I think you understand the answer to your own question. If I see a college resume that doesnt report a GPA, Im going to assume the worst (below 3.0). Id imagine that employers/schools that request a transcript and dont get one will also assume the worst as well. Now, if employers don’t ask for a GPA or a transcript, that may change the playing field a little bit.
Simply pushing kids over to UC Riverside isnt the best solution, either. This puts a tremendous strain on UC Riverside. I think you are probably advocating that the entire UC system decrease the number of undergraduates it educates, but doesnt that look bad in the eyes of the public and in politics (stated in my post above)?
I agree with this. Another way to look at it is that there is less to prove at a selective institution. If everyone that gets in has great statistics and is generally very good academically, there should be no reason for the college to encourage competition everyone has already proven that they are good for the most part. At a place like Berkeley, people are less proven due to the looser admissions process. People still need to prove themselves at a place like Berkeley. This breeds competition, resentment, elitism, etc However, I dont want to pretend that selective institutions dont have their own problems because they have many.
First you agree that there is a reason for this, and it seems like an easy fix too!
Im going to repeat what I said earlier:</p>
<p>*Why is Berkeley first and foremost a research university? Why is educating undergraduates a second priority? There are far more undergraduates in the world than PhD students. Why focus on such a small percentage of the world?</p>
<p>Statistically, isnt it great to report that ~160,000 people are being UC educated due to the states effort in education? Look how great California is! They must put a lot of emphasis on education! Taxpayer money well spent!</p>
<p>The truth of the matter is that California probably is putting a strain on the facilities in order to push that number up in order to look good. This is a theme that extends well beyond education. People that have agendas will find any way to push the statistics in their favor. They will do anything to play with that number to make it in their favor. The truth is: numbers dont lie, but the people that present them do.*</p>
<p>Like I said above - change is going to take a lot of sacrifice.</p>
<p>Sure, I will not say it is a trivial thing to change. I would be skeptical both of those who say it is easy and of those who’d say it’s impossible. </p>
<p>Somehow I think the issue will be more making the paradigm shift than any issue with funds, but that’s only a wild guess. </p>
<p>And part of the reason, SDTB, that I think Berkeley IS first and foremost a research university, is that the graduate schools practice an elitism that the undergraduate school does not. There is just no nonsese in grad school admissions. I think around 8+ students in the incoming math Ph.D. program are international students. One student (my friend) from Berkeley. One student from Harvey Mudd. One from Columbia, Yale…etc. Berkeley grad school is basically not a public school in any traditional sense for practical purposes.</p>
<p>“This is pure conjecture - I believe the answer is fairly complicated, but consider the fact that each department in Berkeley has nearly complete control over PhD admissions. I think the undergraduate admissions office has limited control over the undergraduate admission given that the state of California probably has a lot of say as to what happens with taxpayer money.”</p>
<p>My conjecture is that better research gives a university more fame and prestige which is a good way for a school to attract potential students and investors. Universities just don’t get so well known for being able to educate their undergrads well. Granted I feel that a better undergrad education could lead to an increase in alumni donation in the future.</p>
<p>KitKatz: Change would be nice, but you will find that older generations who run the school have much different views than we do. At that meeting with the Dean of Student Affairs I was at, all I wanted him to do was stop cutting funding for GSIs and such, especially for math and science courses. I really couldn’t ask much more than that of him since for the types of changes everyone is proposing on this thread Berkeley would need a couple more billion dollars and go through mountains of bureaucratic red tape. </p>
