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um, prestige-wise, berkeley is more world-renowned than caltech. The world-class school includes Harvard-Yale-MIT-Columbia-Stanford-Berkeley.
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I'm not going to disagree, but I think that's because those schools are a) a lot larger than Caltech, and b) offer great programs outside of math/science/engineering. </p>
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I dont wanna discourage OP, but IMO, a regent scholar @berkeley (super-star) will open you many more doors than a back-door student @caltech.
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Please refrain from calling waitlist students "back-door students" - they're still perfectly qualified for admission and are probably motivated to succeed more than regular admits. Also, I'm sure you have little idea of what opportunities there are for every undergraduate at Caltech, so please don't post such unqualified generalities.</p>
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P.S.this is 5 years ago- i know a guy who got into harvard & caltech. A brilliant student, extremely good at math/physics. He chosed caltech over harvard cuz of caltech's AXA scholarship (full-ride). After freshman year, he transferred to harvard. Paraphrasing what he said: "caltech is wonderful for techie courses, but other than math/science, there is not much". Harvard accepted him as a transfered sophomore. He majored physics at haravrd, now in new york, looking to go graduate school.
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To the OP, I'd recommend taking a look at the Caltech course catelog and see if there are not enough courses to hold your interest. It's certainly possible that there aren't, and then you shouldn't come if you think you need more humanities/social sciences than are offered.</p>
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It depends on the person of course, but getting Regents/Chancellors at Berkeley was actually a turn-off for me. Not the perks, of course, but being among the top 200 admitted takes somewhat away from the inch-by-inch struggle to the top. Not to say that it would be easy even so, but wouldn't it be so much more interesting to know everyone else currently stands stronger than you? Being a backdoor student means you have so much more development to go, and who knows what heights you can achieve by your end?</p>
<p>Then again, I might be peculiar in this manner.
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This was exactly one of the reasons why I didn't really want to go to Cal. You are definitely not alone.</p>
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The world-class school includes Harvard-Yale-MIT-Columbia-Stanford-Berkeley.
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<p>Columbia over Princeton? </p>
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um, prestige-wise, berkeley is more world-renowned than caltech. The world-class school includes Harvard-Yale-MIT-Columbia-Stanford-Berkeley. </p>
<p>I dont wanna discourage OP, but IMO, a regent scholar @berkeley (super-star) will open you many more doors than a back-door student @caltech.
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<p>I too have to disagree with the notion that being on the wait-list is somehow a 'backdoor'. </p>
<p>Besides, who is to say that you really will perform well at Berkeley. i know a lot of people are tired of hearing this story, but again, I would drag out the example of my old friend who came in as a Chancellor's Scholar, and then proceeded to flunk right out of Berkeley. Nothing says that just because you are a Regent/Chancellor's Scholar, that you are automatically going to be one of the best students at Berkeley. There is some correlation, but certainly no iron law. </p>
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"caltech is wonderful for techie courses, but other than math/science, there is not much". Harvard accepted him as a transfered sophomore. He majored physics at haravrd, now in new york, looking to go graduate school.
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<p>I find this curious to say the least. If he had left Caltech for Harvard to major in the humanities, then that's one thing. But to complain about the math/science focus of Caltech, and then to end up majoring in physics at Harvard anyway? It seems to me that there is more going on here, such as perhaps the guy was simply gunning for the Harvard brand-name. There's nothing wrong with that, but it would be refreshing if people would admit that this is what they are doing.</p>
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Quote:
It depends on the person of course, but getting Regents/Chancellors at Berkeley was actually a turn-off for me. Not the perks, of course, but being among the top 200 admitted takes somewhat away from the inch-by-inch struggle to the top. Not to say that it would be easy even so, but wouldn't it be so much more interesting to know everyone else currently stands stronger than you? Being a backdoor student means you have so much more development to go, and who knows what heights you can achieve by your end?</p>
<p>Then again, I might be peculiar in this manner. </p>
<p>This was exactly one of the reasons why I didn't really want to go to Cal. You are definitely not alone.
