<p>Not to bring elitism into this too much, but if we’re talking about facts, we really should note that it depends on what major they’re transferring into. It’s my belief that someone transferring into a hard major at Cal could (a fairly significant number of times) be a strong student. After all, if this person were not such a great student, it’s more likely he/she would be heading for an easy major. Self-selection is a huge deal. If the transfers are taking and surviving certain courses, chances are they’re much more intellectually formidable than most Berkeley students.</p>
<p>Wow. People are talking about transfer students like White southerners talked about Blacks in the old South. They’re inferior, they cannot compete! But when Transfers are successful here they only get half a diploma (in the minds of some people here). </p>
<p>Reminds me of a case after the Civil War ended when a Black southerner’s grocery shop competed too successfully with a White man’s grocery shop that the White man almost went out of business. How could he have competed successfully? Well the White man and his friends went over to the Black southerner’s grocery shop and shot at the Black owner and his friends. The Black owner and his friends defended themselves but were nonetheless arrested. The town’s people later ended up dragging the Black men out of their cells and they ended up lynching them. The only thing here that got its way was not virtue nor hard work but jealousy.</p>
<p>It doesn’t matter if the Transfer students here compete successfully. Not in the minds of the jealous freshman admits who ended up doing badly (not all do badly). Well I hate to break it to all the jealous bigots here but you can’t have it your way because you want to, this isn’t the Old South.</p>
<p>Employers don’t care. No one else does either.</p>
<p>this thread is disgusting and discriminating. you all should be ashamed of yourselves. shouldn’t berkeley be an open school, open to all who have a drive and will to learn? </p>
<p>who cares about getting here. it’s about how well you do here. I’m sure that those who are serious about academics will do well here- it’s not all about outwardly appearances or innate intelligence, it’s about hard work. Transfers wouldn’t be here unless they really wanted it and DESERVED IT.</p>
<p>bwahaha you call the freshman at this school strong? I’ve met some students who have scored in the 1700s, 1800s, and 1900s in the SATS at this school. the only consistently strong freshman (scoring above 2200) I’ve met are those in the engineering department. This just shows that freshman haven’t had an adequate education either, so stop being so cynical and considering yourself vastly superior to transfer students.</p>
<p>I’m sure that most students weren’t used to the pressure that they faced in cal in their semester (honestly my high school junior year was worse than my first semester here), but they mus have stepped up to do well. so im sure transfer students will also “step up” and do well if they want to succeed. that’s what makes them stand apart.</p>
<p>finally, this school would be very pathetic if it was only a school of socially awkward nerds. we need athletes. we need musicians. we need actors. we need artists. it is not in pure academics that a school gains its power, but rather in academics plus extracurricular actives. Stop being so narrow minded- if they can’t contribute academically, then they can also contribute in another way and don’t overlook that!</p>
<p>And I want to add to those viewing this thread that the people here are outliers/fringes of the Berkeley populace. Don’t believe that everyone is hostile towards transfers at Berkeley. They’re just disgruntled bigots who instead of focusing on their own career and their own lives, try to interfere with the lives with others.
If you don’t get into Berkeley in your first round, feel free to transfer. The majority here will not care, and most will respect you.</p>
<p>you guys are seriously elitist pri*ks. My friend…a transfer from uc riverside…just got a 99 on her first midterm…Take that .STOP JUDGING. seriously. What makes you ANY better than someone just because you had to take the SATs, and most transfers didn’t? (She did, and I did…)
I mean, what next? Are you gonna pick on people because they can’t write 10 pg. papers in less than an hour? Come on…
It’s starting to anger me that such people go to Cal. We’re all human, after all, aren’t we?</p>
<p>lol how would freshman admits be jealous of inferior transfers!?
I just don’t get it. It’s that we don’t want inferior and undeserving kids to be at a school I worked hard to get into. If only 200-300 transfers are admitted, that would be okay. But more than 1500? You must be kidding me. That’s like almost 1/3 of Columbia Undergraduates combined.
