When you pick apart quotes and ignore the context, it becomes very easy to create a strawman. Good work.</p>
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When you make such a tremendous effort, as you have in thread, to correct an injustice which you only seem to do because it’s pertinent to your situation, then one is left wondering whether you made any effort to notice any of the injustices you took advantage of to arrive in the position that you are currently in.</p>
<p>Also: the quote wasn’t asking about your current involvement. It’s asking about your involvement when you took advantage of the “self-serving mechanism.” Did you or did you not attempt to correct those injustices while you were in high school? In either case: why did you participate in the system if you knew it was unjust?</p>
<p>MY GUESS is that you find it to be perfectly acceptable when you work in your own best interest, but not when somebody else does the same. MY GUESS is that you would have never considered risking your own admission into university to fix a broken system.</p>
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Let me highlight the qualifier in that quote, since you can’t seem to respond to what’s actually being written.</p>
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No.</p>
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And I can assure you that those that did are in the minority. You’re going to attempt to defend a position based on exceptional cases rather than the norm. </p>
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You’re operating on the premise that I asserted the opposite; again, you’re not responding to what’s actually being written.</p>
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Oh, so those students who have already had the benefit of making it to a certain point should be further advanced by the system while we neglect those who haven’t yet had the luxury? Makes sense.</p>
<p>Wait, no it doesn’t; that’s ludicrous.</p>
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AGAIN, you’re not responding to what’s being written. I made NO mention of what kind of policy should be implemented for Berkeley’s freshmen who have also faced hardship. I also qualified my sentence, if you noticed, by “some” and not all.</p>
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I responded to this earlier when I mentioned the “self-serving mechanism.”</p>
<p>As a side note: persistence and vacuously lengthy posts don’t give you some sort of upper-hand in this conversation. Spare us the rhetoric and respond to the content, otherwise I’m just going to ignore it.</p>
<p>Oh, like what you’re doing right now? Good work. </p>
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<p>Again, how exactly is it pertinent to my situation? As I said, I’m long gone. Whatever Berkeley chooses to do now will have never have any impact on me. </p>
<p>Can you say the same? I thought not. Hence, to follow your logic, one is left wondering you will make any effort to notice or care about any injustices that you may personally take advantage of. Judging from your response here, seems like you won’t. </p>
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<p>One could similarly ask why are you participating in a system that you know is unjust? Seems to me that you are attempting to transfer to a UC. {Note, I don’t think this is just a Berkeley-specific problem, but is general to the entire UC system.} </p>
<p>And exactly what is the injustice anyway? Equal academic standards seems to be a tried-and-true procedure used throughout history - one that we have become accustomed to throughout our lifetime. After all, in all of our classes, from high school and college (including community college), we have been asked to perform to certain standards if we want to pass our courses. If I want to pass my high school geometry class, I have to know geometry. If I don’t know it, the teacher is not going to care why I don’t know it. Maybe my girlfriend broke up with me, maybe my parents are divorcing, maybe I have to work after school to make money, maybe a whole sort of litany of problems may be facing me. But none of that matters, for at the end of the day, I still have to know geometry. Otherwise, I don’t pass. I surely can’t simply appeal to my teacher by saying that since I am suffering from a litany of personal problems, I should be allowed to pass geometry without actually knowing any geometry. After all, the other students learned geometry, so I must do the same. </p>
<p>But how exactly is that different from demanding that transfers be allowed to skip weeders that the freshman-admits can’t skip? </p>
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<p>And are you now prepared to admit that your guess was completely and utterly wrong? Again, I am not working for my interests, because there is absolutely nothing for me to gain here. </p>
<p>But you are working for your own interests, are you not? </p>
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<p>And you’re not? Let’s be perfectly honest - most transfer students do not have any serious personal problems. Heck, I knew quite a few that came from rather privileged backgrounds. </p>
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<p>I am responding to the logical outcome of your statements. You said that because transfer students suffer from personal problems - which is already a highly questionable assertion for the majority of them - then they deserve to be allowed to skip weeders. I disagree with that logic, and I am showing you what it would mean to take it to its logical conclusion, which you clearly do not support. Hence, the entire chain of logic is faulty. </p>
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<p>Ludicrous? I think we can all agree that it is far more impressive for somebody who experienced terrible personal events in high school and still did well vs. those who experienced terrible events in high school and didn’t do well. </p>
<p>And besides, the logic is no more ludicrous than your stance, which is that transfer students should be allowed to skip weeders. Those transfer students already have the luxury of actually (finally) making it to Berkeley, and now you’re arguing that they should be further advanced by being allowed to skip over weeders as well? How is that any different? </p>
<p>Again, my argument is that nobody should have the luxury of skipping weeders. What’s fair is fair. If I don’t know geometry, then I shouldn’t pass my high school geometry class, regardless of my personal circumstances, and that’s exactly the way it ought to be. </p>
<p>Or do you consider that to be an injustice as well? That every time you were required to do something in school to pass classes, you should always be allowed to waive that requirement depending on your personal circumstances? K-12 allows no such recourse, heck, neither do community colleges, so why should Berkeley? </p>
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<p>Similarly, you make no statement about transfer students who didn’t face hardship. </p>
<p>And that’s the point. Plenty of transfer students face no problems, and plenty of freshman-admits do. But you are nevertheless supporting the status quo, which provides weeder waivers to all transfers and no freshman. </p>
<p>If you want to place an alternative reform policy on the table, feel free to do so. If you don’t, then you’re effectively arguing for the status quo. </p>
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[quoteI responded to this earlier when I mentioned the “self-serving mechanism.”
