<p>I never said that Berkeley was as hard to get into as MIT. Never! Here is the thing though, it may be (or it may not be) harder to graduate from the top 10% of your class if you are coming from a private school but still, the same percentage of MIT and Berkeley students graduate in this manner. Not all MIT students graduate from Private schools and not all Cal students graduate from public schools. Still, Berkeley's incoming class is 3 times larger and has the same characteristic as MIT. My point in comparing, and YES, they CAN be compared, MIT's admissions with that of Berkeley's was to show that there are at least as many gifted students at Berkeley than at MIT. These students could have went to other schools that some of you say are better than Berkeley. Somehow though, they ended up at Cal. Why do these students who could have went to many other schools choose Cal to matriculate at if it is so bad? The only point I was trying to make Cal is not a second choice school. For many students it is. For many students it is not.</p>
<p>there! now I agree with you shyboy :)</p>
<p>37,000 people apply to Berkeley......</p>
<p>"Facts? What facts? I don't see ONE fact in that post."</p>
<p>uc_Benz, I was talking about my subsequent post. Do you honestly think you are going to fool everyone here into thinking I only posted once?</p>
<p>"You seem to think that SAT scores are the deciding factor between getting into MIT and not getting into MIT"</p>
<p>No I dont think that. I was just using but one metric, which I hate, to show the quality of Berkeley students.</p>
<p>"The fact is: it's easier to get into Berkeley than MIT."</p>
<p>That is correct but I never said anything to the contrary.</p>
<p>Then why would you talk about that post? I never said anything about your previous posts. My post was this:
[quote]
Just think to yourself. Would you rather go to Berkeley than MIT? I doubt it
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I was referring to the previous rankings, which I considered to be inaccurate, that listed Berkeley ahead of MIT. I could care less about your previous posts, in fact I haven't even read them because I only cared about your response to my first post.</p>
<p>"These students could have went to other schools that some of you say are better than Berkeley. Somehow though, they ended up at Cal. Why do these students who could have went to many other schools choose Cal to matriculate at if it is so bad?"</p>
<p>Not really shyboy. These students with high SAT scores and great academic abilities were probably rejected by HYPSM schools because there are so many more qualified students who apply to HYPSM than there is room to admit. In fact, upwards of two-thirds of MIT's applicant pool is academically qualified to attend. Yet there are only 1,000 spaces in MIT's freshman class. So about 6,000+ students who are smart enough to get into MIT are going to be turned away because MIT will only take the best and the brightest of those who are qualified. The situation gets even worse when you look at Harvard and Stanford which receive upwards of 20,000 applications each. They turn away about 10,000 students who could probably do well at the elite schools. So where do these kids go? Well most of them go to other schools like the lower ivies, Duke, Berkeley, etc. UC Berkeley competes for the students who are very good, and yet not good enough to make the cut at HYPSM. In summation, schools like Berkeley get the leftovers from HYPS. That's not to say that the leftovers aren't extremely academically accomplished (which they are). But the fact is that there are so many academic superstars out there that there isn't enough room at HYPSM to admit them all. So the rest go to Berkeley and other schools like Duke, UPenn, Cornell, etc.</p>
<p>rooster, then why do the numbers disagree with you? Do you really expect people to believe that those stellar Berkeley students are rejects from other schools? I really dont need to comment on that.</p>
<p>What numbers disagree with me? If you can provide me with the numerical evidence as to why I am wrong, then I will publicly concede. But I highly doubt you can find such numbers.</p>