<p>Frankly, I think the quality of education at Berkeley can be improved if became semi-privatived, but that does rather defeat the purpose of Berkeley being a public school. I also feel that Berkeley accepting lower caliber students is something that is done to preserve its image as a non-elitest (compared to private schools like the Ivies) university that serves the public good. </p>
<p>I remember reading a story about a Hispanic illegal immigrant girl who was accepted into UCLA last year whose academic background was lacking and yet for some unknown reason UCLA accepted her even though her status as an illegal immigrant means she gets no financial aid, her college funds would only last her a year, she had a difficult commute, and her chances of academic success were greatly hindered. She could have gone to cheaper, closer yet less prestigious colleges but she ignored all the odds against her at UCLA and still went to UCLA. I can’t help whenever I think of this story to imagine how happy she felt when she was accepted to UCLA. Nevermind all those difficulties she faces at UCLA (especially since there is no guarantee that she won’t face those same difficulties anywhere else though perhaps to a lesser degree), she chose UCLA because for her it is the realization of dream. </p>
<p>If we just replace UCLA with Berkeley, I think there are also people in the same boat as this girl at Berkeley. I don’t think its fair to deny them this dream but at the same time it is disadvantageous to them and to other students. Perhaps this problem would be resolved if the entire public school education system was better so that there are more students of high academic caliber, but for a better public school system we need higher taxes and who wants to pay higher taxes.</p>
<p>^^ It comes down really to whether you believe it’s worth giving someone who likely isn’t going to benefit from the crazy academics Berkeley offers a chance at Berkeley. I happen to think that in a sense, this is getting into the whole privatized admissions system actually (ironically!). Because it is generally elite private schools who do this whole “select this disadvantaged student because they wrote a heartfelt essay about their dreams.” </p>
<p>My vision of a public school system is that it’s straightforward, and there’s none of that going on. If your academic record is lower, you don’t get into the top UC. If it is, you do.</p>
<p>By the way, I happen to believe UCLA is running its admissions more like a private school than it used to. How UCLA admits students is rather different now from how it used to many years ago (I know from talking to a couple where the husband went to UCB, and the wife went to LA).</p>
<p>I think those elite privates still require that disadvantaged students have fairly decent if not above average academics. Besides, just the application fee can be too much for most of these students to pay for individually (even with fee waivers and all).</p>
<p>UCLA, I think, is placing a heavier emphasis on extracurriculars recently. I knew a guy at my school who quite literally failed math junior year, but made up a bunch of extracurriculars on his applications and got into UCLA. Everyone else I know who got into UCLA was ran a club, did a sport, or some extracurricular in high school though they may not have the most stellar grades.</p>
I think we are in agreement here. I want to extend your argument even further.</p>
<p>Why can the grad school practice “elitism”? I would argue that it’s due to the pressure from the state, cost structure, competition, and the philosophy behind a PhD.</p>
<p>State Pressure:</p>
<p>The state cares more about publishing the amount of undergraduates it educates rather than graduate students it educates. PhD education is a small percentage of society. Undergraduate education is much more prevalent and much more applicable to mass media/politics. Success is sending more kids to the UC system to get their Bachelors. A BS today means less than it did 40 years ago. </p>
<p>Competition:</p>
<p>Truthfully, in academia most of the progress accomplished in academia is done by the upper echelon of academia. These numbers are complete bs, but what I mean is that 70-80% of what is accomplished is done by ~5% of the field. Theres simply no need to educate the masses with a PhD because more PhDs arent needed, relatively.
