<p>They’re in the “BOTTOM SCHOOLS BY GRADUATION RATE: MOST COMPETITIVE” category, not “MOST COMPETITIVE”. </p>
<p>Berkeley is in “TOP SCHOOLS BY GRADUATION RATE: HIGHLY COMPETITIVE”.</p>
<p>The editor is not mindless.</p>
<p>New College of Florida 56%
St. John’s (NM) 56%
Hendrix 66%
Northeastern U 66%
Goucher 67%
St. John’s (MD) 71%
Knox 72%
Rhodes 73%
Tulane 76%
Reed 76%
U of Miami 76%
Bard 76%
George Washington U 78%
Kalamazoo 78% </p>
<p>The rates for a few of these could be lower because of the ridiculously high tuition cost, for example, GWU’s over $40,000 a year in tuition alone</p>
<p>Sorry, forget my post #81.</p>
<p>The report does look a bit odd; e.g.:</p>
<p>Berkeley’s 2008-09 CDS CR SAT 25%/75% is 580/710, listed as highly competitive.
Reed’s is 660/760, listed as most competitive.
UCLA’s (2006-07) is 570/690, lower than Berkeley, but also listed as most competitive. ???</p>
<p>Occidental doesn’t publish a Common Data Set, and I can’t find their SAT data.</p>
<p><a href=“http://cds.berkeley.edu/pdfs/PDF%20wBOOKMARKS%2008-09.pdf[/url]”>http://cds.berkeley.edu/pdfs/PDF%20wBOOKMARKS%2008-09.pdf</a>
[Reed</a> College 2008-09 Common Data Set SecC](<a href=“http://web.reed.edu/ir/cds/cds0809/cdssecc200809.html]Reed”>Reed College 2008-09 Common Data Set SecC - Institutional Research - Reed College)
<a href=“http://www.aim.ucla.edu/data/campus/general/CDS2006_2007.pdf[/url]”>http://www.aim.ucla.edu/data/campus/general/CDS2006_2007.pdf</a></p>
<p>The definitions:</p>
<p>Highly competitive colleges generally admit students with high school grade averages of B to B+ and accept most students from the top 2035 percent of their high school class; have median freshman test scores ranging from 620 to 654 on the SAT and 27 or 28 on the ACT; and accept between one-third and one-half of their applicants.</p>
<p>Most competitive colleges usually require high school rank in the top 1020 percent and high school grade averages of B+ to A; have median freshman test scores between 655 and 800 on the SAT and 29 on the ACT; and typically admit fewer than one third of applicants.</p>
<p>Does anyone see how UCLA was labelled “most” but Berkeley “highly”?</p>
<p>[U-CAN:University</a> and College Accountability Network - Free. Easy.](<a href=“ucan-network.org”>http://www.ucan-network.org/) publishes data on many of the private colleges and universities. Oxy’s data is here [U-CAN:</a> Occidental College](<a href=“ucan-network.org”>ucan-network.org)</p>
<p>Thanks! So in descending avg SAT CR+M order, adding M and GPA:</p>
<p>
Reed: CR 660/760, M 630/710, avg 690, GPA 3.9, most competitive
Berkeley: CR 580/710, M 630/760, avg 670, GPA 3.9, highly competitive
UCLA: CR 570/690, M 610/720, avg 648, GPA 4.1, most competitive
Occidental: CR 590/700, M 600/690, avg 645, GPA 3.6, most competitive
</p>
<p>Berkeley’s classification does look odd.</p>
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<p>…Wait, what? What big software companies are hiring all these non-college graduate IT people? At the company my mother works for (lame sounding, I know), even the admins need 4 year college degrees.</p>
<p>In the tech industry, in my experience, a college diploma (mind you it can be ANY college diploma in any subject) is a huge discriminator in hiring. Sorry, know it’s off topic, but what you posted really seems like misinformation that downplays the importance of a college degree.</p>
<p>"What big software companies are hiring all these non-college graduate IT people? At the company my mother works for (lame sounding, I know), even the admins need 4 year college degrees.</p>
<p>In the tech industry, in my experience, a college diploma (mind you it can be ANY college diploma in any subject) is a huge discriminator in hiring. Sorry, know it’s off topic, but what you posted really seems like misinformation that downplays the importance of a college degree."</p>
<p>The position typically has to be made for you.</p>
<p>A tennis friend’s son was part of a software company that a group of friends formed in high-school. They were bought out. One was offered a job at about $200K out of high-school for a major media company.</p>
<p>You have to have skills to get a job without a degree. You can get those skills by getting a job in high-school and then learning on your own. Or perhaps enrolling in a certificate program or taking community college courses.</p>
