<p>If I got straight Fs in high school, a 4.0 in DVC, and transferred over to UCB and got into EECS I’d be the most arrogant sonofa***** on campus. </p>
<p>That requires getting all of Physics done (3 tastes of hell), all of the Calc series done, some other stuff, and at the end of the day after spending 2-3 years crunching all of this, you still need to look exciting and sociable on paper to even be considered. </p>
<p>Oh, and the worthless transfer/counseling departments you get at a CC compared to the one-on-one DEDICATED counseling high school students get? Ho boy. </p>
<p>Yeah since you know ever HS counselor is dedicated and all transfer counselors are trash. Dang that’s a lot of people you must have meet to deduce such a strong statement. Wow CC pre-EECS must be pretty crazy, you know since Cal freshman admits barely if EVER have taken calc or physics before in our lives. I guess all of us rare few who took AP Physics and AP Calc must have gotten As and 4.0+ because we guessed.</p>
<p>Well, to that, not to be overly harsh, but I’m afraid I have no sympathy. Frankly speaking, if those transfer students had worked harder in high school, they could have been admitted to Berkeley as freshman. Nor do I find poverty to be an entirely convincing excuse, as over 1/3 of all Berkeley students, which obviously includes numerous freshman-admits, are Pell-Grant recipients, which indicates that they are poor. Those who worked harder in high school certainly enjoy some advantages over those who didn’t, and that’s exactly the way it ought to be. </p>
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<p>See above. Hard work should be rewarded. Certainly you’re not going to try to argue otherwise? </p>
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<p>The far bigger problem is that many freshman-admits are weeded out of certain majors entirely. In fact, that is precisely the raison d’etre of the weeders: to weed many students completely out of the requisite major. Heck, certain weeders do their job so effectively to cause some freshman-admits to be expelled from Berkeley entirely because their GPA’s are no longer high enough to retain good academic standing. </p>
<p>So consider the following comparison:</p>
<p>*Transfer student admitted to engineering who graduates with a (Berkeley) GPA of 2.1, which is barely passing.</p>
<p>*Freshman-admit who was admitted to engineering, but obtains a 1.9 GPA due to the weeders, which results in him landing on academic probation and then expulsion from Berkeley entirely. </p>
<p>There’s clearly no comparison to be made whatsoever regarding who has the better career prospects. The transfer student may not have done well. Sure, perhaps employers will discount his first two years of community college experience. But at least he has an engineering degree. From Berkeley. In contrast, the freshman-admit didn’t even graduate from Berkeley at all. </p>
<p>What’s even more poignantly sad is that that freshman-admit probably could have graduated from Berkeley if he had been allowed to skip the weeders in the same manner that the transfer students were allowed. Sure, maybe he would have obtained mediocre grades in the post-weeder sequence. But he wouldn’t have failed, because practically nobody actually fails the post-weeder coursework - where failure is defined to be anything less than the C, which corresponds to the 2.0 GPA threshold required to avoid probation. </p>
<p>Note, lest you think this is merely a hypothetical point, that freshman-admit with a 1.9 GPA in engineering is a real person that I know (no, not me). He really was expelled from Berkeley because he couldn’t meet Berkeley’s GPA threshold which pays no heed to weeder grading schemes. What’s even more galling is that he, frankly, clearly knew more and was harder working than many of the engineering transfer students who were earning low (but still barely passing) GPA’s, yet they weren’t being expelled. If they had been forced to take the weeders, they would have been placed on probation on the road to expulsion in the same manner that he was. </p>
<p>That guy ended up having to take a job hauling boxes for FedEx because not only did Berkeley expel him, no other school wanted to take him as a transfer student for he had flunked out of Berkeley. They don’t care that he flunked out because of harsh weeder grading curves. All they care about is that he flunked out. It’s a sad story, but that’s what happens when certain students are allowed to avoid weeders when others are not.</p>
<p>For the record, again, I have nothing against transfer students per se, and indeed, I once proposed the notion that perhaps all Berkeley undergrads should be transfer students. </p>
<p>However, I hardly see anything ‘tired’ in the least about pointing out the fact that transfer students do enjoy an advantage in avoiding weeders that freshman-admits do not. The fact that this problem has existed for years without anybody bothering to fix it - despite widespread agreement even here on this thread that a problem does exist - or, even worse, the notion we shouldn’t even be allowed to discuss the problem at all, now that is truly tired. Are you saying that people are not allowed to discuss problems? </p>
<p>What is so ‘tired’ about the notion that freshman-admits should be allowed to take the same community college ‘weeder-waiver’ courses that the transfer students take? Barring that, what is so ‘tired’ about having those transfers take those weeders, or at least the weeder exams? </p>
<p>Not once have I proposed the notion that we should reduce the number of transfer students. I have simply proposed that transfer students be subjected to the same standards that the freshman-admits are. Why is that so controversial? Would anybody like to argue that the transfer students should not be subjected to those same standards?</p>
<p>And the simplest explanation for that is that they skipped over the weeders. The average freshman-admit GPA’s would be higher if they didn’t have to count their weeder grades. </p>