For a BS, its every Presidents agenda to increase education through undergraduate degrees. Thats the measure of increasing education in the publics eye. Thats why people with agendas will push the statistics to the brink.</p>
<p>Philosophically:</p>
<p>In this country, a PhD really means something it adds credibility to your statements. I dont necessarily agree with it, but thats what happens. Not everyone is meant to get a PhD. A lot of people think they are good enough, but they arent (~50-60% of PhD students drop out/fail in this country). </p>
<p>The number I posted is a little off at the selective institutions, the graduation rate tends to be much higher. There is just seems to be a ~baseline standard for what it means to be a PhD; therefore, less selective schools will have a much lower graduation rate than 50% while the more selective schools will have a higher graduation rate than 50% - it all averages to about ~50%.</p>
Sure, research does increase fame and prestige. But Id argue that undergraduate admissions are also a big part of fame and prestige as well. In my experience, people tend to identify with a BS degree much more than a PhD degree because many more people get a BS than a PhD (mass media supports this).</p>
<p>So if you go to a bar and say you got admitted to Yale for a science/eng PhD, and you are turning it down for Berkeley science/eng PhD. Id argue that most people in the US would go ***? while most people in academia wouldnt think twice about it.</p>
<p>This message board confirms this argument given the sheer amount of naïve statements Ive seen. You might call foul for this type of sentiment, but its a waste of time and it shouldnt be your goal in life to impress these people. </p>
<p>I think there are a lot of ways to increase alumni donation, but I addressed some of the points earlier. I would target professional school alumni as well because they tend to have the highest income.</p>
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I believe I see a shift overall, as well, but Im not as familiar with it as you two are.</p>
<p>I dont necessarily disagree with this type of admissions process either. There are plenty of ridiculously smart people in the world who just suck at taking tests. The inventor of the Electric Car from Who Killed the Electric Car? movie was a Caltech undergraduate that could never score well on any exam, even in high school, but no one doubted that the guy was a smart cookie.</p>
<p>I also think this promotes activism with kids rather than just hitting the books. I don’t want to talk to a one-dimensional person. I want to talk to a well-rounded individual who has a wide variety of opinions and experiences.</p>
<p>Then use UCMerced. The whole reason why UCM was even built in the first place was to accommodate the overflow of the UC system. I highly doubt that Merced is strained, with only 2700 total students, including grad students. Think about that - that’s only ~60% of the enrollment of just the College of Engineering at Berkeley. </p>
<p>Now, I can agree that Merced needs time to ramp up. But how much time, really? I don’t think it’s that hard to find administrators or senior faculty: after all, I’m sure that plenty of them would prefer to work at UCMerced than, say, SouthEast Missouri State or some of the other myriad no-name schools across the country. Nor do I think junior faculty would be a problem, as right now, plenty of newly graduating PhD’s across the country who are looking for academic positions won’t get a single job offer. I’m sure many of them would like to place at UCM, for that’s clearly better than no academic job placement at all. And if they turn out not to be good researchers, then you just don’t promote them to tenure, just like how right now, many (probably most) Berkeley junior faculty don’t pass tenure review. </p>
<p>Frankly, I fail to see why this is such a problem. Why even build UCM at all, if not to accommodate the students who, frankly, weren’t going to do well at the upper UC’s? </p>
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<p>No, the answer is simple: the school will simply report that the student had simply not registered for any classes at all. In other words, it would be as if the student had simply registered and then immediately withdrew, hence generating no reportable grades.</p>
<p>The other (more extreme) method would be for the school to simply deny that the person was ever even a registered student at all. The analogue would be the sealing of court proceedings in some criminal trials. Heck, some districts go so far as to actually expunge all court proceedings after a certain wait-period for certain defendants who committed minor crimes. Under a similar situation, it would be impossible, short of a court order, for a third party to verify that somebody whose records were sealed was even a registered student at Berkeley, and if the records were expunged, then even a court order would not succeed. </p>
<p>To give you another analogue, personal credit histories are updated periodically, and expunge any adverse credit events after a certain time period. Even a personal bankruptcy, as a matter of law, will be wiped from your credit history after a certain period of time (I think 7 years) and hence loan agents are barred, as a matter of law, from using any old adverse credit events against you. </p>