<p>Another approach would be to work on an open source project. The source code is freely available so that you can build and experiment with production code at home. You don’t even necessarily have to know how to program. Some open source projects need graphics people, documentation people and testing people. Sometimes you see requests for people to do contracting work related to your open source contributions. Sometimes the organization doing the open source work asks you if you’re interested in working there as an employee. If you have a skill that someone wants badly enough, then the lack of a college degree shoudn’t be a problem.</p>
<p>Those of you using the Firefox browser might know that one of the four guys that built it was a high-school teenager.</p>
<p>Lima, </p>
<p>We’re not downplaying the importance of a college degree. Of course it matters at some places some of the time. But there are also many places where “what you can do” is even more important than having a degree. Let’s not forget that. </p>
<p>It is also true that in many settings having a degree and having demonstrated ability is the best combination. </p>
<p>What may be hard for you to understand is the difference between one’s credentials and one’s skills/abilities. While some employers use credentials as a proxy for skills/abilities some of the time, it is not universal. It is also true that having skills/abilities without the corresponding credential is not common, but it does happen. Bill Gates comes to mind. </p>
<p>So don’t be so quick with your accusation of “misinformation”…</p>
<p>“… but what you posted really seems like misinformation that downplays the importance of a college degree.”</p>
<p>Well, for the majority of seekers of entry level jobs that usually require a college degree, I have to agree. A few exceptions don’t contradict the rule for most. The practical problem is that for entry level jobs that usually require a college degree, getting the requisite skills/abilities is difficult without one. In this case, I think “many” means “most.”</p>
<p>We’re not talking about entry level jobs that generally don’t require a college degree.</p>
<p>This is why there is a lot of emphasis on getting an internship in your degree area - you’re slightly above entry-level which counts for something in a sea of otherwise similar resumes.</p>
<p>One other thing about open source work as a volunteer: working in software projects often means navigating through politics and processes. You need to be technically able to get things done which includes working with others, convincing others and even motivating others. You often need to figure out how to get an important piece of information from an organization that isn’t well-understood to newcomers. Those are intangible things that are learned in the workplace that usually aren’t taught in universities.</p>
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<p>Actually, your example bespeaks to the solution: MIT graduates a far higher percentage of its students than Berkeley or, especially, Reed. 93% of MIT students will graduate in 6 years, compared to only 75% at Reed. While I can certainly agree that Reed is a rigorous school, I think it’s hard to make the case that it is significantly more rigorous than is MIT. What does the MIT adcom know that Reed’s doesn’t know? </p>
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<p>Again, see above - whatever you may want to say about the difficulty of MIT, the fact remains that over 93% of the undergrads will eventually graduate. Maybe the students do sometimes struggle, maybe they do sometimes fail, but at the end of the day, a highly impressive percentage of them will graduate. MIT is therefore living proof that you can combine high levels of rigor with a highly impressive graduation rate. </p>
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<p>The same factors probably would affect that student…but the results of those factors would differ. </p>
<p>I’ll give you a simple example. Take a student who barely got into Berkeley - i.e. represented the lower percentile in terms of high school GPA and SAT score. That student is probably going to struggle academically at Berkeley. If lucky, and if he never runs into problems, maybe that student will indeed perform as an average student at Berkeley and successfully graduate. But if he does run into problems, his performance will drop below the threshold of good academic standing whereupon he will be excelled. Yet that student would have probably done just fine - heck, probably excelled - if he had gone to a Cal State, where he would have been one of the more qualified and talented students of his class. Even if he does run into the same problems, his performance will be degraded from being a top CalState student to just being an average student - but that’s still good enough to graduate. </p>
