<p>sakky, you’re correct about concurrent enrollment. College of Chemistry says this:
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<p>I wonder if they mean concurrent enrollment in another “degree granting” institution versus taking a class at a community college?</p>
<p>I believe that is in fact what they mean: I don’t think you can take a class at any school without actually formally enrolling, which Berkeley clearly prohibits without the rarely-granted Dean’s sanction. </p>
<p>But again, the question is - why? Why does Berkeley care so much about what students are doing in their free time? It’s their free time; they should be allowed to use it as they wish. Why are you perfectly allowed to waste all your time playing video games or partying, but not allowed to take classes at another school?</p>
<p>So Sakky, which upper div CS courses are easier than the CS61A series? (or just cs61b, up to you)</p>
<p>I haven’t talked to anyone whose said “Yeah, I’m taking CS1xx and it’s SO easy after CS61B” It’s always been the other way around</p>
<p>Keep in mind that the question is not whether any particular course is “easy” in the sense that the material itself is easy. Rather, the question at hand is whether a course is “easy” in the sense of whether you can avoid a failing grade (that is, a grade lower than the C=2.0 technical GPA that is necessary to graduate). Most upper division CS course are not going to fail you as long as you do the work. You might get a mediocre grade but you aren’t going to fail. But in weeder courses, you can do all of the work and still fail.</p>
<p>But to answer your question directly, it’s quite easy to find relatively easy upper-division CS courses. The entire CS 198 series is relatively easy, certainly easier than CS 61B. Let’s face it, taking a course on “Exploring Discworld” or “Intro to Cyberpunk” is not going to be that hard. Heck, I don’t even think you need much of a CS background at all to take those courses: some coursework in the CS 9 series may be sufficient. You certainly don’t need to know anything from CS 61B. {It may help you know it, but you don’t need to know it.} </p>
<p>But they’re still technically upper-division CS courses for the purposes of fulfilling the CS major’s requirement for upper-division CS breadth (unless the rules have changed lately).</p>
<p>SAKKY</p>
<p>I see you bashing on transfers on how they skip weeders.
But it’s not that. We don’t care about TRANSFERS. Why would we care when they are inferior? We are really indifferent more so. The fact that they act like they are freshman admits and think they are smarter than us make it look very disgusting. Other than that, who cares? They are just inferior students from CC trying to get their second chances.</p>
<p>^^i agree with you that sakky has gotten WAY off point but i disagree with the fact that transfers are trying to act like freshmen admits.</p>
<p>The point of this thread is that too many subpar transfers are at UC Berkeley. It is unfair that high school students are asked to be the best of the best but mediocre transfers are not even assessed properly, and guess what…it effects the education we receive and how we are perceived outside of Berkeley (besides that, why would anyone want to study with people who are less capable than them).</p>
<p>If sakky wants to debate the residual effects of weeder classes, I suggest he make his own thread. This thread is about transfer being subpar in comparison to freshmen admits because of lax admission standards. The fact that the stupider kids (not including the ones who went to cc out of financial reasons) get a free pass on the harder classes is a sidepoint…not the topic of discussion.</p>
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<p>Not true. I have made pains to make clear that I am not bashing on transfers per se. If I’m bashing anything, I’m bashing the administration for allowing transfers to skip weeders when freshman-admits are not allowed to do so. You could also say that I’m also bashing the concept of the weeder. {For example, rather than run weeders, it’s better to simply not admit those students who weren’t going to pass those weeders in the first place.} </p>
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<p>Actually, this thread morphed quickly from that original topic of whether there are too many subpar transfers at Berkeley into a predictably defensive and prickly reaction about why freshman-admits resent weeders. That is when the thread first veered off-topic. I submit that a large part of the reason for that resentment is entirely legitimate because transfers are allowed to skip weeders, a privilege denied to the freshman-admits.</p>
<p>So if you think the thread has gone off-topic, don’t blame me. Blame the people who actually first took the thread off-topic. I don’t seem to remember you guys trying to intervene when that first happened. </p>
<p>Besides, I don’t see why discussing off-topic subjects is such a problem anyway. Most threads that attract significant participation will discuss off-topic subjects at some point. You are free to pick and choose whatever posts you want to respond to within a particular thread, and you are free to ignore those posts that don’t interest you. </p>
<p>But if people here want to talk about transfers & weeders - and apparently many people do - then why does that a concern of yours? If you don’t want to participate, then don’t participate.</p>
<p>Thanks 123456789bc for saying exactly what I have been thinking.</p>
<p>And sakky, you cannot say that the thread ‘morphed into’ something or ‘veered off topic’. The number of words you have typed in this thread is probably longer than everyone else’s combined. You have dominated this thread (and many other threads). Typing up responses to comments line-by-line also contributes to this and ends up frustrating a lot of people who might otherwise not have a problem with your arguments :)</p>
