Does a Berkeley degree have the wow factor of HPYSM in America?

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of California - Berkeley
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<p>Oh yeah, traveling around the world, I hear that Americans are racists, rapists, mass-murderers. Oh, that must be quite true?</p>

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<p>I’m afraid Berkeley’s, “Hippie, dirty, pot smoking reputation” is widely accepted among the general public outside of California. I had no idea Berkeley was an excellent school until I moved to California.</p>

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<p>Cornell also breaks apart math courses, etc into discussions that have less than 25 students. There are also not very many lectures in the 100s</p>

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<p>Bragging among Comp Sci types, Berkeley is awesome. Better than Harvard. So is Carnegie Mellon, so is Cornell. Not all Engineering mind you, but for Comp Sci/EE, yes.</p>

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<p>I think some people are missing the point here. Bragging rights and prestige in the US among high-schoolers doesn’t necessarily come from how good a school is. Berkley could be #1 in all areas of study for all they care, but if it doesn’t have a low acceptance rate and a high US News ranking, it’s just doesn’t hold lay-prestige. From my experience in high school, Berkley was never truly “difficult” to get into in the same sense that every school in the top 10 US News ranking is. They’ve begun to accept many out of state kids, many of them subpar, just to get the additional tuition boost. It’s not much of an accomplishment to get into Berkley when one compares it to the difficulty of getting into schools like HYPSM, Columbia, Caltech, Chicago, Penn, Duke, Dartmouth. For people in the know, Berkley is an amazing practical choice, because it does indeed have some great departments. </p>

<p>Bragging rights? Those go to schools that have admissions considered “crapshoots.” If I had a 2300 SAT Score and got rejected from Berkley (or any other state flagship), I’d truly be shocked. That same score would give me no assurance for my applications to the Ivy+ schools.</p>

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<p>Why are these people so determined to prove that Berkeley is not as prestigious as IVYs? What gives? Don’t they have any better things to do? I found it very funny though.</p>

<p>We are the electrical engineering majors at Berkeley. And the truth is that we are so much smarter than all those IVY league students.</p>

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They’ve got one thing right: the quality of the opportunities available to you doesn’t give you bragging rights; it’s what you had to do to acquire them. But taking that logic to its natural conclusion, the people with real bragging rights are geniuses without formal education. Gregor Mendel invented genetics with nothing but some monastical training, a little bit of gardening knowledge, tons of crops, and time. He proactively disproved 35 years of scientific “advancement” made by people who didn’t take him seriously. That makes him more badass than if he’d attended Cambridge, studied with the world’s elite biologists, received a research grant, and published his research in Nature.</p>

<p>So to you Ivy League and Cal students who brag about your schools: you’ve already made your future accomplishments less impressive (if you accomplish anything).</p>

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<p>Dunno brah, i think the world still reveres gates/zuckerberg/obama</p>

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<p>Two of whom dropped out of college…</p>

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<p>I would say berkeley does have some programs on par or even surpassing the Ivies, but where I’m from it is nowhere bear as prestigious as the Ivies and Stanford, MIT, and Duke. And I’m from California.</p>

<p>I think it has to do with the large amount of students there. And in reality, its just not that difficult to get into. I go to a school of underachievers, and pretty much all the pretty smart people get into Berkeley. There were ten people in the senior class this year
accepted to Berkeley, and none accepted to any of the top privates.</p>

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<p>According to [Cornell</a> Math - Spring 2013 Class Schedule](<a href=“http://www.math.cornell.edu/ADMIN/Teaching/Schedules/sp13.html]Cornell”>http://www.math.cornell.edu/ADMIN/Teaching/Schedules/sp13.html) , the 25 student Math 1110 classes are run by graduate student instructors and visiting faculty. Most of the other lower division courses fit the usual faculty lecture with graduate student instructor discussions, just like Berkeley. Some, like Math 2930 and 2940, have enough discussions that the lectures likely number in the hundreds of students.</p>

<p>Other Cornell courses, like introductory economics and chemistry, also have enough discussions to indicate large lectures:</p>

<p>[Cornell</a> University Registrar: Course and Time Roster Spring 2013](<a href=“http://registrar.sas.cornell.edu/courses/roster/SP13/ECON/]Cornell”>http://registrar.sas.cornell.edu/courses/roster/SP13/ECON/)
[Cornell</a> University Registrar: Course and Time Roster Spring 2013](<a href=“http://registrar.sas.cornell.edu/courses/roster/SP13/CHEM/]Cornell”>http://registrar.sas.cornell.edu/courses/roster/SP13/CHEM/)</p>

<p>This isn’t to say that Cornell is bad or anything like that. But the experience is likely to resemble that of a big state university like Berkeley more than it does what people tend to assume that prestigious private universities are like.</p>

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<p>Berkeley, the <em>best</em> PUBLIC university in the world, has 8 Nobel Laureates in its CURRENT faculty:</p>

