<p>Why didn't you want to go to Harvard?</p>
<p>Rooster. What we decide before we attend college is one thing.</p>
<p>Looking at the end product, the student that the University produces, is completely different. My experience at Berkeley, when I compared it to other universities and how people are still to this day even after graduating college, trying to "find themselves", confused with life, etc... from other universities, I feel very lucky to have experienced what I experienced, while having the best education of academic superiority in viewpoint and survival skills available. It seems almost unfair to be honest... to have had the fun I had in college, and still be where I am today...</p>
<p>Sorry, this is a late response to something much earlier in the thread:</p>
<p>Barrons says claims that the most fmaous professors will be members of the National Academies of Science and Engineering. There's very little true about that--many famous professors are members of the Ntl Academies, and many profs who aren't famous are also members. I think it's pretty obvious that there are also huge numbers of "famous" professors who aren't members of the Academies. </p>
<p>Professors become famous through publishing and researching, yes, but those both occur at even lower tier state colleges. Professors at top LACs are expected to publish, research, and be tops of their field. They, unlike professors at top Universities, however, are suppposed to place teaching as their top priority. </p>
<p>It'd be quite easy to go through the faculty at most any top college and pull out quite a number of professors famous in their own fields; as I said previously, there are quite a number more famous professors than positions available for them. Instead of focusing on which college has more famous professors, we should be focusing on which college has BETTER professors, or more student interraction with their better professors.</p>
<p>Veritas949, Harvard is not worth it if you stay near Stanford and have a nice Californian weather.</p>
<p>I'd be happy to attend any of the HYPS.</p>
<p>Well I was just wondering because previous posts that rooster has made indicated that he believes Harvard to be the #1 university. Stanford is an excellent and comparable school and I agree that California has better weather.</p>
<p>Networking
(Buddy Rankings)</p>
<ol>
<li>Harvard </li>
<li>Yale</li>
<li>Princeton</li>
<li>Duke</li>
<li>USC</li>
<li>Stanford</li>
<li>Columbia</li>
<li>U Pen </li>
<li>Cornell
10.UCLA</li>
<li>Berkeley </li>
</ol>
<p>Academic Rankings</p>
<p>1.Berkeley
2.MIT
3.UCLA
4.Stanford
5.Michigan
6.Wisconsin
7.UCSD
8.Chicago
9.Caltech
10.Harvard</p>
<p>Professional Schools Rankings.(L-School, B-School, M-School)</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Harvard</p></li>
<li><p>Stanford</p></li>
<li><p>Yale</p></li>
<li><p>Columiba</p></li>
<li><p>Duke</p></li>
<li><p>UCLA </p></li>
<li><p>Cornell</p></li>
<li><p>NU</p></li>
<li><p>Chicago</p></li>
<li><p>USC</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Berkeley( NO Med School) </p>
<p>R&D Rankings(Year 2002-2003)</p>
<p>(excluding Medical R&D)</p>
<p>1.UCLA 788 Million</p>
<p>2.Michigan 674 Million</p>
<p>3.Wisconsin 662 Million</p>
<p>4.UCSD 585 Million</p>
<p>5.Stanford 538 Million</p>
<p>6.Berkeley 474 Million</p>
<p>7.MIT 455MIllion</p>
<p>8.UI Urbana 427 Million</p>
<p>9.Harvard 401 Million</p>
<p>10.Yale 354 Million</p>
<p>11.Princeton 164 Million</p>
<p>Grade Inflation Rankings</p>
<ol>
<li>Stanford (3.45)</li>
<li>Harvard (3.40)</li>
<li>Pomona (3.40)</li>
<li>Duke (3.40)</li>
<li>Princeton (3.38)</li>
<li>Yale (3.36)</li>
<li> UCLA (3.20)</li>
<li> MIT (3.15)</li>
<li> Berkeley (3.07)</li>
<li>UNC (3.0)</li>
<li>Caltech (3.00)</li>
</ol>
<p>Stanford GPA Ave 3.85= Pomona 3.80=UCLA 3.60=Berkeley 3.48=Caltech 3.40</p>
<p>Oh Caltech. What a walk in the park. Man, there's SO MUCH grad inflation there it hurts. </p>
<p>Your rankings are bull.</p>
<p>CotoDeCasa, where did you get those numbers?</p>
<p>I have a hard time believing the average GPA at Stanford is 3.85. IF it is, that is outrageous.</p>
<p>What are "buddy rankings?" If you mean the strength of the community and the loyalty of alumni and alumni recruiters it is much more like this:</p>
<ol>
<li>Princeton</li>
<li>Yale</li>
<li>Dartmouth</li>
<li>Williams</li>
<li>Harvard</li>
<li>Stanford</li>
<li>Amherst</li>
<li>Duke</li>
<li>Penn</li>
<li>Brown</li>
</ol>
<p>1600, I think its amazing that you had a great experience and learned to swim BUT you judge schools without having experienced or even visited them yourself. Had you gone to Dartmouth, Brown, or as, you put, "ethnically-challenged" Princeton you would see incredible students who after graduation go on to do great things. Just because their focus isnt pre-professional doesnt take this away from them. You say that in your experience UCB I-banking alumni are superior to those even at HYPS. Have you ever thought that maybe this might be due to the fact that a great majority of these alumni are banking in New York rather than California?</p>
<p>What I meant was Stanford's 3.85 GPA is equivalent of Caltech's 3.4 GPA.</p>
