<p>The undergrad engineering enrollment number changes by year due to the large attrition rate. Meaning there could be 1000 freshman engineers but only 500 sophomore engineers.</p>
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Oh merciful god, sakky. I’m sorry to point out the glaring fallacy in your logic. The issue at hand is which one to choose, Cornell or Berkeley? Given choice, which one will you choose, and why?
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<p>Oh merciful God, Rabban, I already answered that question in a previous post. But you are arguing the thread in a manner that I believe is incorrect. </p>
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1) The post #31 is a good example that the full professor had no problem of getting BS-PhD in Berkeley where is anti-incest rule in effect?
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<p>Did I say that ALL Berkeley departments have an anti-incest rule? I did not. Nor did I say that that rule was in effect all the time throughout history. But the point is, the rule is definitely in effect for chemistry and chemical engineering now, and has been for the last few years, and those are 2 departments that you have mentioned. Hence, one could say that going to Berkeley for undergrad in those majors actually LOWERS your chances of getting into a top PhD program, that being the PhD program at Berkeley itself. </p>
<p>Hopefully you are not trying to argue that there is no anti-incest rule at all. </p>
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2) The post #31 and the follow-on post #36 also clearly show good examples of going Berkeley (grad or undergrad) is a good way to get your first foot at the door of an ivory tower.
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<p>Again, who ever said that Berkeley was a 'bad' way to get your foot in the door. You said it yourself - the comparison is between Berkeley and Cornell. Neither are 'bad'. The question is, which is better? There are people who have been successful going to Berkeley for undergrad. There are people who have been successful going to Cornell for undergrad. The question is, which is better? You have failed to answer that question. </p>
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I need to post the NRC ranking again, because that is the most unbiased assessment of all programs in all universities. And please don’t lecture me that this is only applied to graduate program only, because last time I checked, the same A&S/ Eng. professors teach at undergrad & grad levels, and both grad & undergrad students were working together in a lab under the direction of the same A&S/ Eng. professor.
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<p>Uh, no, this does not hold. The major weakness of the NRC ranking is that, again, it does not include LAC's. This is perfectly natural because the LAC's have few if any graduate programs, hence they would not be included in the NRC. But I have shown through post #48 that the LAC's seem to be highly successful in getting their grads into top PhD programs. Like I said, there are almost as many former AWS undergrads who got PhD's from Caltech in 2005 than there were former Berkeley undergrads, despite the fact that the combined student population of AWS is only a fraction of the undergrad population at Berkeley. </p>
<p>The example of the LAC's illustrates that undergrad and grad are quite different. You can have a great undergrad program with a mediocre, or even nonexistent grad program. If that weren't true, then how did AWS get so many people into Caltech for grad school? Is Caltech being dumb in admitting so many of them? </p>
<p>Rabban, I am afraid to say that THAT is your glaring fallacy. Plenty of major universities are basically LAC's. Let's face it. Many of the Ivies, especially Princeton, Dartmouth, Yale, and Brown are basically LAC's. They are LAC's that just happen to have graduate schools. But at the end of the day, they are really LAC's. And we have already established that LAC's are highly successful in placing students into top PhD programs.</p>
<p>Rabban, don't blame me for what's going on. Go ask the top PhD programs why they are admitting so many grads from the LAC's (relative to the number of students at the LAC's), if the LAC's are really so bad? </p>
<p>Furthermore, you want to talk about where Berkeley people head off to grad school? So let's talk about it. Here is a list of grad schools that Berkeley ChemE students head off to (scroll down on the link). While obviously some went off to top graduate programs like MIT and Stanford, you should notice 2 things. First off, a lot of them went off to grad schools that aren't exactly top-ranked. Come on, UCDavis? Louisiana State University? UCSC? Secondly, notice how no chemical engineer went back to Berkeley for PhD chemical engineering. Two went back to different Berkeley PhD programs, but no chemical engineer was able to return to chemical engineering. What did I say about the incest rule? </p>
