<p>Not caring about fair doesn’t make you mature. Acting condescendingly also does not make you mature.</p>
<p>These few examples of people saying they owned weeders do not make a statistical trend.</p>
<p>Lol at gtarant.
Typical transfer student misunderstanding that it does not matter in the long run. You are really dumb as all transfer kids are. I mean… look at what you wrote, pretty hillarious if you ask me. I don’t care whether one is a transfer or w/e. I mean, they are just transfers, they don’t hold any threats against me. But when you make those comments “we are all equal” bull crap, it is not cool. </p>
<p>You are just a transfer from CC. Move on. Why would freshman admits care about inferior transfers? I don’t get it. I hear the word “I am from CC” bullcrap, the inferior image comes up to my mind. Just my 2 cents.</p>
<p>i lol’d, well done. ^^^</p>
<p>What? :x You may be overconfident about your reading ability. I said that we’re all <em>unequal</em> – that is, we’ve all got different sets of circumstances to tackle to get to the same place, but that ultimately, all that matters is getting there.</p>
<p>You seem really angry… and not particularly bright, either, which means you probably have a tough couple of years ahead of you. 
When I’m in medical school this time next year, I’ll try and remember to have a moment of silence for you as you struggle to pull a C+ in your weeders. <3 </p>
<p>And for reference, “I am from CC” isn’t a word. It’s a complete clause. You’ll need to know that sort of thing if you’re going to make it at a UC.</p>
<p>lol hds404 was probably just joking dude</p>
<p>GTarrant, I don’t mean to sound rude, but you completely missed a large point of this argument. Yes, the world is not fair. Yes, life may not be just. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t strive to FIX the unfairness. </p>
<p>Slavery wasn’t fair. Should people have jut said “look, you’re a slave. This is how life is. Stop your *****ing and work”</p>
<p>As to you dominating your lower-division weeder classes, congratulations. However, you’re an exception. I found a Professor’s powerpoint slide comparing LSCS freshman, LSCS Transfers, EECS freshman, and EECS Transfers in CS61A and it was quite clear that transfers weren’t performing as well as the freshman. Their whole grade distribution was shifted to the left.</p>
<p>Yes, the real world is unfair. Yes, we are a bunch of whiners. I bet that’s what the Southerner plantation owners said to the abolitionists.</p>
<p>lol @ GT not realizing he’s getting ■■■■■■■ and then revealing that he has his head up his ass.</p>
<p>LAWLS.</p>
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<p>And once again, that’s recommending a cynical and defeatist strategy. If an unfair loophole exists, the correct answer shouldn’t be for everybody to exploit the loophole. The correct answer should be that the loophole should be closed. </p>
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<p>I don’t think that we need such an extreme response. Nobody is requesting that transfer admissions should be modified. All that is being proposed is that transfer weeder-skipping be modified. </p>
<p>The Master Plan dictates that certain transfer students be admitted. Fine. But I am not aware of any stipulation within the Master Plan dictating that those transfer students be admitted and also be allowed to skip weeders. </p>
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<p>But notice how CS 61B is conveniently excluded, and - perhaps not coincidentally - 61B is the most notoriously difficult of all of the lower division CS courses. I know many former CS students who considered subsequent coursework to be a relief after the grindhouse of 61B. </p>
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<p>I’m not sure what your point is, for your statement only seems to reinforce what I’m saying. You say that you are doing well in your UC weeder courses. Good for you! But that only begs the question - why not have the other transfer students also take weeder courses (or equivalent placement exams)? If they are all as truly prepared as you are, then they will perform just as well as you do, right? So what’s the hold-up? If you can do it, so can they. </p>
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<p>Look, by that logic, all schools are inherently ‘unfair’, whether we’re talking about Berkeley, community college, or even grade school. Heck, the whole world could therefore be considered to be unfair. After all, the world is inherently biased against the lazy and the incompetent. Lazy and incompetent people tend to less successful than hard-working and capable people, and that’s “unfair” in some sense. </p>
<p>Since you come from the military, you would therefore know inherently well that success in a military career requires that you meet certain standards that could arguably be considered ‘unfair’. For example, if I want to succeed in a military career, I have to meet certain standards of conduct and competence. If you can’t or won’t, the military doesn’t care why you can’t or won’t. All they will see is that you are not meeting those standards. Maybe I was raised by terrible parents who encouraged me to be lazy and discouraged me from developing any skills. Hence, it’s not ‘fair’ that other people with whom I attended boot camp but who had better upbringing are enjoying great success and being promoted quickly up the chain of command whereas I am always being targeted for demerits for my lack of work ethic. </p>
