Good News for All Current UC Students

Colleges & Universities A-Z University of California - Berkeley
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<p>@sakky - after considering your proposal, I think it requires some revision if we want to preserve fairness. Since you propose that junior transfer students would have to take final exams on subjects they learned as freshman/sophomores, I think in order to preserve fairness we should also make regular juniors take final exams in subjects they learned as freshman/sophomores.</p>

<p>@indiscreetmath - No, you’re obscuring the argument by comparing things which are morally egregious inherently with transfer admissions.</p>

<p>Without invoking arguments about fairness, theft and persecution are already wrong because they harm others. Transfer admissions are wrong because they…?</p>

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These are not second chances. They’re alternative chances. Seoncd chances mean you’re given another opportunity to repeat what failed you the first time.</p>

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<p>LOL. This thread is too funny. </p>

<p>As a transfer student myself, I really don’t give a damn what anyone thinks of me–CC, or otherwise. I’m here and I’m just as much of a student at Berkeley than anyone here–if someone doesn’t like that, too bad. </p>

<p>People can *****, people can complain, but when all is said and done not a thing will be changed in way of transfer admissions.</p>

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<p>Again, by the same logic, freshman admissions are also available to everyone. All transfer students went to high school, and if they had done well there, they could have been admitted as freshmen. One could therefore ask why they didn’t do so.</p>

<p>But again, I have no problem with second chances. If somebody didn’t do well in high school, he may still deserve a second chance. But I don’t see why he deserves special privileges along with that second chance. </p>

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<p>Second chance, alternative chances - whatever term you want to use. </p>

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<p>Actually, if I wanted to take a harder line, then the true method to preserve fairness would be to have the transfers take * the entire freshman and sophomore course sequence at Berkeley*. That would be truly fair as that is precisely what the freshman admits had to do. After all, if you’re coming to Berkeley, you should be willing to abide by the same rules that other Berkeley students have to endure.</p>

<p>But I’m willing to meet the transfers halfway. Just pass the finals - the same finals that the freshman admits had already completed. If they’re not willing to do even that, then that suggests that they are indeed seeking special privileges. </p>

<p>But, like I said, an alternative is to simply allow the freshmen admits to take courses at community colleges in place of Berkeley weeders. Or, even better, Berkeley could dispense with weeders entirely. Take your pick; any one of them would be fair. But the present situation clearly is not fair. </p>

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<p>Nobody is arguing that transfer admissions by itself is wrong. The problem is with the special privileges associated with transfer admissions, namely the fact that they are permitted to skip the weeders that other students are forced to endure. That immediately invokes concerns regarding fairness and justice. </p>

<p>So let me put it to you this way. Transfer students deserve special treatment because…?</p>

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<p>Yes, as I said I was using extreme examples. For some reason I thought I could get you to look past that and actually understand the point. But why would you want to put in effort to find out your misconception?</p>

<p>Here, I’ll make a better example. If the government suddenly started taxing apple growers and subsidizing orange growers at some unreasonable rate, with no given reason, would you not say that’s unfair?
But ostensibly the government could say, “Why don’t you just grow oranges then.”
or “you knew when you started growing apples this could have happened”.</p>

<p>That’s basically what you’re saying. You also didn’t address:
“The fact that freshmen are willing to go to berkeley despite an unfairness that most of them aren’t even thinking about does not say anything about whether that unfairness exists.”</p>

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<p>@sakky -They could have chosen to attend as freshmen, but they didn’t. There are an infinite number of possible reasons why, but why does that matter? What’s your point? </p>

<p>Your use of “special privileges” subtly begs the question. You say the problem with transfer admission is the special privileges, but these “privileges” are available to everyone. Whether “special privileges” even exists is contestable.</p>

<p>@indiscreet- I saw what you wrote. There were problems with your analogies that couldn’t be overlooked, and there are problems with your current one too which I won’t bother to point out because then I would have to introduce the concept of marginal social benefit and utilitarianism and then we wouldn’t be arguing about transfer admissions anymore! Analogies have very limited use in argument and should be avoided since they tend to obfuscate the real issue.</p>