<p>Simply put, some schools are more demanding than others are. What schools should then do is simply not admit those students who are unlikely to be able to meet those demands. Why not? That’s what MIT does. I think we can agree that MIT is, on average, a significantly more rigorous school than Berkeley is, yet MIT still boasts of a higher graduation rate than does Berkeley. </p>
<p>It gets back to the point I made before - why admit students who you have strong statistical reason to believe aren’t going to graduate? Doing so is cost-free to neither the school nor to the student. The student has to pay whether he graduates or not, and the school has to expend academic resources on students who aren’t going to graduate. Furthermore, the student gravely risks ruining his academic record for life. </p>
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<p>I’m not sure that the Harry Levin example helps you, because he did in fact have a degree, and from Harvard. Sure, it wasn’t a PhD. But it was still a bachelor’s degree. I believe the discussion here is implicitly restricted to the bachelor’s degree. I certainly agree that nobody absolutely needs a PhD, not even in academia (although they are often times de rigueur). </p>
<p>As far as the Bill Gates example - it is one that I have touted myself, as it has to do with entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurs don’t have to impress any hiring committee. They just hire themselves and all that matters is that they then build a product that the market demands. Heck, I myself have recommended in various threads in CC that those people with entrepreneurial dreams may do very well to drop out of school and start their own company. If Microsoft hadn’t worked out, oh well, Gates would have just re-enrolled at Harvard. </p>
<p>What makes the Gates/Microsoft scenario even more poignantly ironic is that nowadays, it is practically impossible for anybody to actually be hired by Microsoft unless they have a degree. In other words, and as Paul Graham once remarked, Bill Gates today probably would not have been hired at Microsoft. What Gates could do is grow a company like Microsoft under him. But once that company is established, it begins to institute bureaucratic rules, such as demanding degrees from its hirees. </p>
<p>I agree that those who apply black-and-white screens don’t have hiring power in the sense that they can determine whether you will receive a job offer. However, they do have screening power in the sense that they can and will winnow your resume out of the pile because of your lack of degree. The truth of the matter is that many (probably most) job openings receive tens, and sometimes hundreds or even thousands of resumes, particularly if the job opening is posted online or other public forum. What employers then do is then weed people out for lack of credential, of which a lack of a degree is a well-worn tactic, for nobody is going to sit around carefully vetting thousands of resumes for a low-level job opening. While having a degree certainly won’t guarantee that you’ll get the offer, for you still have to impress during the interview, not having the degree will eliminate you before you even get the interview. </p>
<p>I also agree that hiring depends far more on skills and accomplishments than on degrees. Yet - pop quiz - how many 21-22 year olds actually have significant skills and accomplishments? Bill Gates certainly didn’t have much, which is why, as an entrepreneur, he effectively hired himself. Entrepreneurs - unlike employees - have no entitlement to payment. Bill Gates and Microsoft had to successfully build products and then convince customers to buy them, and only after all that will he be paid. A company employee, on the other hand, is paid whether he is productive or not. He is also paid prospectively - if a project will take a month of work, that employee will be paid for that entire month of work, even if the project turns out to be a failure. Entrepreneurs, on the other hand, are paid retrospectively - Gates and Microsoft are paid only if the product is successfully sold, otherwise they get nothing. </p>
<p>In other words, Gates, as an entrepreneur with limited marketable skills, assumes all of the financial risk. An employer, on the other hand, has to assume the risk in hiring somebody with limited skills. The employer has to hope that such a person will develop productive skills, with no guarantee that that will happen. A college degree is a way for employers to lower their risk, for, if nothing else, at least it signals to the employer that the person has enough gumption to complete college. That’s better than nothing. </p>
