<p>So we've all heard about the cutthroat competition at Berkeley, but isn't getting an A in i.e. organic chemistry just as hard as getting an A in an Ivy League school because the students at Ivy Leagues tend to have better stats? For some reason I am turned off by Berkeley's alleged intense competition, but am absolutely willing to go to an Ivy League. Does this make sense haha? What do you think?</p>
<p>It isn’t so much the competition as it is the grade deflation and curving, which you probably know most Ivies actually inflate grades. I don’t think it matters either way, since it’s common knowledge which schools inflate/deflate grades and it won’t matter in your future.
It’s kind of funny how many posts about the “competition” are springing up from new acceptees. It’s really nothing like what I heard, no one is going to sabotage you, in fact a lot of people help. But because most STEM classes are curved, you do have to do better than your fellow students to earn an A.
Just ignore what you’ve heard about competition and pick a school that you like.</p>
<p>In any 4-year university, there will be a certain percentage of kids in a given class, like calculus, that will be given an A, B, C, D, or F. The percentage of each grade that is given out, and the level of students in each class will vary from university to university.</p>
<p>I guess the percentage of A’s given out at Berkeley is lower than Ivy League institutions to some degree, according to many articles on the lower average GPA of UC Berkeley graduates:
<a href=“UC Berkeley may combat grade inflation through new system”>http://www.dailycal.org/2013/03/11/uc-berkeley-may-combat-grade-inflation-through-new-grading-system/</a></p>
<p>Now you should keep in mind, because Ivy League schools have smaller incoming freshman class sizes than Berkeley, you could say there is more weeding out at Ivy’s in the admissions process, and more weeding out in Berkeley in lower division courses. But, this is hard to confirm.</p>