<p>I still can't quite make my mind up about which school to go to and I do not have much time</p>
<p>I really think they are very good schools...</p>
<p>any advice will be great..</p>
<p>oh.. and I am planning to major in biological science(premed)</p>
<p>omg!! this was me a few days ago! same programs...same two schools...i visited berkeley and it just wasnt for me..i mean i loved the campus and atmosphere but I think I didn't fit in very well with the kids and type of ppl...so i ruled it out. good luck with ur decision...I think premed at cornell is difficult but it seems less hostile than the psycho premed at berkeley....both would be difficult but I got a much scarier and cut throat vibe from berkeley premed where as cornell seemed much more friendly and inviting (yet still challenging..)
good luck!</p>
<p>one thing i am worried about is the sort of isolate surrounding of cornell compared to berkeley which is in San Francisco city..
It seems that the only thing students at Cornell can do is study (besides activities they might have there on campus or in a small town Ithaca..)</p>
<p>I don't know, ..it's just a hard decision to make..
What graduate (medical school) school do Cornelians usually go to?
should I really go to cornell and forget berkeley?</p>
<p>how to non californians see berkeley?</p>
<p>as a non californian I don't I fit in too well at Berkeley...and while there is a lot do to in SFO, for me, I found cute little spots in Ithaca, like the commons that were much more eventful than i had realized. berkeley is a lot tougher than some people get credit for...one of my cons for berkeley was its uber competitive environment and the students didnt seem too social...i dunno, I decided to rule out Berkeley because while the education would be awesome at both places, I really liked cornell kids more than those at Berkeley...i guess I just dont mesh too well with california kids!</p>
<p>I turned down in-state tuition at Berkeley for Cornell. Cornell students, as you might imagine, get into just about every type of med school. I think you will find that the caliber of students at Cornell is higher which pushes you to do your best. No regrets here.</p>
<p>I'm also premed by the way. And there's nothing wrong with CA kids. They tend to be the coolest people at every school.</p>
<p>I turned down Cornell for Berkeley 4 years ago. I have to admit, it was a hard decision...I really like Cornell....great school. But I really really doubt that the caliber of students at Cornell is higher than that of Berkeley....i'd say it's about the same. I ended up having an absolute blast at Berkeley......Berkeley is a great place to study chemistry/biochemistry (my major)...but i'm sure Cornell's programs are equally awesome. And also, Berkeley pre-meds aren't cut-throat........they're surprisingly sociable and very friendly. G'luck in your decision!</p>
<p>can freshmen students help out ,as in work-study program , a professor with his research or something like that at cornell?</p>
<p>Yes but that's all you'll be doing: "helping out" (usually by washing beakers or something). You really don't have the proper coursework and science background to be conducting research on your own.</p>
<p>thanks everyone!</p>
<p>so what I came to conclude ...is that academically berkeley and cornell are pretty much the same</p>
<p>at cornell, students can get more help due to its size and since it is a private school than at berkeley</p>
<p>weather I know will better at berkeley although i have heard that it rains a lot..</p>
<p>cornell has more research opportunities and has med program that is in top 5..
berkeley students I heard often apply and get accepted to USF med school, which is ranked four..</p>
<p>students at cornell get more help from their professors when applying to medical schools.. (with excellent letters and such)</p>
<p>please correct me if I am wrong...:)</p>
<p>oh,. and how do you apply for housing? online or ... I don't know what you are supposed to do after turning in SIR and deposit</p>
<p>Acceptance rates to med school:</p>
<p>Berkeley: High 50-low 60%
Cornell: High 70's-80%</p>
<p>i chose berkeley over cornell and middlebury, and have no regrets.
