<p>Sounds like another PA.</p>
<p>"Berkeley's yield rate is high compared to most schools, but not compared to many of the elite schools that it should be measuring up to."</p>
<p>Well, it does have UCLA competing for the same students.</p>
<p>That is true, but it seems a bit unreasonable that a school as exemplary as Berkeley has to admit 40,000 students to get its 20,000 students, which is already more than a little bit unwieldy a number.</p>
<p>The situation is certainly not unbearable by any stretch of the definition, but there are many aspects, housing, class sizes, etc. that I think would be eased if that number were somewhat smaller, or more resources were somehow solicited. But soliciting more resources would be significantly more difficult than reducing incoming class size.</p>
<p><<i'm just="" warning="" a="" certain="" group="" of="" people="" that="" might="" be="" coming="" here="" not="" to="" waste="" 4="" years="" their="" lives="" in="" place="" like="" berkeley.="">></i'm></p>
<p>Yes, Polite Antagonis aka CantSilenceTruth. You are correct. The group of people that should not attend a place like Berkeley are those who overgeneralize their own bad experiences onto everyone else, who filter their past, present and probably future through the most negative lens, who can't find opportunities to make a positive difference at one of the world's best-known and top universities, who can't seek out people they admire (or even admit that they exist) but who instead slap labels such as "untalented" and "moron" on everyone else, and finally, who would rather drag a place through the mud over and over while telling the world they are doing community service. Yes, it's true. People like you should not attend Berkeley. Your own definition of "untalented student" fits you. Thank's for the personification. The place is so clearly wasted on you.</p>
<p>
[quote]
That is true, but it seems a bit unreasonable that a school as exemplary as Berkeley has to admit 40,000 students to get its 20,000 students, which is already more than a little bit unwieldy a number.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>HUH?</p>
<p>Your numbers are wrong. Assuming you are talking about four-year admission rates and yields, it's more like Berkeley has to admit about 32,000 to get its 20,000-while rejecting about 136,000.</p>
<p>Yeah, or do it by year (it's more clear). Very roughly, let's say 43,000 apply, about 24% are accepted, and about 40 something % enroll, I think.</p>
<p>This year more students were admitted but they still expect the same number of students to enroll. I wonder how they predict it. Intuitively Cal would have offered fewer acceptances.</p>
<p>You stand by your points? Alright, lets take one example. Lets do this.</p>
<p>
[quote]
1) Higher Tuition Costs (especially if you are out of state, I pay more than a stanford student for much larger classes and less credit hours a week).
[/quote]
</p>
<p>It is true that out-of-state students pay higher tuition costs relative to in-state students (disregarding private scholarships, such as the athletic scholarships, which I know little about). The way you present it, however, is that you pay more than . . . well, its ambiguous at first. You go on to say more than a Stanford student. If you get financial aid, and it would have to be at the very least 5k as of this year, then you would pay the same. You pay thousands less than a Stanford student not on fin-aid. You said you pay more. You dont even bring up fin-aid. If you brought this in, perhaps youre right, perhaps you do pay more than you would if you went to Stanford, but its not part of your post here, and doesnt seem to be part of your consideration. Your comment that Berkeleys classes are larger holds, although my friend there has her class of 300, her class of 100. But you go onto say that you pay more (which is dubious) for less credit hours a week. 1) Stanford is on the quarter system and comparison of credit hours from it to a school on the semester system doesnt make sense. 2) You are the one choosing to take fewer classes, as you could take up to 20.5 units without approval, and more units with approval. But you didnt. And a Stanford student who went here on semester transfer wouldnt be taking 20.5 units either. So your claim is false. </p>
<p>This one is the easiest to show how youre false in what you would call an objective way, but every time Ive posted the above, youve stood by it. </p>
<hr>
<p>
[quote]
