<p>Is there an A+ is Berkeley?
If A is the highest, I am sure it is a 4.0
Then, what is the grade point for an A-? for a B+? B? B-?..?</p>
<p>3.7 = A-
3.3 = B+
3.0 = B and so on and so forth...</p>
<p>PhD programs will accurately adjust your undergraduate GPA. A dean of admissions at a well known university told me himself that a 3.1 from Berkeley is seen as the equivalent as a 3.5~3.6 from most other schools.</p>
<p>Is it THAT really hard to get a good GPA in Berkeley? I thought Berkeley gives students curved grades a lot so that gives them better chances of getting higher GPAs.</p>
<p>I am actually thinking of transferring to either Berkeley or Cornell. If I want a better GPA, where should I transfer?
Which school gives more curves?</p>
<p>Hehe, Cornell, the grading there is better than at Berkeley</p>
<p>It would depend on the major. Berkeley engineering, CS, Math, Economics, PEIS, etc... have difficult curves. But there are majors that have easier curves. They're just not as well respected on campus. But for law school, it doesn't really matter your major. They just care about GPA, even if you majored in basket weaving.</p>
<p>That means a 2.9 GPA in engineering from Berkeley or Cal Tech would be seen as the same as a 2.9 GPA in Film History from Stanfurd, for law school. Which is just absurd! PhD programs adjust for GPA, but MBA and Law school programs do not adjust as much. But having said that, Haas and Legal Studies major at Berkeley have inflated curves.</p>
<p>You can get A+ at Berkeley but you don't get more than 4.0 for it.</p>
<p>It is relatively hard to get an A in most of the science classes at Berkeley and very difficult to do so in engineering, physics or math. Econ is also supposed to be hard. There are some departments, though, where the classes are a joke (__ studies; basicallly any major where they're training you to march at protests and nothing else) - these departments are the reason why Berkeley's average GPA is as high as it is. </p>
<p>Cornell, if it is a little easier in terms of grades, will only be a little bit easier. Cornell is the most difficult Ivy to survive (particularly in engineering) with an intact GPA. </p>
<p>In terms of getting a high GPA, don't think curves. Think about spreading out the difficult classes as much as possible and, if you're going to be going through a GPA intensive application (med or law school), a little fluff won't hurt either.</p>
<p>uh-oh...I want to be a physics major and take a bunch of math and econ for fun. I think my GPA just whent WHOOSHING down.</p>
<p>...uhm, any word on the difficulty of intro lit, philosophy, or polisci classes? I need to find some appealing fluff, and quickly! :p</p>
<p>Difficulty
Lit > Polysci > Philosophy
AC requirement classes are usually very, very easy.</p>
<p>I am thinking of chemistry as my intended major to get into medical or pharmacy schools. I am still not sure where would be the best to transfer(Cornell or Berkeley)in terms of difficulty of the courses and maintaining high GPA. ANY ideas??
Thanks~!</p>
<p>You just said Cornell is the hardest Ivy to survive. Does that mean Cornell really is ACTUALLY harder than other ivies?(including Harvard?) Or are you saying that it is RELATIVELY harder for Cornell students to survive in Cornell because the caliber of the Cornell students is worse than that of other ivies?</p>
<p>Yes, Cornell is indeed harder because Harvard has a high grade inflation rate</p>
<p>Okay...so you guys are saying it is easier to get better grades at Cornell than at Berkeley, and that Harvard is easier b/c of a high grade inflation rate. Well, then does that mean Berkeley is even harder than Harvard??!</p>
<p>Not at all. If I compete on the same level with science olympiad winners in my physics class, and I consistently score as high as them, do I not deserve an A? At Berkeley you compete against weaker people than you would at Stanford or Harvard. Therefore, even though the mean GPAs are higher at Stanford and Harvard are higher than they are at Berkeley, they are also much harder to earn. It's like the inflated grades at underachieving public high schools where the valedictorian gets a 800 on the SATs. I would expect that a school like that is a lot easier than say Andover or Exeter even though the mean GPA at that school is lower. The same principle applies to Berkeley vs HYPS.</p>
<p>99% of Berkeley students were in the top 10% of their high school class. </p>
<p>EECS, Stat, math, CS majors all have same SAT Math scores as sciences at MIT, Cal Tech, and Stanfurd. In a grade deflation environment like Berkeley, you see the reason why the top 10-20 % at Berkeley will demolish the top 10-20% at other schools.</p>
<p>Stanford is just a ridiculously hard school to get into because they accept so few and look for specific unique things. Being a Stanford student doesn't mean you're smarter than a Berkeley student, it just means that you had something extra to offer, or maybe your family donated a lot of money or you're Mexican. Saying that Stanford students can handle the Berkeley workload better than Berkeley students is ridiculous. It's hard for everyone.</p>