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<p>Every chancellor scholar I talk to feels that the process was random, that they don't know why they were selected, and that they know plenty of non-RC scholars who they think could have been chosen (and were not).</p>
<p>Just because you were given the Regents doesn't mean you are smarter or more qualified or the top of anything. It just means you were given an award. The arrogance of some people is amazing. Let me point something out to all of you high school kids. You can't tell the difference between someone who scored 1400 on their SATs and someone who scored 1500. Assuming that you're somehow better or smarter than the rest of us poor slobs makes you look like a jerk</p>
<p>I have to agree, being a Regents scholar is not that big of a deal. To say someone is a "superstar" without even taking any courses at Berkeley is being extremely presumptuous. Also, Rabban, you are correct that Berkeley is more prestigious internationally (not by very much though, even though the size difference is staggering), but that isn't necessarily the best way to pick a college, especially because Berkeley gets almost all of its fame from its graduate programs. I was more impressed with the caliber of the Caltech student body than the student body at Berkeley and I felt like it was an excellent fit. I wanted to go to a place where I'd be humbled by my peers (and hopefully pick up a thing or two ;-)), and I think most people would agree that Caltech beats Berkeley undergrad in this regard.</p>
<p>"Berkeley gets almost all of its fame from its graduate programs."</p>
<p>All schools do. That's why we don't mention Amherst or Pomona or Harvey Mudd with HYPS.</p>
<p>"I wanted to go to a place where I'd be humbled by my peers (and hopefully pick up a thing or two ;-)), and I think most people would agree that Caltech beats Berkeley undergrad in this regard."</p>
<p>I wouldn't, but I'm an English major and I don't think Caltech students are going to humble anyone in that regard.</p>
<p>On an international level, I guess grad programs are the ones that stand out, but this only enhances my argument that one shouldn't pick a college based on international prestige, a topic brought up by Rabban. You would be surprised at how well Caltech students can read and write too (I know test scores are a horrible metric, but they are the only things that are standardized. Anyway, the verbal 25-75% range for the SAT at Caltech is 710-770), but they come to Tech to focus on their main interests, which are math and science. But you are right, I would go to Berkeley over Caltech as an English major simply because there would be more varied course offerings.</p>
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Just because you were given the Regents doesn't mean you are smarter or more qualified or the top of anything. It just means you were given an award. The arrogance of some people is amazing. Let me point something out to all of you high school kids. You can't tell the difference between someone who scored 1400 on their SATs and someone who scored 1500. Assuming that you're somehow better or smarter than the rest of us poor slobs makes you look like a jerk
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Hmm. Amusing.</p>
<p>I don't take the measure of a person through SAT scores or GPA, personally, but I wonder if you'll deny that generally higher GPAs and SATs correlate to higher academic performance in college.
Obviously you don't go up to a person and ask them, "What's your SAT?" or something from a past era, "What's your IQ?" since you cannot put a quantifier on intelligence. However, I wonder if all the colleges out there are utter idiots to use GPA and SAT as a metric for helping decide whether or not to admit students.</p>
<p>The importance of it is trends, and there is correlation between stats and performance.
There would be a significant difference between going to a school where your stats far exceed the average, and a school where your stats are muddled in the average or even below the average.</p>
<p>Generalizing to one or two individuals is folly--using it to predict the average quality of the student body is not.</p>
<p>Or will you assert that Cal is not, in fact, far less selective than most other elite institutions and in this way has on average a weaker student body?</p>
<p>Your indignation is admirable, but only defensible when applying it on an individual basis.</p>
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The importance of it is trends, and there is correlation between stats and performance.
