<p>This will just validate the fact that there *is *something to be ashamed about in being a transfer. There isn’t. The problem doesn’t lie with the subpar transfers, they will come to Berkeley if admitted. The problem is with the administration, who infringes these “separate but equal” policies that allow so many unqualfied transfers to come through (and freshmen as well but to a lesser extent) without facing a majority of the stressors that more capable students have to go through like APs, SAT I, II, weeders, ect (this doesn’t include student who went to cc only out of financial hardship…it includes those that were too stupid to do well until they took easy cc classes, regardless of their financial situation).</p>
<p>@1234… yes, but gtarrant and goingmeta and others are in denial that there are any unqualified transfers or any transfers that couldnt come because they were slackers/idiots. They assume that all transfers are like themselves. Though they have different backgrounds, which of course makes their assertions mutually exclusive.</p>
<p>Certainly I’m under no such impression. There are moronic transfers who’ll end up graduating by the skin of their teeth and continue on to do nothing particularly noteworthy with their lives.</p>
<p>The difference between my perspective and that of many people in this thread is that, rest assured, the above applies to a good number of direct HS to college-goers as well. If you imagine that the ability to pull a 4.0 in HS and successfully tackle a smattering of AP courses is indicative of anything beyond simple perseverance, then you probably haven’t set foot in the real world beyond academia.</p>
<p>The most rudimentary psychology course would teach you that any belief otherwise is a simple ingroup / outgroup phenomenon. Those of you who’re balls-to-the-wall on your hard science curriculum might consider a social psych course… you know, just so you don’t run the risk of making absurd and terrible threads like this one.</p>
<p>It’s strangely ironic how Cal is known for it’s open mindedness and liberal views, yet - as is evidenced by this tread - so much elitism go on. Obviously one thread doesn’t speak for the entire population of Berkeley, but its still ironic. </p>
<p>I don’t know if this point has been made, but I think some of the blame can be placed on public high schools. When my brother was going to high school, all of the students had to take this college information class called AVID. Apparently the teachers who taught this class constantly talked negatively about “junior college” and how only “stupid” people go there. It was a little depressing at the time because I was attendning these “inferior institutions”; but now, I am at Cal and his friend who did a concurrent HS/CC program (which the same teachers advised against) entered UCSC as a sophomore after graduating HS. I realize UCSC might be considered a joke school (at least within this thread), but all things considered, she was one step ahead of her peers.</p>
<p>The point is it maybe if HS students were more aware of the benefits a CC has to offer they wouldn’t have to be so sour about having to go through “weeders”, ACT, SAT, SAT II, etc. Of course, if they follow this course knowing about CCs I cannot see the problem. </p>
<p>I mean, what can administration do to make everyone happy? If transfers are so inferior shouldn’t that make classes easier? Do subpar transfers really have the ability to bring down Berkeley’s reputation?</p>
<p>@Jbeak and RML, I think we don’t need to propose absolute numbers like 6K so soon. I agree we should at least have transparent admissions standards to a large degree, and need not be as selective as the selective privates. I think public education means you have a reasonably fair estimate of what you can do to get in…be as strong as many top private applicants but have an infinitely better chance of being admitted if so (I.e. not roll of a dice status).</p>
no high school has made it a requirement for every student to take this joke class. It was in my school district and has been well known to be taken by students who wouldn’t be attending college normally (out of financial situations, poor grades, or circumstance) to steer them into the mindset that college was a feasible option.</p>
<p>this is where you’re not wrong:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>if I had known that taking the humorously easy community college classes without having to compete and be intelligent and take a battery of tests could give me an easier avenue to berkeley…i would take it. But then again, by telling people that “there’s a shortcut to berkeley where you don’t have to be as smart or work as hard to get in” you really do assault the idea that education and hard work are worth something.</p>
<p>My mistake. I didn’t go to a public school. But now it makes even less sense for those teachers to say that. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I am sorry if this question has already been asked, but have you taken a community college course? I am going to go out on a limb and claim that you have not and are judging CCs based on stereotypes and hearsay. Unless there are reports or studies which show the “inferiority” of community college courses, all claims of them being “humorously easy” or substandard are just unfounded opinions. </p>
