<p>A lot of the unproductiveness stems from posts like yours, coolwhip. Posts that only discuss how useless the thread is are one of the causes of the uselessness.</p>
<p>There have been some good, long, detailed, and stat-backed posts, and so far, the proposed solutions to render the problems (if there are any problems) are definitely intriguing.</p>
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<p>And if that’s true, then the transfer students will do perfectly fine by taking the weeder placement exams, right? After all - you said it yourself - if the transfer students are indeed as well-prepared as you claim, then the weeder exams will prove to be no obstacle whatsoever. So what’s the problem? Why the resistance to an exam that the transfer students would easily complete anyway? </p>
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<p>I have never said that that anybody is better than anybody else. In fact, my ideas are specifically designed to be consonant with the notion of equality: transfer students should be subject to the same weeder rules that the freshman-admits are. If the freshman-admits are forced to take weeders, then so should the transfers. Otherwise, none of them should be forced to take weeders.</p>
<p>By arguing otherwise - that the transfer students deserve to skip weeders that the freshman-admits are forced to take - one might say that is the transfer students who actually think they are better than the freshman-admits. After all, why exactly should they be allowed to skip weeders when the freshman-admits are not? How is that compatible with your stipulated notion that no group of students are better than the others?</p>
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<p>I thought you wouldn’t. So I will leave it to the readers to decide what they think. You have an unfair advantage. True, you never asked for it, but you nevertheless have it anyway. Having that unfair advantage, you unsurprisingly, yet cynically that you don’t want the system to reform, thereby allowing you to maintain your unfair advantage. In other words, the situation is unfair, you know that it’s unfair, and yet you don’t care, because the unfairness benefits you. </p>
<p>And now I think we can truly understand why the freshman-admits have a legitimate grievance.</p>
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<p>Well, considering how much time people spend on far more frivolous activities, I think I’m still producing meaningful debate, relatively speaking. Just think of how much energy and brainpower people spend debating sports, when, honestly, who really cares if your favorite team wins the championship or not (and I say that as a sports fan)? </p>
<p>On the other hand, weeder courses are effectively playing with people’s careers. Some people can’t even graduate from many majors at all because they fail the weeders. Other people who do manage to pass the weeders are nevertheless left with sundered GPA’s that hinder their chances of being hired or winning admission to graduate school. {For example, clearly one of the least efficient pathways to admission to law or medical school is to choose to major in engineering due to the proliferation of notoriously difficult engineering weeders that perennially threaten the high GPA you need.} </p>
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<p>Because, from a systems viewpoint, that proposal is the cynical and defeatist choice. When you see an unfair loophole, your response shouldn’t be: “Well, I should then ruthlessly milk the loophole for my own selfish advantage.” The far more constructive response is to actually close the loophole and improve the system. If the system is broken, then let’s fix it rather than simply exploit it for our own ends.</p>
<p>For those of you who defend the rigor of community college classes, please keep in mind that many competitive high schools that send lots of kids to Berkeley offer far better education than most community colleges. To express it simply, there just isn’t as much to learn. As a prospective applied math major, my math ability by the end of high school far exceeded the limited classes offered by community colleges.</p>
<p>And for those of you who defend the rigor of community college courses, then you should have absolutely no program in having Berkeley freshman-admits use those very same courses to skip Berkeley weeders. If they’re rigorous enough for the transfer students to skip weeders, then they should also be rigorous enough for freshman-admits to skip weeders too. </p>
<p>For those who disagree, I’d love to hear a rationale for why those courses are rigorous enough for one group of students but not another.</p>
<p>“On the other hand, weeder courses are effectively playing with people’s careers. Some people can’t even graduate from many majors at all because they fail the weeders. Other people who do manage to pass the weeders are nevertheless left with sundered GPA’s that hinder their chances of being hired or winning admission to graduate school.”</p>
<p>@Sakky: Don’t forget that the cum. GPA for transfers only takes into account the coursework completed at the 4-year level. This means that for most transfers only their upper division work is recorded. This definitely puts frosh students at a disadvantage as they have to lump their weeder grades and all of their lower-div work into their cum. GPAs. Grad schools tend to discount the lower-div work, but the problem of the lower GPA remains. It is not a fair system.</p>
<p>p.s. I was a transfer student and while I don’t agree with some of the other posters about the quality of the transfer population, I do believe that the system definitely puts freshmen at a disadvantage in regards to the hard sciences.</p>
<p>“Don’t forget that the cum. GPA for transfers only takes into account the coursework completed at the 4-year level. This means that for most transfers only their upper division work is recorded. This definitely puts frosh students at a disadvantage as they have to lump their weeder grades and all of their lower-div work into their cum. GPAs. Grad schools tend to discount the lower-div work, but the problem of the lower GPA remains. It is not a fair system.”</p>
<p>Wait, are you talking about the UC GPA or the GPA that graduate schools will see?</p>
<p>I’m a transfer and I plan on applying to health school (med or dent). Will my cc grades not count toward my AMCAS/ADSAS GPA? If they don’t, could you please site where you got the information.