<p>So let’s limit ourselves to the topic at hand. Why is transfer admissions wrong? Who does it hurt? Does the harm it incurs outweigh the benefit?</p>

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<p>I think my point is quite clearly: students who are transferring to Berkeley should be willing to abide by the same rules that other Berkeley students are forced to abide by. Nobody should receive special privileges. </p>

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<p>Your argument seems to stem around the notion that a freshman-admit theoretically could become a transfer student by simply forgoing his freshman admission and taking the transfer route. But that still means that special privileges still exist to a certain subset of students, which is precisely the point. Nobody should receive special privileges. </p>

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<p>If they truly do not exist, then that fact will be clearly revealed when every single transfer student successfully passes the weeder exams of their majors. So then there’s no problem - so why not do it? </p>

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<p>I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: who here is arguing that transfer admissions are wrong? You say that you want to limit the discussion to the topic at hand, but you’re the one who is not respecting the boundaries of the discussion. </p>

<p>The problem is that transfer students receive special privileges, not that transfer admissions itself is somehow wrong. Would you like to answer the question of why those privileges should exist?</p>

<p>If you agree that special privileges should not exist, then the only question remaining is how to eliminate them. My preferred (if highly unrealistic) choice would be to simply eliminate weeders entirely. Another choice would be to allow freshman-admits to take the very same community college courses that transfer students currently employ to allow them to skip weeders. Yet another choice is what has been discussed here: force transfers to pass the final exams of every weeder they want to waive (or take the entire weeder course). </p>

<p>Indiscreetmath’s argument is sound: if the government is subsidizing oranges but not apples, then such government policy is indeed unfair to apple farmers regardless of whether they could switch to growing oranges. Berkeley should be trying to maintain a fair system for its students regardless of how they were admitted.</p>

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<p>Sakky’s proposal is a way to get rid of the fairness but still its inefficient as educating as much as possible. It’s bad to have lots of 5th and 6th year floating around the school filling up the classes just because they didn’t get their classes waived. Also if they had to retake their classes at Berkeley they would have taken a seat another freshman/sophy could have taken. Plus if you have already taken the class at CC, you are going to have advantage over freshman admits who hasn’t ever been exposed to the material before.</p>

<p>The standardized exams would be a whole another mess too. What if someone passed the exam for chem physics but not bio? What if another person just passed bio and not the others? Will the person be jeopardized a whole year cause he passed the others but not 1 exam? Or will the rule be you have to pass all to be admitted in the first place? </p>

<p>The UC’s already do one thing that is fair. They reset your GPA when you transfer. So things are kinda fair in which the person doesn’t get to transfer their high CC gpa into the school. I don’t think things are going to get any better than that without affecting efficiency. The school still wants to educate as many people as possible as soon as possible. </p>

<p>The transfer admissions are still doing its best. Berkeley is still admitting the best students as possible out of the transfer pool. I think you should be happy with that. What if Berkeley all of a sudden had a TAG or TAP program like other UC’s? That is the point where you should be outraged.</p>

<p>The only thing I hate is that how people blame lower academics due to transfers admits. Whats the reasons for that?</p>

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<p>So if I transfer to Caltech or wherever, it wouldn’t be fair to other Caltech students unless I redid all my undergraduate work or passed a bunch of final exams?</p>

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<p>Actually, doesn’t Caltech make you take a transfer exam in physics/mathematics? lol</p>

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<p>@cavilier: Yes, analogies are not very “useful” because the opposition merely can refuse to understand or acknowledge it. But I don’t really care about winning.
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Have the lofty ideals of social utility blinded you to the simple, almost instinctive idea of fairness? Sure,you can argue (probably correctly) that policy and society have other values other than fairness, but don’t call something fair when it’s not. That would truly be obfuscating the issue.</p>

<p>@iTransfer: 5th and 6th years? I’m pretty sure you’re not ever allowed to stay 6 years, and 9 semester students are mostly double majors.</p>

