<p>Doesn't Berkeley have some crazy Greek style amphitheatre?</p>
<p>guys quite fighting yo! I just wanted to know if going to Cornell or Berkeley for my undergrad degree would be wise. which one would be the Best to go to!!!! remember I am going into Law.</p>
<p>either one will work. I think Cornell is best for numerous reasons, but UCB fans will say the same thing.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Maybe in the Asian countries, but my experiences have been much different in the UK and the Middle East (Qatar to be specific). For some reason, most people recognize harvard and yale (obviously), then the next two are Cornell and NYU.
[/quote]
Times Higher Education Supplement rankings 2005 (London):</p>
<p>1 Harvard University USA 100.0
2 Massachusetts Institute of Technology USA 86.9
3 University of Cambridge UK 85.8
4 University of Oxford UK 83.9
5 Stanford University USA 83.4
6 University of California, Berkeley USA 80.6
7 Yale University USA 72.7
8 California Institute of Technology USA 71.5
9 Princeton University USA 64.8
10 Ecole Polytechnique France 61.5
11 Duke University USA 59.1
11 London School of Economics UK 59.1
13 Imperial College London UK 59.0
14 Cornell University USA 58.1
15 Beijing University China 56.3
16 Tokyo University Japan 55.1
17 University of California, San Francisco USA 54.9
17 University of Chicago USA 54.9
19 University of Melbourne Australia 54.5
20 Columbia University USA 53.9
21 ETH Zurich Switzerland 53.5
22 National University of Singapore Singapore 53.0
23 Australian National University Australia 52.9
24 Ecole Normale Sup</p>
<p>
[quote]
Times Higher Education Supplement rankings (London):
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Sakky has posted his criticisms of the rankings, some of which I have pasted:</p>
<p>
[quote]
According to who is this international reputation garnered? </p>
<p>The only polls that I have seen that purport to measure 'international reputation' are the THES poll and the Shanghai JiaoTong poll. Both of them I find deeply flawed. Nevertheless, both of their latest polls ranks Stanford above Berkeley.</p>
<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/THES#T....28worldwide.29%5B/url%5D">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/THES#T....28worldwide.29</a>
<a href="http://ed.sjtu.edu.cn/rank/2005/ARWU2005TOP500list.htm%5B/url%5D">http://ed.sjtu.edu.cn/rank/2005/ARWU2005TOP500list.htm</a></p>
<p>I find both of these polls deeply flawed for a number of reasons. First off, take the Jiao Tong poll. Forget about Berkeley and look at some of the other results. The notion that Wisconsin and Washington are somehow better than Michigan is a curious result to say the least, as is the notion that UCSD is better than UCLA. But come on. Honestly, how many of us are really going to turn down Dartmouth or Brown for, say, Michigan State or the University of Arizona unless money was the issue? But that's what the Jiao Tong survey would have you believe. Similarly, how many of us are really going to turn down Dartmouth or Brown to go to UMass unless, again, money was the issue? But that's what THES would have you do.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>
[quote]
Sakky has posted his criticisms of the rankings, some of which I have pasted:
[/quote]
I was refuting a claim of Gemostar, that somehow the reputation of Cornell is above the reputation of Berkeley in the UK. Certainly that ranking is much better evidence, objective evidence, than Gemostar's biased personal experience.</p>
<p>Also, Sakky is misinterpreting the rankings. In the US many people make decisions based on our own ranking, US News, which has rankings in line with the conclusions Sakky was making about what US students would decide. </p>
<p>This isn't the case outside of the US; they turn to other rankings--that accounts for the differences in worldwide rankings versus what students may decide to do in the US and what US employers may think of various schools. </p>
<p>Sakky was using US student opinion evidence to refute a claim that involves international student opinion.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I was refuting a claim of Gemostar, that somehow the reputation of Cornell is above the reputation of Berkeley in the UK. Certainly that ranking is much better evidence, objective evidence, than Gemostar's biased personal experience.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Objective evidence? The criteria used is insufficient, especially in light of Sakky's illuminating criticism.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Also, Sakky is misinterpreting the rankings. In the US many people make decisions based on our own ranking, US News, which has rankings in line with the conclusions Sakky was making about what US students would decide.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Ohhh... I get it... so people should actually choose UMass over Brown and Dartmouth.</p>
<p>No problem.</p>
<p>
[quote]
This isn't the case outside of the US; they turn to other rankings--that accounts for the differences in worldwide rankings versus what students may decide to do in the US and what US employers may think of various schools.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Really? I know many people at Oxbridge, and none of them even pay attention (and they have never even heard of) such rankings.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Sakky was using US student opinion evidence to refute a claim that involves international student opinion.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I am not sure Sakky was expressing "US student opinion"; unless UMass fit you better or you could not afford Dartmouth and Brown, you would be pretty darn stupid if you chose the former over the latter or if you even dared to argue that the former provides a better undergraduate education and experience than the latter.</p>