<p>But that’s life. In any endeavor, whether the military, in school, or any other career path, you have to meet certain standards, and if you don’t, then you won’t advance. Life therefore inherently discriminates against those people who can’t or won’t meet those standards. We accept that as an inherent feature of life. To invoke my former analogy, if I want to pass my high school geometry class, I actually have to learn geometry. I can’t simply argue that, well, I’ve been having numerous family problems beyond my control, and so I should therefore be passed out of that geometry class without actually knowing the material. No matter what my personal circumstances happen to be, if I want to pass that class, I still have to learn geometry, and if I don’t, nobody cares why I don’t. I then simply don’t pass the class. Similarly, if I want to be promoted to a higher military rank, I have to meet the promotion standards of that rank, and if I can’t or won’t, nobody cares why. All that matters is that I am not meeting the required standards, and so I won’t be promoted. I don’t think this is controversial: I am aware of no social movement that is advocating equal treatment for the lazy and incompetent. </p>
<p>Where that becomes deeply controversial is when those standards are not evenly applied, especially when doing so is a matter of statute. For example, what if some people who enlisted in the military were immediately given the rank of corporal without actually having to meet the standards of being a corporal, whereas other enlistees had to start as privates and were forced to meet certain standards before they could be promoted to corporals. Surely, you would agree that those privates would then have a legitimate beef about why they should be forced to meet standards of promotion that other enlistees are being allowed to skip. </p>
<p>In fact, it seems to me that this very sentiment is shared by you in the following quote: </p>
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<p>Exactly right, and that seems to be all the more reason why transfers should not be allowed to skip weeders. The latest counterargument has been that transfers had to endure serious life problems that freshman-admits did not have to endure, and therefore should be allowed to skip weeders as some form of ‘karmic payback’. Even leaving out issues of validity - for plenty of freshman admits also had to endure significant life problems and plenty of transfers had no life problems - the more basic issue is that that’s not relevant. Any educational institution - or heck, any occupational institution at all, including (especially) the military - requires that you meet certain standards. If you don’t meet those standards, nobody cares why you don’t meet them. </p>
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<p>Let’s modify that statement: not when you graduate, but *if * you even graduate at all - which is highly relevant when you’re talking about weeders that are notorious for expelling some students out of Berkeley entirely. See below. </p>
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<p>Yet that highlights the problem. Some freshman-admits were, as you say, unable to master the academic challenge of the weeders. They failed, and hence were unable to complete their major, or in extreme cases, were expelled out of Berkeley entirely. {I know some such students.} But the transfer students were not forced to master the same academic challenges because they were allowed to skip those weeders. </p>
<p>Again, it seems to me that your statements actually serve to bolster my position. I’m sure that some transfer students did have to endure dreadful life circumstances, whether that be a lack of financing, or poor family lives, or crime-ridden neighborhoods, or whatnot. But that’s not a reason for being allowed to waive the (weeder) standards that other students are forced to meet.. While I wouldn’t have said it so obnoxiously, what you said about ‘pathetic whining’, blubbering, and growing up is applicable to the transfer students. After all, standards are standards. Everybody should have to meet them, regardless of their personal circumstances.</p>
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What “unfair loophole” are we talking about? A kid that gets accepted to Berkeley, goes to Berkeley and takes some lower division requirements at a CC? Or, a kid that got accepted to Berkeley, chose NOT to go to Berkeley and went full-time to a CC and then reapplied and readmitted as a transfer student?</p>
<p>If you’re talking about the latter, I don’t see what’s “unfair”. There was no guarantee the kid would be readmitted to Berkeley as a transfer.</p>
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Perhaps it’s not in the Master Plan, but UC policy accepts college course credits from other institutions. You’d be walking a very fine line…and devoting unnecessary resources to conduct tests, re-enrollment in impacted classes etc. for transfers.</p>