<p>Borrowing one of Sakky's favorite arguements: if HYPS don't inflate grades, then why is it that at MIT and Caltech, two schools that are just as hard to get into as HYPS, students struggle to get Bs and Cs? And as a grad student taking courses at both MIT and Harvard (with a good number of undergrads in both sets of classes), I'd have to say that, while there are a few outright brilliant people, the average undergrads are about as good as the slightly-above average (top half) engineering undergraduate at Berkeley was. Yet among the three sets of people, I know that the Harvard undergrads are going to get the best grades, even before the courses are over. </p>
<p>And at Berkeley, the weakest people academically end up in the easiest majors that have the highest average grades. The better students tend toward engineering, economics and math; amongst the humanities they tend toward english; yet these students aren't the ones getting mostly As. So saying that the lower incidence of grade inflation at Berkeley is purely due to a lower grade of student isn't accurate. There is a tendency to weed out the weaker students in the hardcore majors (EECS, ChemE, etc) that might not occur at HYPS - even then, though, you can't use this arguement to account for all the grading differences.</p>
<p>To answer your question about Cornell: it's true that Cornell accepts more students than HYPS and therefore some would consider it lesser; but if this were the only cause for harder grading, Cornell students would have to be drooling idiots compared to HYPS students, and they certainly aren't. In fact, people that survive Cornell (or MIT and Caltech) tend to be at the top of the med school class at Harvard every year, according to an old post from PsderishMD. Some of the highest caliber people on the MIT engineering faculty (including Robert Langer) did their undergraduate work at Cornell, which has (by far) the best engineering department of all the ivy league schools. </p>
<p>There are ways to get through Cornell (or Berkeley) that aren't so hard. Because of that, I'm pretty sure that getting an American Studies degree at Cornell or Berkeley is a lot easier to do than it would be at Harvard; on the other hand, getting a degree in chemistry or engineering science is going to tend to be a lot harder at Cornell or Berkeley.</p>
<p>I fully agree with calkidd. I would further point out that grade inflation happens not just between various schools, but also happens within a particular school. The OP asked whether it is really that hard to get top grades at Berkeley. The answer is 'it depends', and in particular, it depends on what class you're talking about. As has been pointed out by calkidd, it's actually trivially easy to get an extremely high GPA at Berkeley if you do a creampuff major like Peace and Conflict Studies (or basically any major that has the word 'Studies' in its name) and take all the easiest possible classes. </p>
<p>However, if you want to take 'real' classes in a 'real' major, then it is actually quite difficult to get high grades. Go ahead, try to get straight A's in chemical engineering or EECS. </p>
<p>And that gives the lie to the notion that curves actually help you get high grades. That depends on the curve, but in the case of difficult Berkeley classes, the answer is almost certainly not. Case in point - take the premed sequence of classes like OChem. All the premeds want to get into med-school, and so all of them want to get an A. So all of them are studying extremely extremely hard. Yet the curve dictates that only a certain limited (and quite small) number of A's will be granted, so the competition to get them is absolutely fierce. Basically, if you want to get an A in those classes, you are going to have to outstudy and outwork all those premeds, and that's a very tall idea considering how cutthroat they are. </p>
<p>And to collegeperson12, I would say the same thing as calkidd said. Look at the grading schemes of MIT and Caltech, and in particular, look at the grading schemes of the difficult majors at MIT and Caltech (i.e. EECS, physics, etc.) Everybody in those majors is a high achiever, yet the fact is, the grade curve is low, and you will struggle to even get a C. Does that mean that those students are stupid? In particular, are you saying that those Caltech physics students are dumb and so they deserve to get low grades? I don't think so - it just means that the grading is harsh.</p>
<p>Finally to California_ivy/california1600/californiapride/whatever-name-you're-using-now, I see you're complaining as absurd that Berkeley students with a 2.9 in engineering are treated the same as a 2.9 in Film Studies from Stanford for the purposes of professional school admission. Yeah, but what about the guy with a 2.9 from Berkeley in Film Studies, who is also treated the same as a guy with a 2.9 from Berkeley in engineering, for the purposes of law school admission? Isn't that also absurd? And let's face it - getting a 2.9 in film studies from Berkeley is even easier than getting a 2.9 in film studies from Stanford, because while they're obviously both easy, at least the Stanford guy had to survive a tougher admissions process to even get into Stanford in the first place. So which situation REALLY is the absurd one - the 2.9 Stanford film studies guy getting into law school over the 2.9 Berkeley engineer, or the 2.9 Berkeley film studies guy getting into law school over the 2.9 Berkeley engineer?</p>