<p>Why can’t Berkeley do that? We’re not even talking about a criminal act or a personal bankruptcy. We’re just talking about somebody who got bad grades. That person may have been immature, but he’s certainly not criminal nor is he financially negligent. Think of the following inequity: a bankruptcy will be wiped from your credit record after 7 years, but bad grades will remain on your academic record for the rest of your life. Why is that? </p>
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<p>The obvious counterargument would be: what exactly is so great about just having lots of students in the UC system? Isn’t the real goal to have lots of students who actually graduate from the system? If the UC system brings in lots of students only to flunk many of them out, does that really meet the state’s goals?</p>
<p>I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. You don’t just go to college simply for the sake of going to college. Unless you happen to be like Bill Gates or Steve Jobs and find something more productive to do, the point of going to college is to actually get a degree. {I would argue that even that’s not really the point, or shouldn’t be; the real point is to prepare you for a successful career in whatever field you choose, and granting easy degrees from cheesepuff majors such as the ‘Studies’ majors probably doesn’t cut it. It’s rather ironic that the ‘Studies’ majors are are loaded with students who don’t actually want to study. They should really be called the “Non-Studies” majors. }</p>
<p>To SDTB: Then it seems impossible to dispute that you in some sense want to turn UC Berkeley admissions into something more similar to what private schools do. I think this, more than my proposition that admissions be maintained the same in philosophy (i.e. someone from CA who got good grades in high school and got a pretty good SAT should be offered a fair shot at a top university, while private schools may not take this student), is a huge paradigm shift. </p>
<p>Under your system, neither myself nor a friend of mine in EECS with a 4.0 would have been accepted. Lots of high school valedictorians who are very smart, but did few EC’s, would be rejected not only from most private schools, but also from UCB. I don’t think this is favorable even in the interests of UCB because some of UCB’s most motivated students fall under this category. Probably a lot of the EECS department consists of students like this. They need not be boring, one-dimensional people just because they didn’t do ECs or anything!</p>
<p>I actually think this is a cruel story. What I hear is that this is an impoverished girl with little chance of actually graduating from UCLA, yet UCLA is happy to take her money anyway. The way I see it is, UCLA is basically exploiting her dream to steal her money. That to me is highly unethical. What would have been better is, if she doesn’t actually graduate from UCLA (which she probably won’t), then UCLA will refund her money, but of course that’s not the deal on the table. Nor does UCLA seem to be trying to find help for her to be able to actually graduate. UCLA will get paid no matter what, and if she doesn’t graduate, oh well, that’s her problem, not UCLA’s, right? </p>
<p>This is not a game. She doesn’t have a lot of money. And UCLA is going to take what little money she has knowing that she probably won’t graduate? UCLA is just leading her on, and that’s exploitation, plain and simple.</p>
<p>I guess my initial answer is: I don’t know. If it could be done, I’d imagine that it would be done. There has to be a reason for it, right?</p>
<p>It could very well be a time-issue, but I don’t think it’s that simple. I’ll think about it some other time.</p>
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Wouldn’t this diminish the value of the high GPA? I’d imagine I’d begin to question any high GPA I’d see then.</p>
<p>I think this is an interesting argument you make, and it could very well work. Like I said, I’ve always liked the MIT and Caltech freshman way of doing things. Although your JHU-Med School story does put a damper on everything, if true. </p>
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<p>What’s great about having many people in the system is that it’s good for statistics of the UC and the state of California. I don’t necessarily agree with it, it’s just what I think they are thinking. I actually think they like to push meaningless stats because it’s the “easiest” thing to do. And yes, I think having ~160,000 is a meaningless stat, but California still publishes it.</p>
<p>But UCB reports a 6 year graduation rate of ~88%. It’s 4 year rate is considerably lower (~50-60%), I think.</p>
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<p>And I agree with you. I think you probably agree with the fact that going to college is also about networking with people as well.</p>
<p>Sorry - I didn’t make myself clear. I am not agreeing with UCLA’s system at all. I actually don’t have any vested/personal interest in UC Berkeley’s undergraduate system. I just think it’s a very interesting system.</p>
<p>I think there are some merits to the private institutional system. If you knew that the only way for you to get into Berkeley et al. was to do EC’s - you may have done more ECs. I am just saying that “forcing” people to do more ECs can be a good thing and a bad thing.</p>
<p>I didn’t mean to say all these motivated EECS students are boring one-dimensional people.</p>
