My friend just got off the waitlist at Berkeley and is really excited. She’s a business major, but she also received a full scholarship from UCI. Any advice?
Financial aspects aside, it should be a relatively clear answer. Haas is almost as good as it gets.
I guess it depends on the type of debt she wants to take on and her financial situation, but again Haas is as good as it gets.
@kalecutter123 Was she notified today? Or does she need to SIR by today? just curious - also on wait list
I didn’t even know Irvine had an undergraduate business school.
Like previous posters have said, Haas is as good as it gets - according to USNews it’s the second best undergraduate business school behind Wharton and tied with MIT Sloan. The only legitimate concern that I can think of would be the difficulty of making it into Haas.
If your friend was admitted off the waitlist she probably wasn’t at the top of the applicant pool at Berkeley, and only around 40-50% of pre-Haas students are ultimately admitted to Haas. You’ll need to consider whether she’s prepared for the tough weeder classes and the competition from her peers who will be on a different level from the ones she would have found at Irvine.
Still, I feel like this decision is a no-brainer, as the connections, prestige, and opportunities available at Berkeley far outweigh the tuition that she would be saving by attending Irvine. If your friend wants to get into anything finance-related then Berkeley will open countless doors while Irvine will close just as many. If Haas doesn’t work out, then she can major in any of the other world-renowned majors that Berkeley offers.
A more fair comparison between undergraduate business programs would be between Haas and USC Marshall, and that’s only because Marshall is a four-year program and doesn’t require its students to apply for admission in their sophomore year. Otherwise, Haas would blow Marshall out of the water as well.
^^ good info re: Pre-Haas. I was reading this from the perspective of transferring, not a continuing Cal student.
If she’s a continuing student, the fact that you aren’t guaranteed admission directly into the program does make it tough. It would depend on how seriously she wants to do business, because she might not make it in and would end up majoring in something like economics or political economy.
@yinous “If your friend was admitted off the waitlist she probably wasn’t at the top of the applicant pool at Berkeley, and only around 40-50% of pre-Haas students are ultimately admitted to Haas”
Don’t buy that at all. Students off of the waitlist have the same material academic profile as other students. Many factors determine why some students are admitted earlier than others. Your friend has just as good a chance to perform well in her first two years as any other student, and therefore will have just as good a chance at Haas admission for junior year.
@jsstag Though it might sound nice to believe so, students admitted off of the waitlist do NOT have the same average academic profile as students who were admitted early and/or on decision day. To claim otherwise is absurd, and I don’t see how anyone could logically arrive at that conclusion.
Many factors determine why some students are admitted earlier than others. For example, those who received an early acceptance from Cal this year, and by extension, an opportunity to interview for the Regents scholarship, were far more qualified for the average admit. Because their academic profiles were significantly stronger than the rest of the applicant pool, most of their applications didn’t need much of a read because their grades and test scores were significantly above average applicant at Cal.
The same applies to applicants that received decisions on-time and those who were put on the waitlist. There is absolutely no reason to randomly waitlist students from an applicant pool of 85,000 and make it so that students that are waitlisted have the same academic profile as regular admits. Berkeley puts heavy emphasis on test scores and grades, and the admissions office will always admit those who are the most qualified as a whole (extracurriculars, academic performance, etc.). Just as those admitted early were a clear cut above those who were admitted on-time, there will be a difference between the pool of regular admits and waitlisted admits. Whether this difference is a small SAT/ACT score difference or a slightly less impressive application as a whole, there is no doubt that the difference is still there. In an applicant pool of 85,000, there will almost always be someone who is more qualified than you, and that difference could very well move you between the “admit” and “waitlist” piles.
Think of it this way - if a 4.0/2300 applicant were waitlisted, forced to do the dreaded FPF/spring admit, and miss out on one of the most important semesters of the college experience, would they be likely to matriculate? The admissions office knows that they probably wouldn’t, and will sort students accordingly to balance yield. Those who were waitlisted usually have weaker profiles and less choices, so the issues with being a waitlisted applicant aren’t as huge as they would be for a more qualified applicant with more options outside of Berkeley.
TL;DR - There is a clear difference between early admits/regular admits/waitlisted applicants, though the difference might not be huge. The competition for Haas is extremely intense, and everyone should be aware of that whether they were admitted off the waitlist or admitted normally.