<p>Edit: And I love your apocryphal generalizations: "they turn to other rankings," "they do this, they do that." Perhaps you could use some objective evidence rather than unsubstantiated nonsense when attempting to ground your claims.</p>
<p>Cal and Cornell are good schools; however, sextonism for both simply will not be tolerated.</p>
<p>Also, Brian Leiter's criticism of the THES Rankings:</p>
<p>
[quote]
THES has published their second ranking of leading universities around the world here (you can register for a 2-week free trial period to see the rankings). In format it looks like a U.S. News excercise, but (and this is key!) the focus is (largely) on the research and graduate quality of institutions. ** 60% of the overall rank is, happily, based on research/faculty quality: 40% based on an international reputation survey of academics; 20% on citations as measured by Thomson ISI's database (which is skewed towards medicine and the hard sciences). That's the good news!
**Unfortunately, being journalists, the THES folks apparently have no real idea what they're doing, so mixed in with these research-oriented criteria are incommensurable and unrelated factors: an evaluation of graduates by employers (10%); the percentage of international faculty and students (5% each); and faculty/student ratio (20%). These factors aren't uninteresting, but how they should be weighted relative to the research strengths of an institution is utterly mysterious.
THES is clearly still figuring out what it's doing, and some of the mistakes are rather dramatic. In 2004, for example, the University of Texas at Austin was ranked 15th in the world by THES, and in the top ten in the US, a result that was, shall we say, a bit surprising. Scrutinizing the data, it became clear to me what had happened: Texas was ranked in the top ten in citations per faculty member, an astonishing result for a university without a medical school (research in medicine drives citation measures), but one that would make good sense if the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School at Dallas (one of the real medical powerhouses in the world, with more Nobel Laureates on its faculty than any other medical school in the US) were counted as part of the Austin results, which is obviously what had happened. ** This year, THES apparently figured out that Austin and Dallas are two different campuses, and UT Austin's citation per faculty member dropped dramatically--as did its overall rank (from 15th in the world, to 26th, and to 12th in the US--more realistic results). **
Although THES claims to include only schools with undergraduates, they rank the University of California, San Francisco 17th in the world, though UCSF is exclusively devoted to graduate education in the health fields (that it fares so well is one indication of how skewed the results are to universities with strengths in medicine and biological sciences).** Duke jumped from outside the top 50 last year into the top 15, a change that can only mean there was some kind of mistake last year or this (probably last year--my guess is THES neglected to count the medical school). **
All this being said, the core THES data on research quality of institutions is interesting, and the effort is far superior to the absolutely bizarre "world university rankings" being put out by a Chinese university, which rewards institutions for its dead Nobel Laureates (if you used to be really good, that counts in your favor here!) and--because it has no peer review component and relies heavily on citation measures--is hugely skewed to schools strong in medicine, engineering, and the hard sciences (a first-rate "arts and humanities" school would barely register in the Chinese rankings). On the other hand, THES is not sufficiently forthcoming about its methods and underlying data to permit a thorough evaluation of its results.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Toodles, Mr. Objectivity!</p>
<p>
[quote]
Objective evidence? The criteria used is insufficient, especially in light of Sakky's illuminating criticism.
[/quote]
The point was that a ranking system such as that is clearly more reliable than one person's extremely limited personal experience. With that said, I think ALL rankings are dubious themselves, but certainly less dubious than one man's limited personal experience, especially one who lacks credibility.
[quote]
Ohhh... I get it... so people should actually choose UMass over Brown and Dartmouth.</p>
<p>No problem.
[/quote]
I was addressing school reputation, not directly approaching which school is better. I was refuting a claim made regarding school reputation, not a claim that Cornell is better than Berkeley for instance.
[quote]
</p>
<p>Really? I know many people at Oxbridge, and none of them even pay attention (and they have never even heard of) such rankings.
[/quote]
Many don't know what US News is either, but still carry opinions about schools that match the rankings: the rankings are a fairly accurate representation of US school reputation within the US.
