@firmament2x You’d have to provide data showing that a significant fraction of those 500 matriculants got into elite schools but CHOSE a more affordable alternative.
Regardless, I don’t want the mods to have to close this thread because we’re “debating” (they don’t appreciate that for some reason) so I’m going to agree to disagree on this one 
The reason I was asking about off-campus housing is that apartments in Evanston are considerably cheaper than those in Berkeley. I am not convinced that living off campus saves more in Berkeley? A one-bedroom place in a semi-decent part of Oakland is charging at least $2500/month. Are we talking about living arrangement in which 4 people are cramped into a 2-bd apt? All else equal, the rent could be $1,000-$1,500 cheaper per month in Evanston. If you assume 9 months of school, that’s easily about 10K a year. Not to mention that everything is more pricy in California and those add up too. So the actual price difference may be more like $15k a year instead between NU and Berkeley.
I suggest OP to take a serious look at MMSS (math methods for social sciences) because there’s probably no better undergraduate program that rigorously integrates math and econ so well. The difference between Berkeley econ rank and Northwestern is very tiny. I think there’s a 5-way tie at #1 and Northwestern is right after at #6. Also, Northwestern is a 4-time national champ for college fed challenge.
“Hmmm, the WSJ excluded Stanford Law (#2), Stanford Biz, (#1), & Stanford Med (#3), UCSF Med (#5), Boalt (#8)…btw, Cal has as many/more top ranked grad programs than Harvard, depending on the year.”
I could’t believe Stanford wasn’t included so I dug into this on the original post on CC and UCSF was included for med, along with JHU, Harvard, Yale, Columbia, law was Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Chicago, Michigan and for b-schools, it was Harvard, MIT, Dartmouth, Wharton, and Chicago. And no PHd programs, so flawed from the get go, and not including Stanford makes it pretty worthless.
If you told me that going to a particular undergrad college meant I’d have a better chance of getting into Stanford, than any school (outside Harvard) on the above list, I’d go there. Give the context of the thread, I’d lean to Berkeley, though they’re rivals, there’s a lot of academic respect between the two schools.
@JenniferClint . . . Read what the study said about Cal’s students. This applies to UCLA’s also. I will label “not counterintuitive and not unreasonable” as “N/C-N/U”…
The aamc.org website does not give specific information about acceptances by applicants into specific med schools. But in a roundabout way, it can be seen that the UCs, especially UCLA, Cal and UCSD, are responsible for the glut of medical applications to the UC SOMs and secondarily to the others in California.
Because of its locale and its excellent reputation, USC Keck, a private, is a “target” even if most UCLA and UC grads desire to attend a UC SOM because of Keck’s high price tag, N/C-N/U. As it is, I believe 38 students with UCLA bacs were accepted ~ 20% of the incoming Keck freshmen. Actually, here’s the [url=<a href=“https://keck.usc.edu/education/md-program/admissions/%5Dlink%5B/url”>https://keck.usc.edu/education/md-program/admissions/]link[/url], about 4/5s of the way down.
At the vast majority of SOMs around the country, you’ll find a pretty high rate of applicants from out of state “oos,” in many cases with these applicants having a greater proportion, and at times having nearly equal the rate of acceptances. But those who matriculate, tend to trend in an opposite manner: those who accept are predominantly in-state.
So it’s not that UCLA’s applicants are the only ones who forsake oos SOMs; it’s a general trend across the nation, except for those who attend Harvard, Yale, and JHU SOM, which are fed by their undergrad schools. And it’s not N/C-N/U to believe that Harvard, Yale, etc, feed their own pricey professional schools because they can afford it.
How many times do I have to reiterate that UCLA and Cal are public schools with students who are not as wealthy? The Pell grantees at both are extremely high.
So getting back to the original poster’s issue, I talked with someone tonight who’s in venture capital with one of the firms over on Sand Hill Road up here, and he mentions that for Econ folks the pecking order for hiring is usually is Stanford, Berkeley and then either USC or UCLA. Not sure if that was his own opinion or if everyone felt that way though.
