Cornell v. Berkeley

Colleges and Universities A-Z Cornell University
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<p>Totals don't impress me. That's a function of school size. You make your argument based on totals. I make mine based on percentages. If you read the thread you drew your last set of data from, you will see everyone decrying that "ranking" as being totally irrelevant because it does not factor in school size. Just about every school on that list is a public school. Am I supposed to believe that UF is better than Harvard?</p>

<p>As for your Stanford MSTP data, is that supposed to prove anything? 4 Berkeley, 2 Cornell, 1 Yalie, 4 Princeton, 3 Duke, blah blah blah. What conclusions would you like to draw?</p>

<p>The fact that Berkeley generates a gianormous number of med school applicants is unimpressive to me. It's a huge school. It's supposed to have a large number of applicants. How many of those applicants get in is my question.</p>

<p>As for quality of students, the most reasonable comparision across colleges are SAT scores. Don't forget Berkeley takes a ton of community college transfers. If you can keep up a 3.9 at a community college for 2 years, you have a very good shot at getting into Berkeley. Berkeley freshmen have lower SAT scores than Cornell freshmen. I would bet that the discrepancy is even larger once you factor in the transfers.</p>

<p>I guess people can decide if they want to go by percentages or totals. It's a personal choice really. It just makes more sense to me to go by percentages but whatever :)</p>

<p>Anyway, since you won't be replying, I just want to say that it was good debating w/ ya. I usually answer questions on this forum about Cornell premed but rarely have to defend it.</p>

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<p>
[quote]
I guess people can decide if they want to go by percentages or totals. It's a personal choice really. It just makes more sense to me to go by percentages but whatever

[/quote]
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<p>good job, norcalguy</p>

<p>i also turned down berkeley (in-state) for cornell. the choice was pretty clear to me. berkeley simply does not have the same quality AND quantity of biology programs/ premed as does cornell.</p>

<p>finances mean shlt as I won't be graduating with a penny of debt either way</p>

<p>abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz, there are numerous reasons to pay for private tuition at cornell than public tuition at berkeley, not only for the support premeds receive, first from the career center, and second from a separate bio advising program. in my view, cornell's environment is more conducive to both learning and professional school placement (YES, i have visited both).</p>

<p>
[quote]
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.

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<p>notice how norcalguy would never sink to this level. and please, you don't need to reply, you really don't. this forum would be much better without your presence, thanks.</p>

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<p>Eh, it's alright. I like to see a guy who's passionate about his school. I don't think current students would be on this forum if they weren't. I don't have a problem with his language, just the fact that he accused Cornell and ND of preventing applicants from applying when it's simply not true. Believe it or not, some kids actually make their school decisions based on what we say on these forums (even though they shouldn't). I would hate for him to mislead anyone.</p>

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<p>*sigh. The point of the 4th link is to show that the data presented by the Berkeley Career Center that norcalguy so happily posts is representative of <150 out of >500 medical applicants at Berkeley, and to prove to norcalguy that Berkeley produces more med school applicants than Cornell does (norcalguy claimed otherwise). Thus the point of the link was simply to show that anyone quoting stats on Berkeley med admissions is working on incomplete data...and a non-random sampling and hence I was showing that the data can't be used to argue for or against favoring or disfavoring Berkeley's pre-med admissions over any other school's.</p>

<p>No where in any thread have I ever suggested that the more med applicants, the better the school for pre-med preparation. I don't understand how anyone can interpret the information I posted in that way.</p>

<p>And since norcalguy loves proportions, let's discuss proportions of each school's undergraduates who apply to med school:</p>

<p>Assumption: 1) The undergraduate population has been reasonably steady for the last couple years for both schools (although Berkeley's freshman class HAS been increasing a little over the last couple years and even though this fact would disadvantage Berkeley in the method I propose below, i'll use it anyway because I don't think it'd make that much of difference) and 2) since the retention (graduation rate) for Berkeley and Cornell's freshmen are similar, the # of med school applicants will be divided by undergrduate population to determine an arbitrary proportion of med school applicant per undergraduate for both schools. Because i'm too lazy to find out how many seniors there are at Berkeley and Cornell (I really should be using seniors instead of total undergraduates), i'm going to use the total population unless someone can reasonably disprove the 2 assumptions I made. In that case, feel free to do your own calculations and correct me. So here it is (undergrad populations data stolen from Wiki):</p>

<p>Berkeley: 540 med school applicants / 23,000 undergrads = 0.0235
Cornell: 220 med school applicants / 13,600 undergrads = 0.0162</p>

<p>So a higher proportion of Berkeley undergrads apply to med school than Cornell undergrads. WITHOUT considering the acceptance rates yet, two reasonable hypotheses can be made to explain the numbers: 1) There is a higher proportion of high-achieving students at Berkeley , or 2) Cornell discourages low-achieving students from applying. NOW let's consider the acceptance rates**(see bottom)....67% for Berkeley in 2004 and 76% for Cornell in 2004. Norcalguy already pointed out that Cornell doesn't have a committee that prevents pre-meds from applying if their stats are low, so cancel out hypothesis number 2. The acceptance rate issue shows that hypothesis number 1 is probably false...but let's check: Now multiply the above proportions by the acceptance rates to come up with an index for both schools that represents the proportion of undergrads in 2004 for both schools that can say that they are going to med school:</p>

<p>Berkeley: 0.0235 x 0.67%= 0.0157
Cornell: 0.0162 x 0.76% = 0.0123</p>

<p>THUS it is shown that proportionally, Berkeley students are SLIGHTLY MORE likely to go on to med school than Cornell students are.</p>