at first, i thought, oh cornell, that is the most prestigious and distinguished school out of my choices since it is the only ivy league. however, i soon visited and realized that:</p>
<ol>
<li>berkeley is berkeley, enough said. where else will you find a place as diverse, interesting, and fun, especially as a student?</li>
<li>#1 ranked civil engineering program in US (my major)</li>
<li>the people are all incredibly friendly and will take the time to talk to anyone who asks</li>
<li>ok, its a large school, so of course, everybody assumes that it is impossible (or near it) to get advising or get to know your professors. This is not necessarily true- a few days after finding out about acceptance, a professor from my major called to talk - a professor at berkeley, a gigantic school, took the time to call a prospective student. I actually met him and sat in on one of his classes, he is awesome and his class was really interesting.</li>
<li>sports: great selection and facilities</li>
<li>bay area</li>
<li>streaking in the library at finals - just plain entertaining</li>
<li>great weather - you're not gonna freeze your ass off and become morbidly depressed by bad weather</li>
<li>lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of majors, courses, activities, clubs to choose from</li>
<li>lots to do on and off campus</li>
</ol>
<p>Challenge question: What is better about cornell then berkeley? (give a few reasons)</p>
<p>website, food, and hockey team.</p>
<p>:D</p>
<p>"Acceptance rates to med school:</p>
<p>Berkeley: High 50-low 60%
Cornell: High 70's-80%"</p>
<p>FIRSTLY, the acceptance rate to med school was 70% last year, and 67% the year before at Berkeley</p>
<p>SECONDLY, BERKELEY DOES NOT HAVE A PRE-MED COMMITTEE WHILE CORNELL DOES.....that means Berkeley lets anyone apply to med school...even if they have ridiculously low MCATs and GPA, while Cornell screens out potential applicants that they think won't get accepted. This is also the reason why Whittier College (a random 2nd tier liberal arts school in California) can boast a higher medical school acceptance rate than Berkeley (and Cornell) as "90%" of its applicants get into med school.</p>
<p>I stand by my generalization of Berkeley's acceptance rates. Cornell's rates over the same span: 76, 79, 81, 76, 76. You don't need to run a t-test to realize there's a significant difference.</p>
<p>Secondly, I'm sorry if Berkeley cannot afford to give each premed student a personal interview + write a rec letter for them like Cornell does. Cornell DOES NOT screen. Cornell DOES NOT screen. Cornell DOES NOT screen. Get it? You might want to do some research on the HCEC before u run your mouth.</p>
<p>Cornell's stats. Direct quote: "If you are comparing Cornell's acceptance rates to other colleges, keep in mind that Cornell does not prevent any student from applying and includes in the Cornell data all those who applied."</p>
<p>Sorry if I came off as harsh before. One of my pet peeves is presenting "facts" that are blatantly false.</p>
<p>alright alright alright alright alright alright alright Cornell DOES NOT screen. Cornell DOES NOT screen. Cornell DOES NOT screen. </p>
<p>I hate to break this to you but you can't see Cornell's admissions numbers in the same way that you see Berkeley's admissions numbers. Here is why:</p>
<p>Berkeley is a California public school and hence most of our students are california residents. When Cal students apply to med school, they apply to: UC Medical Schools (ridiculously comptetitive admissions) and private schools. When non-Californian Cornell students apply to med school, they apply to THE MEDICAL SCHOOLS OF THEIR HOME STATE (not even remotely as competitive as the UCs) and to private schools. Not many Berkeley premeds apply to out-of-state public med schools (e.g. U of Kentucky Medical School) but the ones that do almost always get in somewhere.......despite the fact that they are applying out of state and thus are at a disadvantage. Many UC pre-meds neglect to apply to out-of-state state schools, despite the fact that most non-UC state med schools have average GPAs of 3.5 and MCATs of 29 (In other words, signifcantly lower than that of the UC medical schools). In fact, just recently, the Career Center at Berkeley has been trying to get Berkeley pre-meds to start thinking about applying to out-of-state state med schools because of the above situation. At least 2 other states have top-tier medical schools: Michigan and Virginia...and maybe even Texas....but they also have other ho-dunk state med schools that pre-meds from those states can apply to. This is a luxury that UC pre-meds (and Cornellians from California like YOU) don't have, as the only state med schools in California are the UCs. </p>
<p>Because the admissions data only reports if an applicant gets in "somewhere," I'm sure a significant proportion of Cornell pre-meds only got into their home state's med school....not impressive, considering that many UC pre-meds apply to private med schools as BACKUP in case they don't get into one of their state (UC) medical schools.</p>
<p>....think about these kind of realistic scenarios before YOU run your mouth. </p>
<p>AND considering the acceptance rate at Berkeley in the last 3 years has been climbing, and actually broke past the 70% mark for 2005, this is even more of a reason to believe that going to Cornell (and paying private school tuition and freezing your gonads off) is not going to be any better than applying from Berkeley.</p>