the only thing that was found is that they're are enough different situations at Berkeley for either positive or negative decisions either way. I'm just pointing out how bad Berkeley can get and how very little its worth it to come here as an out-of-state student.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>What do you mean by the first sentence? And no, what youre pointing out is how bad the school is, how stupid everyone here is, how nobody who does well here really deserved it, but they gamed the system. Thats some of what you point out.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I think its pretty simple to see many of the things I say are subjective, and as I've pointed out, I just want the idea out there so people can see for themselves.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>So why do you state them as if they were fact, then? Why dont you say I feel that Berkeley students suck and not Every Berkeley student sucks? </p>
<p>
[quote]
If you're unhappy here, in many cases you are trapped and its very hard to escape.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>In many cases? How about sometimes? How about its possible? And how about you chose not to escape. Certainly youre correct, there are situations in which one can get trapped at Berkeley, but theyre not yours, and theyre not who youre trying to help. People can transfer. Ive read that a third of college students do. But I guess Berkeley prevents them from doing that, somehow.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I've made the best of the situation and am heading for greener pastures. I'm just warning a certain group of people that might be coming here not to waste 4 years of their lives in a place like Berkeley.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Youre going to love Columbia (if you want liberals, Berkeley was a good warm up!) and New York. You made the best of a bad situation in some ways, but in other ways, you created it. Is that Berkeleys fault? Californias fault? Does it matter?</p>
<p>
[quote]
[quote]
Quote:
That is true, but it seems a bit unreasonable that a school as exemplary as Berkeley has to admit 40,000 students to get its 20,000 students, which is already more than a little bit unwieldy a number.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>HUH?</p>
<p>Your numbers are wrong. Assuming you are talking about four-year admission rates and yields, it's more like Berkeley has to admit about 32,000 to get its 20,000-while rejecting about 136,000.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>You may be right, since I don't remember the exact numbers. I just remember the ballpark was around there.</p>
<p>In any case, what I remember most clearly is this wonderful statistical composition somewhere on Berkeley's web site (I looked through my history but can't find it at the moment) that has the acceptance and matriculation numbers of Berkeley compared to Stanford, MIT, Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, etc.</p>
<p>The little bar on Berkeley that was next to the total acceptances, indicating number of enrolled, was about half the height of admits, while the others had just a tiny drop from one bar to another.</p>
<p>A point that is beaten to death however. Berkeley's yield is high. I would prefer a higher yield (with lower overall acceptances), however, it is still an excellent school nonetheless (or I wouldn't be planning to attend it). However much I would discuss it, it is not likely to change.</p>
<p>W. Bush is will be at stanford this weekend. I don't know if that makes it better or worse.</p>
<p>rofl gentlemanandscholar!</p>
<p>Allorion, you are thinking of the peer performance metrics. </p>
<p><a href="http://metrics.vcbf.berkeley.edu/%5B/url%5D">http://metrics.vcbf.berkeley.edu/</a></p>
<p>Yes, Polite Antagonis aka CantSilenceTruth. You are correct. The group of people that should not attend a place like Berkeley are those who overgeneralize their own bad experiences onto everyone else, who filter their past, present and probably future through the most negative lens, who can't find opportunities to make a positive difference at one of the world's best-known and top universities, who can't seek out people they admire (or even admit that they exist) but who instead slap labels such as "untalented" and "moron" on everyone else, and finally, who would rather drag a place through the mud over and over while telling the world they are doing community service. Yes, it's true. People like you should not attend Berkeley. Your own definition of "untalented student" fits you. Thank's for the personification. The place is so clearly wasted on you. </p>
<p>You remind me of the type of mother I am glad mine is not.
Berkeley students, including most of the new admits are strong enough and smart enough people to read through the various threads and come to our own conclusions. Those that cannot should consider whether they have what it takes to survive, thrive and excel at Berkeley.
