<p>Why thank you for that, stallite. This just reconfirmed my suspicion that you don’t read very well as evidenced by the fact that your poorly constructed flow of logic was already refuted by sakky in post #91 (in some of the bracketed sentences). I will try to explain them in even simpler terms, but I don’t know how marginally helpful that will be for you.</p>
<p>If a CC course does not cover the same breadth and depth of material, then it should not be considered a transferable course. The CC is obviously not upholding its end of the articulation agreement by omitting material, which includes methods, interpretations, and any topic covered at a supposedly similar course offered by Berkeley. And as such, transfer students should not be able to skip such a course.</p>
<p>Were you able to understand that? I can try to cover more in breadth and depth as I know that maybe your CC probably doesn’t do a fantastic job educating its students.</p>
Hmm. I don’t think the freshman admits have taken any classes called SAT II History, Chemistry, Biology, Physics, Literature etc., and they certainly have no clue what classes to take to prepare them for SAT I Crtitical Reading. Yet, they not only have to pass these tests, they have to beat 80% of the test takers.</p>
<p>I think it’s nice that we’re not the elitist “I’m so special I got into a top whatever school with a super small admit rate,” spoiled BRATS that Stanford claims.</p>
<p>@stallite: I love it! I haven’t said ANYTHING about my own viewpoints (I had merely put down another persons arguments, who was also “too smart” to refute me), yet you’ve deduced that I’m an idiot! No, there’s just no possibility that you’re lashing out at me just because i disagreed with you.
You must be psychic or something!</p>
<p>Also, props for being the one voice of reason among a sea of idiots. Curse that Aristotle for tricking everyone into thinking ad hominem’s don’t prove anything.</p>
<p>Good job, stallite and menloparkmom for sticking to your guns, but targeting sakky (and tastybeef and indiscreetmath) only weakens your argument. By your standards, any old CC transfer should be admitted to a school of their liking because they did well in a CC. </p>
<p>I’m afraid that’s not the circumstance. Not even close. Transfers should be people at CCs who are of equal caliber as the students at the four-year university they wish to attend. There’s nothing wrong with requiring a pass on a test administered by the four-year university for a transferable course. The transfer student should have the necessary skills to pass those exams since they will be given junior standing and enrollment permissions for upper division courses with the assumption that they already took the necessary courses and obtained the necessary skills to do well in upper division courses. What’s wrong with proving they do indeed have the qualifications? Transfers should not be subjected to material more difficult than Berkeley’s offerings, but they should not be babied simply because they’re from a CC.</p>
<p>Why has this turned into a discussion on transfer students? lol.</p>
<p>Anyways. This is most definitely not good news for us. I wish the school would stop thinking of short term revenue and think about their current students and quality of education.</p>
<p>Anyone bashing UC Berkeley transfer students is an utter moron. I am a junior transfer here at UC Berkeley and earned a 3.81 at community college and have a 3.92 GPA at UC Berkeley.</p>
<p>Transfer students are at the top of the class, at least in my major in L&S. They set the curve on every exam and hold study groups to teach non-transfers the material. A transfer friend and I during one section last semester received our midterms back, and we both earned A’s (highest grades in the class, followed by 7 A-'s, 6 of them transfers as well) but were somewhat disappointed we didn’t earn A+'s; then we hear the other non-transfer students in the class flaunting their B+'s and even a C. </p>
<p>Furthermore, multiple GSI’s have revealed to me that they have noticed a common theme throughout their classes, and that is that transfer students are always at the top of the class.</p>
<p>It’s not realistic to expect a transfer student to pass a Berkeley class, at least in the social sciences - in the same way that a Berkeley student should not be expected to pass a test from a transfer school. The reason for this? The classes differ substantially according to who is teaching them - even among professors at the same school. Take, for example, Sociology 5 - Evaluation of Evidence, at Cal. (This class is a pre-req to declare soc, but there aren’t many CCs or CSUs that offer a similar course. As such, most transfer students take this class at Cal in their first semester.)</p>
<p>If you look the syllabus for the course in Spring 09, taught by Prof. Bloemraad (third link here: [Department</a> of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley](<a href=“Home | UC Berkeley Sociology Department”>Home | UC Berkeley Sociology Department)), and compare it to the same class taught by Prof. Haveman in Fall 09 (fourth to last link here: [Department</a> of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley](<a href=“Home | UC Berkeley Sociology Department”>Home | UC Berkeley Sociology Department)), you can note the similarities and differences in the material. For instance, Bloemraad includes Weber, Durkheim and DuBois - Haveman does not. Should I be expected to pass Bloemraad’s class if I took Haveman’s? And let’s say that Haveman does include Weber in her class - but she doesn’t use “Science as a Vocation,” but chooses another essay he wrote. I still wouldn’t be able to answer any questions on the test, even if they are about Weber, because I haven’t been exposed to specific material. </p>