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<p>I think the thing is that yes, a 4.0 HS student will probably do better than a 3.3, but I don't think we can assume that a 4.0 is going to do better than a 3.8. On the same note, a 1500 to a 1400 could just mean that the 1500 practiced a few hours longer than the 1400 in this one instance. This doesn't mean that the 1400 will always study less and perform poorly. If you disagree, I'd like to see research that shows correlation on these minute scales. </p>
<p>When it comes to college admissions, I think it's a matter of conservatism. It would be a worse error to have a 1400 student that performs poorly than a 1500 who does.</p>
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Or will you assert that Cal is not, in fact, far less selective than most other elite institutions and in this way has on average a weaker student body?
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<p>I agree to certain extents, but I'm just wondering what are you basing this on? How are we measuring "weaker student body?" Have there been studies, or is this completely subjective?</p>
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All schools do. That's why we don't mention Amherst or Pomona or Harvey Mudd with HYPS.
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<p>I wouldn't say that all schools do. Princeton gets more of its fame from its undergrad program than from its graduate programs. In fact, Princeton is really a LAC that just also happens to have a bunch of graduate programs. But at the end of the day, it's really a LAC. </p>
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I wouldn't, but I'm an English major and I don't think Caltech students are going to humble anyone in that regard.
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<p>Well, if you're not humbled by the English skills of the average Caltech student, then you really won't be humbled by the English skills of the average Berkeley student, especially the ones in the technical majors. Heck, this even extends to some of the humanities students at Berkeley. Sadly, there are a lot of quite lazy students at Berkeley who are majoring in some of the humanitiies just because they are easy and they can pass their classes without having to put in much effort. Whatever else you might say about Caltech students, you can say that almost none of them are lazy.</p>
<p>I got the impression from a couple of people on these boards that because they were selected as regents scholars they would be head and shoulders above everyone else. My point is that, while in school, you will most likely not be able to tell a 1400 from a 1500 sat score under most circumstances. As I'm sure you noticed from my post, I didn't say anything about GPA or SAT as a measure of college success. I used a very specific example, which was that of two people with 1400 from a 1500 sat scores. And I think you should be specific when you say "elite instututions," as that definition varies widely depending on who you ask. If by elite you mean HYSP, then yes Cal has a weaker student body when measured by SAT and is far less selective. If by elite you mean the top 20 or so schools, then I would say Cal is very selective and does not have a weaker student body then the majority of the elites.</p>
<p>Sakky, you have no idea what you're talking about. First, I didn't say anything about being humbled by Berkeley english students. Second, english majors aren't overly concerned with "english skills." You're stuck in science world where everything is about right of wrong answers. English majors are concerned with creativity and and critical thinking, not how well you scored on the verbal section of the SATs. Lastly, I think technical majors are easy. Prove me wrong.</p>
<p>i think your personality has to be a REAL big factor in this one....
CALTECH is a GREAT SCHOOL.. and if engineering / mathematics is your passion.. then go for that
but my AP chem teacher taught general chemistry and organic chemistry at caltech.. and he told us their grad school was fine but their undergraduate school "sucked".. he said he's never seen a more depressed overworked bunch of undergraduate students who seemed to have no social life.
The school itself is pretty small in Pasadena, whereas berkeley is HUGE.. sometimes too big for one's liking...
berkeley as you know.. is very lively.. active.. with its "study hard party hard" theme. and yes it'll be much more competitive to get many research opportunities, nonetheless it's engineering school is absolutely amazing... </p>
<p>consider what you're looking for in a college
academics social life all that jazz</p>
<p>sakky:In US, Berkeley is well recognized as top 10 colleges along with HYPS, MIT,Columbia, Cornell, Caltech, Chicago. However, in a global sense, the pecking order is something like this: Harvard-MIT-Berkeley-Stanford-Yale-Columbia..... This is international reputation, probably due largely to graduate research and faculty recognition. :)</p>
<p>haha yea, it's like Harvard >> MIT, Berkeley > Yale Stanford >> Columbia. Well, let's face it- no matter how you slice it, Harvard is such a HUGE brand-name whether in this country or globally :p</p>