<p>Which leads to the other point. Again, I agree that if you do indeed have highly marketable skills and experience, you probably don’t really need the degree. But, again, how many 21-22 year olds actually have highly marketable skills and experience? The value of the college degree is that it provides you with opportunities to compete for a high quality job via which you will obtain those skills and experience. “Can’t get a job without experience, can’t get experience without a job” is the vicious cycle that most young people face, and the college degree is a tried and true method of breaking that cycle. </p>
<p>So I return back to my basic point: in this day and age, in order to garner a decent career, you basically need a degree, with only a few important exceptions such as entrepreneurship or professional entertainment/sports. More and more employers screen applicants out via degrees. While there is some differential value in having a high-prestige degree over an average one, the difference is relatively small. The large falloff is between somebody with an average degree and another who has no degree at all. </p>
<p>Now, is it fair? Is it right? No, probably not. It’s a silly “check-the-box” artifact of bureaucracy. But like it or not, that’s how it is. It would be nice to believe that you can always ‘network’ your way around screeners, and I am sure that there are some truly savvy networkers who may indeed be talk their way into their dream jobs without degrees. But most of us aren’t quite that deft. Most of us have to obtain jobs the normal way, and if the screeners demand degrees, then that is what we have to provide.</p>
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<p>Well, In fairness, I have. And not just any med-school, but UCSF, which is arguably the best med-school in the West Coast. </p>
<p>*We strongly recommend that premedical students pursue a four-year undergraduate curriculum and obtain a baccalaureate degree before entering medical school.</p>
<p>However, we only require completion of three years (135 quarter units or 90 semester units) of acceptable transfer college credit from an accredited institution, including the required college-level courses listed below. Only 105 acceptable quarter units can be transferred from a junior or community college.*</p>
<p>[Getting</a> Started | How to Apply | Office of Admissions | UCSF School of Medicine](<a href=“http://medschool.ucsf.edu/admissions/apply/getting-started.aspx#importantinfo]Getting”>http://medschool.ucsf.edu/admissions/apply/getting-started.aspx#importantinfo)</p>
<p>However, it should be noted that it is extremely rare for anybody to be admitted to UCSF, or any other med-school, without a bachelor’s degree simply because most of your competition will have degrees. </p>
<p>The truth of the matter is that degrees have become something of an arms race. You need a degree because others have them too, which makes you look inferior by comparison if you lack one. Unfortunately, there is no easy way to exit this arms race, for everybody has to agree to stop, which won’t happen because everybody is looking for an edge.</p>
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<p>I have always been a resolute proponent of the open-source movement and the IT/hacker/tinkerer/developer community. I frankly think that more Americans would be better served by, instead of going to college, performing poorly and wasting money; instead learning IT/software skills. Heck, I believe that US high schools do a great disservice in having all of its students learn how to deconstruct Shakespeare - a skill that is valuable to only a small minority of society - but not providing them with opportunities to learn how to configure Cisco routers and Linux/Unix servers or program in Java or C++. </p>
<p>But it is also true that young people themselves have to want tech/IT jobs, yet many don’t. Many people want some other career. If you want to become a management consultant, investment banker, or private equity associate, you need a degree. If you want to be a doctor, while may not technically need a degree, you need at the bare minimum at least three years of college courses with strong grades. If you want a business role in a large company, you increasingly need a degree. </p>
<p>Heck, some tech firms implement hiring policies that are deeply partial to college degrees. And not just any tech firms, but the most famous and innovative ones. Consider the hiring practices of none other than Google:</p>
<p>For the most part, it takes a degree from an Ivy League school, or MIT, Stanford, CalTech, or Carnegie Mellon–America’s top engineering schools–even to get invited to interview. Brin and Page still keep a hand in all the hiring, from executives to administrative assistants. And to them, work experience counts far less than where you went to school, how you did on your SATs, and your grade-point average. “If you’ve been at Cisco for 20 years, they don’t want you,” says an employee</p>