@yinous You say: “Whether this difference is a small SAT/ACT score difference or a slightly less impressive application as a whole, there is no doubt that the difference is still there.”
No doubt? Of course there is doubt. But more importantly, you are talking about what you admit are “slight” statistical differences. That makes my point which is that the differences are not only insubstantial, but not “material”. That is, the ability of such students to succeed once at Cal is materially the same as students admitted earlier.
I admittedly was not a Cal student. I attended Wharton undergrad and can tell you that students, including some close friends, who were both admitted off the wait-list and even transferred after being rejected by Penn outright were, if anything, more likely to do well because they worked harder with something to prove. I suspect the same is true at Cal and particularly with respect to Haas. This thread was started by someone who has a friend who wants to pursue business studies at either Cal or Irvine. The proper analysis is which institution presents the best opportunities towards that end. Prospective students admitted to a school should never incorporate an element of doubt on whether they can succeed. The school has already told them they can in offering them a spot.
No incoming student is guaranteed Hass admission of course, but to suggest that this student should self-apply an extra dose of caution in accepting Cal based on the temporal point of her admission is, to use your word, “absurd.” It is bad advice, based on erroneous presumptions of how and why students prosper at the next level.
@kalecutter123, please ignore the flawed pessimism proffered by @yinous and encourage, rather than discourage, your friend.
I repeat: she has as good a chance as any of her classmates in succeeding swimmingly at Cal and getting into Haas if that is her ultimate decision. It’s all about putting in the work.
If she has the financial means to afford paying the cost of attendance without much financial struggle, then she should choose Berkeley. The return on investment is, I would say, incredibly large when it comes to the potential advantage you gain as a student at Berkeley, whether or not you get into Haas. Even if she ends up not being admitted to Haas, plenty of students who are economics majors find incredible internships at top-tier firms just the same (sometimes even better than some Haas students).
In addition to this, from my experiences, the pre-requisite “weeder” courses are really quite easy. The only tough one out of the bunch is likely the intro to economics course because of the curve (and sometimes difficulty of the conceptual material and testing itself). Pre-Haas students themselves on the whole are actually a lot less competitive than you might think. I would say perhaps a group stands out “at the top” based on their accomplishments (e.g. getting into exclusive business organizations, extracurriculars, and legitimate companies they are working on), but this group is honestly very small. Most pre-Haas people play the admissions game as if it were high school (join a business club - ANY business club - and take the easiest classes as possible to get a high GPA for Haas admissions [which is, again, not hard]). If that strategy is viewed as “competitive”, then I guess they are - otherwise, they’re not cutthroat and they’re not crushing the curves.
In terms of her standing as a student getting off the waitlist at Berkeley, I would just be wary. I think being a business major is something where you can be relatively average as a student and still do well (as opposed to engineering which relies completely on your raw brainpower), especially with the help of the curves relative to those of engineering classes. She’d do well to use this opportunity to go to Berkeley (if she chooses to do so) as motivation to prepare in advance to ensure high performance while many of her peers wing it.
If anything, she shouldn’t be intimidated. Berkeley might hold some of the brightest students in the world, but because of its massive size, there exists a lot of variation in that brightness that could perhaps allow her to shine if she puts in the work.
@yinuos I was accepted off the waitlist at Berkeley and I’m pretty sure my academic profile is above average there. 2350 SAT, 36 ACT, top 1% of class of 1000, good ECS, etc.
Some of my friends, who were accepted into Berkeley (not off the waitlist), did not get into some of the schools I was accepted into (NYU Stern, Rice, and a few others). So I truly think a lot of the people who were accepted off the waitlist have stats that are equal to their non-waitlist peers.
@yoyohi Your stats are indeed above those of the average admitted student at Berkeley. The point I was trying to make was that Berkeley, like every other university in the U.S., doesn’t randomly waitlist students, and that the stronger overall candidate (as perceived by the admissions office) will always be admitted over the one who isn’t perceived to be as strong.
The stronger candidate could be determined not only by grades and test scores but also overall fit, extracurriculars, essays, and the overall strength of their application. In other words, if you’re waitlisted then the admissions office believed that those admitted before you would be more likely to succeed at Berkeley than you would. I’m sure there are people accepted off the waitlist who have stats that are equal to or better than their non-waitlised peers, but on average the waitlisted applicant will be weaker. You obviously aren’t lacking in your academic profile, so it might have been something else in the holistic review that got you waitlisted.