<p>Of course it morphed. I was not the one who began to ‘derail’ the original topic of this thread. That began all the way in page 3 of the thread (and arguably even sooner). I didn’t step in until page 4.</p>
<p>And so what if I’ve typed more on this thread than anybody else? You will notice that my very first post in this thread was quite short. Every one of my subsequent posts has been in response to somebody else who wanted to expand on my original post. In other words, people wanted to talk about the topics that I raised, and I was happy to oblige them. But I don’t go around responding to my own posts. If nobody wanted to talk about those topics, then neither would I. </p>
<p>But if people clearly do want to talk about something that I raised, why is that of any concern to you? Those people who want to talk about something should be allowed to talk about it. Those who don’t want to participate don’t have to.</p>
<p>I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. If you don’t like my posts, fine, don’t read them. If you see my name on a post’s byline, feel free to skip right over it.</p>
<p>Sakky</p>
<p>do you have a thing called life? You type these 2000 word essays every time on a transfer post…JK haha. who actually reads your posts?? Like I said, who cares if they skip weeders? We are indifferent, we meaning freshman admits. We are good as long as only top students get into CAL, but that is clearly not the case. I saw on the cal website that median gpa for transfer is like 3.5 haha that’s hillarious. And they justify that they are worthy enough to be here. Over the years, I started to realize that thinking about transfer for even a second is very unreasonable. They are just inferior kids trying to get 2nd chances to school. And Berkeley picked them with 3.5 from CC. Very threatening right ??hahaha.</p>
<p>Are you a student, sakky?</p>
<p>Sakky, the reason it is annoying that this thread morphed is because it now seems like the main complaint freshmen admits have is that they are unable to skip weeders by taking classes at community colleges. I understand that this may not be your intention, but it is what is happening. And even if I skip over your posts, anyone else browsing through this thread sees little else than your repetitive reasoning on this “weeder issue”. Your voice becomes the voice of us all as evidenced by Paniikd’s post #642 in this thread which you should go read. People start thinking we’re only bitter about not being smart enough to have gone to a CC and transferred later and that we’re bashing on them because we’re jealous of not being able to attend CC courses. </p>
<p>Besides maybe premeds, I have not in 2.5 years heard of anyone here actually complaining about not being able to swap Berkeley classes for community college credit. While following your suggestions may make the system more fair, it would have absolutely no effect on whether or not transfers are perceived to be “subpar”. </p>
<p>The real reasons for this perception are much more deeply rooted and none of the comments by transfers on this thread have done anything to change that. Just because Berkeley is a public school does not mean that anyone who wants to be here should be here. Would we be having this conversation at all if this was Harvard? Or would it be absolutely justified for Harvard undergrads with all their accomplishments and prestige to be frustrated when transfers from community colleges get to in 2 short years put Harvard on their resumes? I understand that Berkeley as a public school must accept many more students including transfers, but I do not see why we are expected to be happy with it.</p>
<p>paniikd’s post is not even that good.</p>
<p>people think that we’re bitter/jealous because they don’t want to think about the arguments about unfairness, they just want to assume they’re right.</p>
<p>Regarding pre-meds taking classes at CC instead of Cal:
Isn’t med school way tougher and more time consuming than college-level work? If you can’t get a good/decent grade in the first 2 years of chemistry sequence (not even, as chem 1a, 3a, 3b is an easier version of 4a/112), then how can you survive medical school? </p>
<p>I’m a CS major and no very little about pre-med life / med school life, so forgive me if I’m being ignorant.</p>
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<p>My understanding is a lot of people who get into med school pass, and that the hard part is getting in. Getting in requires top grades, and GPA is much more important to a premed than a CS person (even a CS person aiming for grad school, actually). Remember, grading and difficulty are not quite the same. The former relates to survival, the latter relates to what you actually learn.</p>
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<p>Honestly though, I have related why sakky’s argument relates to the actual topic many times, and am a bit amazed it hasn’t been taken up. It almost seems people want to talk about weeders more. I think off topic stuff is fine, and in sakky’s defense, most of the long essays seemed to be in response to things people argued – I think no matter how off topic, if people chose to misconstrue or distort or misunderstand my posts, I’d clarify too.</p>
<p>OK so: we need to get rid of a huge misconception, which is the claim that frosh admits are worthy and transfers are subpar. My belief is admissions standards are messed up for a lot of Cal, and the issue is in how subtly they analyze the data when admitting students. Think about it: the reason the weeder topic comes up at all is that frosh are going through much more rigor (or so is claimed) in high school and Berkeley to get their degree. But what if the transfers, when admitted to a major, had to write placement exams comparable to the final exams at Berkeley (as verified by a professional, e.g. professor) in order to be admitted to the major? Then clearly only transfers up to the same standards would be getting the opportunity to put that degree on their resumes. </p>