[quote]
you would be pretty darn stupid if you chose the former over the latter or if you even dared to argue that the former provides a better undergraduate education and experience than the latter.
[/quote]
Again, I wasn't using the rankings to say that Cornell is better than Berkeley, just that Geo's claim that Cornell has a better reputation than Berkeley in the UK is dubious.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Also, Brian Leiter's criticism of the THES Rankings:
[/quote]
I agree with much of the criticism leveled at MANY rankings; I think rankings are inherently dubious, but much more reliable than evidence from a person who visited the UK a few times and must have been surrounded by other New York tourists in coming to the conclusion that Harvard, Yale, Cornell and NYU are the four most well-known schools there.</p>
<p>
[quote]
but much more reliable than evidence from a person who visited the UK a few times and must have been surrounded by other New York tourists in coming to the conclusion that Harvard, Yale, Cornell and NYU are the four most well known schools there.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>So his methodology was dubious; yours is no better.</p>
<p>He uses personal experience, and you use spurious rankings that are really not as highly regarded as you claim them to be.</p>
<p>Edit: Also, to be honest, I have heard more about Cornell than I have of Cal, and I am from Texas. Cornell also has quite an international presence, especially because of their Qatar campus.</p>
<p>Also, Cornell and Cal matter to those who are in a position to give you the job for which you are looking. What "popular opinion" thinks is nearly irrelevant. Popular opinion here in Texas is that Rice is better than Stanford, and Baylor is as good as Brown.</p>
<p>I smirk.</p>
<p>
[quote]
So his methodology was dubious; yours is no better.
[/quote]
It's about evidence. All dubious evidence is not equal. Evidence can be more or less dubious than other evidence.</p>
<p>
[quote]
It's about evidence. All dubious evidence is not equal. Evidence can be more or less dubious than other evidence.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Sure, and I think I raised sufficient doubt regarding your "evidence."</p>
<p>my personal experience stems not just as a tourist. My girlfriend's twin sister lives in Leeds and she is dating another college student who has two rather powerful parents (one went to LSE, the other oxford and they have another son who went to oxford). I have visited probably half a dozen times in the past two years and have considered graduate studies or possibly a job in Europe. </p>
<p>I realize that my evidence can be dubious, but I (unlike many others on these forums) prefer not to talk from my ass. I was surprised with the familiarity of NYU in the UK.</p>
<p>You don't have to believe me, I'm just sharing what I've experienced.</p>
<p>Thanks,
Gemostar</p>
<p>Carlos, the wise thing for you would be to go to the school you like best. They're very, very different environments. Both will get you into a good law school. The wise thing is to understand that you will have a successful career as a lawyer either way, so in getting there, take the path that makes you happiest and where you feel you will have the most opportunity to blossom as a student and a human being.</p>
<p>Do you would have to fly to Chicago or NYC from Ithica to get a great burrito or tacos al pastor while in school instead of stepping right off campus, or will you have to wear four to five layers of clothes on march 1st instead of a pair of shorts. Do you want to watch the sun set through the Golden Gate Bridge in February or pace quickly through the snow to get indoors...</p>
<p>to the poster who claimed the food offerings from Ithica are comparable to the ones in and around Berkeley: how many good dim sum parlors are within a half hour of campus? how many are among the best in the US? how authentic is the Mexican food around Ithica? Do businessmen fly into Ithica from elsewhere to go to some local sushi bars, like they do in San Francisco? Do you realize the incredible breadth of groceries and wines available yearround in the Bay Area while Ithica is frozen 5 months out of the 9 months-long schoolyear? Do you realize how ludicrous it is to compare the food from an isolated hamlet in upstate New York to that from the epicenter of the North American food revolution? Do you put the Princeton review dorm food ranking above the ravings from Gourmet, Saveur, Food & Wine and other top foodie magazines about world-class SF/Berkeley restaurants and even about Berkeley street food? </p>
<p>nspeds: I said "Berkeley in comparison has arguably the best campus concert venues/programs of any American university." The Greek Theater is a legendary venue, from Jimmy Hendrickx to the Smiths to the upcoming Radiohead concert. Radiohead, the biggest non-trash pop act currently has only 8 stops on their tour of North America. Two of these stops are on the Berkeley campus, at the Greek.</p>
<p>In terms of live music, Austin vs SF/Berkeley? I would still pick SF/Berkeley, for the variety. Austin is mostly about country music (SxSW excepted.) Berkeley/SF is much better balanced (classical, jazz as well as pop.) Yoyo Ma and the Kirov Ballet, Cecilia Bartoli are on campus at Berkeley every year.</p>
<p>
[quote]
nspeds: I said "Berkeley in comparison has arguably the best campus concert venues/programs of any American university." The Greek Theater is a legendary venue, from Jimmy Hendrickx to the Smiths to the upcoming Radiohead concert. Radiohead, the biggest non-trash pop act currently has only 8 stops on their tour of North America. Two of these stops are on the Berkeley campus, at the Greek.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>...and if you knew anything about UT - Austin, you would understand that UT pretty much is Austin.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I would still pick SF/Berkeley, for the variety. Austin is mostly about country music (SxSW excepted.) Berkeley/SF is much better balanced (classical, jazz as well as pop.)