<p>^^ My personal view is that for people to be interesting individuals, they should be passionate about <em>something</em>. A lot of people are interesting individuals, but don’t have application packageable extracurriculars, and I think UCB eats a lot of these up. </p>
<p>To be honest, if UCB stopped admitting those “boring, one-dimensional” EECS students, its EECS undergrad department would no longer have close to as many good students, I’d conjecture. In maintaining a different admissions philosophy from its competitor Stanford, also with wonderful engineering departments, Berkeley ends up with some of the highest caliber students. </p>
<p>Sakky has many times mentioned that lots of students would prefer to go somewhere other than Berkeley because of the public school characteristics that may be undesirable. I’d say that in fact, one of the reasons so many high caliber students end up at UCB is that they probably ended up being valedictorians of their classes, got 2390 SAT’s or whatever, and ended up getting accepted to UCB with little luck with many other schools – and invariably, they end up at UCB, and study hard.</p>
<p>I think the answer is simple: there is no driving force for UCM to expand quickly to accommodate the overflow. For example, Berkeley administrators seem to be perfectly fine with bringing in extra students who they can reasonably predict are going to flunk out. After all, if they flunk out and ruin their permanent academic records, oh well, that’s their problem, not Berkeley’s. </p>
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<p>I doubt it. After all, those who got high GPA’s under the old system would still have high GPA’s now. It’s not as if those people who formerly got low GPA’s would suddenly be able to report high GPA’s. {Remember, my proposal would wipe out all of your Berkeley grades, not just your bad grades. Hence, you couldn’t just hide your F’s and still reveal your A’s. All of them would be wiped.} </p>
<p>I think the more serious counterargument is whether companies/grad-schools would take evidence of withdrawal as evidence of bad (and thus hidden) grades. But I’m willing to take that risk. After all, presenting no grades at all is still better than presenting bad grades. </p>
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<p>*Q - Can I put a letter grade for the classes I took during my freshman year on the application or do I have to put Pass since that is what shows on the official transcript?</p>
<p>A - For Freshman year, you should put Pass on the AMCAS application, as that is what is indicated on your Official MIT Transcript. Sometimes, students release their freshman grades to medical schools during the secondary application, especially for the ones that require students to do so. For this, you would have to individually go through the department at which you took the subject to have your grade released and send to the MIT Careers Office. The Careers Office will send your released freshman grades along with your recommendation letter packet to the schools you indicate.</p>
<p>Johns Hopkins and the Medical College of Wisconsin tend to request freshman year grades.*</p>
<p>That is why I’ve supported the idea of MIT completely expunging first-semester grades. That is, enact a policy in which all computer records of those grades are completely cleansed, and all printed copies are shredded. Hence, when JHU requests those grades, you and MIT can legitimately argue that records of those grades are truly not available.</p>
<p>SDTB:
I suppose in a way my opinions are slightly different from the norm. I grew up thinking that going to graduate school was a natural part of every person’s education, and until I went to graduate school and obtained at least one graduate degree, my education was incomplete (I hero worshipped my dad and his 4 graduate degrees throughout my childhood and my mom also went to grad school and they always discussed my education with me with the assumption that I would go on to grad school already included.). I only realized this was untrue in my sophomore year of high school so I apologize for some of my opinions which are unique to me. </p>
<p>sakky:
I don’t know if I can say whether or not that it’s a good or bad thing that UCLA admitted the girl. The good thing is they gave her a self-esteem boost and hope for social mobility if she succeeds. On the hand, they are kind of leading her over a cliff by dangling a carrot if she fails, which is far more probable. I think the ideal situation for her would have been if she was accepted and rejected the offer to go to a school that suited her situation better (she can get that self-esteem boost without being lead off the cliff), but the appeal of the UCLA name must of seduced her better judgement, which probably happens more often than not. But if UCLA/Berkeley didn’t accept people like her, then would not the majority of the freshman class be mostly students from a middle to upperclass background since these are the students who are typically of higher academic caliber give their educational opportunities?</p>
I generally agree with you. Id extend your statement even further by saying that it depends on what they are passionate about. There are plenty of people who are passionate that are still uninteresting, in my opinion.</p>