<p>OK, Sakky. No matter what you say, Berkeley is a better choice if you want to become a professor. As monydad's graciously posted (and deleted :p), the normalized number of PhD's per eng. grad also proved my point. </p>
<p>Berkeley (20-30) > Cornell (10-20)</p>
<p>I must agree with Sakky on this one, though. He makes more sense and proves his arguments - plus, he's also not biased to UCB as a student or anything. </p>
<p>To the OP: if you go to berkeley, you can hang out with people like Rabban all day long!!! </p>
<p>There's a thread out about UCB spammers, why is the student body so insecure about their position???</p>
<p>Yup, come join us. We welcome you to the greatest university of the world.</p>
<p>o no, i dont go to berkeley :p</p>
<p>UCB is far from the greatest university in the world. </p>
<p>Actually, I got a nice chuckle today when one of my professors whom I do research for described his undergrad experience as the "worst 4 years of college ever" and said something along the lines of "It felt more like working for a large corporation than a school." He went there for BS-PhD.</p>
<p>"i dont go to berkeley"</p>
<p>i guess, this confirms it:</p>
<p>"greatest university of the world"</p>
<p>Wondering which school he got his degree :)?</p>
<p>Gome: however you slice it, you cannot escape the fact: Berkeley is better known among Uber elites. Just deal with it.</p>
<p>Dolce Notte~~</p>
<p>An aria from Verdi's Otello</p>
<p>"Wondering which school he got his degree "</p>
<p>look at the adjectives he used to describe it, of course berkeley!</p>
<p>"Berkeley is better known among Uber elites"</p>
<p>not where I'm from buddy. Sorry! I don't know what part about that you deny. </p>
<p>To the OP, again: though UCB is a great school, I don't think it's better than Cornell, not in the least. In fact, only one person seems to think so. Take it for what it's worth, most people would agree that Cornell will have the better undergraduate experience, and it's extremely strong in the engineering area and hard sciences. Not sure if you're into med school stuff, but Cornell clearly places better than UCB, by quite the margin as well - a perk of the Ivy League perhaps. Unless, of course, you wouldn't mind surrounding yourself with people like Rabban all day ;)</p>
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it's a no-brainer to take Berkeley
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<p>That's absolutely not true. Visit both schools and go with the one you feel more comfortable in. Besides, someone with an east coast bias like me might take Cornell or even Chicago over Berkeley. In fact if I had the grades to go to Berkeley I'd be applying to Georgetown and UVa not Berkeley.</p>
<p>I hate how people say it's a no-brainer to choose one school over the other. First of all, there's not much of a difference academically between Cornell and Berkeley: if you want to live in the east coast, go with Cornell. If you want to go west, Cornell's still an excellent option. </p>
<p>I would ABSOLUTELY pass up instate tuition at Berkeley for schools like Cornell, Chicago, Brown or even schools like Georgetown and UVa, no doubt. For someone who hates living on the west coast, it might be a better option to go to schools like Michigan, UVa, Georgetown or even NYU. I love the east coast and I intend to live in the east coast forever, and those schools will open more doors in New York or DC than Berkeley will. Berkeley's a great school, it's just not for me.</p>
<p>OP: Having said that, nobody can tell you where you'd be better off. I suggest you visit both places, and then decide based on which you like better. Go with fit. Don't listen to what anybody says, including me. Most will have ulterior motives. ALL OF THEM will be biased one way or another.</p>
<p>Dude, I love living on the west coast and I still passed up in-state tuition to go to Cornell. I love big schools but Berkeley just felt way way too impersonal for me. I went there on Cal Day and there were people running amuck everywhere. The traffic was atrocious. No one knew where they were supposed to go. There were this random group of people parading around in a circle protesting the ROTC. It was an absolute circus.</p>
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OK, Sakky. No matter what you say, Berkeley is a better choice if you want to become a professor. As monydad's graciously posted (and deleted ), the normalized number of PhD's per eng. grad also proved my point.
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<p>How so? Perhaps monydad might like to present his post again. Furthermore, as even monydad said (and probably why he deleted his post), I'm not sure that a normalized number of Phd's per eng. grad proves all that much anyway. </p>
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Gome: however you slice it, you cannot escape the fact: Berkeley is better known among Uber elites. Just deal with it.