I was always under the assumption that my cc grades and UC grades will count toward my cumulative GPA for graduate programs. Maybe you were just talking about the cumulative UC GPA.</p>
<p>Community college classes <em>are</em> easy. I probably will be under-prepared once I transfer. All that needs to be said, however, is that I’m here to learn. I don’t think I have any obligation to defend myself against this petty ********. If I am subpar, then you’ll have no problem with people like me in the classroom and it’s not like the reputation of the school will immediately shatter. </p>
<p>PS: you might want to consider the length of time this transfer system has been in place. If you’re trying to come up with an informed opinion (or an argument), it would help to know what impact this system has already had (if any). However, I suspect you didn’t create this thread with the intention of being informed, but to instead put yourself on a pedestal.</p>
<p>let it go d-bags. stop bumping this thing to post useless opinions.</p>
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<p>Fair enough. Then by that very same logic, the freshman-admits should also not have any obligation to ‘defend themselves’ in petty weeder courses that are specifically designed to derail a large subset of such students through poor grades. Freshman admits should be allowed to skip weeders in the same manner that transfer students do, and if subpar freshman admits continue to post-weeder courses, then the other students should have no problem with them in the classroom, right? </p>
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<p>Actually, I think the impact has not only been considered, but is evident in plain sight here on this thread, through a deep suspicion and resentment swirling about the special privileges being accorded to the transfer students in being allowed to skip weeders that the other students are forced to take. That resentment is entirely justifiable. To date, I have heard not a single bona-fide reason based on equity as to why transfer students deserve such special privileges. The only reasons provided have been purely logistical in nature - that it would place an undue burden on transfer students to have to take weeders - but that hardly speaks to any reasons of equity. </p>
<p>Heck, if the only issue has to do with that undue burden being placed on the transfers, then why not allow handicapped freshman-admits to skip weeders also? After all, having to endure the frenzied pace and incessant grade pressure of weeder courses is a great burden on those students who can’t even walk. I remember one girl who was confined to a wheelchair and hence had great difficulty completing many of the labs in her weeder course, as that lab involved using equipment and retrieving chemicals that were often times located in awkward parts of the room. Nevertheless, if she performed poorly in the labs, she would fail the class. Yet I don’t remember anybody - least of all her - advocating that she be allowed to skip that weeder, despite the physical burden it placed on her. So if she wasn’t being provided special treatment, why should the transfers?</p>
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<p>Freshman-admits knew the consequences of being… admitted as freshmen. They put themselves in a position where they would have to take weeder classes. </p>
<p>Should I be apologizing to you because Berkeley doesn’t institute such a policy? </p>
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<p>I was talking about the impact in terms of academics and statistics regarding scores and grades. You know, the relevant details which would normally justify a person in saying that an entire group is sub-par. </p>
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I can guarantee you that there are plenty of students who are more deserving of being in the position you, or the OP, are in. The resentment may be justified, but is the behavior of going around and making those perceived as “subpar” feel like **** also justified? No, and it’s completely counterproductive in an educational environment.</p>
<p>I’m not claiming the system is fair and I’m not here to defend it. But please realize: you/ those students had the same options. If <em>you knew</em> that you were going to take weeder classes and <em>you knew</em> that you were going to be unhappy, then why didn’t you take them at a community college?</p>
<p>Truth is everyone in Cali thinks majority of you are subpar…there, I said it. Its pretty common that most of you are ivy rejects. </p>
<p>[University</a> of California, Berkeley](<a href=“http://stanfordrejects.com%5DUniversity”>http://stanfordrejects.com)</p>
<p>lolol. I’ve seen the stanfordrejects website (some high school sophomore was smart enough to post it properly and not just post UC Berkeley website)</p>
<p>But I’m glad you learned something from your ol’ alma mater 
- [Online</a> College Education - Online Degrees - University of Phoenix](<a href=“http://www.phoenix.edu/]Online”>http://www.phoenix.edu/)</p>
<p>GoldAngealArea is noob ■■■■■ lol.</p>
<p>GoldAngealArea: You are a fool to make stupid generalizations. My best friend transfered to Berkeley from Caltech…he is NOT an idiot. I highly doubt that.