<p>Don't be sorry if Berkeley cannot afford to give each premed student a personal interview + write a rec letter for them like Cornell does. The difference between 4 years of private school tuition and 4 years of state tuition isn't worth that service.</p>
<p>I'll give you credit for presenting an argument that can actually be debated rather than blatant lies.</p>
<p>The problem w/ the Berkeley data is that it is incomplete. Some years its data only includes 110-150 applicants. What happens to the rest? Berkeley is a huge school. Either a bunch gets weeded out or a bunch chose not to release their data to Berkeley. I wonder why? (this is not a rhetorical question). Cornell is much more likely to have more complete data as just about everyone uses the HCEC (their data includes approx. 220 applicants-roughly 50-100% more applicants than Berkeley despite being a smaller school).</p>
<p>Also, I don't see where you get the notion that Berkeley applicants would be soooo competitive if only they would apply to out of state schools. Here is the data for Berkeley applicants to various med schools and their acceptance rates in the last 5 years:</p>
<p>Harvard-3/361 (less than a 1% acceptance rate)
Johns Hopkins-9/340 (2.6%)
Columbia-12/132 (9%)
Cornell-9/322 (2.8%)
Duke-5/281 (1.8%)
Stanford-15/470 (3.2%)
UChicago-11/349 (3.2%)
Upenn-4/293 (1.4%)
University of Washington-6/150 (4%)
WashU-19/234 (8.1%)
Yale-6/288 (2%)</p>
<p>In all of the cases (except Columbia or Stanford which might be ties), Berkeley applicants' acceptance rates into top med schools are way less than the normal averages. For example, acceptance rates of Harvard/Johns Hopkins/Cornell are around 5% normally (Berkeley applicants only around 2%). Yale/UChicago/WashU boast acceptance rates close to 10% but you don't see that with Berkeley applicants. Either med schools just don't realize the value of a Berkeley education or Berkeley has ****-poor advising or their applicants have inflated egos and apply to med schools out of their league to have such atrocious acceptance rates. With the exception of UCSD, even their acceptance rates to UC's are nothing to brag about since, as you noted, most of Berkeley's applicants are CA residents.</p>
<p>I really wish you would've learned something from this thread. It rehashes a lot of the points I just brought up:</p>
<ol>
<li>Berkeley data is incomplete.</li>
<li>It's hard for any public school to compete with elite privates in med school acceptances.</li>
<li>Lower quality of study body</li>
<li>Interesting that none of the students on the senior panel were going to med school immediately following undergrad (I actually attended a similar panel at Cornell this Wed. All but one were going to med school after undergrad. I was more interested in the one senior taking a year off since that's what I'm planning to do)</li>
<li>And please stop accusing schools of screening their applicants just because they have a higher acceptance rate than Berkeley lol</li>
</ol>
<p>Norcalguy said:</p>
<p>"1. Berkeley data is incomplete.
2. It's hard for any public school to compete with elite privates in med school acceptances.
3. Lower quality of study body
4. Interesting that none of the students on the senior panel were going to med school immediately following undergrad (I actually attended a similar panel at Cornell this Wed. All but one were going to med school after undergrad. I was more interested in the one senior taking a year off since that's what I'm planning to do)
5. And please stop accusing schools of screening their applicants just because they have a higher acceptance rate than Berkeley lol "</p>
<p>1) Berkeley data is incomplete......yeah, so why are you drawing conclusions from it?? According to a UCSF med representative who was answering questions last year, last year was Berkeley students' best year in terms of admissions to UCSF med.....over 25 students (20% of the entering medical class) were Berkeley alumni....many took time off before applying. You won't find this info in the data set you were looking at but this came from a UCSF med school rep. Hmmmmm. So apparently, many Berkeley students don't report their acceptances/plans to Berkeley. Understandable, as Berkeley allows its students to apply independently of the school.</p>
<p>2) It's hard for any public school to compete with elite privates in med school acceptances? Apparently not. <a href="http://mstp.stanford.edu/students.html%5B/url%5D">http://mstp.stanford.edu/students.html</a>
Here is the list of MD/PhD students at Stanford...I count 4 Berkeley alumni and only 2 Cornellians....and 2 each from U of Arizona and Oregon State, as a matter of fact. Either you're wrong or Cornell isn't as "elite" as you hoped it to be, clown. Okay, now this will REALLY make you cry: <a href="http://medschool.ucsf.edu/mstp/students/%5B/url%5D">http://medschool.ucsf.edu/mstp/students/</a> . Here is the list of MD/PhD students at UCSF. I count NINE BERKELEY ALUMNI AND ZERO CORNELL ALUMNI. So where are the Cornellians?...I'll be fair by mentioning the stats for the MD/PhD program where Cornellians are most likely to be found: <a href="http://www.med.cornell.edu/mdphd/students/%5B/url%5D">http://www.med.cornell.edu/mdphd/students/</a> . I count 13 Cornellians and 4 Berkeley students. Hmmmm, I guess Cornell wins as expected......but then again, why would the Berkeley students do their MD/PhD if they got into UCSF's MD/PhD (UCSF is ranked 4th for research/medicine ....Cornell is 15th........and UCSF is ranked higher in terms of graduate education in the biological sciences than Cornell is). Also, I tried to find the stats for Harvard and Yale's MD/PhD programs but I couldn't find them......I could go on and on but I think I made my point: Cornell doesn't have an edge over Berkeley. </p>