<p>Current Faculty Nobel Laureates at Berkeley</p>

<p>2011 - Saul Perlmutter (Physics)
2009 - Oliver E. Williamson (Economics)
2006 - George F. Smoot (Physics)
2001 - George A. Akerlof (Economics)
2000 - Daniel L. McFadden (Economics)
1997 - Steven Chu (Physics)
1986 - Yuan T. Lee (Chemistry)
1964 - Charles H. Townes (Physics)</p>

<p>besides countless others before.
Also, it has a FREE parking spot for all future ones. Priceless !</p>

<p>[Berkeley’s</a> Prize For Nobel Winners: Free Parking : NPR](<a href=“http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113883274]Berkeley’s”>Berkeley's Prize For Nobel Winners: Free Parking : NPR)</p>

<p>Go Bears!</p>

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<p>Gosh, these kind of posts are getting too familiar</p>

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/johns-hopkins-university/884322-johns-hopkins-undergard-warning.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/johns-hopkins-university/884322-johns-hopkins-undergard-warning.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p><a href=“http://thetartan.org/2012/12/3/forum/mentalhealth[/url]”>http://thetartan.org/2012/12/3/forum/mentalhealth&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>moral of the story: dont choose hyper competitive college or majors if you are not cut out for it, someone i know got a comp sci from csu hayward and who cares, her comp sci degree helped her to get a job, no mention of college.</p>

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<p>The NL parking permits have been around for a long time.</p>

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<p>As a resident of Cali, I can honestly say that Berkeley carries little to no prestige here. This may be different for others, but no one I know really puts much emphasis on a Berkeley education. I do not mean to undermine Berkeley; after all, it is the best public institution. However, its reputation for TA-taught classes, large lectures, and little professor-student relations definitely is Berkeley’s downfall. In short, Berkeley has no “wow factor” here… Berkeley is actually a safety school for a lot of the Ivy-bound seniors at my school. The colleges that have real reputation in California(from what I have seen) are Stanford, Stanford, and Stanford ;)</p>

<p>In all sincerity though, Stanford is the main college that people really respect closely followed by USC, UCLA, and the Claremont Colleges.</p>

<p>NOTE: This is only from my personal experience, and other people in California may have seen otherwise.</p>

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<p>It is only in American where capitalism is strong that Public Universities are second in line. Did you know that Oxford and Cambridge are public? How can you compare the facilities at a private hospital to that of a public? Maybe Administration but not facility where taxpayers’ money go. Money is huge here and that is why the privates will always win in rankings. Look at the rest of the world and see how they rate their schools. Public>>>Private. Go figure. I like the academic ranking better and that of peer review. Okay, eat me. lol</p>

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<p>-n from American lol</p>

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<p>Unless you work in a prestige-driven job or are a wealthy WASP (or wealthy in general) and need a prestigious degree for social purposes, the quality of the individual program matters far more. </p>

<p>I think people tend to take prestige a bit too seriously. But then again, this is CC. I hope this thread cleared up a lot of questions for prospies. I think one thing we can all agree on is that the prestige of a Cal degree really differs geographically. California residents are a bit lukewarm because all the top students get into Cal, East Coasters have little idea what/where/who Cal is or means, Southerners hate Cal because of its dirty hippie image from the 60s, academics everywhere hope to go to Cal for grad school, and international students adore Cal. And that’s okay. Very few schools have a solid and consistent reputation everywhere. Tons of people in Chicago have no idea what my school is. </p>

<p>Go where you think is best for you and don’t let rankings decide where you end up.</p>

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<p>Op,
You post rankings that may have affected your ideas about prestige whether consciously or subconsciously. In the US, we use the USNWR which consciously or subconsciously affects ideas of prestige to many people.
[National</a> University Rankings | Top National Universities | US News Best Colleges](<a href=“http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities?int=college_rankings_lists]National”>http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities?int=college_rankings_lists)</p>

<p>And since HYP > UC Berkeley in the USNWR, then much of the public who follows these rankings feels this way as well. Even so, the group that follows USNWR is much much smaller than the masses of laymen who basically see Harvard branding, plotlines, stories in the movies, TV, etc, etc. Thus for the masses of laymen, Harvard >>>> UC Berkeley.</p>

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<p>“In all sincerity though, Stanford is the main college that people really respect closely followed by USC, UCLA, and the Claremont Colleges.”</p>

<p>Just because it’s fun to rank colleges, in California I’d say the most respected universities are -

  1. Stanford and Caltech
  2. Berkeley
  3. USC and UCLA
  4. UC San Diego
  5. UC Davis, UC Santa Barbara
  6. The other UCs and Cal Poly SLO</p>

<p>While absolutely top-notch, the small Claremont Colleges don’t seem that well known among the general public. I know a couple of people with degrees from Harvey Mudd, and I’d rate them right up there with the Stanford & MIT graduates I know.</p>