<p>When it comes to future wealth and job opportunities, will the prestige of the university one graduates from matter that much? If not, why do so many students stress and stress to go to the top schools possible? For instance, let's talk about the business administration major. The only 3 undergraduate business programs in the UC system are in UC Berkeley, UC Irvine, and UC Riverside. If I graduate from UCI or UCR instead of UC Berkeley, does that mean that my potential salary will be less than UC Berkeley graduates because of UCB's prestige? Please elaborate. Thanks!</p>
<p>Depends on what your plans are for post-graduation. For the Business Admin. major (with hopes of finance/consulting then MBA), the college absolutely matters. For a future med/law school student, GPA matters much more. There are always exceptions but this appears to be the general rule.</p>
<p>To be honest, UCR=UCI=UCSD=UCB.</p>
<p>Just do well. You will get opportunities.</p>
<p>^Seriously?! I totally disagree.</p>
<p>And I wish the UC system as a whole would wake up and realize that not all of their universities are on the same level. To try and argue that one can receive the same quality education at Merced as at Berkeley seems ridiculous to me.</p>
<p>I’ve always thought tiered tuition would make more sense…(can’t believe students at Merced are paying the same tuition as students at UCLA) but now I’m just taking us totally off-topic. :P</p>
<p>Never said Merced is same as those UCs that I mentioned.</p>
<p>However, I do really feel that UCR=UCI=UCSD=UCB…at least for probably all non technical majors.</p>
<p>Absolutely not…UCR, UCI, and UCSD can’t even compare with UCB. The former three schools are filled with slackers and students of slightly above-average intellect, while UCB students are several notches above. </p>
<p>But if you’re a top student who was accepted to all four schools and choose, say, UCR over UCB, there’s a good shot you’ll still end up doing well. But that has more to do with you than your school.</p>
<p>loldanielol//maybe. But considering there are so many transfers accepted everywhere, it is safe to say it’s probably not that different. I see kids in high school who got a 2.0 get 4.0 at CC and come to Berkeley. I wouldn’t say it’s any different at other UCs. UCR, UCI, and UCSD are probably different than Berkeley in terms of professors and level of education received. But as with student quality, it isn’t that much different. IE, transfer kids.</p>
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<p>Meaning that they got serious about their academics a little late, but CC->UC gave them a second chance. Do you think that that is a bad thing?</p>
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<p>Selectivity varies for transfer admissions, both by campus and major. Berkeley and UCLA are likely significantly more selective for transfer students than UCR or UCM are for the same major.</p>
<p>Some of the students who started at CC for various reasons (cost or high school record) and transferred to Berkeley graduated at or near the top of their majors, going on to PhD study at highly respected schools for their majors.</p>
<p>ucbalum//the 25%-75% for Berkeley transfer admits from CC is 3.4.-3.8 according to website. That is a cakewalk if you ever been to CC. Significantly selective according to CC grades means nothing.
For UCI, it’s 3.3-3.8, so any UCI transfer kids could have bested those kids here.</p>
<p>It’s substantial or almost all that got rejected the first time around. I’ve never yet to see more than 5 students who transferred to Berkeley and graduated at the top. Yes, one instance I saw was when he transferred from Cornell and did well. But that’s different story.</p>
<p>I see kids in high school who got a 2.0 get 4.0 at CC and come to Berkeley.</p>
<p>I am being sarcastic and you took it straight up. I meant that CC is very easy…</p>
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<p>Then would selectivity based on high school grades also mean nothing?</p>
<p>Transfer admissions selectivity does vary by major, as you can see here for UCLA: [Profile</a> of Admitted Transfer Students - UCLA Undergraduate Admissions](<a href=“http://www.admissions.ucla.edu/prospect/Adm_tr/Tr_Prof.htm]Profile”>http://www.admissions.ucla.edu/prospect/Adm_tr/Tr_Prof.htm)</p>
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<p>I know people who were top students at Berkeley (EECS) after transferring from community colleges. And there was also the 2011 University Medalist (sociology and rhetoric): [Top</a> graduating senior a rags-to-academic-riches story](<a href=“Berkeley News | Berkeley”>Berkeley News | Berkeley)</p>
<p>@iphone929 I absolutely get what you’re saying. But even if the transfers at UCR and UCB are of similar quality, the overall student body at UCB is still stronger because the students who were admitted as HS seniors are stronger as a whole.</p>
<p>I’ve also heard tons of stories about transfer students who come to Berkeley and can’t handle the work there. It’s safe to say that transfers (not all, but in general) tend to drag down the rest of the school.</p>
<p>90% of transfer students to Berkeley from CCs eventually do graduate, so it is not like they are mostly flunking out or whatever. However, it does take them more than two years more often than it takes freshmen more than four years, probably due to unavailable prerequisites for some majors at CCs.</p>
<p>@ iphone929, UC Berkeley is the flag-ship campus of the UC system. and UC Berkeley consistently is regarded as reputable as Stanford and MIT. UCI, UCR and the lower UC’s don’t even come close to comparing.