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<p>The unfair loophole that those students who go to Berkeley as freshman admits who then discover that they are not allowed to skip weeders when the transfer students can.</p>
<p>I have no time for the argument that that student could have simply not chosen to go to Berkeley as a freshman but rather reapplied as a transfer. That effectively turns freshman-matriculation into a punishment. Nobody should be punished simply because they chose to go to Berkeley as a freshman. </p>
<p>After all, think of the implications of what you are saying. You are effectively implying that students are better off choosing community college over Berkeley, at least for the first 2 years of college. Yet I think the inherent assumption is that Berkeley is actually a better educational institution than a community college. {Now, if you want to argue that community college are in fact better than Berkeley, you could do so, but that’s an entirely different topic which then begs the question of why even have Berkeley as an undergrad institution at all.} Yet your ‘strategy’ effectively incentivizes students to prefer community colleges over Berkeley. Is that what you want? I believe the incentives should be placed to encourage students to prefer the better educational institution, not the worse one. Students should not be punished for picking the (ostensibly) better institution. </p>
<p>We should be encouraging people to make better choices by setting the incentives accordingly. If we agree that Berkeley is a better choice than a community college - and indeed, that is why Berkeley admits only the top performing California high school students whereas community colleges will admit anybody - then we should not punish people for choosing Berkeley over a community college. By doing that, you are cynically encouraging people to make bad choices. </p>
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<p>Ok fine, then let’s go the other way. Let the freshman-admits skip over the weeders in the same manner as the transfers. In this case, we would not be expending resources - if anything, we’d be *saving<a href=“Berkeley”>/i</a> resources. Fewer students would be taking courses at Berkeley, swapping community courses instead. Fewer Berkeley courses would be impacted. I am certainly not aware of any stipulation whatsoever within the Master Plan that bars Berkeley freshman-admits from skipping weeders by taking community college courses. </p>
<p>Granted, I don’t know that we’d be saving overall state resources, as we’d simply be shifting the burden onto the community colleges. But hey, right now, the community colleges are shifting the burden onto the UC’s by offering easier courses and hence producing some transfer students that are not properly prepared for the rigors of UC. If they can shift the burden to UC, I don’t see why UC can’t shift that burden right back.</p>
<p>Can’t freshman skip weeders via AP credit…5s on the respective exam?</p>
<p>Sakky, I am cynical…glad that came across…</p>
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<p>Hey, don’t get me wrong. I’m cynical too. Heck, I myself have promoted the notion that the optimal risk-averse strategy for many aspiring premeds is not to take premed courses at Berkeley, but instead take them elsewhere. I therefore have some (nihilistic) sympathy for the strategy of attending a community college just to skip weeders. </p>
<p>But, my point is, that’s a short-term (and cynical) solution. The long-term and uplifting solution is to change the system so that people won’t have to feel that Berkeley is not the best educational pathway for them. Right now, freshman-admits have a legitimate complaint that they are being forced to take weeders that the transfer students are allowed to skip. </p>
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<p>Depends on the course (and the major). For example, you cannot use the AP Physics exam to skip Physics 7B, a notorious engineering weeder. You can skip 7A, but 7A, perhaps not coincidentally, is not a weeder. I am not aware of any AP Electrical Engineering exam at all, and certainly not any that allows you to skip EE 20 or 40. I am not aware of any AP Organic Chemistry exam that allows you to skip the infamous Chem 3AB premed abattoir. </p>
<p>If the freshman-admits are forced to take these sorts of courses (as requirements of their major), then so should the transfers. Otherwise, the freshman-admits should not be forced to take them either.</p>
<p>^ Well, can’t the freshman admits take the course at another university or community college?..or take the course during Berkeley summer sessions when a lot of the courses are taught by more grade friendly GSIs and the student can concentrate on the class?</p>
<p>I think residency requirements are only for the last semester of your senior year.</p>
<p>If the student performs poorly, he or she has an option to retake the class and improve his/her GPA on a limited amount of units. </p>
<p>There are options here for an industrious Berkeley student…that’s what Berkeley teaches you best. Life isn’t fair.</p>
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All engineers have their right of passage courses…ChemE 140 prof told us to look left, look right…only one would carry on in the ChemE series.</p>