Who are you to say that Polite Antagonis/Can't Silence Truth shouldn't be at Berkeley, much less share his/her opinion? I don't agree with many words he/she says, but he/she has a right to express them.</p>
<p>greatestyen, you are indeed correct. That was the thing I was looking at.</p>
<p>Well, I suppose Berkeley's numbers don't look that bad. I would simply prefer they looked a bit more like Harvard or Princeton's. But then again, I suppose it would be less like Berkeley then, with its own resounding characteristics. <em>sigh</em> Can't have your cake and eat it too.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Who are you to say that Polite Antagonis/Can't Silence Truth shouldn't be at Berkeley, much less share his/her opinion? I don't agree with many words he/she says, but he/she has a right to express them.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>And who are YOU to tell her she has no right to post whatever she feels like? (If you're going to defend freedom of speech for PA, you can't be having a double standard.)</p>
<p>The reality of the situation however, is that PA paints a vastly overgeneralized (and negative) picture of the Cal undergrad experience. Most students do not feel that way. As evidenced by this poll</p>
<p>,most undergraduate students at Cal are very happy with not only the education, but the social experience. It has been pointed out that perhaps the survey is self-selective-meaning that the undergrads who hate Cal would not care to fill it out. The opposite is true. When humans hate something, they flock to the opportunity to belittle it. This is especially true in this case since every student is sent an email notifying him or her about the survey and how easy it is to complete. Few Cal haters would miss the opportunity to bash Cal. It may therefore be concluded that the survey accurately depicts how the majority of Cal undergrads "feel." That is, "happy." </p>
<p>In defence of momof2inca, I would like to say that I have already posted this survey and other pages of Cal propaganda which singlehandedly prove that most Cal students are quite happy with Cal. When Polite Antagonis read that post, s/he dismissed the findings because s/he MISREAD them. In other words, he himself is the "moron" and "unintelligent student" he claims is overruning the Cal campus. If you don't believe me, search for the post. </p>
<p>Now that's not to say that s/he hasn't learned from the experience. On this thread s/he properly qualifies some of his/her statements. So, obviously s/he is capable of learning from mistakes and isn't as unintelligent as it frequently appears. That is not to say that s/he is not elitist and racist, however. (Look these up.)</p>
<p>"Who are you to say that Polite Antagonis/Can't Silence Truth shouldn't be at Berkeley, much less share his/her opinion? I don't agree with many words he/she says, but he/she has a right to express them."</p>
<p>I am not sure who this was originally directed at but I think it is too much already. On the Berkeley threads I read, it is the same thing over and over by him. We get it he thinks UCB is horrible. Not only that but he has insulted people just for going to the school and having high gpa's. His anger and bitterness cause me to disregard all of his posts as overdramatic and unreliable.</p>
<p>"The truth is Berkeley is what you make of it"</p>
<p>And you have made it a negative experience</p>
<p>"Yeah they are smart people if you go and canvass the campus and find the ones that are smart, not busy, and willing to be friends."</p>
<p>I am guessing the students would be friendly to you if you did not have such a negative attitude towards them. I know if you acted towards me the way you talk about them, I would run in the other direction.</p>
<p>It sounds like you really are the cause of your own misery. Did you not realize how big the school was when you entered?</p>
<p>Actually, lets go over ALL of them so you can't use selection bias and OVERGENERALIZE from one sample of my arguments.</p>
<p>"1) Higher Tuition Costs (especially if you are out of state, I pay more than a stanford student for much larger classes "and less credit hours a week)."</p>
<p>"If you get financial aid, and it would have to be at the very least 5k as of this year, then you would pay the same. You pay thousands less than a Stanford student not on fin-aid."</p>
<p>Yes, with my income bracket, I would get about a third of Stanford paid for me. At Berkeley, tuition costs started being jacked up about 20-30% a year for out of state people since my first year here wheras in state tuitions had much less hikes. This happened at the same time library hours were cut and classes became even more impacted. I should have been clearer and said "many." </p>
<p>"But you go onto say that you pay more (which is dubious) for less credit hours a week."</p>
<p>I guess I made a mistake in my statement here. I meant less avaible credit hours a week as it has been difficult to get all my classes. I also probably meant that the resources devoted to classes were less which is not clear. My bad. My first year wasn't bad with more gsi's per student. That has not been the case in recent years.</p>
