<p>It is indeed counter-intuitive that Berkeley’s administration imposes weeders to increase the quality of their graduating classes but admits transfers who have taken the same classes elsewhere.</p>
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<p>Well, I can think of one excellent reason: some students want to graduate early, and Berkeley implements a (stupid) 20-unit cap. I agree that it may not be wise to exceed such a cap if you’re in a difficult major such as engineering, but if you want to proceed anyway, or if you’re in an easy major, then you should be free to take as many units as you want. If the problem is that Berkeley simply doesn’t have the academic resources to handle students taking more than 20 units, then they should be free to take the backfill simultaneously at another school. </p>
<p>Again, why does Berkeley care so much about what students do in their free time? It’s their time, they should be free to use it however they please.</p>
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<p>Exactly right, and that’s why I doubt that my proposals would ever be implemented at face-value. The administration will never admit this to be true, but the fact is, weeders are used to enforce quality amongst the students. Berkeley tries to maintain a reputation of quality amongst its graduates, and the way to do so is to weed the students. </p>
<p>But not all students. Transfer students are conspicuously immune. And that understandably generates discord amongst the rest of the students. That the transfer students have taken courses at their community college that are truly equivalent to the notoriously harsh Berkeley weeders is a claim that strains credulity. </p>
<p>So I’m calling the administration’s bluff. If those courses truly are equivalent, then the administration should have no problem in allowing every freshman-admit to bypass weeders by taking their community college equivalents. I doubt they will ever allow that, because we all know what would happen if they did: practically every freshman admit would use it. I know I would have. There would be practically nobody taking infamous weeder courses such as Physics 7B or CS 61B. Nobody would risk subjecting their GPA’s to those abysmal grade curves if they could flee to a community college. </p>
<p>Nevertheless, I still think it would be an informative exercise to request from the administration that reforms be made, and then see what sort of excuses they invoke as to why they won’t. </p>
<p>But maybe I’m wrong. Heck, I hope I’m wrong. Maybe the administration will allow such a change to happen.</p>
<p>The fact that you’re comparing slavery to transfer students is just ludicrous.
Why don’t we compare then and see what’s fair?
Let’s have Berkeley freshman working full time and supporting a family while trying to go to school, or what about the people who couldn’t leave home because their parents were too sick and they couldn’t afford a nursing home?
I have to take 4 years at a community college because Berkeley wants so much–5 semesters of chem, 3 semesters of physics, 3 semesters of bio, 6 semesters of math, and not to mention igetc certification! These classes aren’t easy either, there are plenty of people who plan on transfering to great schools and become discouraged because they don’t do well in a class–and it sure as hell isn’t because they aren’t smart enough. I work my ass off for every A and I work to support my mom and there are so many people out there doing that, people that feel like giving up all the time. So yeah, life isn’t fair. I wish I was the one sitting on my nice laptop in a cafe in Berkeley thinking about how unfair it is that I have to take a few really difficult classes while transfer students just whiz through everything. I’d love to have my parents pay for tuition while I sit there and protest the unfairness of the world from my comfortable dorm room while I’m in the bubble that is today’s universities.
So no, I’m not going to take some test to prove to arrogent underclassmen that I am worthy of their company. Life isn’t fair and you just have to make the best out of what you are given.</p>
<p>whatever. who cares anyways?</p>
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<p>I wasn’t the one who invoked the metaphor (which was about Jim Crow, not slavery). If you don’t like the metaphor, feel free to take it up with Tiberius. </p>
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<p>What about it? There are indeed Berkeley freshman who had to endure all of that, or even worse. Heck, I knew one who was born with a congenital disease that will confine her to a wheelchair for the rest of her life. I’d rather have to work every day while going to school in order to support my family rather than not have the ability to walk.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, physical challenges or no, as a freshman-admit, she still had to take the weeders. Nobody gave her a get-out-of-weeders-free card. Nor was she demanding any such special treatment. So if she’s not getting any special treatment, why should anybody else? </p>
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<p>If these classes are really as difficult as you claim, then you should have no problem with my alternative solution: allow the freshman-admits to skip weeders by taking those very same community college courses. </p>
<p>Either that, or you have to admit that you’re perfectly fine certain students use community college courses to skip weeders, but not others. That I find to be a logically untenable position.</p>
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<p>Then let me put it to you this way; there are some transfer students who are richer than we probably ever will be. While I don’t really know the guy well, I do remember the guy driving into the parking lot in his brand-new Boxster, and that was a trust-fund kid from a very wealthy family. {Rumor has it that he was just a ne’er-do-well in high school and that’s why he was consigned to the community college route). </p>
<p>On the other hand, I’ve never owned a new Boxster. Heck, I’ve never owned a new car of any model. And I certainly don’t have any trust fund backing me. Neither do the vast majority of freshman-admits. </p>
