<p>
</p>
<p>A likely reason is that many humanities and social studies courses have few or no prerequisites. In other words, there is not so much pressure to ensure a more rigorous course that ensures that the students will be better prepared for a follow-on course.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>And similarly, there are some students who receive those grades + LSAT scores or higher who aren’t admitted. </p>
<p>But more importantly, that 3.85 GPA is about the top 8% of the students in a class who graduate, not all students as a whole. That’s an important distinction for reasons explained below. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Is it now? Keep in mind that we’re (ostensibly) not talking about just some average undergrad school of which the Berkeley Law School would be skimming off the top 10% of students. We’re talking about the Berkeley undergraduate program, which is arguably the #1 public undergraduate program in the country, which is already supposed to be highly selective. You now propose that the law school only skim off the top 10% off of what is already supposed to be a highly selective pool? </p>
<p>{Now, granted you might rebut with the counterargument that the Berkeley undergrad program is actually not highly selective at all. But I’m not sure that’s an argument you really want to make.} </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>And that figure surely contains a strong selection bias. That 3.3 figure is either regarding those students who actually graduate, or those students who are currently enrolled. Either way, it doesn’t count those students who were expelled and are therefore no longer members of the student body (and who will obviously not count as members of the graduating class either). Put another way, if those students hadn’t been expelled, they would have continued to have taken classes and presumably would have continued to receive poor grades, hence dragging down the overall GPA of the class. {Put another way, wars would seem far less deadly if you simply don’t count the missing soldiers for which you simply can’t find the bodies but who have almost surely perished.} This is a prime example of data truncation. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Uh, I’m not entirely sure how that helps your point, for the issue is not about the specific coursework that may happen to be run by the various colleges, but rather to compare the specific majors, which is an entirely different comparison. In other words, it doesn’t matter which college happens to house a particular difficult course, it only matters who is required to take those courses. Engineering students are forced to survive the difficult lower-division math/science courses in addition to the difficult engineering coursework. Humanities students can avoid both, and usually do. Hence, it is not the appearance but the reality that engineering is unusually harsh, relative to the humanities. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>See above regarding selection bias. The poorly performing student, who in my example is actually earning a 1.9 GPA rather than the 2.1 that you designated, will quickly flunk out and hence will no longer count as a student for the purposes of school-wide GPA calculation. The poorly performing student is therefore more common than a cursory examination of the data would suggest. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Well, I think latecoder already did paint that picture, and the truth of the matter is that such a student is unlikely to be competitive for most top professional grad programs or top jobs. That student will likely be competitive for an average job or average graduate school, but honestly, how many Berkeley students dreamed of just ending up in an average job or graduate program? </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I don’t believe even that’s a valid rationale. Like I said, humanities courses could simply assign far more work, perhaps including all of the necessary prerequisite material within the first few sessions in order to understand the rest of the course. If students can’t or won’t assume that workload, then they should receive a poor grade. </p>
<p>Again, if engineering courses routinely assign backbreaking quantities of workload, why can’t other courses do the same? I vividly recall plenty of engineering students actually looking forward with relief to exam weeks because those tended to be the weeks during which problem sets were not assigned, and preparing for exams was actually less strenuous than trying to complete problem sets. {But then of course certain courses would nevertheless assign a problem set along with an exam.} If that sort of workload is appropriate for the engineers, then it should be appropriate for everybody else.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>You and I may not think that that is a valid rationale, but when there is nothing placing a floor on the rigor of a humanities or social studies course as there is on the rigor of a math or physics or chemistry or CS course (which needs to ensure that students learn enough to handle subsequent courses), it should not be surprising that some of the humanities and social studies courses let the rigor slide in comparison.</p>
<p>There seems to be the concept of grade deflation and grade inflation, but I’ve never heard of someone set an actual basis to compare from. For example, if 3.0 is the norm, then Berkeley does have not grade deflation. If 2.0 is the norm, then Berkeley has the opposite. Grade deflation shouldn’t be compared to grade inflated schools with 3.5+ averages. Rather, instead of the terms grade deflation/inflation, it’s better simply to write down the average GPA and statistics relating to it.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Actually, I think it should. Because, like it or not, the students at those ‘grade-inflated’ schools will be who you as Berkeley students will be competing against for top jobs and graduate school placements. Grade deflation relative to them is therefore a handicap. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I didn’t say that it was surprising. But just because something isn’t surprising doesn’t mean that it is right or acceptable. </p>