<p>Stanford GPA is around 3.45</p>
<p>Buddy rankings = Networkings=Jobs</p>
<p>How did you come up with that? Its so wrong. I know, I went to Columbia for a year. One reason I transferred was that their alumni could care less vs. a Dartmouth, Williams, or Princeton alumnus. If anything these schools are famous for how tighknit they are!! The tightest networks are the schools with the tightest student bodies. At Columbia grad school (I came back for grad...when you should go there), by far the alumni from these schools are the tightest. We share and instant bond and in many cases know many of these same people at our respective schools. Look at alumni giving rates, these tell the true story. I cannot tell you in my experience how much tighter the Dartmouth network is and how much better recruiting is because of this. And big schools like USC, Cornell, and Berkeley? Yeah right. </p>
<p>Let me give you a random example, as a Columbia alum I will have some random email address that needs to be forwarded. As a Dartmouth alum, the school provides email to all alumni on THEIR servers, so forever I am connected to their system. I just search for name and year, and their info pops up. I have had so much luck tapping into the network, its unbelievable. Funny, I am using this network more to find jobs right now than Columbia Business because its so much more effective!!</p>
<br>
<p>CotoDeCasa, where did you get those numbers?</p>
<br>
<p>Mostly from students newspapers like this</p>
<p>Brown and Stanford dropped the D and F grades entirely out of their system during the 70's. Ever since, a Brown student has yet to fail a course. If a course is not 'satisfactorily completed,' no record of the failure shows up on the student's transcript. Some say this has lead to a 'grade compression.' Without the D and the F grades, professors are forced to give the poorest students at least a C. This, of course, pushes the rest of the grades up if the professor is going to be fair to the better performers. Since an A is the highest grade possible, the top performers remain where they are while their lesser peers join them. Stanford reinstated the D grade in 1975, and in 1994, after a study showed that nine out of ten grades given out at Stanford were A or B grades, the university reinstated the F grade, albeit as a less foreboding 'No credit.'</p>
<p>Despite Dartmouth's best efforts, a comparison of statistics of recent class years shows that Dartmouth grades are about just as inflated as the rest of the Ivy League.</p>
<p>In the 2002-2003 school year at Brown, A and B grades constituted 44 percent and 25 percent, respectively, of received grades, while only 5 percent of grades received were C grades. Twenty-three percent of the grades were 'Satisfactory,' similar to 'Pass' in a 'Pass/Fail' system, and three percent were 'No credit.'
In the same time period at Harvard, 51 percent of the grades were A and A-minus grades, with 54 percent of humanities grades, 50 percent of natural sciences grades, and 43 percent of social sciences grades, respectively, being A-range grades.</p>
<p>This is from Daily Bruins
At private universitites across the country, grade inflation is rampant. Average GPAs at private schools like Stanford range from 3.5 to 3.6 while at public institutions, such as Berkeley, UCLA, UNC , The Average range from 3.0 to 3.2. UCLA needs to bring back class rankings to preserve the value of hard -earned grades. Class rankings would demonstrate that a 3.0 at UCLA , where the average GPA is from 3.1 to 3.2 is much more respectable thatn a 3.0 at Stanford, where the average GPA was recently brought down from 3.6 to 3.45. While grade inflation is a national phenomenon , former Harvard dean Henry Rosovsky and University of Pennsylvania lecturer Mattthew Hartley say it is "especially noticeable in the outragehously expensive IVY League. Harvard professor, Harvey Mansfield, has two-grade policy. Professor Mansfield hands out a merit-based grade which is shown only to the students and an inflated grade which gets recorded on transcripts. Having a high GPA at a state school is a bigger accomplishment than having a high GPA at a private school says Vidya Prabhakaran, Former president of Yale College Council.</p>
<p>Im offended by that statement. I know for a fact that people at my private school work very, very diligently and EARN their grades; Im sure grade inflation occurs at some private institutions, but definitely not at all.</p>
<p>Slipper, although I sometimes disagree with Cal1600, I must say that of all people, it is those who bash state universities who speak out of ignorance. You ask Cal 600 if he ever experienced private universities. Have you truly experienced state universities? The notion that private universities have smaller classes, more individualized attention and better undergraduate educations is total excrement! I have attended both types as have many people I knoiw and we all agree that it is a cheap marketing gimmick. It works on the masses, but it does not make it true. Good thing people who really make decisions (coprorate recruiters and academics) know better.</p>