<p>I am going to Berkeley with a 1590 SAT, 3 800 SAT II's, 7 5's on AP tests and one 4, so we aren't all knuckledragging dunces. I didn't apply to the Ivy Leagues or MIT, but I am sure I would have gotten into one of them by pure luck (even though i got rejected by Stanford). Its undeniable that MIT and some of the top Ivys are more selective than Berkeley, but I don't know when that became the major criterion for quality of a school. Certainly Berkeley's undergraduate program is not its strongest aspect, but neither is it for most of the top schools.</p>
<p>~Rooster, Shyboy~
I personally think both of you are looking at this the wrong way. It's not about "because MIT will only take the best and the brightest of those who are qualified," nor is it about "who are very good, and yet not good enough to make the cut at HYPSM," nor is it about "rejects from other schools." HYPSM admission is largely a numbers game. Sure, there is some percentage of the admissions pool with objectively inferior quantitative credentials and, for these applicants, it's accurate to say that they might not be included in "the best and brightest" and they might be "good, but not good enough." But, for many others they are good enough -- plenty good enough -- only the vagaries and happenstances of HYPSM admissions resulted in someone else getting selected ahead of them. The someone else selected was not necessarily brighter, in no sense of the word necessarily "better," but someone simply different.</p>
<p>I've personally heard multiple admissions officers at H, Y, and P say (and I've heard anecdotally that people have heard the same from S and M) that if they divided their applicant pool into tenths, that their preferred top 10th ... the ones getting the offers ... are objectively NO DIFFERENT than the second 10th, the third 10th, and perhaps even the fourth 10th. They seem to delight in telling how their professors would never know the difference between this top 10th and the third or fourth 10th.</p>
<p>So, what happens to this objectively qualified third 10th candidate -- definitely good enough for admission, but perhaps not accepted because he plays the clarinet and the band needs more oboes, or, he was 2nd in State at Debate but the Math department needed the 2nd in State Mathlete, or, some other nuance that is ultimately completely undisclosed and transparent to both the accepted candidate and the rejected candidate? Well, that highly qualified and qualified ENOUGH person who some call a HYPSM REJECT likely gets his particular lottery ball selected by another top school.</p>
<p>I apologize if this got too lengthy or preachy, I just get a little concerned when justifiably proud people over-emphasize how good they are and perhaps deemphasize the additional role that luck plays in elite school admissions. If you're not good enough, you're never going to get considered. Understood. But it's simply bad karma to go that step further and truly believe that you are necessarily BETTER or MORE QUALIFIED than the denied candidate (perhaps the unlucky denied candidate) because you got in and they didn't.</p>
<p>rooseter, did you read my previous posts? I'll repeat. Approximately 800 freshmen entered Berkeley with an SAT score of at least 1440. About 3000 students entered Berkeley that were in the top 10% of their high school class. The average GPA was something like 4.23.</p>
<p>I think Rooster makes a good point, though he might not have worded it too tactfully. There is a growing gap between who can succeed in one of the top five or six universities and who can gain admission into those universities. As competition gets stiffer, I think those colleges can fill up their class multiple times over with people who could do well. However, they aren't enlarging their class sizes so a lot more qualified people get rejected. That's not to say the admissions process is random, it just means that people have to be that much more special to get in.</p>
<p>Amused, perhaps I am not making myself clear or perhaps people that are new to this conversation dont have time go over what has already been said. I'll repeat once again. Those schools are very difficult to get into. What I am saying is that there are a LOT of students at Berkeley who are of equal caliber. Not only that, there are a lot of students at Berkeley who are of higher caliber than those found at any other school.</p>
<p>~Amused~</p>
<p>you said . . .