I admit A LOT of the Berkeley posters here tick me off, but students there are smart… </p>
<p>To the OP: This is a generalization.</p>
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<p>First off, I’m not entirely sure that they do. To this day, the Berkeley administration continues to refuse to publicly acknowledge the existence of weeders. </p>
<p>But secondly, even if they did know what they were getting themselves into, that’s hardly a reason for them to be stuck with the consequences. After all, consider who you’re talking about. A great percentage of them haven’t even turned 18 and hence are legally minors by the time they’ve decided to enroll at Berkeley. The United States has a long-standing tradition of shielding minors from the full consequences of their actions except in the cases of serious crimes. </p>
<p>And in this case, we’re hardly talking about crimes. Those students who perform poorly in weeders may be acting immaturely or lazily, but they are not breaking any laws. They’re not hurting anybody other than themselves. As a point of comparison, people who accumulate a litany of speeding tickets on their driving record will - as a matter of law - eventually have the corresponding points removed from their driving record, eventually giving them an (ostensibly) clean driving record. Heck, even evidence of personal bankruptcy is wiped from your credit record after a period of 7-10 years, as a matter of law. But poor weeder grades remain on your academic record for the rest of your life. Why? Is failing a weeder course really worse than declaring bankruptcy? </p>
<p>Put another way, plenty of 18-year-olds join the military and head to war, where some will become grievously injured. Yet nobody argues that they should have known what they were getting themselves into, so now they don’t deserve medical care. </p>
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<p>Nobody is asking for an apology because Berkeley doesn’t implement a particular policy. On the other hand, you shouldn’t be actively fighting against such a policy, which is what you seem to be doing now. </p>
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<p>As was I, and that’s precisely the point: nobody knows what the true impact of transfers is in terms of academics and scores, because the administration conspicuously refuses to provide that information. That transfer students supposedly receive similar GPA’s as freshman-admits only serves to heighten the suspicions, because, frankly, that’s actually prima-facie evidence that they aren’t performing as well as the freshman-admits. After all, as has been explained countless times, the transfer students can skip weeders. I know my GPA would have been higher if I didn’t have to count my weeder grades. Most freshmen-admits will say the same. In fact, the very purpose of weeders is to assign lower grades to a large percentage of students who are forced to take them. </p>
<p>What the administration could do to clear the air is to report the post-weeder freshmen-admit GPA’s and compare that to the transfer GPA’s. But that they have refused to do, and suspiciously so. </p>
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<p>And I can also guarantee you that there are plenty of other students who are more deserving than you or most other transfers. So, what of it? </p>
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<p>I would actually argue that such an open discussion is healthy and highly productive. The resentment, which you agree is justifiable, exists whether we like it or not. To shut down any honest and open discussion of the problem only serves to encourage a subterranean debate where all transfer students then truly become the target of jealousy. On this thread, we have been able to enumerate a list of potential reforms and concerns that could be brought to the administration. Granted, nothing is likely to happen, but if nobody ever talked about it, I can guarantee that nothing would ever happen. </p>
<p>So, to the transfer students, what I would say is that, if you agree that there is a problem - and I think most reasonable transfer students do - and especially if you don’t like the tone of this debate, then join me in enacting reform. But the only long-term solution to the embitterment of the freshman-admits is to implement a fair system. Shutting down any debate about the issue is not going to solve anything. Freshman-admits are going to feel resentment whenever transfers are allowed to skip weeders, whether they voice that resentment here or not. </p>
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<p>Come on, be realistic for a moment. Nobody ever plans to perform poorly in weeders. Every freshmen-admit performed well in high school, and hence all of them believe that they will continue to perform well in college. That sort of solipsistic self-confidence, arguably overconfidence, is probably necessary to most ventures in life. After all, nobody ever starts a company thinking that they’re going to fail, despite the fact that most new business ventures fail. Nobody ever moves to Hollywood thinking that they’re going to be consigned to little more than bit-roles, even though that is what happens to most aspiring thespians. Nobody ever joins the military thinking that they’re going to be injured, even though that does happen to many soldiers. </p>
<p>And I emphasize the point that freshman-admits do not have the same options. They cannot simply take weeder courses at community colleges without significant administrative burden. By rule, all registered Berkeley students are prohibited from enrolling at any other school, including a community college, without special sanction from the Dean’s office, which is hardly guaranteed. </p>