<p>Either way, I still don’t see the negative effect transfers have on Cal. Unless we somehow have a collective power of bringing down the schools reputation down to the likes of DeVry, I cannot see the issue.</p>
<p>"I am sorry if this question has already been asked, but have you taken a community college course? I am going to go out on a limb and claim that you have not and are judging CCs based on stereotypes and hearsay. Unless there are reports or studies which show the “inferiority” of community college courses, all claims of them being “humorously easy” or substandard are just unfounded opinions. "</p>
<p>I have taken a community college course and known many others who have taken them and this is at the community college that prides itself as being THE BEST for getting students accepted as transfers to UCs. Trust me, community college courses ARE humorously easy. In fact, students from my HIGH SCHOOL tried to get out of AP courses by taking classes at this community college because getting As was so much easier there.</p>
<p>The fact that you (and so many others on this thread) actually believe that community college courses are equivalent to Berkeley-level courses is INCREDIBLY frustrating. Sorry for all the caps, but that argument is just WRONG.</p>
<p>Honestly, I understand why people who have only taken classes at community college would think that they are difficult. The material for a class like Intro Biology should always be the same, right? But the level that you are tested at and the level of understanding you need to have in order to get an A grade are nowhere near the same at Berkeley than at a community college. I took AP Biology in my high school and got a 5, but taking Biology 1A in Berkeley was still extremely challenging for me. I had a vague familiarity with the topics from having taken AP Bio, but felt like I had complete mastery of all the material after Bio1A. Just think about the people who were afraid of even taking AP Bio in high school and preferred to take the “equivalent” community college class where they would be guaranteed an A. What sort of understanding of the material do they have?</p>
<p>This holds true for most other lower division classes like Organic Chemistry, Physics, even math. And are you guys really going to argue that having a solid foundation from intro courses is not necessary for upper division courses or for grad school?</p>
<p>I have taken classes at 2 community colleges in California. Without being too specific, I was concurrently enrolled during two regular high school semesters and two summers. I took 3-5 unit classes in social sciences/humanities to math classes at cc. I have around 20 units from cc, which I’d like to point out is around a third that is required to transfer to any UC and is 10 units short of signing one of those Transfer Agreement Guarantees.</p>
<p>Let’s say I don’t call anything inferior or easy. That’s vague. </p>
<p>However, I can say by comparison that the level at Berkeley is almost certainly higher. Berkeley is a top school in the world, you kind of have to expect that.</p>
let’s agree that there are a lot of them, the disagreement is that they are sub-par. To name a few:</p>
<p>-they take up seats in classes and discussion sections, making them even bigger than they already are
-they delay tele-brears appointments for a lot of students
-they skip the weeders and get inflated statistics about their performance
-admission standards are different for the two groups making it unfair for freshmen admits to be top students at such a young age and having their mediocre peers receiving the same degree after two years of laughable coursework + two years of upper division classes
-community college students are not standardized with students across the nation…let alone any other community colleges
-they add the length to waitlists
-subpar students hold back classes by asking stupid questions, delaying sections from moving fast, not being as ready and relying on lab groups/partners, etc
-they get a leg up in graduate school admissions without taking half the real classes</p>
<p>-they make the school less prestigious, no not to the point where it’s comparable to DeVry or a community college, but to the point where UC Berkeley is not in league with extremely selective schools like Stanford, Harvard, Yale, MIT, etc. That ticks me off, that we **can **be as prestigious as them but we aren’t partly because of these unqualified community college kids deteriorating the reputation. </p>
<p>btw, i feel for the rare student who gets into university and doesn’t go out of circumstance. But let’s be quite clear, the ones with financial difficulties who reject Cal because of it are few and far between. Transfers do not get to say “well we could’ve gotten in but we didn’t because we were poor.” Financial aid is readily available for the student who qualify along with many other opportunities. The problem is, most cc students couldn’t and didn’t get into Berkeley in high school.