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<p>How is that? I think the 'uber-elites' know full well of the weaknesses of the Berkeley undergraduate program, which is often times why they prefer to go to places like the LAC's, which specialize in teaching undergrads.</p>
<p>Take a gander at the Revealed Preferences ranking, and ask yourself, why is Cornell revealed to have a higher preference than Cornell? Are these people being dumb? </p>
<p>I had posted a list of future PhDs per 100 undergrads , from another CC poster. I pulled because, doing some due diligence, I discovered that it was not consistent with other such lists that had been created, and upon inquiry this is because the denominator was (current) all engineering undergrads instead of actual (time lagged) engineering graduates. If various schools have differential dropout rates from their engineering programs this could make somewhat of a difference in the %s. Ditto if program sizes have changed. So held pending further investigation. I don't like posting bad numbers.</p>
<p>I think such a list could be quite relevant to Raban, since he's posted to the effect that he thinks that an engineering PhD is the "holy grail" destination of choice for engineering undergrads. For other people, who think lots of top students would really rather be, e.g., investment bankers than PhDs if that opportunity is made available to them, the interpretation can be more ambiguous. FWIW, in current form, of the 11 schools listed Swarthmore (an LAC) was the highest and Columbia (an investment banking recruiting hotbed) was the lowest. So yeah, different people might regard this differently but I thought at least Raban should like it.</p>
<p>I, for one, am a Cornellian who thinks Berkeley is every bit Cornells' equal. In fact, in terms of the structure of the universities, they are very similar. Sure, there are perks at Cornell--like unimpacted majors--that Cal doesn't have, but Berkeley makes up for that with being in a much more cosmopolitan and interesting area. I was always amazed at the lack of any kind of intellectual atmosphere at Cornell as soon as you stepped foot off campus...not so at Berkeley or in the bay area. Anyone who says that Berkeley is "dangerous" or "dirty" is from the suburbs and should probably go to the University of Virginia.</p>
<p>Look, I loved my experience at Cornell...but I would have taken Berkeley in a second. And this is not to say that one is better than the other. When you're talking about the top 20 or so schools in the country, certain schools will excell in certain areas and others in different areas.</p>
<p>I think the intangibles of living in the bay area (as opposed to Ithaca) make Berkeley a much more exciting place to spend four years.</p>
<p>Cheers,
CUgrad</p>
<p>Berkeley: Better education, better location. Not even close.</p>
<p>^^^</p>
<p>Get real, few believe that. </p>
<p>UCB has a better urban location, though. Though, I must say, you'll be working in an urban location for the rest of your life - go to college where the vacation homes are abundant and the small town atmosphere is vibrant.</p>
<p>gome--it's a matter of preference. Yes, to many of my friends from back east, who grew up in the burbs, ithaca is a charming vibrant town. To me, ithaca was charming and vibrant for about a week. That's not taking anything away from Ithaca or Cornell, but my view is that four years in ithaca is like living in a bubble. I knew many people who, literally, NEVER left east hill for four years. Going to Berkeley for many is like moving to a foreign country and many people simply prefer the more urban environment.</p>
<p>And understand the BearsandBruins is trying to get a rise from you...but in his defense, there are many, MANY people who think that Berkeley is simply a better school, all things considered, than Cornell. This shouldn't make any of us Cornellians defensive, it's not like those same people think Cornell is a junior college.</p>
<p>Bottom line, both schools are amazing, but very different atmospheres...in general, however, my opinion is that the true Berkeley bashers (and you're not one Gome--just a Cornell defender) wouldn't be happy anywhere where self reliance or innitiative are valued (e.g., Cornell, Berkeley, insert any other large, impersonal research university here)--they'd rather be in a high chair being spoon fed by their mothers.</p>
<p>Go Big Red and Go Bears (I know that shouldn't be uttered in the same sentence...forgive me).</p>
<p>CUgrad</p>
<p>"I knew many people who, literally, NEVER left east hill for four years"</p>
<p>it's such a shame when I hear people miss out on the things they have surrounding them like that. Ithaca is a small town, yes, but it is only a small bubble if you spend your entire time on the Cornell campus. Though there's usually dozens of things going on at any given time on campus, I always encourage others to get out and enjoy the town. There really is alot more than people give it credit for, especially when you know where to look. I have a few guides from visitithaca.com that have helped me tremendously - I just did a lake cruise a few weeks ago and it was great! It's a town that is really catered to the needs of college students, though under one stipulation: you have to go off of campus to get there!</p>
<p>I agree with pretty much everything CUgrad wrote. Good posts.</p>