my peers who went to the lower UC’s are still slackers who are bumming around at home now, not even being proactive at job searching, or just settle for less in underemployment.</p>
<p>to answer OP’s question, UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business is one of the best (not sure if it’s still in top 3, but it was a year or a few ago).
it’s great that people wonder the value of the school’s name when it comes to job opportunities. if you go to higher-ranked school (like UC Berkeley), you’ll be competing with the best of the best and enjoy the company of self-motivated, ambitious, highly responsible fellow students, and by being in such a positive atmosphere, i’m sure some of the great work ethic and drive for learning can trickle down to you as well. you won’t know your true potential until you’ve put your brains to the test by competing with the world’s best and brightest students. your chances of finding out your true potential is much, much more probable to happen at UC Berkeley than at UCI or UCSD and the like.
here’s an example from big fish in small pond:
he thinks he’s smart because he topped the charts in a class full of slackers who fail and he happens to get a D, which is better than failing with an F of course. so the teacher curves the class and he gets an A in Algebra, yay! but hold on - he takes the national standardized test and fails miserably because compared nationally, he does not understand Algebra. sure, he understands Algebra way more than his local classroom of slackers. but he doesn’t truly understand Algebra when compared to a greater sample of the population. the same principle transfers over to universities. performance is always relative. so your bet is to go where you can find room for improvement in your studies and can grow and learn. otherwise, if you like being big fish in small pond, you’ll just be complacent with where you are since you’re not challenged enough and can even be deceived in your own little bubble</p>
<p>loldaniellol//i know. The freshman admits are indeed better overall compared. But the mediocre transfer students make it evenly equal to other UCs pretty much.</p>
<p>I never see transfer kids at the top of the class in any of my classes. Noone really discriminate because we simply don’t care. But it’s true that they bring the reputation down though.</p>
<p>Yes and no.</p>
<p>Graduate from Haas in Business Administration or Berkeley Engineering? Yes. It matters.</p>
<p>Graduate from Berkeley with a B.A./B.S. in English, Literature, History, Art History, Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Ethnic Studies, Foreign Language, Linguistics, Philosophy, etc…LULZ…absolutely not.</p>
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<p>actually, the reason why the admit rates are so high is because these CC students have to meet certain, strict criteria in order to apply for transfer. plus, there are some really smart transfer students here. they aren’t the exception and most transfer students blend right in once they enter the college.</p>
<p>i know some transfers who get easy 4.0s after they enter(engineering majors). they quickly adapt their work ethic</p>
<p>It depends on what job you’re going into.</p>
<p>For high finance and consulting, school absolutely matters. The only students from the UC system at my summer internship are from UC Berkeley. No UCLA, no UCSD, etc. The rest are a mix of Ivies, Stanford, MIT, etc. I had a friend who actually flew up to Berkeley from UC San Diego so he could drop his resume at a Goldman Sachs info-session, because investment banks don’t even look at their resumes. (He didn’t get the internship.) Obviously, this is anecdotal. But if you do a quick Linkedin search, you’ll see pretty quickly that this is the rule: in business, name matters. It’s a lot easier to get to a top company from Berkeley than it is from other schools. AFTER your first couple jobs, nobody cares about your school. But that first job at Bain leads to a second at LEK, which leads to Harvard Business School…you get the idea. It’s a snowball effect.</p>
<p>In medicine, your undergraduate school doesn’t mean quite as much. Berkeley provides great research opportunities that many other schools lack, but if you can get the research opportunities at Davis or where-ever, then graduate schools won’t really care. It’s all about the test scores, the GPA, and the research/volunteering. Law is similar. Great grades, great essays, great LSAT, and you can go to Podunk U and still go to a top 5 law school.</p>
<p>I have no idea how engineering recruiting works. But I know that Berkeley EECS/CS majors are completely spoiled with opportunities at a billion amazing tech companies. I’m jealous. Go into CS. It’s a gold-rush. No idea if this is the case at other schools.</p>
<p>Yes, Berkeley EECS and L&S CS majors benefit from two factors: Berkeley’s top reputation and large size in the subject, and proximity to Silicon Valley. The first factor attracts traveling non-local recruiters who may not be inclined to fly to lower reputation or smaller schools; the second factor means that many small companies that have limited recruiting resources can recruit without having to travel.</p>
<p>However, your school’s reputation effect becomes less important after experience in the industry. Actually, since CS has more opportunities to self-educate (inexpensive computers and free programming language interpreters and compilers) and self-credential (e.g. open source software), many non-CS majors do make their way into the computer software industry, though such method of entry is more difficult (especially during industry downturns) than the usual route of majoring in CS at a college with a decent CS degree program.</p>