<p>What makes the situation all the more remarkable and sad is that it’s not as if humanities departments don’t know how to run rigorous programs. The Berkeley PhD humanities programs, for example, are breathtakingly rigorous. They’re not going to grant you a PhD until and unless you invest eons of time to produce a work of substantial scholarship, and indeed, a substantial fraction of humanities PhD students never submit a satisfactory dissertation and hence never finish the program. Now obviously I’m not asking that undergraduates perform at a level comparable to the PhD students, but I don’t think it unreasonable to ask them to meet more demanding standards than they currently do.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Consider that there are pressures that push them to making the courses less rigorous. If a department makes its courses more rigorous, it would have fewer students (both majors and students taking breadth courses, since a lot of students look for “easy A” courses), which may result in less funding. It would also increase the workload for the faculty and GSIs in grading tests and projects, at least with having to explain to more students why they got a C instead of a B, etc. (especially when determining the quality of work can appear to be more subjective).</p>
<p>With such pressures, it should be surprising that the result is less rigor in many humanities and social studies at the undergraduate level, even though it is not desirable from the point of view of ensuring that students learn.</p>
<p>my own gsi said…the people who make the tests for our class purposely make it hard and use new vocabulary to try to trick us and she’s complained about it but they don’t care. maybe they don’t deflate ur grades, but they make tests that go waaay above ur head. that’s all.</p>
<p>@ Sakky</p>
<p>Again, I see the problem at Berkeley more being how insanely difficult it is to get above a 3.7 in the more hardcore disciplines. The people I know that did it, were generally very organized about their scheduling and for example planned their coursework to include a fluff humanities for every technical class. </p>
<p>So, while Im sure some students at Berkeley engineering have trouble maintaining a 3.0, I worry more for students who are between, say 3.3 and 3.6, and are stuck going to graduate schools. These are the students that for sure, given the work ethic required for this gpa, would be pulling close to 4.0’s in other schools/departments.</p>
<p>Could it be a sneaky way for the engineering dept. to “lock” their students into engineering graduate schools. In other words if Cal graduates a lot of engineers who go on to graduate school it should reflect better than if many of them were to, say go to law school, or work on wall street or other non-engineering professions.</p>
<p>what are some of these “fluff” courses?</p>
<p>
Absolutely. I haven’t looked into Boalt specifically, but speaking about Berkeley grad school as a whole, most programs are highly esteemed. There are also only 4 grad students to every 10 undergrads, so if every Cal undergrad wanted to go to Cal for grad school, it would be limited to the top 25% of the class or so (which means the average GPA would be around the 12.5% mark). But… Cal’s grad school prestige gives it the clout to be more selective, so it can choose the top 15% of Cal undergrads (average GPA around the 7.5% mark) and the top students from other top schools, too (and the other undergrads go to less prestigious places). And there - Boalt’s admissions process isn’t so wacky.</p>
<p>
Do you have stats on how strong the selection bias is? My gut feeling is that it’s actually not that strong. I’m trying to figure it out based on the number of students who come in and the number who make it out, from [UC</a> Berkeley Fall Enrollment Data](<a href=“http://opa.berkeley.edu/institutionaldata/campusenroll.htm]UC”>UC Berkeley Fall Enrollment Data for New Undergraduates | Office of Planning and Analysis) In Fall 06 there were 4157 freshmen + 1950 transfers = 6107 incoming students but I can’t seem to find the size of the graduating class (7,092 bachelor’s degrees conferred, but that overcounts for double majors, etc), and to get a really accurate picture of the dropout rate we’d need to subtract the students who transfer out of Cal to other schools. Just given that most classes only give 0-10% D/F and the fact that a student would need to receive many low grades to be below the 2.0 threshold, the dropout rate seems low. </p>
<p>The point I want to make is that Cal is an easier school (for GPA) than I perceive you to be saying. I say this as an EECS major for what it’s worth.</p>
<p>I agree it is not cool that a 3.6 from Cal is treated less than a 3.9 at some other places where it’s much easier to get A’s, in terms of competition and the amount of work. And yeah, a 3.3 isn’t going to stand out that much. But if grades were inflated and a 3.3 becomes a 3.8, does that really help? Employers will put less trust into Cal GPAs. As for the law schools and the med schools that want your 3.95 or whatever, the only answer I have is standardized tests. (and then you invariably get people whining that they are “bad at tests” despite the fact that 70% of their college grades were decided by midterms and finals)</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>A simple way to deal with these problems is to implement a university-wide ‘grade budget’: each department is allowed to confer only a certain percentage of A’s/B’s/C’s/etc. each year. Departments may be able to exceed that percentage in certain years where their student bodies are ‘exceptional’, but in return for making up the difference by handing out fewer such grades in subsequent years. </p>
