<p>I know you guys hate on transfers but it is a second chance for a bunch of us who just didn’t know what were doing in high school. I had a 3.2 gpa in high school and a 33 ACT which was pretty much the only thing that kept me from going to a community college my freshmen year. After a year at UCSB i found a major that i was really passionate about and decided that UCSB wasn’t giving me what i wanted out of a college so i dropped out and went to a CCC for a year. I’m now double majoring in math/econ and minoring in stats here at Berkeley and am very happy to be in a place filled with so many bright people. </p>
<p>There are tons of transfers that are totally unprepared for berkeley courses. But there are also some brilliant transfer students that put in serious time and effort into the classes because they really appreciate the opportunity to study here. A good example would be Gordon Moore who transfered to CAL from SJSU.</p>
<p>What Berkeley needs to realize is that junior transfers are what puts down Berkeley in terms of academics. A lot of the peers from high school who did a ****ty job academically get into berkeley 2 years later. Are you kidding me?</p>
<p>I worked my butt off in High school. They did nothing. They go to CC and get a 4.0. I coud easily get a 8.0 in CC. After 2 years, they make it into Berkeley. We meet again at Berkeley.</p>
<p>If there are no transfers at Berkeley, it will indeed be a prestigious school. As of now, it really isn’t. They take away our spots in classes and put down our school.
Many think it’s really easy to get into Berkeley. I should have went to a school where i can really get an education, not a school where i receive education with kids from CC with a 3.6+.</p>
<p>Not when there are ample spaces to accommodate the additional 5k students without sacrificing the quality. </p>
<p>UC Berkeley’s undergrad’s number needs to trim down. Remember that Berkeley is not any ordinary, or another, State U out there. It’s a State U that provides education to the highest standard to the topmost students.</p>
<p>I’m not sure if I would agree with this entirely. I think that a lot of transfer students are just as smart as, if not slightly smarter than, those freshmen students admitted through the normal route. I don’t think Berkeley’s admissions are that perfect gauge that it can accurately predict which students would do well at Berkeley and which would not. But the one thing that I can agree with many Berkeley students/alumni is Berkeley just accepts too many transfer students. I believe that if Berkeley would cut the admit rates for the normal route to 10% - 15%, and the transfer route to 5% - 10%, Berkeley’s reputation for undergrad would rival the ivies, and would even threat HYPSM in major ranking games.</p>
<p>The GPA scales aren’t necessarily comparable. Freshman admissions are based off a specially designed UC GPA which makes it possible to go well over 4.0 due to weightings.</p>
<p>CC GPA are based on the standard college GPA that maxes at 4.0. Numerically, they are not comparable because they are based on different situations. I am pretty sure they need ECs too, two of my cousins migrated to CA from India to complete CC here and transfer to the UC; they both had to complete a fairly significant amount of EC work. The purpose of the transfer program is to give students one extra shot after high school to get into a good school. </p>
<p>A lot of students **** up in high school for varying reasons (some valid, some because they were ****ing around). Going back and forcing them to take the SAT or look back on their old scores isn’t much of a second chance (unless the proposal is that they must take it HS then again when applying for transfer).</p>
<p>
The UCs are required to admit transfers, pretty much all universities admit transfers. Not all transfers are underqualified. Some of them are underqualified for sure, but that does mean all of them are crap. I am not quite convinced that Berkeley’s transfer admission is much different from any other university’s in that plenty of underqualified students get in; all universities have transfer students that you will have to deal with.</p>
<p>
If you wanted a small school you probably shouldn’t have chose Berkeley. See the problem with your proposal is that it cuts millions of Californians out of UC educations. The CA Master Plan for education was designed to maximize the number of Californian students that could get a cheap, quality education through the state. Millions of parents across the state pay taxes in California, so that they can get access to this education. If you cut the number of people who have access, people will revolt (or knowing us Californians create another stupid student initiative amendment that either mandates admission levels or further cuts funding). The prestige of UC Berkeley and UCLA was a byproduct of the state actually funding us appropriately; right now the state is not funding us appropriately and thus people think fundamentally changing the UC will protect the UC, but the better solution is to get our funding back permanently.</p>
<p>oh transfers… have yet to meet a competent one…</p>
<p>unfortunately the goal of public education is to try and provide education to the most people possible so it’s unlikely that enrollment will be cut down…</p>
<p>Plus I’m sure there is some provision or law in the UCB constitution that forbids lower enrollment… because it’s public.</p>
<p>glad i’m outta there, classes are way too big and resources are spread thin…</p>
Transfer admission in other schools are intended to replace the very few freshman dropouts(many are just transferring from one top school to another) each year. You’re talking about 20-40 people vs. 2000 for Berkeley. It’s harder to transfer to a top school than to gain admission as a freshman.
