.</p>

<p>Just so that you know, I didn't read one word of your post and I don't plan on it.</p>

<p>Come on, children, play nice.</p>

<p>"And it also varies by which major you apply. I don't think there's even a question that EECS out-of-state is more difficult to get into than most majors at Stanfurd, period."</p>

<p>First off, let me dispel the myths about applying to Stanford within a certain major. In all of the HYPSMC schools, you are not admitted based on what major you choose. Applying as an art major is just as hard as applying as an electrical engineering or computer science major. Once you are admitted, you can choose from whichever major you like....whether it's EE or CS or Chem or English. </p>

<p>"I have a friend who got a good scholarship at Stanford and was rejected by Berkeley for out-of-state."</p>

<p>Stanford does not hand out merit scholarships. Period. </p>

<p>"Communist, the argument based upon percentages doesn't hold up. If you've ever taken a course in statistics (or applied even the most common of sense), you would realize that the single parameter of percent admitted bears no significance on the relative difficulty of admission. You are making the broad assumption that the applicant pools for Stanford and Berkeley OOS are exactly the same. Do you have any basis for this?"</p>

<p>The applicant pools for Stanford and Berkeley OOS are not exactly the same. In fact, the applicant pool for Stanford is probably higher. That makes the higher percentage of Berkeley OOS admits all the more reason for us to believe that Stanford is harder to get into than Berkeley OOS. The only way you can convince people that Berkeley OOS is harder than Stanford is if you prove that the Berkeley pool is more academically qualified. However, I highly doubt the Berkeley OOS pool is more academically qualified than the Stanford pool. My reasons being that if they are qualified enough to get into HYPSMC, why would they want to go to Berkeley and pay much higher tuition than 90% of the student body? If Berkeley purposely makes policies to limit the enrollment of out-of-staters, why would the best of them want to go to Berkeley as opposed to schools that embrace out-of-staters? Is there some sort of masochistic quality to college admissions?</p>

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In all of the HYPSMC schools, you are not admitted based on what major you choose. Applying as an art major is just as hard as applying as an electrical engineering or computer science major.

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<p>Thats not true. When applying to HYPSMC, etc, you specify which college you are applying to: school of engineering, business, college, etc. Each department has different admission standards. Besides, you can petition to change your major to any harder/easier major at Berkeley.</p>

<p>"if they are qualified enough to get into HYPSMC, why would they want to go to Berkeley and pay much higher tuition than 90% of the student body?"
Still costs much less than HYPSMC, and financial aid, I believe, is easier to obtain.</p>

<p>Whenever i meet a guy who studied Computer Science at Yale, I can't help laughing... LOLZ!</p>