I’m all in for second chances and redemption…but at least make it a valid redemption, not a half-assed farce by saying community college courses are equivalent to university ones and that cc kids are equivalent to traditional admits and just didn’t have the money. Going to community college is cheap, that’s a given. It is not a place where Berkeley level students go and not a place where university level classes are taught.</p>
<p>Ah, now things are beginning to make sense. calfootball made a lot of valid points, however there are a few issues which need addressing. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I dont know if you were referring to Berkeley, but I can guarantee that Cal DOES NOT have a TAG with any college. Otherwise all of my other classmates who applied to Cal would have gotten in. If memory serves, UCSC, UCSB, UCD, UCM, and UCSD are the only UCs that have it. Cal and UCLA do not. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>If the seniors, admission officers, professors, and vice chancellor are to believed it is largely due to the “immaturity” of freshman who arrive for their first semester of college only equipped with book smarts. Sure the SAT is meant to measure your readiness for college, but there are certain things one can only learn by experience that AP and honors classes cannot teach you. Compared to freshman, transfers have already gone through the “oh god what am i doing/ what do i do now/” phase and are more prepared for a 4 year school. I’m not saying that those of you who entered as freshman are completely clueless, but you only really have your high school experience to guide you. I think all juniors can say that they are more able to handle their college life now as opposed to when they were freshman. This is the primary difference between freshman and transfers. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Uh, unless your GSIs don’t have office hours or can’t be reached by email I see no reason why this is a problem. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Aren’t private schools more selective than public schools? I don’t think it all has to do with transfers. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I don’t get this holier-than-thou attitude. It’s pretty messed up. If someone from Standford or Harvard came and said, “Pfft. Cal students are just Standford/Harvard rejects” or something along those lines many of you would take offense.</p>
<p>Where would you prefer the transfer students sit? Or should they be barred from sitting in class at all? Should they have to give up their seats if a freshman admit tells them to get up? Perhaps they should do the same on school transportation? If you don’t see where I’m going with this – and I’m not being subtle – then you should consider taking a history class.</p>
<p>No rational person is a fan of enormous class sizes, but if you approached the university with this comment, you’d be laughed out of the room.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>And alternately, freshman admits delay tele-bears appointments for a lot of transfers. Seriously, are you ■■■■■■■■ here, or what?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I concur that it’s not fair that transfers don’t have to go through the same academic meat grinder that freshman admits are subjected to, although when you get a little older, you’ll realize that spinning your wheels over all the little things in life that aren’t fair will only slow you down. But… sure, it’s unfair, in a general sense. There’s no getting around that.</p>
<p>But the second part of your statement is an illogical supposition: how can transfers have inflated performance statistics when their performance isn’t predicated on the same criteria? </p>
<p>And as a final aside on this point, you and every other person in this thread seem to be under the incorrect impression that all transfers can skip all weeders. This is categorically false. When arrived this quarter, I had to take <em>two</em> weeders for my major – not because I failed to take them at a CC, but because no reciprocity agreement exists for these courses. And for the record, barring any final exam-related catastrophe, I’ll be getting solid A’s in both, much to the consternation of a couple hundred freshman admits, no doubt.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Once again, a series of ridiculously illogical suppositions. I don’t know what operational definition you’re using for “mediocre,” but whatever it is, it certainly doesn’t apply to all transfers – or even some arbitrary majority. If you’re reasonably similar to your freshman admit peers in this thread, I can safely assume that your definition of mediocrity is inextricable from a person’s GPA. We can go back and forth arguing the merits of using GPA as a measure of aptitude, but in the real world, there are any number of reasons why somebody may have a less-than-ideal GPA: parents have a messy divorce, a family member dies, lack of support for some pressing issue, the need to work part time to supplement familial income, et al. Others simply aren’t mature enough in HS to succeed academically, but down the road get their **** together and can stride easily ahead of their peers. I really shouldn’t have to explain this – it’s virtually self-evident – but so many of you can’t seem to get over your GPAs, it boggles the mind.</p>