Get it right, kid.</p>
<p>But that’s where your analogy falls down. We don’t know if the transfer students are truly ‘competing successfully’, because most of the competition is concentrated within the weeder courses that the transfer students are conveniently allowed to skip. If the transfer students were to perform in the weeder courses at the same level as the freshman-admits, or equivalently if the freshman admits were allowed to skip the weeders, then your case would be strong. But that doesn’t happen. </p>
<p>That’s why I’ve always said that the worthy transfer students - and surely there are many - should welcome weeder reform, because that would eliminate, once and for all, any suspicion about whether they truly are able to compete at the same level as the other Berkeley students. But the fact that they don’t do so - and indeed seem to vehemently oppose any reform - only reinforces the suspicion that they have something to hide. </p>
<p>Like I said before, Berkeley might also be able to end the dispute by publishing a side-by-side comparison of transfer vs. freshman GPA post-weeder. Then we could see whether transfer students were indeed competing successfully. The fact that the administration refuses when they could easily do so again only serves to reinforce suspicions. </p>
<p>To reiterate, I have no problem with the concept of transfer students, and I don’t support transfer-bashing. On the other hand, I wish I never had to take weeders. Nobody does. Yet as long as transfers are allowed to skip weeders that the other students are forced to take, then it is only natural for those other students to feel ‘jealous’, and, frankly, justifiably so. </p>
<p>Hence, I pose the question once again: ‘Why should transfer students be allowed to skip weeders that the other students are forced to take?’ Until that question is resolved, the dispute will persist. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Let me stop you right there, because your opening premise is flawed. Berkeley is not, as you say, an open school, open to all who have a drive and will to learn. Not even close. The vast majority of applicants - whether freshmen or transfer applicants - are not admitted. Heck, the vast majority of people aren’t even eligible to apply to Berkeley. Let’s face it, if you earned a 2.0 GPA in high school and a terrible SAT score, you can’t even apply as a freshman applicant, or if you had a 2.0 GPA in community college, you can’t even apply as a transfer applicant. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Is it? I’m sure that some people who were rejected would have done just fine if they had actually been admitted, regardless of whether they were freshman or transfer applicants. But they weren’t admitted. </p>
<p>As long as Berkeley has dual admissions tracks, neither of which is ‘open’ as each rejects most applicants, it is incumbent for Berkeley to ensure that the two tracks are equitable to each other. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>And if that is indeed true that the transfers do work hard and deserve to be here, then they should have no problem’ stepping up’ to take the weeders, or at least the weeder placement exams, right? Or if you dislike that solution, then let’s invoke the other one: freshman admits should also be allowed to skip weeders in the same way that the transfers can. </p>
<p>Otherwise, the freshman-admits will continue to have a legitimate complaint. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Sure, but at the end of the day, Berkeley rejects the vast majority of its applicants, including plenty of people with impressively well-rounded capabilities. I personally can think of a number of gifted athletes and artists with decent grades who were nonetheless rejected from Berkeley because their total package was not considered impressive enough to merit admission. I don’t see what this point has to do with whether certain students but not others should be allowed to skip weeders.</p>
<p>Then allow me to turn your analogy on its head. Blacks in the Jim Crow South were ‘jealous’ of whites - and legitimately so because they were not being accorded equal rights. They were forced to sit in the back of the bus, they were not allowed the right to vote, they were not allowed to sit on juries, they were not provided equitable access to the law. </p>
<p>Now, I don’t want to compare weeders to the treatment of blacks in the Old South, for obviously the two situations do not compare on any moral metric (but, after all, it was you who brought up the analogy). But the guiding principle is the same: inequitable treatment inevitably produces jealousy. Freshman admits are forced to take weeders that transfers do not, and that engenders jealousy, and legitimately so. </p>
<p>The way to solve that problem is to implement equality. The Civil Rights Movement enjoyed a groundswell of support across races precisely because it advocated equal treatment for all. {It was when the Movement later began to press for special treatment for some was when it became controversial.}</p>
<p>Sakky, you need to stop posting in this thread. All of your points are valid but the people that you are arguing against are literally ignoring your side of the argument, and simply assuming that everything you post is “transfers suck and are second rate”.</p>
<p>If you guys were truly upset, stand in upper sproul, write a letter to dean of admissions, make a website. Do something, this thread does absolutely nothing. </p>
<p>If you aren’t “upset” enough to do something about it, then your just *****ing.</p>
<p>^you’re not even a student here, why are you ■■■■■■■■ this forum and pretending to have a clue about the students here? (and yes, making a screen name exclusively for the purpose of arguing about transfers is ■■■■■■■■)</p>
<p>@afc10ns: I agree, sakky’s posts (along with mathboy’s) have a lot of good content. But they’re so lengthy that the transfers are either unable or unwilling to read so much that goes against their beliefs. </p>
<p>The beef isn’t with the transfer students, they will obviously be angry/hostile to anyone that bashes their path. It’s with admissions. They are the one’s responsible for allowing so many soft major, under qualified, and undeserving students in. Transfers just want to further their education and status, they can’t be blamed exclusively for wanting lateral movement.
I also agree with coolwhipp, sitting on cc and writing about it is not enough. There is an injustice happening here and at every other University of California campus. Something needs to happen irl.</p>