"However, they aren't enlarging their class sizes so a lot more qualified people get rejected. That's not to say the admissions process is random, it just means that people have to be that much more special to get in."</p>
<p>The cruxt of it goes to the word "random" juxtaposed to the phrase "that much more special to get in." More often than not, the "more special" manifests itself in some extra "wrinkle" that a particular applicant brings to the table vis a vis another applicant. These "extras" might be important to the given university as they assemble a class, but are rarely (if ever) communicated to either the successful or the rejected applicant. These two applicants -- one accepted, one denied -- are often otherwise virtually identical. It is in this limited, specialized sense that I think many refer to the state of elite HYPSM admissions to be "random." It's not that schools are randomly accepting some people and rejecting others. It's from the perspective of a given applicant -- at the time of application, an applicant is whoever he is, and he has no clue whatsoever whether his particular set of "extras" makes him more or less likely to be accepted from 5 other virtually interchangeable applicants.</p>
<p>All you have to do is to look at the kids who get into some of these elite schools in any given metro area. Sure, some kids apply to a half-dozen ultra-elite schools and get into every one of them. Yes Virginia, there are some pure "superstars" in any field. However, many of these kids get into 1, but get waitlisted at another, and denied at 2-3 others; another kid gets into 2, but denied at the three you could have sworn were better bets for him. It is in this sense that some think of this as "random" -- you can't predict, you can't count on it, because ultimately, the set of factors by which you are measured -- at least SOME of those factors -- are not made available to you.</p>
<p>theres also a lot of bright students who decide not to apply to HYPSM at all because of various factors, maybe like weather, staying in-state, the cost-benefit of quality public education, etc. we cant simply disregard these students as "probable ivy rejects" when they couldve been very competitive in the applicant pool. </p>
<p>certainly, if the quality of berkeley students couldnt compare with say, the quality of dartmouth students, then no matter how much bigger berkeley is, it still wouldnt produce 36 current berkeley-alumni compared to 34 dartmouth-alumni at harvard law (just as an example). </p>
<p>i have to agree with the point that while some colleges overall dont possess the same caliber of students as the top privates, that does not mean that they lack their fair share of top-notch students. </p>
<p>to continue with the harvard law example:
cornell (44) vs penn (48) vs texas (44)
chicago (16) vs michigan (18) vs florida (13) vs northwestern (17) vs UVA (21)
interesting how BYU has 27</p>
<p>stats taken from <a href="http://www.***.harvard.edu/admissions/jd/colleges.php%5B/url%5D">http://www.***.harvard.edu/admissions/jd/colleges.php</a></p>
<p>substitute *** with "law"</p>
<p>shyboy-
Could have "went" to other schools?? Do you mean could have "gone" to other schools?? How's the English Dept. at Berkeley? :)
All teasing aside, how'd this thread become a "mine is bigger than yours"
contest?? Maybe shyboy and rooster can agree to disagree-- this is beginning to take on the tone of a discussion about politics or abortion. Doubt either of you will convince the other with your arguments. Besides, maybe I am being too naive and reductionist, but how can you really compare a comparatively small, private tech school to a large, public state university?? Yes, I know Berkeley also has a strong engineering program, but is it reasonable to assume that the kind of student who would apply to MIT would also apply to Berkeley as opposed to, say Stanford or Cal Tech?
To be fair-- I have only scanned the back-and-forth posts about this- so perhaps this issue/question has been addressed here and I missed it. If so, sorry for the redundancy. I am just surprised that this discussion isn't occuring on the "overrrated vs underrated" thread. It sounds like that is really the crux of the discussion.</p>
<p>jym, I never even "gone" to Berkeley. I "gone" to UCLA and USC. :) I just sometimes defend schools that get unduly put down. I have defended UCSD, Michigan, U Texas, Chicago, and even the Ivy League among others. Usually I try to stay out of it (unless its UCLA or USC) but sometimes I cannot help myself. I hate when people say things without knowing what they are talking about. Perhaps I should because one cant usually change people's minds. There is a small list of people who I totally ignore though.</p>
<p>Shyboy--
Must be that California education-- looks like kfc4u had the same grammar training (it's "there are a lot of bright students", not "theres a lot of bright students...") Ok -- sorry again-- just trying to cut the tension in this thread. Glad you joined in, Shyboy. And should I assume that if you don't respond, I have joind that list of people you ignore? :)
Oh-- and KFC-- I could't get to your Harvard link,even trying the site without the *** in the address,as I assume it was a typo. Do they indicate how many applied from a school compared to how many they accepted?? That would be a helpful piece of info to better understand the statistic.</p>
<p>I'm responding just so that you know you are not on that list. Not yet at least! :) Hey I didnt know I was being graded! Are you saying I should proof read, edit, spell check, and correct all of my posts? Does that mean I cant say cuz and aint either? You are taking all the fun out of this site!</p>
<p>Well, Shyboy was a CC Student.</p>