<p>[Can</a> Google Grow Up? Google is one of the best things to happen to the Net. So will its IPO, expected this spring, be a must-buy? A look inside reveals a talented company facing trouble. - December 8, 2003](<a href=“http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2003/12/08/355116/index.htm]Can”>Can Google Grow Up? Google is one of the best things to happen to the Net. So will its IPO, expected this spring, be a must-buy? A look inside reveals a talented company facing trouble. - December 8, 2003)</p>
<p>“*While I can certainly agree that Reed is a rigorous school, I think it’s hard to make the case that it is significantly more rigorous than is MIT. What does the MIT adcom know that Reed’s doesn’t know? *”</p>
<p>If anyone cares, I think it’s more than rigor, but not the adcom. When those leaving Reed were asked why, the most common answer was that they were surprised by what they found. In case anyone has noticed, Reed has been one of the most transparent schools recently, opening the admissions process to the NY Times, publishing how the adcom chooses a class, and mentioning the difficult freshman humanities class 19 times in the viewbook. MIT and Reed are such apples and oranges that comparisons are difficult, other than both being in the top five of future per-capita PhD producers. I think MIT is more predictable to prospies than Reed; it certainly is much more well known.</p>
<p>The efforts may be slowly paying off; Reed’s six-year graduation rate has increased one percent per year for the past seven years, now at 77%, but still low.</p>
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<p>While transparency is certainly wonderful, I would argue that ultimate responsibility still falls to the adcom, who should simply not be admitting those students who don’t understand what the Reed experience is. This could mean deep interviews, perhaps over the phone or IM, or essay questions to try to ascertain just how deeply an applicant understands what they would be getting themselves into. This could be a matter of statistical regression, i.e. if prior students from the East Coast are found to be the most likely to not graduate from Reed, perhaps because they didn’t understand the school for reasons for geographical distance, then the answer is to simply admit fewer East Coast students in the future. </p>
<p>The general point still holds: you want to minimize the percentage of students you bring in who aren’t actually going to graduate. I’m not asking for 0%, for that’s clearly impossible. But you should be trying to minimize the rate, for everybody’s sake. Many students probably are better off not going to Reed.</p>
<p>The main problem is that GPA only goes so high… and we all know the wide range of capabilities among 4.0 students.</p>
<p>“This could mean deep interviews, perhaps over the phone or IM, or essay questions to try to ascertain just how deeply an applicant understands what they would be getting themselves into. This could be a matter of statistical regression …”</p>
<p>Reed, like many schools, does all of this. The CDS also shows Interview as Important, Essay as Very Important.</p>
<p>“you want to minimize the percentage of students you bring in who aren’t actually going to graduate. I’m not asking for 0%, for that’s clearly impossible. But you should be trying to minimize the rate, for everybody’s sake.”</p>
<p>Well, duh! 
What school doesn’t try?</p>
<p>“Many students probably are better off not going to Reed.”</p>
<p>Same for MIT or any rigorous school; few students have the academic wherewithal. Reed says the same thing in the view book:
The catch is that no one in the 77% graduating group saw this version of the viewbook or experienced the transparency, so we have to wait a while to see if the efforts pay off.</p>
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<p>I would argue that Reed isn’t trying, or at least, not hard enough. You said it yourself - only 77% of the students will actually graduate. That clearly indicates that something is missing.</p>
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Sakky, this is the crux of our difference. You posit this. I don’t agree, and much evidence is on my side.</p>
<p>take away this assumption on your part and much of your argument is weakened.</p>
<p>But no matter. This is not a search for truth.</p>
<p>“That clearly indicates that something is missing.”</p>
<p>Yes, the six-year lag time needed to show results of recent efforts. :)</p>