<p>Yet that guy was able to skip weeders because he was a transfer student. But the freshman-admits, including my physically-challenged colleague, had to take them. Why? </p>
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<p>Uh, why not? You said it yourself - if you were forced to take such an exam, you could chalk it up to your favorite mantra that ‘life isn’t fair’.</p>
<p>I am no longer the devil’s advocate:</p>
<p>“I’d love to have my parents pay for tuition while I sit there and protest the unfairness of the world from my comfortable dorm room while I’m in the bubble that is today’s universities.”</p>
<p>That’s a terrible assumption. Friends of mine are on the borderline of withdrawing or have withdrawn because they don’t have enough money to pay tuition. In fact, someone very close to me was denied loan money because of her parents’ bad credit.</p>
<p>Why would you use a bad metaphor again…? I think you need to understand that most transfer students aren’t going to community college to have a “get out of weeders free” card-- they are going because of other circumstances. And while there are people at universities who have to deal with the tragic hardship of taking out loans, they are still living in a bubble where they think they understand the world and they really don’t. Honestly, I don’t think I should have to prove myself to you–sorry.</p>
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<p>You are a music and psychology major. Music and psychology majors sit in the corner and play music (and analyze why music is being played). Music and psychology majors don’t proffer advice on academics unless they’ve taken an academically rigorous class.</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/music-major/931035-ucla-music-ucb-music.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/music-major/931035-ucla-music-ucb-music.html</a>
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/music-major/950204-need-help-cal-music-audition.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/music-major/950204-need-help-cal-music-audition.html</a>
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-california-berkeley/1017568-research-opportunities-graduate-school.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-california-berkeley/1017568-research-opportunities-graduate-school.html</a></p>
<p>Sakky has his own issues with the weeder classes, and they are legitimate. But the fact still remains (and the topic of this discussion is) that a good portion of transfer students are sub-par.</p>
<p>What needs to happen is implementation of SAT/ACT/SAT II. That would allow the more intelligent transfers to get through, give another criterion for admissions/basis for comparison, and validate their acceptance here. If transfer are as “up to par” as they like to believe, they should do well and would have no reason to worry. If they truly believe that they belong here, then they would have no problem doing well on an exam that 16 year olds take every single year.</p>
<p>honestly, I think I’m done with this thread for a while. The problem isn’t the transfer kids. There are some brilliant transfers who contribute to the classroom and compete w/ freshmen admits in some of the most rigorous classes. The problem isn’t with them, it’s with the admissions officers that allow the substandard ones to be accepted by a path that doesn’t really test the academic ability of applicants (or not to the same degree as freshmen applicants).</p>
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<p>First off, I think a college student in a given major is more qualified than someone outside that major to determine who is fit for admission into it. As transfers are typically juniors, I think it’s fair to say that they should be held to sufficient preparation for getting a Berkeley level degree in the subject of intent.</p>
<p>But clearly that is far from the case. Transfers who have taken courses have been asked to repeat the equivalents after entering, because the courses weren’t rigorous enough. Some have said their courses were not rigorous enough to prepare them to transition. Of course, there were transfers who had their courses approved easily – and some just did it by taking a replacement exam. What I’m saying is experts greater than you, myself, and the admissions office, i.e. the professors at Berkeley, have assessed a lack of preparation. </p>
<p>Presumably this means admissions is not so good at deciding what is and isn’t sufficient. And it makes it not at all unlikely that in some cases, perhaps if the professors as you say “have better things to do” than to judge the preparation of the transfers, some of them may really have gone through a loophole in the system. In the example I gave, I spoke of the mathematics dept, where the upper division is markedly harder than the lower. But the notion of weeder course is less prominent in math, and more so in other areas – which is why I think this loophole thing may actually be a problem elsewhere. In math, the transfers get big time taken to task anyway, once it’s discovered their prep wasn’t comparable to the frosh students who went through Berkeley for 2 years, because it gets very much harder as you go on. But in other disciplines, there may really be inequality going on.</p>
<p>Now do I really badly care? Likely not. I’m not in those departments, and it doesn’t really affect my day to day life. But do I think Sakky has a point ? Certainly.</p>
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<p>And to all the defensive transfers – to be fair, I do not think Berkeley really tests the ability of prospective frosh equally either. A good example – the Regents’ scholarship is supposed to be a prestigious mark of academic ability and perhaps a few other things. Yet I am almost certain this depends on what school you go to; someone with impressive ability but who is among several overachieving peers likely has a harder time standing out. Sometimes it was inexplicable to me how some very talented people didn’t get that award, and others did, when I wasn’t sure how they were as impressive.</p>