<p>Second, you’re a bit quick to dismiss CC coursework as “laughable.” Certainly, it tends to be less intense than the coursework in the UC system, but as a personal anecdote, I didn’t have a single professor that curved grades at my CC, whereas here I’m amused to note that an 84% in my weeder classes is an A-. It’s the first time I’ve ever encountered an A letter grade at anything less than a 90%. Further, although my two weeders are somewhat challenging, primarily by way of bulk of information, my other two courses are a joke. Each of my professors posts his/her detailed lecture slides online, for every lecture – I can count on one hand the number of times we had that resource available at the CC. Anyhow, I digress…</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Sure they are, insofar as they’re all accountable to the same entities responsible for national accreditation. Are UC students standardized with the University of Georgia, et al?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>We add to the length of lines at the grocery store, as well. Just a heads up.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>To be fair, you’re making a series of stupid comments here, delaying those of us who might be interested in meaningful discourse. Should I conclude that freshman admits make poor College Confidential members?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>While overall GPA and the difficulty of your chosen classes are both important for admission to grad school, a lot more weight is placed on your upper division performance and your demonstrated research interest / exposure. Now, if transfer students are generally sub-par and unprepared for the rigors of upper division coursework, wouldn’t it logically follow that -you- actually have the leg up for grad school admission?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>This almost isn’t worthy of comment, but… I’ll keep it short. First, as KnitKnots pointed out, Berkeley is of course a public (and that means publicly funded) university whereas the colleges you list are private. Second, there is a whole slew of additional factors relevant to a university’s prestige beyond selectivity. But that’s another argument for another time.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Got any numbers to back up that assertion? Financial aid is particularly robust in California, for sure, but it’s far from the panacea you apparently believe it to be.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I just can’t quite shake this feeling that you’re ■■■■■■■■, or something. Your elitism is just breathtaking. Let’s say that you ended up doing rather poorly in HS – maybe your mom used to beat you or lock you in a closet for days on end with no food, or your parents had some explosive divorce and you were the puck in a drag-down custody battle. As a result, you couldn’t concentrate, gave up and ****ed yourself out of Berkeley.</p>
<p>Five years down the road, you pull your head out of your ass and decide you want to do what you should have done in HS had circumstances been more favorable.</p>
<p>Would you be apologetic when you told people you were attending a CC for 2 years? Ashamed of yourself? And when you got to Berkeley, would you walk around with your head down, ashamed that you weren’t a freshman admit? Would you nod in sad agreement with others when they said that transfer students are sub-par and that you didn’t deserve to be there?</p>
<p>Food for thought and nothing more.</p>
<p>And now, without further adieu, let the hostile replies begin.</p>
<p>This argument can be made back and forth but I feel the need to comment on GTarrant’s post.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I don’t mean to offend you, but your response is ridiculous. Calfootball was discussing some negative effects that transfers have on freshman admits which include competing for seats in classes, which is a definitely a true negative effect for anyone who wants to sign up for the class. If Berkeley enrolled more freshman admits, than that too has a negative effect on freshman admits that would have gotten in before the expansion as they now have to compete with each other for seats. </p>
<p>That doesn’t mean transfers shouldn’t be competing with freshman admits for classes and that also doesn’t mean that transfers are “below” freshman and should thus give up their seats. It just means that the existence of transfers makes life harder for freshman admits in this manner.</p>
<p>As for whether transfers are smarter or dumber than freshman admits, it’s hard to argue because there’s no complete metric to measure intelligence and as you mentioned, GPA can not suffice. Also, there isn’t much data about transfers’ performances versus freshman admits’ performances.</p>
<p>Again, this doesn’t mean transfers are dumber. I’m not bashing on transfers. But it does show conclusively that transfers don’t do as well as freshman admits in CS/EE courses.
It doesn’t show much more.</p>
<p>GTarrant, if you want to persuade more people that transfers have just as much ability as their freshman counterparts, you would do a better job if you weren’t so emotional.
Saying things like
doesn’t help convince people.</p>
<p>And just as you make this comment
you then proceed to say something like this
Unless you yourself have any numbers about transfers being in a situation like this or anywhere close to this you can’t possibly use this to advance your argument.</p>
<p>Calfootball isn’t saying that transfers should all be ashamed and should recognize that they’re not at the caliber of freshman admits or anything like that.</p>
<p>I don’t agree with a lot of what Calfootball says, but basically, the whole notion of which group (freshman admits or transfer students) is better is pretty much impossible to solve because there are different definitions of better.</p>
<p>A more interesting question is if freshman admits are known to be better than transfer students (in any measurable way) than should Berkeley, as a public school, still accept the transfer students?</p>
<p>However, for non-grad school aspirants, this entire line of reasoning is irrelevant, but I think GTarrant gets that.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>No, but I would also know that the courses I took weren’t equivalent to Berkeley’s. Calfootball said:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>which I think is dubious, because there is certainly a share of very smart transfers who didn’t play the usual prestigious college admissions game and figured things out later (and actually are doing better by far than most frosh admits). </p>
<p>I think it would be accurate to say that community college is not conducted on the same level of academic rigor as a top US school like Berkeley, without making generalizations about the students.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>The TA’s responsibility is to make sure all of class time isn’t spent on answering trivial questions. It’s not the students’ fault for asking questions, it’s the TA’s responsibility to tell the students to make an appointment with them for later. </p>
<p>Also, there are lots of subpar frosh admits, enough that this is irrelevant to the frosh vs. transfers point.</p>