<p>Another example, now comparing Soc 1 - Introduction to Sociology, which is a pre-req course that most transfer students take before coming to Cal. Most Intro to Soc classes cover the same types of things - race, gender and poverty - but professors assign different readings based on what they have read and find interesting. There is so much variation in what they assign that it is ridiculous to expect someone who didn’t take their class to do well on a test.</p>
<p>Basically, what I’m trying to say is that if there is variation in material among the same classes at Berkeley, there will definitely be variation at other UCs, CSUs and CCs, and it is impossible to standardize everything so that all students are treated the same. </p>
<p>One last thought: if people aren’t doing well in a class that’s curved, and you are, then don’t you benefit? Some students will always do more poorly than others - transfers or not.</p>
<p>I didn’t want to get into this argument at all, but I think Hilfinger has some data on grade distributions for EECS/L&S CS students for both transfers and non-transfers. The classes were also divided into lower div, upper div, EE and CS (not that this is all that relevant). I’d actually be interested in seeing more data rather than all these subjective statements. It’s too easy for anyone from either side of the debate to make conclusions based on their personal experiences, but that doesn’t amount to anything.</p>
<p>See, there are two ways to prove a position (this goes for politics, too).
One is going through thought experiments to demonstrate that one position is more reasonable than another, based on the fact that we have notions of what fair is, notions that can be clarified through said experiments. This is what sakky has been doing (somewhat). The thought experiment can be debated, and if a genuine ambiguity arises again another thought experiment or idea can be floated, and eventually we would get to the bottom of it. Unfortunately, many people are too stupid to tell the difference between, “wow i don’t like being proved wrong” and “there’s something fishy about that logic”, and so they just make some irrelevant and likely already-disproved counterargument, rather than help progress the debate by poking at the experiment or its conclusions to see if they can find flaws in it.</p>
<p>However, people (on this page includes CalBears, but there’s been a lot of them) are using subjective evidence (“oh hey i saw a bunch of idiots and they were all ______ students”), and there are people on both sides doing this. They don’t even bother to give any context. CalBears apparently made a conscious decision to not tell us his major, evidenced by the fact that he said, “my major” when he could have said it.
Then since they’ve already put down a group of people they’re in the mood for some personal insults so they pile those in.
So while objective evidence such as the link you provided can be helpful, the first camp is currently using correct logic while the subjective evidence camps are not (camps i mean not based on position but on reasoning style).</p>
<p>I am in none of these camps. I have not given any indication to what I think about transfers, so please do not make your foolishness more apparent by saying my opinions are dumb. They very may well be, but how would you know?</p>
<p>edit: Oh, the way to prove I’m an idiot is to criticize my opinion of “how arguments [should] work”. This has nothing to do with these actual issues so if you’re trying to use evidence from “the transfer issue” or “the Berkeley admissions issue” then you’re missing the point : ). Good luck!</p>
Actually, cutting the number of students at all UCs (especially at UC’s premier campus, Berkeley), would do all of those you’ve mentioned.</p>
<p>When there are too many students utilizing a limited resources, you won’t get quality services and products. But when you have otherwise, you’ll get your money’s worth.</p>
<p>If the classes differ from Berkeley to community college, then that’s all the more reason for the community college students to not be allowed to skip over those classes by having to pass the final exams for the corresponding Berkeley class.</p>
<p>Now, I agree that some of the same Berkeley courses differ amongst whoever happens to be teaching it. So, I would be charitable and say that the transfer students would be allowed to pass any of the final exams among the corresponding professors. But I think it is entirely reasonable to require that they pass one of them. As I said before, they’re transferring to Berkeley, so they should be willing to abide by the same standards that other Berkeley students are held to.</p>
<p>If you don’t like my posts, then don’t read them. I may have written a lot of posts over the years, but nobody is being forced to read them. </p>
<p>If you believe my ideas are “laughably bad”, then pray tell, why not come up with some better ideas? If you can’t, then, tell me, whose mind is addled? </p>
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<p>And again, that seems to be all the more reason to not allow transfers to skip the weeder exams. After all, you said it yourself in your point #4 - somebody who has not taken an identically rigorous course will not be able to adequately pass a rigorous test, possibly due to the course’s idiosyncracies. Fine, fair enough. Then those students should be forced to learn those idiosyncracies that the freshman-admits are forced to learn. {Otherwise, those idiosyncracies should be removed.} </p>
<p>But your point #5 is not substantiated. I never said anything about “performing well” on the exam. I simply talked about passing the exam. You don’t have to do that well on an exam just to pass it. </p>