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Really? That’s not what I heard. I heard that upper div CS courses can be way, way harder and much more time consuming than any in the CS61 series. Also, many community colleges don’t offer the equivalent of CS61B I think? I know mines doesn’t. Mines just offers programming classes, but no formal data structures.</p>
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<p>I’m sure a course like CS 164 is killer. But I am also sure that Hilfinger failed many students in 61B. That might be what is being gotten at. Keep in mind that harsh grading and hard coursework are different things.</p>
<p>For one thing, yes, while fewer people can likely handle a specific high level course, it’s also the case that they are not forced to take it. Whence, basically if you really want to take a certain course, probably you’ll do the work for it, and the higher level often rewards you for being competent, even if making it through the material can require tons of effort and enthusiasm. But on the other hand, easier and less sophisticated material can get really tricky. You can fail someone on the most basic material if you try. </p>
<p>For instance, think about the extreme example of the international math olympiads, where questions do not test the most sophisticated of material, but are nevertheless despicably difficult (and can require much more sophisticated reasoning than the actual material may let on), such that a tiny fraction of the population realistically could attempt them and make much progress.</p>
<p>I don’t know about Physics 7B, but I’m sure some of the Chem series and some other courses are genuine weeders.</p>
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<p>If they could for sure once they matriculate as Berkeley students, then I don’t think there is much argument, but I think one of sakky’s points is to make sure they have that equal opportunity.</p>
<p>At least for the lower div EECS courses, I think that most people (in the EECS major) look forward to a challenge. I’m taking 61C, EE20, and EE40 next semester, and looking forward to any challenges they’ll throw at me.</p>
<p>61B’s material is taught everywhere, and I don’t think it matters if you’ve taken it with an excessively hard grader if you are going to take harder upper division cs courses anyways. </p>
<p>Also, I wouldn’t say that getting 5’s on AP exams necessarily means you’ll have the material mastered for many years. I got 5’s on both AP Physics C exams, but I definitely think 7B helped me prepare for 7C, as if I took that without having taken physics since junior year of high school, it would’ve insane.</p>
<p>I guess I don’t see anything wrong with the weeder courses you’re talking about. As long as you work hard in those classes you’ll get A’s. And if you don’t have the time for them you’ll get B’s or possibly C’s.</p>
<p>@mathboy
Maybe with hilfinger…he’s notorious for ridiculously difficult exams. But nowadays isn’t it usually Mike Clancy (CS61BL) or Jonathan Sheweuck (CS61B) who teaches the course? Any class with hilfinger can be crazy hard, upper division or lower division</p>
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<p>But you don’t have to take (most of) those upper-div CS courses. The CS program is actually quite flexible in that respect. Beyond certain required upper-division courses, you have great freedom to mix and match whatever upper-division CS courses you want. So if you want to avoid CS150 - another notorious grindhouse - you can choose to do so. </p>
<p>But everybody has to take the entire CS61 series whether they want to or not, whether they’re relevant to their particular interests or not. And that’s where the weeding begins. </p>
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<p>Which means that an enterprising community college student could simply find another community college that does offer that course. There is no rule (that I am aware of) that bars community college students from taking courses from multiple community colleges. </p>
<p>But Berkeley students (generally) do not have this option. See below. </p>
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<p>This is why:</p>
<p>You may not enroll simultaneously in the College of Letters and Science at Berkeley and in another institution. If you have unusual circumstances, see the dean of the College to request approval before enrolling in the other institution.</p>
<p>[College</a> Policies-Transferring Credit](<a href=“http://ls-advise.berkeley.edu/collegepolicies/credit.html#Anchor-Concurrent-49575]College”>http://ls-advise.berkeley.edu/collegepolicies/credit.html#Anchor-Concurrent-49575)</p>
<p>{I assume the other colleges at Berkeley have the same rule.}</p>
<p>As I’ve been saying throughout this thread: why can’t Berkeley students enroll at another university during their spare time without Dean approval (which is only rarely granted)? It’s their spare time, they should be allowed to do with it as they wish. It’s downright bizarre that Berkeley students are perfectly allowed to waste all of their spare time playing WoW or Call of Duty all day long, but aren’t allowed to use their spare time to take additional courses at another school. </p>