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<p>That’s quite a bizarre comment, coming from you. I have nothing to gain from whatever Berkeley does, or doesn’t do. Can you say the same? </p>
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<p>Oh really? If you really found my comments “persistent and vacuously lengthy”, why haven’t you ignored them already? </p>
<p>If you don’t like my posts, then don’t read them, and certainly don’t respond to them. Nobody is holding a gun to your head.</p>
<p>That’s not my job. I participate in the parts of the discussion that I want to talk about. </p>
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<p>So what? Many (probably most) cc threads go off-topic, as people find certain subtopics to be more interesting than the original. It has clearly hit a nerve, considering how many other people want to discuss the particular issue of transfers and weeders.</p>
<p>Those who want to talk about a particular topic or subtopic should be allowed to talk about it.</p>
<p>My suggestion: Please try to respond to what is being said, and not what seems to be the poster’s personal situation. I think that’s the point of our identities being anonymous, unless we choose to reveal them: we are held to what we state, and not held to discussing what our own backgrounds may have to do with the situation. I would also guess that a lot of transfers here argue based on personal angst and biases, but I don’t think that guess is worth discussing, nor will I bring it up to support any claim.</p>
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<p>I find it strange how claiming that the “most impressive” batch of students being claimed to be those who both had difficult life circumstances and excelled is responded to in this manner. If allowing such students to skip weeders is claimed to be a form of “advancing” via the system, it would make sense that allowing transfers to do so is too. Sakky isn’t saying transfers should not be allowed to skip, whereas such frosh admits who underwent difficult circumstances should. I think Sakky very clearly wants the same opportunities/standards. </p>
<p>I also have no personal gain in this matter – my days with intro courses are long, long gone, and I daresay I’ve done well enough for myself at Berkeley, and known enough talented transfers that I have the perspective to know where my support should lie on this issue without bias. Frankly I haveseen transfers being held to the standards of Berkeley by having to “retake” the Berkeley version of a class or even test out of it, sometimes even if they didn’t transfer from community college. So if this isn’t happening across the board, then we are not only being unfair in the frosh vs. transfer scale, but also awarding special treatment to some transfers and not to others.</p>
<p>Huh? How is it irrelevant? Usually admits are subpar if they have not been held to the same standards as the more competent admits. If the admits enter a major while having been held to the standards other frosh admits had to be held to, then fine, else there’s a clear issue.</p>
<p>Sakky is talking of holding everyone to the same standards, hence it is quite relevant.</p>
<p>Who said the system not being meritocratic ever was a benefit to any of us? You don’t like lengthy, so let’s try to keep it a bit shorter:</p>
<p>a) Why should people be held to different standards if they want to get a degree from the same place, in the same discipline, depending on their background? Making accommodations is fine, but different standards hardly is a fair way to deal.</p>
<p>b) When not every student who transfers necessarily had crazy personal hardship, I think it’s safe to say we treat transfers as transfers and not equate them with “students who underwent hardship” – hence, again why is it not an immediately logical thing for the system to close loopholes and ascertain, either at the time of admissions into Berkeley, declaration of a certain major, or whenever else, using either a placement exam system or something else, that comparable standards are being met?</p>
<p>^^ Precisely - unless they pass the ACS test, they have take organic chem. Chem 3/112 aren’t as weeder-ish as some classes, but they’re still weeder enough.</p>
<p>As a transfer student to Berkeley in fall 2009, I am appalled and disgusted by some of the comments made in this thread. Only after transferring did I realize that transfer students are unequal to traditional admits. I’m premed/dent so I didn’t realize that I hadn’t actually taken any challenging classes until after I transferred.</p>
<p>Let’s cut the bull sh it. Community classes are a joke. The individuals who think that they’re representative of university classes are either the one’s who are benefiting from them being so easy or are delusional. I’ve taken organic chemistry, bio, and physics series here as well as classes in my major (psych). Some of the classes are serious weeders (bio 1A) that can and do ruin peoples careers. Transfers (who are in general less qualified) get a free pass on them. I took physics and bio at two different cc’s before transferring and students did not learn and were not tested to the same level as berkeley students.</p>
<p>Community college and traditional students are not admitted based on the same criterion. CC kids don’t have to take the SAT, SAT II, and a battery of AP classes to show how they fare in comparison to students across the nation. They simply have to take remedial classes in their major (most of which are social science/humanities) and fulfill IGETC (general education classes that you can choose).</p>
<p>CC students are not asked to know basic math, english, or science. They don’t have to demonstrate their understanding of subject matter by taking any examinations. They don’t have to compete and thus do not show their competence. Success in community college is not an achievement, it is mediocrity. And as someone who has seen the mediocre transfers in cc and my classes here at berkeley, I can say that they don’t compare to students who were admitted under more stringent standards…i can say without any hesitation that traditional students (on the whole) deserve being here more…because they’ve proved it.</p>