In summary, Berkeley’s transfer admission is the polar opposite of most other schools.</p>
<p>I have not met a single junior transfer who has not had trouble with Berkeley classes.</p>
<p>On the other hand, the article uses the collective “UC”, meaning enrollment is cut by 2,300 across ALL UC campuses? So that’s cutting cal class of 2014 by a couple hundred?</p>
<p>Such elitists…
Honestly, don’t worry about the transfer students. If they truly are as incompetent as you all claim, then let them flunk out and go back to their CC’s. But if they can handle the workload and pass all of their classes, then I don’t see what the big deal is. I know a handful of transfers at Cal and UCLA right now with 3.8’s and even 4.0’s their first semester. They seem to be doing just fine. </p>
<p>Some students who attend CCs are there because of financial, health, or personal (family) reasons. Many were competitive admits right out of high school to top schools like Cal, UCLA, USC, and even some Ivies but were unable to attend because of one or more of the reasons I mentioned before. I say this because I think it’s wrong to automatically discount the abilities of a student who comes from a CC just because he or she comes from a CC. </p>
<p>Transfer students, by the way, already save the state quite a bit of money by going to CC their first two years compared to students who attend a UC or CSU for all four years. In line with the CA Master Plan, wouldn’t it make more sense to cut freshmen admits while increasing transfers? Anyway, despite all of this, I DO think that both freshmen and transfer students should be further cut. The current acceptance rate for freshmen at Cal is about 22%. For transfers, it’s 25.5% (Collegeboard). They could definitely stand to lower the transfer rate in my opinion…</p>
<p>Yes, ECs do count for transfers too, but many work in addition to going to school. That is their main EC right there.</p>
It’s a question of fairness.
Most freshmen from UC Riverside/Santa Cruz etc. can handle the workload and pass all their classes in Berkeley too, why aren’t they given a chance to study at Berkeley?</p>
<p>Everyone adjusts to the environment they live in.
I am sure all or if not most of all the kids from my high school that were in ap classes
can definately pass with a B or better in Berkeley.</p>
<p>Some just dont make it in here and end up somewhere else.</p>
<p>Most CC transfers suck in high school and end up in Berkeley easily by getting a 4.0 at a local CC.
It’s not whether they can do well or not, it’s that we get the same diploma as them
when we worked our butt off to get into this **** ass school.</p>
<p>Most of the people that go to CC firsthand after high school is because they just didn’t get in anywhere in the first place. If they are evaluated same as the freshman applicats, there will be no chance whatsoever that they will end up at Berkeley or UCLA.</p>
<p>The claim that you are making that students just chose CC over ivy leagues or other prestgious school due to financial situation is definately not true.
That’s probably around 1% if not less than 1%.</p>
<p>You are a junior transfer to Berkeley, aren’t you?</p>
<p>No ****, Sherlock. The entire point of it being unfair is that GPA’s are very hard to compare, even between different high schools, let alone random CC’s. Hence, there exists the need for an equalizer like the SAT to compare the rigor of these different curricula. Obviously, such a standardized test exists for high school applicants, but where’s one for junior transfers?</p>
<p>I can obtain a GPA of 4.0 at an easy community college, but does that mean I am as competitive as someone who achieved a GPA of 3.9 at an exceedingly difficult CC? The answers are probably “most likely not” and “who the **** can tell?” simply because there is no standard college GPA. And therein lies the problem-- there is no standard curve to distinguish weak transfer applicants from strong ones.</p>
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</p>
<p>Yes, indeed. Not all transfer admits are underqualified, but a large proportion of them is. Nobody has proposed fully removing transfer admissions, only toughening the admissions process by lowering the number of available spaces.</p>
<p>I’ve met way too many transfer students who have absolutely no idea what they’re doing in MCB classes-- they end up getting C’s and D’s, which in turn hurt their chances of applying to grad/prof schools. So why admit these students to programs they cannot handle and scar their chances for achieving their aspirations?</p>
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</p>
<p>Many? I think the quantitative word you’re looking for there is “few.” They certainly exist, but “many” is definitely an overestimate.</p>
This has to be an oxymoron.
The “top-of-the-line” CC in my school district used to be a target of constant exploits by motivated highschoolers. Rising 10th graders would take CC Intro World History class during the summer to fulfill the 10th grade history requirement while getting A’s and laughing at those poor souls who have to work their butts off on AP Euro History. They would then collect easy A’s from CC Intro US History class, thereby skirting the torturous AP US History class.
Some would take CC Calculus I and II instead of AP Calc AB and Calc BC, CC Intro Stat instead of AP Stat, etc.
Oh, some rising 9th graders would take CC language classes during the summer. I believe the Geico’s Caveman line was invented by these 9th graders.</p>
<p>Some attitudes in this thread resemble nativism, except country is substituted with college. The similarities exceed the superficial. Freshmen admits are the true Berkeley students, and CC transfer students are illegitimate. Nevermind that plenty of mediocre students here that were admitted as freshmen. A bad student is just a bad student–unless he is also a CC transfer student. Then he represents all CC transfer students.</p>
<p>*Have successfully completed graduate level coursework (i.e., received an A), have been part of a group publication on contested concepts in American political discourse, earned a competitive merit-based fellowship in my home department, currently working on my final 40 page paper (last of three) with plans on attending KSG (at Harvard, for the uninitiated) for an MPP.</p>
<p>Enjoy your terrible deflated under-division GPAs, frosh admits.</p>