<p>In one stroke, that would eliminate the pressure for departments to unilaterally ratchet up the grade inflation arms race to attract students and their accompanying funding because all departments would be bound by the grading arms control pact. It would also serve as a a convenient foil for those humanities instructors who have to contend with irate students who are receiving poor grades, as they can now simply say that they are bound by the new grading policy. </p>
<p>Nor would such a policy necessarily institute university-wide grade deflation as some detractors might fear. Berkeley could continue to implement exactly the same overall grade distribution that they offer today. The major difference is that letter-grade distributions would be smoothly distributed amongst majors. Humanities majors would be graded far harsher, whereas technical majors would actually be graded easier. Berkeley students would then finally enjoy a measure of grade equity relative to each other.</p>
<p>To those humanities students who would still object to the harsher grading schemes for them, I’m afraid that I have no sympathy. After all, their colleagues in the technical majors have been enduring unnecessarily harsh grade schemes for decades. If they can put up with it, so can you. </p>
<p>An inevitable outcome of such a reform is that far more students will surely choose to major in technical subjects rather than decamp to the formerly-fluff majors. To that, I would say that that’s exactly the way it ought to be. As much as we may wish otherwise, Berkeley is a state university that, despite all recent budget cuts, is supported by the taxpayers to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars annually. The taxpayers therefore do have the right to demand a proper return on their investment. Technical majors lead to better paying jobs, thereby boosting the local economy and tax base. </p>
<p>{For this reason, I have often thought that UC/CSU should perhaps provide state subsidies only to students in technical majors. If somebody wants to study an unmarketable fluff major, he is free to do so, but why should the taxpayers subsidize him? The state is undergoing a budget crisis, and tax dollars therefore must be preferentially allocated to those investments that generate the highest payoffs.} </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I worry about all engineering students across the board. I simply choose to prioritize the ones who flunk out because of its disastrous implications on one’s career. Let’s face it - with perhaps only a few exceptions such as entrepreneurship or IT/software - you nowadays basically need a bachelor’s degree in order to obtain a decent job. Many companies won’t even grant you an interview if you don’t have a degree (or are on track to receive one). The degree doesn’t necessarily have to be related to the company whatsoever - it could be a degree in underwater basket-weaving - but you still need a degree in something. Even the laziest and most incompetent ‘X-Studies’ student with a 2.1 GPA will nevertheless receive a degree. But the engineering student with the 1.9 won’t. </p>
<p>To be fair, I should point out that this is hardly a Berkeley-specific phenomenon. Engineering is a notoriously traumatic major regardless of which school you are at. I doubt that there is even a single school in the country where engineering is considered to be a ‘fluff’ program filled with ‘refugees’ switching from ‘more difficult’ majors. </p>
<p>But just because the problem is not specific to Berkeley doesn’t mean that Berkeley need conform. Just because your friends jump off a bridge doesn’t mean that you should too. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Well, let me put it to you this way. A substantial fraction of engineering students at MIT and Stanford do not continue on as engineers, but instead take jobs in finance or consulting. Yet those schools are nevertheless able to maintain their status as elite engineering schools.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>But what you’ve neglected is obviously that not every Cal undergrad will want to attend graduate school. Even those that do will often times not want to do so specifically at Cal. In some cases, they simply cannot because Cal does not even offer the corresponding graduate program at all - medical school being the obvious example. I strongly suspect that more Cal graduating seniors apply to medical school than to any other graduate program, and so these students are, by definition, are not going to be attending a Cal graduate program.</p>