<p>And to that, I again ask - why? Why does the administration care so much about what students are doing in their free time? It’s their free time; they should be allowed to do whatever they want with it. If they want to take community college courses during that free time, why does the administration interfere? Students are apparently free to waste weeks on end playing World of Warcraft and Call of Duty and the administration doesn’t care, but if they try to take community college courses, apparently that’s a problem. Why? </p>
<p>At the end of the day, the question remains that seems to have no simple answer: why should the transfers be allowed to skip weeders that the freshman-admits are forced to take? Seems to me that either the transfers should be forced to take those weeders, or the freshmen-admits should be allowed to skip those weeders. What’s fair is fair.</p>
<p>To their credit, most transfer students here acknowledge that the current system is indeed unfair (although, interestingly, there continue to be a few conspicuous students who are utterly defiant). So what we have is a system with increasingly few defenders - where even the beneficiaries largely agree that the system is unfair. Seems to me that that’s a system that is ripe for reform.</p>
<p>sakky for such a cool intelligent dude, you are whining way too much on the issue. </p>
<p>Also, California high schools rank #49 in the US and many of them inflate grades. Getting a 4.123456 in a California HS doesn’t impress me much even though I do respect they didn’t screw off. When I spoke to admissions people at UCB, they told me they were directing more California HS students to a CCC first because over the past 6-10 years they have witnessed grade inflation and honors classes being dumb down. They said it was much more difficult these days to distinguish between students. Don’t even get me started on the College Board AP class and memory test racket. </p>
<p>No matter where you go, it more depends on the teacher anyways. I know plenty of students that attended DVC and De Anza who said they had some harder classes and teachers their than they did at UCB, UCLA, or Calpoly. This is not a clean cut issue and those were primarily business, computer, and engineering students not social science or humanities majors.</p>
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<p>Am I? As I said, there are plenty of students, both freshman-admits and transfers, who spend days on end doing nothing but playing World of Warcraft and Call of Duty. I would argue that discussing serious subjects on this discussion board is a better use of one’s time than that. </p>
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<p>I’m not sure how that bolsters your position, for if freshman-admits were admitted based on inflated California high school grades, then doesn’t that make the transfer students look even worse by comparison? After all, the vast majority of them presumably also went to high school in California, they couldn’t even obtain the inflated high school grades that the freshman-admits did - and now they’re being permitted to skip weeders? Why? </p>
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<p>And are you trying to argue that community college courses also do not suffer from a surfeit of dumbing-down and teaching to the test? </p>
<p>As I’ve said before, if transfer students are really so well prepared through their community college coursework, then they will have no problem in weeder courses. Keep in mind that weeders are not specialized courses, but are based on topics that transfer students into a particular major are supposed to know. If you transfer into engineering, you should know basic physics and calculus. If you transfer into computer science, you should know data structures. Presuming that you actually do know those topics, then those weeder courses, or at least their final exams, will be trivial for you to complete. But if you don’t know them, then that’s a different story entirely. </p>
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<p>Fair enough. Then let’s take the other option and allow freshman-admits to skip weeders by taking the supposedly-more-difficult counterpart coursework at DVC or DeAnza. If those courses truly are more difficult, then no (wise) freshman-admit would take that option. But at least the option would exist.</p>
<p>“As I said, there are plenty of students, both freshman-admits and transfers, who spend days on end doing nothing but playing World of Warcraft and Call of Duty. I would argue that discussing serious subjects on this discussion board is a better use of one’s time than that.”</p>
<p>Haha, you are one of the few people on CC that stays on topic and applies logic and related substance. Sorry if I came across as curt since I was tired and posted prior to going asleep. Ye, I don’t play WOW of COD but do know many that do, even Magick. I appreciate you being here and sharing your thoughts and experiences. I think those things are relevant because many were saying on surveys they were ‘busy’. Busy use to refer to work and outside activities but recently ‘busy’ has referred to playing video games. I’ve noticed over the past decade the decline in students study habits, participation in discussion, lower quality of work, and negative attitude towards education as a whole.</p>
<p>“In survey after survey since 2000, college and high school students are alarmingly candid that they are simply not studying very much at all”</p>
<p>“But new research, conducted by two California economics professors, shows that over the past five decades, the number of hours that the average college student studies each week has been steadily dropping. According to time-use surveys analyzed by professors Philip Babcock, at the University of California Santa Barbara, and Mindy Marks, at the University of California Riverside, the average student at a four-year college in 1961 studied about 24 hours a week. Today’s average student hits the books for just 14 hours.”</p>