[/quote]
</p>
<p>You have no proof of that. You are using your ignorance of Austin and your knowledge of Berkeley to support Berkeley, and that is fallacious reasoning.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Carlos, the wise thing for you would be to go to the school you like best. They're very, very different environments. Both will get you into a good law school. The wise thing is to understand that you will have a successful career as a lawyer either way, so in getting there, take the path that makes you happiest and where you feel you will have the most opportunity to blossom as a student and a human being.</p>
<p>Do you would have to fly to Chicago or NYC from Ithica to get a great burrito or tacos al pastor while in school instead of stepping right off campus, or will you have to wear four to five layers of clothes on march 1st instead of a pair of shorts. Do you want to watch the sun set through the Golden Gate Bridge in February or pace quickly through the snow to get indoors...</p>
<p>to the poster who claimed the food offerings from Ithica are comparable to the ones in and around Berkeley: how many good dim sum parlors are within a half hour of campus? how many are among the best in the US? how authentic is the Mexican food around Ithica? Do businessmen fly into Ithica from elsewhere to go to some local sushi bars, like they do in San Francisco? Do you realize the incredible breadth of groceries and wines available yearround in the Bay Area while Ithica is frozen 5 months out of the 9 months-long schoolyear? Do you realize how ludicrous it is to compare the food from an isolated hamlet in upstate New York to that from the epicenter of the North American food revolution? Do you put the Princeton review dorm food ranking above the ravings from Gourmet, Saveur, Food & Wine and other top foodie magazines about world-class SF/Berkeley restaurants and even about Berkeley street food? </p>
<p>nspeds: I said "Berkeley in comparison has arguably the best campus concert venues/programs of any American university." The Greek Theater is a legendary venue, from Jimmy Hendrickx to the Smiths to the upcoming Radiohead concert. Radiohead, the biggest non-trash pop act currently has only 8 stops on their tour of North America. Two of these stops are on the Berkeley campus, at the Greek.</p>
<p>In terms of live music, Austin vs SF/Berkeley? I would still pick SF/Berkeley, for the variety. Austin is mostly about country music (SxSW excepted.) Berkeley/SF is much better balanced (classical, jazz as well as pop.) Yoyo Ma and the Kirov Ballet, Cecilia Bartoli are on campus at Berkeley every year.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>You know what I want to do? </p>
<p>I want to sit here on a Saturday night and do research and type lengthy essays on whose concerts kick more ass: Cornell or Berkeleys. Hell yeah.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I want to sit here on a Saturday night and do research and type lengthy essays on whose concerts kick more ass: Cornell or Berkeleys. Hell yeah.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Funnily enough, I was reading Quine and thinking the same thing.</p>
<p>These Cal guys spend hours on defending and promoting their school; I think it speaks to some type of inferiority complex.</p>
<p>Now one could wonder why I attack and defend certain schools: there is no complex, I am just really, really, bored.</p>
<p>nspeds, I have friends in the music industry (independent record labels producer, music documentary film maker, venue owner) some of whom were at the SxSW. I used to be a DJ. I have over 3,000 albums, mostly pop but some classical and old school jazz.</p>
<p>I've also lived in Texas and have family there, including Longhorn alums (who always rave about Austin; live music, BBQ, college football etc)</p>
<p>SxSW is the biggest pop festival in the US along with Coachella, but it's a one time event. The programing the rest of the year isn't as stellar.</p>
<p>In any case, for the purpose of this thread, it's quite safe to say that the venues at and around Berkeley dwarf that from Ithica.</p>