<p>"2) Poor social environment. Half the clubs are empty or nearly empty (you have the officers and those that want to be officers, i.e. Resume Whores). They boot you off campus after first year so you're suppose to befriend people on your floor (about 12 people) or your building (maybe about 50). If you are very selective socially, then you're out of luck. VERY cliquish social community (The biggest groups are the Asian American Association, and Asian something or other, and then you have a bunch of much smaller groups). People in clubs are nice but you'll probably never get to know them very well."</p>
<p>"3) Huge classes. Even upper division, problems with the budget have made classes generally large, impersonal and boring."</p>
<p>"4) Poor quality peers. This is subjective but most of the people you meet will be not smart and many times will slow down the class by asking dumb questions. They are the "cream" of the crop of the 2nd worst high school system in the US, where 1/3 of all students drop out, and it really shows many times.""</p>
<p>"5) Poor opportunities for generalists. If you are very determined and know what you want to be, you might get the internship or job you're going for. If you're tring to figure it out, good luck, because they are a ton of applicants for every position you apply for and getting behind is easy, when everyone else has specialized. Its really a bit more cut-throat environment than I have heard from my other friends at ivies and University of Texas."</p>
<p>"6) Many poor quality teachers. This is a research institution and it shows, many professors are just poor quality and seem to care more about research than teaching. Some test you on new stuff not on any of the homeworks they assigned, just because they can. I thought I had left having to consider teacher politics to high school, but you really have to be careful picking teachers, as some classes will be fairer and harder relative to the professor and not the class. Be especially wary of "visiting" professors and professors who have never taught a class before."</p>
<p>"7) CRAPPY housing. If paying highly inflated prices for really crapp housing is your thing, then berkeley will suit you. After the 1st year of paying for extremely overpriced, unairconditioned housing shared with a great deal of idiots, the University sends you out to live in extremely overpriced, unairconditoned housing. Which is only a slight improvement because some areas of berkeley have very high crime."</p>
<p>"8) Shortened semester (due to budget problems) means NO dead days for finals and cheapened academic expereince. Thats a slight exaggeration, we had one dead day last semester, which is next to nothing. So not only will class selection be dominated by politics (picking fair professors), but also your final schedule because having a few extra days between your finals really is a lifesaver for your sleep schedule and your grades. I think we had a week longer semester when I was a freshman here with 2-3 dead days, which is still failry short because we had a month long winter break. Now its even cheaper than that. Libraries close earlier now as well and they are the ONLY quiet place to study on really."</p>
<p>"9) Generall rude people and students. People talking in the library very loudly, playing music too loudly in the dorms, etc. The trash really gets into berkeley and it cheapens the whole experience. The people you meet that aren't students are generally annoying uber-liberals that refuse to tolerate other viewpoints and act particularly righteous."</p>
<p>"The positives about Berkeley is the brand name (not that big a deal IMO since there are like 8000 berkeley grads a year), the relative quickness in which you can get a degree (just get credits and go), the very good grad program which sometimes spills over when you have a good graduate student instructor, and the relative value for in-staters (the UC system in general is a good deal if you only spend like 10k a year total for housing and tuition and are on a business or engineering track)."</p>
<p>"However, if you're like me and a lot of friends and want to use college as a growing experience, I would avoid Berkeley, completely."</p>
<p>Everything else I completely stand by. You can't just pick and choose arguments you want to and say its a pertinent to the whole with non-random selection, especially with a sample size this small.</p>
<p>"So why do you state them as if they were fact, then? Why dont you say I feel that Berkeley students suck and not Every Berkeley student sucks?</p>
<p>I don't recall say that, I usually try to use more accurate qualifiers now such as "many." </p>
<p>"In many cases? How about sometimes? How about its possible? And how about you chose not to escape. Certainly youre correct, there are situations in which one can get trapped at Berkeley, but theyre not yours, and theyre not who youre trying to help. People can transfer. Ive read that a third of college students do. But I guess Berkeley prevents them from doing that, somehow."</p>
<p>In a way I was trapped, 1 of my GSI's who had been in classes with me reneged on their commitment to write a recommendation for me to transfer and because of Berkeley's class size and the classes I selected fall of my freshman year, I didn't get the professor contact necessary to make it up. Indeed, I wasn't that motivated to leave Berkeley because even though it is a piddling school, the academics partially made up for it. This was much less true of my last 2 years here. There is nothing special about Berkely academics. I can go to MIT OCW and get pretty much the same thing, probably more because MIT expects more from most of its students across all disciplines (this is subjective and based on the classes I've taken here that I also looked up on OCW).</p>