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<p>Fairness can be taken to extreme lengths. Taking a final exam on material you learned two years earlier in order to pass out of a class would make transferring unreasonably difficult. Earlier I suggested that all juniors including regular admits be forced to take final exams in weeder classes that they took as freshman. This suggestion was made in jest. My point was no one would get through a battery of final exams like that with acceptable scores.</p>

<p>Fairness is fine, but we shouldn’t make it so difficult that we prevent qualified people from getting 4 year degrees.</p>

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<p>We shouldn’t pretend that everyone who is qualified to get a Berkeley degree is able to either. There simply isn’t enough room.</p>

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<p>Way to reverse what you’re saying. You made a claim about the system already being fair. but now you say all you did was make a “jest” that somehow proves that any change is impractical or something.</p>

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<p>The idea is that you wouldn’t admit those students (or, at least, admit fewer of them) who were unable to pass those waivers. Equivalently, perhaps many of those students wouldn’t choose to come to Berkeley, because they knew (or suspected) that they wouldn’t be able to pass those waivers. Either way, the fairness of the system is improved.</p>

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<p>Actually, now that I think about it, I may actually find that proposal reasonable with two important modifications - that the courses themselves no longer have immediate final exams, and that the courses themselves also no longer be weeders. In other words, freshman admits would not have to take the final exams twice, but would take (and hopefully pass) the junior-level final exam along with the transfer students. The weeding, if Berkeley is still required to implement it, would be those junior-level finals.</p>

<p>The key advantage of this proposal is that the transfer students would not be able to avoid weeders that the freshman admits are forced to endure. Everybody would now be weeded, depending on how difficult those junior-level finals would be. Either that, or nobody would be weeded. Either way, the proposal would be fair. We wouldn’t have certain students be accorded special privileges in avoiding weeders when others are not. </p>

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<p>Why not? The analogy would be something like the MCAT. Med-schools aren’t simply going to use your premed coursework grades as evidence that you learned the material - they also require that you take the MCAT to validate knowledge of topics that you had previously learned. If you score poorly, you won’t be admitted to med-school. What’s wrong with Berkeley requesting that transfer students validate their knowledge by being subjected to the same standards that the Berkeley freshman admits are forced to endure? </p>

<p>Again, keep in mind that transfer students are coming to Berkeley. Hence, they should be willing to abide by Berkeley’s rules. If you invite me to your house, I should be willing to abide by the rules of your house. Otherwise, I shouldn’t come over. I can’t just come over to your house and start demanding special privileges that are denied to others in your house. </p>

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<p>Then let me put it to you this way. I strongly suspect that there are plenty of freshman admits who could have passed the upper division coursework and graduated from a particular major in 4 years - but were never given the chance because they couldn’t pass the weeders. Heck, some of them were expelled from Berkeley entirely (and hence couldn’t graduate from any major) because their low weeder grades sunk their overall GPA to the point of losing academic eligibility. Keep in mind that the rules of eligibility concern concern your overall GPA without regard for whether those grades were obtained in weeders or not. If your GPA is poor because you took a series of weeders, the Registrar officials don’t care. All they will see is that your GPA is poor and therefore cancel your eligibility accordingly. </p>

<p>So what about them? You say that you want to be careful not to prevent qualified people from earning 4-year degrees. I would argue that many of the weeded-out freshman admits would be ‘qualified’ in the sense that they would have passed the upper division coursework if they had been given the chance. Granted, they probably would have passed with middling grades, but they still would have passed. They’re certainly no less qualified than the transfer students who currently earn middling (but still passing) upper-division grades. </p>

<p>Which gets back to my basic question - why should the freshman admits be weeded, but not the transfers? Either everybody should be weeded, or nobody should be weeded. I find it bizarre that my proposals have elicited such concern regarding the treatment of transfer students, but nobody seems to give a damn about the weeded-out freshman admits. For example, one poster stated that if the transfer students can successfully pass Berkeley upper division coursework, then they should be allowed to graduate. Why doesn’t that same logic apply to the freshman-admits?</p>