<p>Frosh admissions standards are ridiculous for similar reasons the transfer ones are, because a state school tends to look at numbers in admissions quite a bit more blindly. A lot of frosh say that a good GPA from a community college is just not as good as the rigors frosh go through, but if you think about it, even in frosh admissions, getting a good GPA from a decent school helps more than getting a poorer one from a very competitive school in terms of admissions. Frosh admits can be quite subpar too, in my opinion, especially as compared to people I am aware of who have gotten rejected from Cal. </p>
<p>Now I’m willing to admit there are additional disparities in the frosh/transfer process, but the real issue is lax admissions standards. I’ve heard of qualified transfers being rejected while less qualified ones are admitted, again because the very way the students are judged doesn’t seem to make sense.</p>
<p>In particular, examine the following:</p>
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<p>Many, many times, there have been threads that discuss making Berkeley admissions standards across the board more stringent, and the frosh admts have been defensive about this themselves…saying “this is a public school! It’s meant to serve California, not be turned into an elitist private!” Well, as I recall sakky said the same, which I agree with. It’s Berkeley. It’s a public school, sure, but glorified all over the world, and certainly admitting subpar frosh over more qualified frosh doesn’t help serve California.</p>
<p>So honestly, only the frosh admits who sympathized with this point really have a genuine reason to be upset with the transfer admissions system. Transparent, reasonably holistic, and stringent admissions standards across the board are what we need. I remember being in favor of doing a lot of the weeding for frosh before they got to Cal. Ditto for transfers. </p>
<p>I don’t know what else there is to say. I think getting it in people’s heads that standards need to be equal, fair, and rigorous in every sense is important, if not in direct response to the question of this thread, in response to the spirit of what is being said.</p>
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<p>This basically says “care about things which directly affect you.” See, as human beings, we have the ability to see unfairness in different forms, and recognize them even when they’re not directly in our faces. I’m pretty sure it makes sense to cut out unfairness.</p>
<p>I’m pretty sure if people didn’t raise stupid objections to someone’s claims about unfairness, then the someone would be satisfied.</p>
<p>For what it’s worth, I am a frosh admit, well well past the weeder stage, but I still think it’s worth looking back and making it clear what works and what doesn’t.</p>
<p>I mean, if it were just occasional disparity in the qualifications of frosh admits themselves, I’d say we can discuss things on a transfer vs. frosh level, but I think to really do the topic justice, and to correct transfer admissions if it needs to be corrected, we need good admissions standards in an absolute sense, and that could apply to frosh by extension.</p>
<p>How about just eliminate transfer at Cal, UCLA and UCSD and turn Merced into a transfer only campus?</p>
<p>I think accepting transfer students is okay as long as they have the stats to get into Cal. What makes Cal look bad by accepting transfer is that fact that Cal just has tooooooooooo many students. If Cal has only about 6k undergrad students, Cal would look like Harvard or Stanford even if half of those students admitted were transfers.</p>
<p>But RML something that Berkeley does is that it provides a safety net for those who have strong academics (straight A’s, AP/Honors classes, high SAT score) in high school but don’t necessarily have significant EC’s to get into good private schools. If Berkeley cuts its undergrad population down to 6k then smart people who can take advantage of the resources Berkeley has to offer may not be able to because Berkeley would be forced to become like strong privates in the admission process.</p>
<p>Until I stumbled across this thread, I had absolutely no idea that 4-year students held such a profound hatred for transfers. It’s… well, very sad that some of you genuinely believe that by virtue of your path in life being a direct HS to college transition that you’re somehow superior to others. It’s slightly amusing, knowing that graduation will be the great equalizer, but mostly, it’s just very sad. </p>
<p>Everybody in this thread seems to have bought into a bizarre false dilemma: that is, either you’re a brilliant and capable person who went immediately to a 4 year university, or you’re a pathetic ne’er-do-well who had to transfer later on by virtue of some lack of aptitude or personal failure. If you can’t conceive of any alternatives, you might want to reevaluate your own brilliance, 4-year students though you may be.</p>
<p>I’ll think twice about revealing my transfer status in the future, particularly in person, lest I be spit upon, ridiculed, assaulted or worse, potentially, if the level of anger in this thread is any indicator. :)</p>
<p>What a poor reflection you all are on Berkeley as an institution, the UC system and American academia in general.</p>
<p>so sakky and mathboy discussing whether or not the weeder system is fair = them hating transfers?
“assaulted or worse” paranoia much? people don’t have the right to disagree with you?
rofl, what a ■■■■■.</p>