<p>I read somewhere earlier that transfer students usually go to cc out of financial reasons and that traditional admits lead a comfortable life without problems. This is a fallacy and the naivety seen by the individual who posted this makes me cringe. Quit being a moron, you make transfer students look even stupider than how people view them already because of your own stupidity.</p>
<p>I also read that “well the traditional admits could’ve gone to cc out of high school.” This shows how completely ignorant the transfer students who defend the current system are. By encouraging high school students go to study with the bottom 10% of their class (the stupidest kids) you are in essence saying that doing well and being intelligent is not valued. The traditional students here are some of the smartest, most capable students in the nation and it is moronic to defend a system that undermines their capability.</p>
<p>Yes, the system is unfair. The argument has been won on college confidential but how do we fix it in real life? I’m only here for another semester so after that I doubt I’ll care. Right now I’m willing to help solve the problem so if you guys want to organize something, I’m in.</p>
<p>Exactly. I think it’s clear that, as both meakame and I have found transfers who do have to either take the Berkeley equivalent of a course besides having done something like it in community college (because it was assessed incomparable) or take a placement exam to test out, that if some transfers do not have to do this, there is unfair inequality between transfers and transfers, not just between transfers and frosh. </p>
<p>Also, while I think sometimes weeders are unnecessarily difficult, in other cases, they are really just the difficulty necessary to survive the upper division. We keep speaking of transfers who got a “free pass” by not having to take the sticky courses. My belief is everyone should be able to avoid unnecessarily troublesome courses. But sometimes the difficulty of the courses is not just because there’s a harsh curve – it may be more intrinsic to the material/style of the field. Not getting used to the real stuff can be detrimental to a transfer’s career. I think it is irresponsible if people are admitted to a school with unrealistic expectations…it could ruin a transfer’s hope of pursuing a certain major when (s)he could just have prepared differently and have been fine, if the standards of rigor to be met to enter and succeed in a certain major were made clearer.</p>
<p>^ I would argue that the system is not unfair. Kids have a choice…attend Berkeley starting freshman year or go to a community college and attend Berkeley for upper division courses. </p>
<p>You aren’t going to fix it in real life…unless they decide to scrap the California Higher Education Master Plan.</p>
<p>This has already been answered. High school seniors who have been accepted to Berkeley should not benefit from going to community college and then transferring to Berkeley instead of going straight to berkeley.</p>
<p>I’ll add CS/EECS to the list of departments who have some method of dealing with this. Transfer students can almost never place out of CS61A / CS61C (two of the three lower division courses) and so they still experience the “weeders.” (These classes aren’t really weeders though. In fact, many have told me that if you can’t cut it in those classes, then you’re completely screwed for upper division classes)</p>
<p>It’s somewhat fascinating to see how emotional many of you are when discussing this largely irrelevant topic. There’s a clear ingroup / outgroup phenomenon happening here, and all specifics of the argument aside, it’s a real blast to watch it play out.</p>
<p>I’m older than most of you, although I’m currently an undergrad at a so-called mid-tier UC. I did horribly in HS, screwed around for a year or two afterward and eventually wandered off and joined the military. After I got out, I worked for awhile before up and quitting to attend a CC. I completed three semesters (21-23 units per) before being accepted and transferring here.</p>
<p>By virtue of a lack of reciprocity agreement for major prereqs between my UC and CC, two of my current courses are enormous lower division weeders. And just as I was throughout CC, I’m at the top of both classes. I’m walking all over students who’ve studied their asses off for the entirety of their academic lives and consistently faced more challenging curriculums than I ever did. And frankly – so far – it’s a piece of cake.</p>
<p>Here’s some advice from somebody who’s rapidly approaching 30 and has been out in the real world. But first, a quote from Labyrinth says it most succinctly:</p>
<p>Sarah: “That’s not fair!”
Jareth: “You say that so often. I wonder what your basis for comparison is.”</p>
<p>When you graduate and head to grad school or hit the workforce or whatever it is that you plan to do, you’re going to learn pretty quickly that nobody gives a **** about “fair.” Some people don’t need to work while attending college, while others have to work full time. Some people get athletic scholarships, while others are in wheelchairs. Life isn’t fair and never will be. Get over yourself and get used to it. All that matters is that you succeed or you fail, and ultimately, why or how you end up succeeding or failing is immaterial. Nobody cares about your excuses or explanations. All that matters are results.</p>
<p>No, it’s not fair that some transfer students don’t have to compete in the weeders. Conversely, it’s not fair that some transfer students are less prepared for UD courses thanks to a weaker curriculum at CC.</p>
<p>Quit your pathetic whining, hand-wringing and blubbering and get busy succeeding despite your circumstances. In 20 years, it won’t have mattered whether you were a 4-year UC student or a transfer or whatever else. All that will matter is whether you were able to master your own academic challenges. Now would be a great time to grow the **** up.</p>