<p>Therefore, what the NYTimes should have done (or the Berkeley administration, who surely provided the data) is to compare the transfer GPA’s to post-weeder freshman-admit GPA’s. That would have been a convincing argument. The fact that nobody did that only heightens the suspicions that something is amiss. For example, I suspect that that analysis was actually run (for it would be trivial for the administration to perform), found that the result was not favorable for their narrative, and simply chose not to report the results.</p>
<p>They shouldn’t? Tell that to the freshman-admits who were placed on academic probation because their GPA’s did not meet the threshold to maintain good academic standing. The Berkeley registrar certainly cares about that GPA, which therefore forces the students to care as well. </p>
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<p>Then we could enact the reform that freshman-admits can’t use a community college course to skip a Berkeley weeder unless the earns a grade equivalent to what the transfer student needed to be admitted to Berkeley. That would be truly fair. </p>
<p>Yet my preferred solution is still to have the transfers take the weeders, or an equivalent placement waiver exam. Why is that so controversial? We’re talking about difficult courses that the transfer students are proposing to skip: so why is it inappropriate to ask them to demonstrate that they’ve truly mastered the corresponding material? If you know the material, you will do well on the placement exam. If you don’t, well, frankly, you should not be allowed to skip the course. Is that really such an outrageous proposal?</p>
<p>Again, I have nothing against transfer students per se. I am simply asking that the transfer students demonstrate their knowledge of the weeder material if they want to skip that coursework. Is that wrong?</p>
<p>The freshmen admits that get on academic probation can go to community college, fix their crap, and go to a UC. </p>
<p>Besides, if you get kicked out of UCB, and are complaining because transfer students don’t get kicked out, aren’t you just proving your point even more that YOU are the one that’s subpar? </p>
<p>You couldn’t even make it past lower division for ****'s sake! They come in and thrive on the harder classes. ha.</p>
<p>I’d FEEL VERY SORRY for the college students with the AP calc teacher.</p>
<p>Wrong. Their UC transcript follows them for life. That’s the problem. Hence, even if they do perform well in community college, they still have a public and permanent UC transcript that sunders their academic opportunities forever. </p>
<p>What I have endorsed - and indeed proposed on other threads - is that students who are expelled from Berkeley should have their academic records expunged completely. The guy isn’t going to graduate from Berkeley anyway - who cares what his Berkeley grades were? But that’s not how the system works. </p>
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<p>Wrong - they didn’t thrive. The transfer student in the above comparison had a 2.1 Berkeley GPA. That’s hardly “thriving”, indeed, that’s almost dying. Almost. It’s still (barely) passing. </p>
<p>Frankly speaking, the true intellectual difference between a 1.9 weeder GPA and a 2.1 post-weeder GPA is virtually nil, and in fact, I would argue that the former is actually superior to the latter, because weeders have harsher grading. Either both students should be expelled, or both should be allowed to stay. But that’s now how the registrar sees it.</p>
<p>Look, the sad fact of the matter is that it is better to not take a difficult course at all than to take it and get a bad grade. That freshman-admit who was expelled with a 1.9 weeder GPA probably could have survived if he had been allowed to skip to the upper-division. Granted, maybe he too would have skated by with only an upper-division 2.1 GPA as well. But that’s still passing. But he never even got the chance because the weeders extirpated him. Meanwhile, the transfer student who was allowed to skip the weeders was allowed to skate by with that 2.1. Why? What’s the difference between these two students?</p>
<p>Hey there are a lot of people like me that were smart and guess what got financial aid and I feel I got the best of both worlds. World class education at a CC price…you just got the CC price and that was it.</p>
<p>All of it is moot, Sakky. Things aren’t going to change, and it’s going to continue. I think your focus and energy would be beneficial elsewhere.</p>
<p>We all attend Berkeley. We should be picking on Standfurd, not each other.</p>
<p>I don’t understand why somebody would serve in the armed forces. Wars will always happen and people will die eventually. One person in the army doesn’t matter, why not just stay at home and spend your time on something else?</p>
<p>True, things probably won’t change. But as long as we keep discussing the issue, at least there’s a chance for change, however small. If nobody ever discussed it, then there really is precisely zero chance that anything will happen. To paraphrase Wayne Gretzky, you miss 100% of the shots that you never take. </p>
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<p>While I can’t speak for others, I’m not picking on anybody, least of all the transfers. I am well aware that what is happening is not their fault. The problem is with the system.</p>
<p>Wars must be fought in order to maintain peace. So wars can stop, as long as there are individuals who are willing to fight for peace, hence everyone is important.</p>
<p>If you read my earlier posts, me staying home doing something else would never accomplish as much good as I did in the military. The US military isn’t only used for fighting wars and maintaining peace, but I can understand your mentality because you attend Berkeley.</p>
<p>Sakky, yes discussing it may bring change, but this is the wrong “forum” for that, no pun intended. Online message boards is probably better for ranting and raving through veracity, rather than a soapbox for demanding change.</p>