<p>If you can’t even pass the final exam for supposedly foundational weeder course material, then that speaks to a number of possible reforms. Either those transfer students should be forced to take those weeders just as the freshman-admits must. Or, those courses simply have too much idiosyncratic material. {After all, why base so much of the weeder course grading on material that students don’t really need to know in order to progress to later coursework?} Or, the course grade curves are simply too harsh. Whatever the answer is, something needs to happen to make the process more equitable.</p>
<p>I can understand a professor throwing in, as part of a (foundational) weeder course, his own favorite idiosyncratic material that he happens to enjoy, yet that represents a minor part of the grading that should not be the difference between passing and failing. Hence, a properly competent transfer student may not know those topics and hence will get all of the corresponding questions wrong, but should still know enough of the remaining material to pass. On the other hand, if that idiosyncratic material does indeed represent the difference between passing and failing, then one should ask whether the professor should have such control over what is supposed to be a foundational course. After all, what that would mean is that some freshman-admits are failing courses because they don’t understand material that they don’t really need to know. </p>
<p>Furthermore, nobody is proposing that the exams be sprung on the transfer students unawares. Those students should be allowed to peruse the syllabus and be provided with the opportunity to learn whatever idiosyncratic new topics they hadn’t studied before. For example, to make up an example, maybe a transfer student who wants to skip Math1B had never actually learned the possibly idiosyncratic second-order differential equations. But come on, they’re not that hard to learn presuming that you are reasonable competent in general calculus. It’s not that hard to procure the appropriate textbook and bone up on the appropriate chapters.</p>
<p>Nobody is saying that we will be able to standardize everything perfectly. Obviously that’s a pipe dream. </p>
<p>But simply because you can’t standardize everything perfectly doesn’t mean that you can’t apply some level of standardization, however imperfect. Whatever variation of standards may exist within Berkeley, it probably isn’t the same as the degree of variation between Berkeley and another school, particularly a community college. </p>
<p>Which is precisely my point. Community college students who want to transfer coursework to Berkeley should be willing to abide by the same standards that other Berkeley standards are forced to abide by, even given the intra-Berkeley variation of those standards. Otherwise, they should not be allowed to transfer that coursework to Berkeley. All Berkeley students should be held to the same standard, even if that standard includes some inherent variation. Statisticians will surely recognize the difference between intracluster and intercluster variation. </p>
<p>Like I said, regarding a course such as Sociology 5, I would allow a transfer student who wants to waive that course to choose any of the Soc 5 variants to prove that he deserves a waiver. But he should still have to choose one. After all, if you’re coming to Berkeley, you should be held to Berkeley standards, even if those standards are not fixed. What’s fair is fair. The freshman admits are being held to those standards, so why can’t you? </p>
<p>Frankly, the ferociously inappropriate ad-hominem responses I have received in this thread only serve to deepen my suspicions that perhaps many transfer students can’t actually meet those standards, and that is why they refuse to do so. By no means should that imply that I endorse the ‘bashing’ of transfer students. But it does beg the question of why else would such a response be elicited? If you truly are competent such that you deserve waivers for certain courses, then you should have no problem with demonstrating that competence.</p>
<p>I don’t usually agree with sakky’s ideas, although I can honestly say that he does contribute “golden” ideas on CC as a whole almost all the time, but i’d give this one to him, big time. He just nailed this argument to his favor, and I can’t see any loophole where I can pin him down, so to speak.</p>
<p>To be clear, not only do I not support the ‘bashing’ of transfer students, in fact, I would condemn such behavior. The transfer students are not to blame, for they didn’t design the system. The problem is with the system, and the solution is therefore not individual moral reform, but rather systemic reform.</p>
<p>My question to berkeley is…why doesn’t it change?
My brother was here in 2000. When i tell him my experience with counselors and classes, he was unsurprised and told me he had similar experiences (good and bad). (we’re both bio majors)</p>
<p>Well, frankly, we’re talking about the Berkeley administration: things change at a snail’s pace, if at all. </p>
<p>Think of it this way. What’s the incentive for the administration? Why should they care? If the undergraduate program has certain problems and inequities, they don’t really care. They have no reason to care. Improving the advising process, or reforming the weeder process vis-a-vis transfers doesn’t benefit them. Why do something when you can get away with doing nothing?</p>
<p>I wish I could devise a way to align the incentives of the administration with the students. Unfortunately, such a method eludes me. If anybody has any ideas, by all means, present them.</p>