<p>
[quote]
And let's face it - getting a 2.9 in film studies from Berkeley is even easier than getting a 2.9 in film studies from Stanford, because while they're obviously both easy, at least the Stanford guy had to survive a tougher admissions process to even get into Stanford in the first place. So which situation REALLY is the absurd one - the 2.9 Stanford film studies guy getting into law school over the 2.9 Berkeley engineer, or the 2.9 Berkeley film studies guy getting into law school over the 2.9 Berkeley engineer?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>But the 2.9 Berkeley film studies and 2.9 Berkeley engineer would be on the same level. </p>
<p>Yes, it is ridiculous that they are on the same level. But its present on campus whenever you meet girls, friends, professors, etc... you cannot deny that a tier system exists on campus, with EECS/CS/Haas/PEIS/Math/Economics getting the most respect. </p>
<p>But, you pose an interesting question. It is probably one of five hardest questions on the internet that I have seen. But anyways, I would say that </p>
<p>2.9 Berkeley engineer > 2.9 Stanfurd Engineer (Big Gap)
and
2.9 Berkeley Film Studies < 2.9 Stanfurd Film Studies (small Gap)</p>
<p>So given that scale, its more ridiculous that a 2.9 Berkeley Film studies gets in over the 2.9 Berkeley engineer. But I would honestly expect the Berkeley Film studies to produce better more creative work than the Stanfurd film studies.</p>
<p>Stanfurd may have more presences in San Jose than Berkeley, but Berkeley has more in San Francisco.</p>
<p>Let's face it guys, when you get into a school like Stanford, you are basically set. I don't know why collegeperson12 is trying to argue that Stanford is just as hard and cutthroat as the GPA killer schools like Berkeley and UCLA. I think it is a positive thing that Stanford is indeed easier, because that is a HUGE ADVANTAGE over Berkeley. Who wants to go to a school where you have to work very hard to get a 2.0? The fact of the matter is that the Stanford guy can work less AND get more benefits. The Berkeley person must work harder, and still his GPA isn't as respected as a Stanford or Harvard person's GPA. </p>
<p>A Stanford guy can be chillin' with his friends, date a few girls, sit under a palm tree, listen to world-class lectures, and earn a 3.8 easily. A Berkeley student has to study his ass off, eliminate dating completely, sit in a lecture hall filled with 1000 students listening to a boring grad student, pull many all-nighters, and still it is doubtful whether he will earn a 3.8. More likely than not, he will get a 3.4 or something. But when it comes to grad schools, jobs, and internships, the Stanford guy who has been dating chicks and drinking cognac under a palm tree gets all the advantages. </p>
<p>Well, you might say, since the Berkeley guy worked harder in college, he will reap the benefits of his education and beat the Stanford guy later on in life. Haha, well this si the beauty of the whole thing. He won't! The Stanford guy is still smarter and more qualified than the Berkeley guy. Do you know why? Because Stanford admissions were so hard that they only admitted the best and the brightest. The Stanford man who was chilling out under the palm tree has always been a genius, and when he leaves college with his fancy degree, he will be capable of doing extraordinary things. After all, why else does Stanford have so many successful alumni? Berkeley admissions, on the other hand, were so easy that they admitted some underqualified students. In order to protect Berkeley's image, they had to grade so harshly and flunk out the stupid students before they have a chance to graduate and sully Berkeley's image. Schools like Stanford and Harvard could afford to be so easy, because the kids are already smart. They would never sully the image of their alma mater. </p>
<p>And what about MIT and Caltech you say? Granted, the institutes are both hard and selective, but their alumni aren't respected more than Stanford or Harvard grads. A Harvard grad is seen as being super smart, an MIT grad is seen as being super smart, a Stanford grad is percieved to be super smart, etc. MIT and Caltech grads have a comination of Berkeley's tough grading and Stanford's tough admissions, and so you would think that their alumni would utterly dominate the alumni of Stanford and Harvard. But they don't. HYPS grads even seem to be a little bit more successful than Caltech and MIT grads. All the presidents come from Yale, the Supreme Court is dominated by Stanford, big corporations like Google, Yahoo, Ebay, and Starbucks are founded by Stanford and Harvard grads, etc. I guess that shows that having a tough grading system doesn't necessarily translate into better smarter alumni. So HYPS are doing the right thing. They are letting their students take it easy, enjoy life, and still be successful. That's the best damn education anybody could ever ask for.</p>