<p>In most other cases, Cal’s graduate program is on par or inferior to some of its competitors. Let’s face it, as strong as Berkeley Law is, I suspect that most Berkeley pre-laws would rather attend Y/H/S over Berkeley Law if they could get in. From an admissions standpoint, Berkeley Law therefore has to account for the fact that they will lose a substantial fraction of their admittees, especially the strongest applicants, to other law schools. Berkeley Law therefore clearly would have to stretch far beyond merely the top 15% of Cal undergrads in order to land the student body that they want. Or they would, if they cared about truly admitting the most qualified student body, not necessarily the one that just happens to have the best grades. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Actually, I neglected to mention the biggest source of selection bias by far - that being those engineering students who switch out of engineering to easier majors because of subpar engineering grades (along with those students who want to switch into engineering but then receive subpar lower-division engineering grades and hence never make that switch). If those students had stayed in engineering, they would have continued to earn poor grades, thereby lowering the university-wide average GPA. But they self-selected themselves out. In contrast, I think we can all agree that nearly zero fluff-majors students receive poor grades and therefore decide to switch to engineering. (Heck, I’m not sure such a switch would even be possible given the stringent admissions regime of the engineering programs.) </p>
<p>I believe there to be little dispute that a notable fraction - perhaps the majority - of incoming engineering students will switch out of the major because of the difficulty. ‘Weeder’ engineering course enrollments are always substantially larger than the enrollments in post-weeder coursework. The selection bias is therefore rampant. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Do they? Seems to me that certain schools offer relatively inflated GPA’s - even amongst engineers - yet still don’t seem to have lost any employer trust. A certain school in Palo Alto immediately comes to mind. </p>
<p>Besides, I’m also worried about the inanity of present-day professional school admissions. It seems patently obvious that a 3.4 GPA in EECS is at least the equivalent of, say, a 3.6 in American Studies, and almost certainly far better. But law and med-school adcoms don’t seem to know what is patently obvious - or, worse, don’t want to know.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>With a name like “bsd”, its amazing how bad you are at basic logic. What do standardized tests have to do with anything? We’re comparing GPAs here so why would you include an extraneous variable. Since you seem to need some hand-holding, let me give you an example:</p>
<p>Student A gets a 3.7 from grade inflated major/school and gets a 30 MCAT. </p>
<p>Student B gets a 3.35 from tough school, tough major and a 30 MCAT. </p>
<p>Here, they have the same standardized test score but Student A has a HUGE advantage in the medical school game. In fact, to be on an even playing field, Student B has to get a 37+ MCAT score since the GPA game is nonlinear–medical schools dont like splitters (a 3.0 and 35 is much worse than a 3.5 and a 30). </p>
<p>Really anything less than a 3.5 whether its MIT/UCB EECS or State School Psychology, makes low-tier med schools a reach school regardless of MCAT. So no, you don’t get people “whining about standardized tests”, because regardless of their test score the GPA game makes them almost ineligible to apply, which is especially sad since many students in engineering ace the MCAT. </p>
<p>Now with regards to your statement that “employers will put less trust in Cal GPAs”, I might point out that Stanford students do quite well in that regard. And FWIW, most engineering jobs look for relevant experience in that work area over GPA (ie. did you do research in actuators as an undergrad?).</p>
<p>One of the very few legitimate reasons that I can think of for Cal giving out low engineering grades is that low GPAs are excellent differentiators. As it is now top Graduate programs will practically auto-accept Berkeley engineers with stellar GPAs, who are able to shine above others. And this is while keeping Berkeley undergrads in the mid 3.0’s very competitive due to the reputed rigor.</p>
<p>@ Sakky,</p>
<p>I certainly empathize with engineers who are hovering around a 2.0, but lets face it, they haven’t been working as hard (highly likely) or just arent as smart.</p>
<p>However, like I’ve been saying its those people between 3.0 and 3.5 who are absolutely hosed by Cal. These are students who are usually smart enough and work hard enough to absolutely ace the standardized testing procedure for professional schools, where we have 4.0’s from <insert easy=“” college=“” major=“”> as the national competition. Sadly, the majority of these fluff 4.0’s, whom our Cal friends will typically outscore on the MCAT, will end up at the better program.</insert></p>
<p>My point is, I haven’t seen you address this Cal demographic enough. Ive seen too many of your posts focusing on the 2.0 engineers who have to switch majors. I agree, that the engineering school should have some policy that erases these grades if such students transfer out, so they can choose a new career. </p>
<p>However, I think you can tell almost every 2.0 engineer to work harder so he can graduate, but asking a 3.4 EECS/BioE/ME to simply work harder (on top of professional school ECs) is probably not possible. Its most frustrating to be smart enough to get into Harvard Med, and work harder than most of the admits to Harvard Med, and even take courses more medically relevant than a history major, but end up at very low tier MD or DO programs.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Yet they clearly have been working harder and are at least as smart as the creampuff majors who are earning 2.1’s. Those students are clearly doing practically nothing and are untalented. Yet after 4 years, they will hold degrees from Berkeley. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Actually, I am not focused on the 2.0 engineers who have to switch majors but rather the 1.9 engineers who *can’t even graduate at all, even if he tries to switch majors. * To have a GPA of less than 2.0 is to be on academic probation and I have never heard of anybody successfully switching colleges while on probation. You are therefore stuck in engineering - hence, the “engineering major trap” - and are likely to be expelled entirely. </p>