<p>Again, I point out the stories Sakky pointed out to about engineering majors being stuck here because of mediocre gpa's. Stuck here not only in the sense of at Berkeley but also in the major. The transfer barrier is also higher for many Berkeley students because you are required to have professor recs as well.</p>
<p>Most of these classes are taught the same at any school; its the professor and student interaction that are what make the classes unique and the truth of the matter is a large portion of the campus is apathetic, many teachers do not care, and class sizes are large anyways. That has been one of my main points throughout and has yet to be refuted. Mitigated perhaps. In smaller majors you will not notice this as much, and many people do not care about graduate school admissions so they don't care if a professor evaluates your work, and there are a few professors who care but in general, the trend is to the former rather than the latter because of the UC budget crisis. Of course, its hard to prove this through sound statistical method so I leave it up to people here to decide.</p>
<p>"Youre going to love Columbia (if you want liberals, Berkeley was a good warm up!) and New York. You made the best of a bad situation in some ways, but in other ways, you created it. Is that Berkeleys fault? Californias fault? Does it matter?"</p>
<p>Eastern liberals are more Rockefeller Republicans that defected wheras California liberals are liberals on all fronts. And they will likely be more intelligent than Berkeley admits, by their stats alone, and not practice the knee jerk reactionary liberalism that is most ardently defended by the mediocre minds at Berkeley (yes, it's subjective, come here and see). And for the price, which though larger is not far off on the scale of what was paid to go to Berkeley, I do get guarannteed professor interaction and relatively small class sizes compared to Berkeley. I also get a higher salary coming out of there. The networking will also likely be much better. For the price, I'm definitely getting more value than I ever did at Berkeley.</p>
<p>It is their fault and the schools for letting in so many people unprepared to challenge themselves and their fault for choosing to be left-leaning. Most left-leaning people just choose to associate with their own kind and vice versa. The way Berkeley is set up, people very rarely, if ever, get to challenge their own views or their own intellectual moorings. The acrimony which I get here is testimony to that.</p>
<p>To mom and cal>>> Why do you think I hate Berkeley so much? I actually started my own student group here for a service project, that was one of my many experiences with the incompotency of the average Berkeley student. I ended up having to do most of the work in many of my clubs because nobody knows what they're doing. Its an absurd waste of time to do these clubs because many times there is no professor oversight or any means of competition to ensure accountability. People get to reveal themselves for what they are, which in most cases is being a selfish prick (yes, subjective, join a club wanting to really get things done and see). People join clubs and ask obnoxious questions that basically amount to, "What's in it for me?" There is very little sense of community, even when referring to sports because much of the campus community doesn't follow what happens to Cal teams. And there are many, many clubs that are just a waste of money and resources yet place demands on my student fees. There's a club-club, which evidently is a club about clubs. There's a squirrel-grabbing club or the like (I know, I met the president) where they went around hitting squirrels or something dumb and got 500 dollars a week from the ASUC. Its inane. If you want to get things accomplished at Berkeley you do it yourself and completely apart from the students. Since the quality of student-student interaction is a significant portion of the Berkeley experience, I would have to say you can find better student bodies at many other schools that are less selective than Berkeley. </p>
<p>The dichotomy is that even though the faculty is probably top 5 or top 3, the students are not. So considering that on faculty alone berkeley should be top 5, the fact that its number 20 indicates that the rank of the student body is much lower. I wish I had taken this into account more when I came here.</p>
<p>Do I overgeneralize? All I've said is that you can have a very bad time at Berkeley and that the two things people come here for which are exclusive to other schools (access to faculty and interacting with the student body) are seriously underwhelming and are big hills to climb. Yes, you can overcome them, but why should a school make it so hard for students to access them.</p>
<p>Let's look at other experiences shall we?</p>
<p>I used this post before but it points out the ways in which going to Berkeley can screw students over. And it is so specific that it is obviously not some random troll.</p>
<p>"I chose Berkeley over Stanford and UCLA. Dumbest decision of my life- and unlike most of the other bad decisions in my life, I was completely sober when I made this one.</p>