<p>AND I didn't even factor in the whole situation of most Berkeley pre-meds being California residents (their state medical schools are the ultra-competitive UC med schools while most Cornell pre-meds have the luxury of applying to their not-so-competitive state schools).</p>

<p>HOWEVER, my final opinion is what i've been saying all along:</p>

<p>It's a wash. Choose your school based on how you like the campus, environment, etc because comparing numbers between Cornell and Berkeley just won't produce an answer in terms of which one is "better." They are equally badass schools. The bottom line is this: If you're smart and dedicated, you'll get into med school whether or not you go to Berkeley or Cornell.</p>

<p>**keep in mind that i'm using the Berkeley Career Center's incomplete admissions data for this purpose.....but there is no evidence that the acceptance rate would be higher OR lower if complete data is known so i'm using this data because it doesn't favor norcalguy's or my argument.</p>

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<p>See, now you're just putting words in my mouth. I never said Berkeley has fewer med school applicants than Cornell. That's preposterous considering how many undergrads it has (if Berkeley has 2X as many undergrads and only 1/2 as many applicants, that's gotta be some kind of pressure cooker, eh?). My exact quote was:</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>The data was used to show that Cornell has data that is more complete than Berkeley's, not that Berkeley has fewer applicants. Cornell's data is not 100% complete either since it does not force you to use the HCEC. </p>

<p>Your statistical analysis would be alright except for one factor: We don't know how many start out premed in each school. Both schools are fairly similar so the proportions starting out premed are probably about the same and the ending proportions are about the same. That just proves both schools are equally efficient in weeding out their students (my intention was never to prove that Berkeley weeded out students at a greater rate than Cornell). Although I will make one conjecture (and this is simply a guess), a larger precentage of Berkeley students may start out premed simply because Berkeley has an extraordinary amount of Asian students. I will probably risk stereotyping here, but Asian students are more likely to be premed than any other ethnicity.</p>

<p>As for people (me, theone, sakky, etc.) interpreting your posting of totals as your argument, what did you expect? Your entire argument has been based on data that's composed of totals.</p>

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<p>I have been reading these arguments for a while... and Im sorry, abcdefgclass2006. I am going to Berkeley next year, and I will choose Berkeley over Cornell anytime (because of location/campus...etc), but I have to admit that you're argument is a bit flawed. I can't really argue for any of these two schools since I haven't attended any of them, but I can see that although his claims might be true, the support and evidence that abcdefgclass2006 is using are not that convincing. No offense by the way tho.</p>

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<p>happygirl, my argument is this: Berkeley and Cornell are equally good in terms of pre-med preparation. Norcalguy's argument is this: Cornell is a better school than Berkeley in terms of pre-med preparation. </p>

<p>So are you saying that despite all the evidence I've presented to show that one cannot present one school over the other as being better in terms of pre-med preparation, Cornell is a better school for pre-meds than Berkeley? Simple yes or no question....</p>

<p>So far i've shown that:
1) The (undergraduate) academic reputations of Berkeley and Cornell are the same
2) Enrolled Berkeley students have similar stats as Cornell students
3) Cornell students don't have an edge over Berkeley in terms of getting into elite medical programs (I used the MD/PhD programs at UCSF and Stanford to illustrate this)
4) Around the same percentage of students at Cornell and Berkeley end up in medical school (actually the percentage is slightly higher for Berkeley students but i'm saying that's too insignificant to say Berkeley is a better pre-med school than Cornell)......and this does not even factor in the inherent disadvantage Berkeley has, being a California public school.
5) The Berkeley data set that norcalguy uses is incomplete and misleading because it apparently represents only around 30% of applicants at Berkeley.
6) Personal opinions expressed by people who have studied at BOTH Cornell and Berkeley either as transfers or graduate students say that the quality of the student body and education are pretty much the same.</p>

<p>And yet you STILL believe that you'd have a better shot getting into medical school from Cornell than from Berkeley?</p>

<p>If the answer is yes, give reasons why.
If the answer is no, then obviously you agree with me.</p>

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<p>Oooops, I made a calculation error earlier, as sakky pointed out. So here are the re-calculations....this affects statement #4 above but the argument still holds....</p>

<p>Not to be too picky, it's 13600 for cornell, and according to Wiki (I rechecked), "Campus Enrollment : The following statistics are calculated from the Fall 2004 enrollment and were released by the University of California system (the 2005 statistics will be released Fall 2006):</p>

<ul>
<li>Total Enrollment: 30,269</li>
<li>Undergraduate Enrollment: 22,144 .........."</li>
</ul>

<p>so it'd be:</p>

<p>Berkeley:605 applicants/22100 undergrads = 0.02738
Cornell:441 applicants/13600 undergrads = 0.03243</p>

<p>multiply the two numbers by their respective acceptance rates,</p>

<p>Berkeley: 0.0183
Cornell: 0.0246</p>

<p>Now at this point I'd claim (for the 224398574984th time) that Berkeley's disadvantage in being a California public school accounts for the discrepency.</p>

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<p>I'd claim that statistically, since both sides are incomplete with different situations, you can't compare them, no matter how high an alpha you set.</p>

<p>I researched both schools heavily, since I got into A&S with a Tanner Dean Scholar at Cornell and Regents and Chancellor's at Berkeley. Basically, I found that they are very, very similar in terms of everything from academics to advising to size.</p>

<p>Therefore, I personally couldn't find a reason to take Cornell over Berkeley, since Berkeley gave me in-state tuition and didn't have a restriction of merit scholarships (as per Ivy policy... I might have considered Cornell more heavily if they didn't just give me $600 for TD). </p>

<p>Both are roughly similar. Pick the one you like better.</p>