<p>“But when it comes to “why,” the answers are less clear. The easy culprits — the allure of the Internet (Facebook!), the advent of new technologies (dude, what’s a card catalog?), and the changing demographics of college campuses — don’t appear to be driving the change, Babcock and Marks found. What might be causing it, they suggest, is the growing power of students and professors’ unwillingness to challenge them.”</p>
<p>Now I have mixed feelings about this answer. On one hand I see the majority of students using Facebook at school over doing homework and research. On the other hand I see teachers herding students through grading easier and not showing tough love. There also is the issue of going through our current transition process from self esteem education towards a more critical thinking and back to basics style education. This is happening on a national level but here is the problem. If you conditioned people to self esteem education and then want them to start properly use their brains in a critical manner, it can start to overwhelm their senses too soon, and many would drop out. Many are not sure how to distinguish fact from fiction or opinion and end up critically analyzing their own opinion instead of the research arguments laid out by academia. The balancing act educators are trying to find is somewhere in the middle of the humanist and behaviorist philosophical approach while attempting to create a passion for wanting to learn. They can grow as an individual and contribute to the collective as California started doing pioneering self esteem education.</p>
<p>“A person who can self-motivate to learn, academics argue, is not only more likely to be a productive worker, but more fulfilled citizen.”</p>
<p>Americans have always cringed at notions of ‘collectivist’ or ‘socialism’ so education in America has ultimately remained individualist even to the point of taking on this lackadaisical laissez-faire approach. That is due to the influx of so many people from other places and advent of political correctness. I’ve talked with and seen where a teacher can no longer say X person is wrong because may upset them and their cultural pride and prejudices accusing the instructor of euro-centrism. So over the past decade the teachers have been instructed to just herd students through the system and act more as administrators of the classroom. Since this is an individualistic country, although I am skeptical about that outside of terminology, students are basically on their own to learn the majority of material, and have free choice to succeed or fail in school and in life. </p>
<p>Instructors tend to say ‘you will be only hurting yourself’ because many don’t understand the level of knowledge to succeed in a high tech society. It seems to fall on deaf ears since many students think that just getting A’s or B’s in the classroom or a degree from a reputable university without having studied the breadth and depth of a subject will get them a well paying job. Just like the complaints about students in a quality school that I admit is true when comes to preparation over actual intelligence, the same sort of grievances are also a part of the work world. </p>
<p>When tutoring or assisting students I tell UCB hopefuls that you need to know this stuff or Cal will drop the C-Bombs (hard Calc and Chem) on you and weed you out man! Some pay attention and take heed to what I say thanking me while others tend to have a cocky know it all attitude claiming they are going to crash course hard Cal classes. So trust me just because they didn’t take the first two year weeder classes doesn’t mean they won’t come up against the C-bombs and weeder classes during their junior and senior year unless are strictly L&S students, which in that case who cares. </p>
<p>"Fair enough. Then let’s take the other option and allow freshman-admits to skip weeders by taking the supposedly-more-difficult counterpart coursework at DVC or DeAnza. If those courses truly are more difficult, then no (wise) freshman-admit would take that option. But at least the option would exist. "</p>
<p>One word, okay three…RATEMYPROFESSOR. I have issue with students taking GE classes they think are easy and purposely trying to dumb down the classroom. My perceptions of California students is that they aren’t of lesser intelligence but just lazier and the more wealthy areas tend to produce a greater number of lazier students with crappier attitudes towards education than those from lower to upper middle class. Many students purposely seek out easy GE teachers, who I think are too easy on them, and so yeah some can get close to a 4.0 and not learn squat. Until proper education standards come back and teachers aren’t afraid to issue substandard grades again both this trend and students habits won’t change. This is an individualist country though and colleges are making a killing out of herding through students the system when they know that many of them won’t make it so figure they are easing that predicament. </p>
<p>There are still students who attend a CCC that are there to learn. I admit that I had to learn over 80% myself and yet that isn’t measured. I will research a subject for two weeks and write a ten page college level paper and get say a 92% while another student spent less than 2 hours researching and writing a BS paper and get an 88%!??!?!? </p>
<p>True, De Anza and DVC have some easier teachers for GE, but they try and take into consideration each students level of where they are in education with the benefit of the doubt. Both schools have very high quality Chem, Calc, and Computer Science classes though that are on par with many UC’s and are not easy. They may not be as hard as Cal but Cal is also an exception amongst the UC’s for using C-bombs to thin out the herd.</p>