<p>One way to compensate for the difference in difficulty is to then increase the admissions standards for transfer applicants relative to high school senior applicants. That’s basically what the top private schools do - as hard as it may be to be admitted to HYPSM as a high school senior, it’s even harder (or, in the case of Princeton, impossible) to be admitted as a transfer. </p>
<p>But as I have discussed on other threads, the most indefensible feature of the transfer admissions process is how it allows transfer admittees to skip over many weeder courses that freshman-admits are forced to take. If the freshman-admits have to be weeded out, fine, so should the transfer students. Otherwise, don’t weed out the freshman-admits. If a particular community college course allows transfer students to skip over certain Berkeley weeder courses, then Berkeley students should be allowed to skip those weeder courses by jointly enrolling and taking those community college courses as well. What’s fair is fair. </p>
<p>Otherwise, transfer students are effectively being provided special privileges, to the deep and understandable resentment of the other students.</p>
<p>@sakky, and I believe to add, Caltech seems to require a transfer examination. I think that is an efficient way of assessing preparation, without requiring anyone to retake classes. </p>
<p>In graduate school, people generally have to pass certain qualifying exams to stay in the program. Transfers entering as juniors are in effect entering Berkeley as students ready to specialize. Thus, an efficient way to ensure fairness is having Berkeley professor certified examinations, passing which (or passing equivalent courses) satisfies a “transfer requirement”. </p>
<p>The Caltech exam is for admission, but as Berkeley has no uniform core, one can leave it up to professors in the given department to ensure things as they feel fit.</p>
<p>Also, for the record, I doubt this. Berkeley admits mainly in-state students, and that automatically places a factor other than quality of the student very high up in importance. That, together with the large class, signifies that Berkeley is certainly not in a position to claim it “almost” has stronger undergraduates than Cornell.</p>
<p>That said, in the scope of things, there are a ton of really strong undergraduates at both schools, and it seems a bit pointless to try to claim one school is clearly better uniformly enough that it matters.</p>