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<p>I agree that that is a valid strategy, and in fact, one that I have proposed myself. </p>
<p>But given that they can do that, why is that really so different from them then simply taking the (supposedly) equivalent courses at a community college? Given that they are already allowed to the supposedly equivalent courses during the summer - when we already know that they aren’t equivalent at all because of the easier grading - I don’t see why allowing them to take those courses at a community college is such a radical notion. </p>
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<p>I never said that all weeders can be skipped by the transfers. </p>
<p>But the fact is, many can be. For example - let’s face it - most chemical engineers don’t really need to know how to calculate the laws of electromagnetism as derived by Faraday’s Laws and the Maxwell Equations. Practically no real-world chemical engineering operation actually relies on the manipulation of electromagnetic fields and waves. Yet all freshmen-admit chemical engineers are forced to endure the Physics 7B weeder lawnmower anyway - but not chemical engineering transfers, who are allowed to skip that through community college coursework. Hence, there are plenty of freshman-admit students who could have become perfectly competent chemical engineers except for the fact that they didn’t know how to properly calculate Maxwell’s Equations, which they never actually need to know in order to do the job anyway. </p>
<p>{Note, I agree that chemical engineers may need to know something about electric circuits, but that’s why they’re required to take EE100, which is not only not a weeder, but interestingly, does not require Physics 7B as a prereq.} </p>
<p>{Also note, I happen to think that chemical engineers - and, frankly, all well-educated people within the technical majors - should actually know something about the laws of electromagnetism. But that’s quite different from saying they should actually be weeded predicated on their knowledge of that topic.} </p>
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<p>I agree that they may look forward to a challenge, but not so much when they’re actually actively dealing with the challenge. While this may be an inappropriate analogy, this reminds me of the braggadocio of newly recruited soldiers who may ‘look forward’ to the baptism of combat, when I doubt that a single (sane) soldier who is actually in combat enjoys being there. If anything, every soldier in active combat probably wishes that it would cease. </p>
<p>It’s also easy to say that you may look forward to an academic challenge if you actually do well. But what about all of the students who don’t do well? See below. </p>
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<p>Yet the fact remains that only a small percentage of students will get A’s in weeder courses. Plenty will indeed fail. {Note, a C- or worse is essentially failing, as recall that you need a 2.0 technical GPA to remain eligible in many technical majors. And I can think of plenty of engineering students stuck with D’s and F’s. In fact, I know one guy whose cumulative GPA was literally a 0.5 GPA (half D’s and half F’s)} </p>
<p>Now, granted, it is surely true that some of those students with poor weeder grades simply didn’t work hard. But there are also plenty of students who do work very hard…and earn poor weeder grades anyway. I would venture to say that most students in any engineering weeder or the notorious premed grindhouses of Chem3AB are working very hard. But only a small proportion of them will get A’s, and many of them will receive poor grades. The inherent and defining feature of a weeder course is a harsh grade distribution that serves to weed a large fraction of students out. </p>
<p>Which is why the notion that transfer students are allowed to skip those notorious weeder torture racks is so controversial. If the freshman-admits have to endure such abattoirs then perhaps the transfer should too. Either that, or those freshman-admits should not have to suffer. It’s unclear why only the freshman-admits should be forced to endure that pain, but not the transfers. </p>
<p>After all - you said it yourself - if freshman-admits are indeed looking forward to the challenge of weeders, then shouldn’t transfers also be looking forward to the same challenge? Is the implication that transfer students are afraid of challenges?</p>
<p>Personally, I think we need to hear far more from those freshman-admits who were actually weeded out, for they have the biggest complaint about the system. Those freshman-admits who did well in their weeders may not care if other students are weeded out or not. But what about those who were weeded out? How do you think they feel when they see transfer students allowed to skip over the very weeder classes that had eliminated them? Surely they would be thinking: “I was forced to take that class, and as a result, I was weeded out, so why shouldn’t they have to do the same?” </p>
<p>But of course, I doubt that anybody is champing at the bit to relive their bitter weeder experience and poor grades in a public forum. But these students clearly exist, as the weeder grade distribution dictates that they exist.</p>