<p>When I say a lot of ECs, I didnt mean someone who just dabbles in a little of everything. Admissions and any reasonable person will see right pass that; they arent stupid. What I meant was that someone who spends a lot of time doing things they are passionate about such as playing the saxophone for 20 hours a week while maintaining high grades. Thats what I mean by a lot of ECs. This kind of person will generally have more to talk about.</p>
<p>Now about your EECS comment, Im sure there are some very interesting EECS people at Berkeley, and youre right: UCB probably eats up some very high caliber students by maintaining a different admissions policy. However, I would guess that there is a higher probability that I would have a more interesting conversation with a Stanford EECS than a Berkeley EECS of the same academic caliber. I want to say that this statement is completely baseless because I know some very boring Stanford EECS majors but based on admissions policies, this is what I would guess.</p>
<p>Now if this is the philosophy behind UCLAs change in admission standards, then I think I can understand their motivation. In general, I would rather talk to a well rounded individual than a one-dimensional individual. <em>That is not to say that there are no interesting one-dimensional individuals out there</em>.</p>
<p>Again, Im not advocating that UCB changes its admissions philosophy to follow the private schools. I, like you, dont like overcrowding, and I believe overcrowding/population stress is a big problem even outside of college. I just think people have agendas and people are selfish.</p>
Well, this point was addressed earlier in the thread. What I mean to answer is <em>Why the Berkeley administrators seem to be perfectly fine with bringing in extra students who they can reasonably predict are going to flunk out</em> Its not like they are horrible human beings, right? There has to be some sort of reasoning behind this.</p>
<p>I said earlier that Im guessing that it has something to do with pressure from the state. </p>
<p>What’s great about having many people in the system is that it’s good for statistics of the UC and the state of California. I don’t necessarily agree with it, it’s just what I think they are thinking. I actually think they like to push meaningless stats because it’s the “easiest” thing to do. And yes, I think having ~160,000 is a meaningless stat, but California still publishes it.</p>
<p>This number seems like a good statistic to feed to the mass media/political types. Just to be clear, I dont like this statistic. In fact, I think many people use statistics to push their agendas (even I do sometimes); its just how things work.</p>
<p>Now to answer your question about why UC Merced cant accommodate more students because it isnt as strained I dont know. There could be a lot of reasons for this. Id like to imagine that if they could, they would.
This is what I dont like about selectively wiping out grades. Grad schools generally see a withdrawal on a transcript like they see a F/D/C- once you are in the C-, D, F range its all the same, basically. Now, one or two withdrawals dont kill your chance at grad school either. I know a recent MIT engineering graduate admit that has 1 or 2 withdrawals from a less than elite college. </p>
<p>I like your proposal (a la MIT/Caltech extreme) of wiping out all freshman grades much better. However, PhD schools still exercise judgment when they see a 4.0 junior year versus a 2.0 freshman year. These people arent stupid, after all. For medical school/law school, its a different story, and I like the idea of wiping out freshman grades. I dont know the reasoning behind the med/law school process, and Im interested in learning more about it.</p>
<p>Another problem with wiping out an entire year is that there could be sample size errors when looking at a transcript, but this is a small problem, in my opinion. You are effectively wiping out ~1/3 of the transcript (Freshman, Soph, Junior). Graduate schools and Professional schools generally dont see your senior grades. Now you can argue that its the Soph/Junior years that matter more, which is true, but were still wiping out 1/3 of the transcript.</p>
<p>I imagine companies see the same thing as well if they ask for a transcript, but I dont know. I guess people can push off senior year to add more to their transcript as well.</p>
<p>Like I said, I like the idea of wiping out freshman grades, regardless of sample size issues.</p>
It’s fantastic to see that you acknowledge your biases. I also have the same type of bias. Generally, I try to eliminate my bias by reading and conversing, but I highly doubt I will ever eliminate it.</p>
<p>SDTB, I’ll just throw this out there – I really think colleges trying to predict who is interesting and who isn’t ends up leading to nothing but a seemingly random, frustrating system. Colleges can read applications and predict talent and such. They can read essays and check for if someone is <em>really</em> boring. But aside from this, I find that the best way to judge who is interesting is to go meet them. I know too many who get accepted to private schools who do a lot to appear interesting on paper, and have it actually work. </p>
<p>More likely that such people will get accepted than those who don’t give a damn and are interesting people, no? This is why, I dislike doing admissions based on finding people who’re interesting. Admit people because they have a talent, and frankly, any mix will have boring and interesting people. My philosophy, not everyone’s, of course.</p>