<p>At another more fundamental level - very smart people I know from hard high schools have been rejected, while people who top their less difficult high schools seem to make it into Berkeley fine, if they have pretty good test scores. Yet the standardized testing does not come close to describing how much harder the former high schools are. </p>
<p>It’s not just about transfer admissions - I think there needs to be more care put into admissions in general. The transfer case is particularly notorious because insufficient academic factors and standardization means are probably most visible there.</p>
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<p>I didn’t see you complaining when Tiberius used it first. But I suppose as long as the bad metaphor is supporting your argument, you have no problem. Hence, the real issue resolves around whether you’re being supported or not, not on the validity of the metaphor itself. </p>
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<p>I never said that they were attending community college just to escape weeders. But the undeniable fact of the matter is, they are escaping weeders, even if inadvertently </p>
<p>Again, I don’t blame the transfer students. They didn’t do anything that violates the rules. The problem is with the rules themselves. </p>
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<p>Then that simply opens the door to the following question: are you sure you really understand the world? Perhaps you’re the one who’s living in a bubble. It’s not clear that your understanding of the world is better than anybody else’s here on this forum. </p>
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<p>And by the same token, freshman admits should not have to prove anything to anybody either. But they are forced to nevertheless, as they are forced to take weeders. Why should they do that, when they have already supposedly proven themselves through the freshmen admissions process? </p>
<p>I think at the bare minimum, you should join me in advocating reform that freshman admits should be allowed to skip weeders by taking the (supposedly) equivalent courses at community college. You yourself vouched for the difficulty of those courses. If that’s true, then you should have no problem with frosh using those courses to escape weeders in the same manner that the transfer students did (even if they did so inadvertently). </p>
<p>I find it interesting indeed that you refuse to endorse this proposal. Frankly, it seems to me that you discovered you were given an unfair get-out-of-weeders-free card (even if you never asked for it), and having discovered that, you don’t want the frosh to have it. You want to maintain your unfair edge.</p>
<p>If that’s the case, then I think the fair thing to do is simply admit that this is your strategy. There have been other posters who have admitted that this is exactly what they’re doing, and that they (somehow) deserve that unfair advantage. While I vehemently disagree with that stance, I do give them credit for being honest about their true intentions. </p>
<p>Otherwise, I think it’s fair to ask why you believe that frosh should not be allowed to use community college courses to skip weeders in the same manner that transfer students do.</p>
<p>The reason I am going to a community college is because my mother can’t take care of herself. I had to leave high school a year early so I could have more flexibility in my schedule so that I can support my mother because there is no one else to do it. How dare you, in your adolescent arrogance, accuse me of going to a community college to escape “weeder” classes (which incidentally, I have to take at a community college). Grow up–I don’t hear mature, intelligent college students complaining this way about their classes. Maybe you should drop out and go to a community college, where these classes are supposedly easier. That way, you won’t have to complain incessantly about classes that other people can handle without accusing the system of being unfair and making ridiculous and unfounded claims about the preparedness of transfer students (who do not affect you anyway).</p>
<p>It’s unfair, that was pointed out 15 pages ago. Any new information to add to the thread? No one goin to actually do anything? We are going continue beating a dead horse are we? Drove the chevy to the Levy but the Levy was dry?</p>
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<p>inadvertently (adv) - unwittingly, inadvertently, unknowingly (without knowledge or intention) “he unwittingly deleted the references”</p>
<p>Don’t pretend like community college is anywhere near the difficulty of Berkeley when it comes to weeders. I am a freshman here but I took Math 1A and 1B at a community college while I was in high school. While I did learn calculus, the difficulty of the class itself was a joke.</p>
<p>Calibabe does not seem to be reading the opposing posts, she just posts her own rants without thinking about the point that sakky is trying to get across.</p>
<p>I find it interesting indeed that you refuse to endorse this proposal. Frankly, it seems to me that you discovered you were given an unfair get-out-of-weeders-free card (even if you never asked for it), and having discovered that, you don’t want the frosh to have it. You want to maintain your unfair edge.</p>
<p>“If that’s the case, then I think the fair thing to do is simply admit that this is your strategy. There have been other posters who have admitted that this is exactly what they’re doing, and that they (somehow) deserve that unfair advantage. While I vehemently disagree with that stance, I do give them credit for being honest about their true intentions.”
Obviously the critical reading skills of some posters on cc is sub-par.</p>
<p>You’re actually standing up for community college classes? You’ve got to be kidding me. You’re acting like none of us freshman admits have taken community college classes. Trust me. Most of them are cake compared to Berkeley classes. Most of them are cake compared to my high school classes. Yeah you may have had to work hard, but I didn’t and I’m sure many many others are coasting through those community college classes.</p>