<p>That’s not to say that I have no sympathy for the 3.0-3.5 engineer who is clearly not enjoying the career opportunities he would have had with a higher GPA in an easier major. However, in the litany of injustices, I would again choose to emphasize the 1.9 engineer who won’t even graduate at all, from any major. At least the 3.0-3.5 engineer can find a job as a regular engineer, however professionally disappointing that may be. The 1.9 GPA engineer won’t even have a degree at all, and will likely have to spend the rest of his life scraping together low-end jobs where degrees are unnecessary, or, at best, try to rebuild his academic record through a community college and perhaps be admitted to a CalState. {For example, I know one guy who flunked out of Berkeley engineering and ended up as a security guard at Safeway. I know another who ended up delivering pizza for Round Table.} </p>
<p>Again, the situation is particularly galling because those students could have easily graduated from Berkeley had they started in fluff majors from the very beginning. Granted, maybe they wouldn’t have received top grades, but at least they would have degrees. Like I said, we live in a time where if you want a decent career, you increasingly need a degree. Put another way, there is a precipitous step drop between having a degree - even with a 2.1 in a fluff major - and not even having a degree at all. That ‘delta 0.2 GPA’ between the 2.1 and a 1.9 is fathomless, as that’s the difference between having a degree or not. </p>
<p>To be sure, those students - whether they are the 1.9 engineers or the 2.1 fluff majors - should probably have never been admitted to Berkeley at all, regardless of major. And certainly those expelled engineers that I know readily admit that they would have been far better off had they never matriculated to Berkeley but had instead gone to an easier school. But that’s all water under the bridge. They were admitted, they did matriculate, and the only relevant question is what to do with them now.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Wait until the time when students are trying to add courses for next semester, and some of them come here to ask for suggestions on easy courses, and others respond.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Presumably, chemistry and biology would be first to go (although most people would not consider them “fluffy” in terms of difficulty; note that chemistry does much worse than chemical engineering in career surveys), since those majors have poor job and career prospects, while being relatively expensive (labs and the like cost more than just classrooms and libraries that humanities and social studies require). Correct?</p>
<p>Many of those labs have to be paid for anyway to support the engineers. Chemical engineers, for example, have to take labs in general and organic (and usually physical) chemistry whether they want to or not. Many of them will also be taking bio labs, particularly the ones who specialize in biochemical engineering. Similarly, bioengineers will also obviously have to take numerous bio labs. Hence, many of the chem and bio labs are necessary simply to run competent engineering programs. </p>
<p>But, to your point, I certainly agree that biology is far too large. I don’t understand why Berkeley needs to offer 6 distinct types of biology majors. Nor do I think that MCB should be the largest major on campus - many of the students being misguided premeds who believe that MCB will provide an advantage in the medical school admissions process, which it will not. </p>
<p>But obviously such reform would require extensive cooperation with the engineering programs. If the population of chemistry and especially biology majors are to be reduced, then far more slots should be opened in the more lucrative chemical engineering and bioengineering disciplines to accommodate those students. </p>
<p>But even that would be infeasible without a ‘Grand Bargain’ which I would propose herein: you place the reduction of taxpayer subsidies for the fluff majors on the table, and then I will respond with placing the reduction of taxpayer subsidies for chem and (especially) bio on the table. Deal?</p>
<p>
It was probably not clear from context, but my intended suggestion was to eliminate GPAs from the picture of professional school admission (it’s likely more pragmatic just to weight them less) and base it off of standardized tests. If GPAs were standardized that would be fine as well. Recommendations can attest to a student’s work ethic and other qualities–but focus on standardized, fair, across-the-board metrics. Then grade inflation/deflation is less of a problem.</p>
<p>
This seems to be the source of the problem. Reject people who aren’t going to do well (bluntly put, place more weight on academic qualifications). Ideally raise the admissions bar to something like Stanford’s and adjust the curves to accommodate the fact that the lower part of the class isn’t there anymore (no need to shift the curve and inflate grades, just chop off the bottom of it)–I think you get something similar to Stanford. Maybe weight A+'s as 4.3 points but I doubt that affects many students on academic probation.</p>
<p>Or maybe I don’t know enough failure cases. I see more cases of my peers having a reasonable choice of comfortable jobs and good grad schools, with positive but weak GPA correlation.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Agree with this, but thats for the professional schools to decide. What can Berkeley do to help their undergraduates? Simply give them better grades, comparable to that of other departments at the same school. Seems logical since humanities majors are also competing for medical school…why put engineers at a disadvantage?</p>