<p>Hmm- campus safety- there is nothing quite like the incessant harrassment from all the nutjobs the City Council allows to roam loose on the street (hey, when you have to pass resolutions condemning U.S. military action, it doesn't leave much time for solving your own problems). If you think that they don't hurt anyone, you are wrong. One of these transients was involved in the murder of my friend in a Berkeley parking garage. The streets around campus could be confused with a port-a-pody. Nothing like the smell of urine in the morning.</p>
<p>As far as the political science major goes, undergraduates are a mere blip on the department's radar screen. You need a thesis to graduate with honors. I had a professor commit and then renege on this commitment. All the other professors in this subject area claimed that they were overburdened with Ph.D. students. When I turned the department adviser to express my grievances, she shrugged her shoulders. Another friend of mine had a similar experience finding a thesis adviser. Somehow, I can't believe this was an indictment of my intelligence: I had a 4.0 in the major.</p>
<p>The curriculum itself was pathetically Berkeleyesque-this means that there is an absence of ideological diversity. Dependency theory, despite its almost universal repudiation, was still widely taught as incontrovertible fact. Hayek and Mill were never discussed. The lack of ideological diversity among the student body further hampers discussion. Few students have any familiarity with world events and political theory to contribute anything outside of the typical platitudes. Prof. A. James Gregor was the lone expcetion to this rule.</p>
<p>The large class sizes also mean that it is rare to have a professor actually evaluate your work. I found this to be a great disadvantage in graduate school programs.</p>
<p>The poli sci faculty has deteriorated significantly in the past few years. The department's luminaries such as Haas, Jowitt, Breslauer, and Janos are all gone or soon to depart. The bench is thin.</p>
<p>I viewed the graduate school admissions process as a referendum on the value of my degree. Based on my raw numbers, I was completely unimpressed with the results. Berkeley really didn't open many more doors than San Diego State.</p>
<p>However, Berkeley did teach me one very important lesson in life: if you have alienated the majority in Berkeley, you are doing something right. I dream of doing something in my life that causes thousands of Berkeleyites to hang me in effigy.</p>
<p>Even if you are liberal, this is the wrong place for anyone who loves ideas. The political correctness is stifling enough that I can identify too well with many South Park episodes. As someone who loves ideas, I was sorely disappointed with my experience."</p>
<p>"Berkeley is a fraud. It is a terrible place for undergraduate education. Cal is a research institution, pure and simple. Undergrads are a drag on the faculty's research time, so they get short shrift."</p>
<p>"While my major has significant impact on my experience here, since math professors are generally not very distinguished teachers, i have taken enough classes outside my department. And what i experienced wasn't very impressive. Moreover, as an international student, i would urge any out-of-state and international students to go somewhere else. For the exorbitant price you're paying for a berkeley education, this is not worth it at all."</p>
<p>"The Psychology Program at CAL is massive in size making it a very impersonal experience. Even in upper division courses, the average class size is close to 300, making professors very hard to get a hold of. Most of the teaching is actually done by GSI's (graduate student instructors) Professors dont read papers, grade tests or involve themselves on the actual innerworkings of the class. Most of the staff is focused on their research, so if you're interested in research more than class learning than this program may still work for you. If you're the type of student who prefers one on one attention and smaller class sizes, I wouldnt recommend UC Berkeley Psych."</p>
<p>"I've learned that the myths about California are generally true--comparatively, people there are--or become--more superficial. They'll be your best friends for two hours and then forget about you, and after a while you may find yourself feeling lost without an anchor. Sometimes that anchor can be found in a good-paying job in Silicon Valley and people with whom you can play video games."</p>
<p>"ve been here three years.. its cool but not as cool as I might have thought. My brother just graduated from here as well and he still hasnt found a job 7 months so dont think the name is going to save you. "</p>
<p>"When coming to Berkeley, don't believe the hype. The place gives an excellent education, but other than that -- this is not the college experience. If you are looking for "college", go somewhere else. Cal has every scholastic opportunity avaliable -- but very few outlets outside of academics or politics."</p>
<p>The campus is big, but I didn't feel like taking dumbed down majors (which are what the humanities majors are, sorry kiddos) just to have a good gpa or faculty access or going to Greek frat row just to make more than momentary friends at Berkeley.</p>
<p>I've done my best, but Berkeley was not worth the trouble, go elsewhere if you want a real college experience and real intellectual stimulation, (and if you got to Berkeley out of state, you can definitely go somewhere else that's better).</p>
<p>Seriously, I am sure you are not the only person who did not mesh well with the Berkeley environment however that still does not prove anything you have said.</p>