<p>3) Lower quality of study body? Where did you pull this one out of??? Actually, I don't want to know. Let's look at 3 factors: Students who were in the top 10% of their HS class, US news academic reputation, and SATs.....</p>
<p>Top 10%: Berkeley wins according to US News, BUT I'm going to say it's a draw because there are more public school students entering Berkeley than there are entering Cornell. </p>
<p>US News academic reputation, based on surveys sent to various faculty and employers: Berkeley floats between 4.7 and 4.8....Cornell is usually at 4.7 in the last few years. So I'm going to say it's a draw.</p>
<p>SAT: Berkeley only considers the highest one-sitting composite score while Cornell adds the highest individual scores together to come up with a composite SAT score. You should know this, you applied to Berkeley and Cornell.....and so did I, and you know what....the SAT score that I got to report to Cornell was 30 points higher than the SAT score that I had to report to Berkeley. I know some people who have differences that are close to 100 points. If you factor this in, Berkeley students and Cornell students have similar SAT scores. SO it's a draw.</p>
<p>NOW, you try to convince me that Cornell has a higher quality student body. I know one guy from Berkeley who transferred to Cornell, and I know one guy from Cornell who transferred to Berkeley.....and you know what? Both say that Cornell students are pretty much East Coast mirror images of Berkeley students. The Cornell-alumni grad students at Berkeley that i've talked to say the same thing. I know how you feel.....you pay private school tuition so you like to delude yourself that you're somehow getting a better education at Cornell b/c come on, it's an Ivy right? The Ivy League is a sports conference to rational people....get over it. </p>
<p>4) And what does this have to do with anything??? Obviously you already know that many many Berkeley seniors go to med school immediately after graduation so what is your point? Two weeks ago I was talking to 2 Berkeley alumni whom I met through a club at Berkeley......I was asking them for advice about medical school because one is now on the faculty of Stanford med and the other is on the faculty of UCSF med. What now??? The panels you've attended are garbage compared to what I've experienced. </p>
<p>5) Yeah, that's real funny. I promise, I won't.....cause I don't have to. Look at the above points and cry.....and don't forget the key point I made in another reply about Berkeley being a California public school and Cornell being a private school....and the disadvantage that brings as California residents (which most Berkeley students are) can only apply to the super-competitive UCs as their state medical schools while most Cornellians (the non-Californians) have the advantage of applying to their not-so-selective state schools (like U of Kentucky, Ohio State, etc).</p>
<p>And as one last testament to your ignorance, here is a list someone presented showing the schools with the largest number of medical applicants. Notice how Berkeley is number 2 with >500 applicants: <a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=152312%5B/url%5D">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=152312</a>
By now I bet you feel stupid for suggesting that Cornell with its 220 med school applicants has more med school applicants than Berkeley. </p>
<p>I'm through talking to you, norcalguy....cause believe it or not, I feel kinda bad when I give someone a one-way bi*ch slap and they still hang onto pathetic inklings of myth...like a turd that won't flush, I know you'll come back again and again to try to argue with me. You can't. So don't expect a reply. </p>
<p>Now don't get me wrong, people, I really like Cornell. I almost went there instead of Berkeley. But when some nut tries to convince me that Cornell is a better school than Berkeley, I'm forced to lay the smackdown....because there is no data that supports such claims. I'm posting here b/c some guy at the Berkeley forum (my interest) said he's starting a Cornell vs. Berkeley thread to help him decide which school to attend, and hence it's my duty to represent Berkeley in the face of clowns such as one particular guy from NorCal. It's sad, every year I have to do this at least once...last year it was some Yalie named Gutrade. After this post, he pretty much learned his place: <a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?p=670545#post670545%5B/url%5D">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?p=670545#post670545</a></p>
<p>The 4th link might not work, so here are the relevant details mentioned....</p>
<p>FYI, this is an excerpt from a Powerpoint presentation on Medical Deprtment Recruiting by:</p>
<p>CAPT Cynthia Macri, MC, USN
Vice President, Recruitment & Diversity
Uniformed Services University</p>
<p>Top Ten Pre-Med Colleges By Number of Med School Applications
UCLA - 611
UC Berkeley - 536
U Michigan 522
UT Austin - 391
UF Gainesville - 385
UCSD 345
Harvard 307
UW Madison 305
UVA 303
UIUC 300
Stanford - 300</p>