Also @asdfjkl1 are you considering going to Haas or straight Econ if you were to come to Berkeley?
having grown up in SoCal and went to Cal getting away from your parents is definitely part of the college experience to factor in. I liked it, and only outside of coastal california would anyone say the weather is not great at Cal. The views of the golden gate bridge from the hills of Berkeley are unforgettable. And yes UCLA is a bit cooler than most of LA due to proximity to the ocean and not being in a valley where it does get hot in CA. So you are literally comparing A+ weather at UCLA to mere A weather at Cal (afternoon fog in the summer (when you may not be there). I’ve lived in many major metros two east coast two west coast and most of the country would die to have Berkeley weather be it Chicago, New York or Boston. Although it’s true that grad rankings are not as relevant to undergrad, employers probably will have some bias when comparing potential hires. If you liked the classes you sat in on, that should make you more confident too.
@ProfessorPlum168 Thank you for talking to someone about the recruiting order; I kinda figured that it’d be a slight difference although that might disappear after like my first job or two (when I have experience working in my field). I’d most likely go straight Econ, but, like most students, there’s a chance I could change my major later on
It’s probably typical, but it’s also a lot of self selection for geographic preference.
I used to hang with a Recruiter for Goldman Sachs (who herself was a Cal grad) and she said that she didn’t make that many recruiting calls to Cal, not bcos they were not top notch students, but that many of them preferred the remain in the Bay Area over moving NYC. She said she would have been happy to bring more Cal kids into GS NY, but the yield from offers wasn’t that great. Thus, it was not an efficient use of her time. Much easier to recruit from say, Michigan-Ross (which has a lot of New Yorkers in its undergrad pop who want to return ‘home’), than Haas.
@asdfjkl1 so just for complete transparency the guy I talked to was a Cal undergrad but Santa Clara MBA FWIW…
What @bluebayou said is probably ultimately what would drive things more than anything - if you intend on working up here in NorCal, you’re probably better off at Berkeley whereas you might be better off at UCLA if your intent was to work down in SoCal.
VC industry recruiting is very much like banking the school prestige would come in play.
@ProfessorPlum168 . . .
Per your quote:
[quoteSo getting back to the original poster’s issue, I talked with someone tonight who’s in venture capital with one of the firms over on Sand Hill Road up here,
[/quote]
I’m glad you self-corrected in a later thread to include geographic tendencies, but with some seeming help. OP does like the cooler weather in the Bay, so this might seem to be his/her – sorry I didn’t note gender – overall net preference. Although, again, I wouldn’t base “liking Cal’s classes better,” based on a cursory experience, having “sat in on classes at both.”
@asdfjidj - I am pasting what I wrote in another similar thread. Both are great schools. I would recommend Northwestern OR Duke because the are more exclusive / elite at the undergraduate level. Most students at Michigan or UCLA cannot get into Northwestern or Duke, except maybe the top 10-20%. Top 10 in USNews vs. Top 25. And now to SAT / ACT scores, Northwestern / Duke have significantly higher scores for many many years compared to UCLA or Michigan. About a 100 point difference in SAT average. And it is not just about test scores when it comes to exclusive, elite admissions - Harvard could enroll a class with a 1600 perfect SAT average. They are looking for very talented, unique individuals. Northwestern / Duke / Dartmouth, Stanford, etc. could similarly enroll a class with a 1550 SAT average if they wanted to but UCLA or UMichigan could not. Go look at the RD decisions threads for these schools and you’ll see a ton of students with 1500+ SAT scores / 34+ ACT scores (with perfect grades) rejected on the regular.
Duke or Northwestern is significantly more impressive on the pedigree level / resume. Unless $$ is a big concern, why would you go to a large public school (which is still awesome but not quite the same level as Duke or NW) when you can go an elite private school with more resources, a higher caliber student body, smaller classes, etc. It is extremely easy to switch in/out of schools and not have to worry about getting into certain courses, etc. I think this is a no brainer to go Duke or Northwestern if money is no issue. If UCLA was giving a full-ride scholarship, then I would say UCLA could be a great option. But, in this instance, I would go to Duke or Northwestern (flip a coin if you are unsure on those 2). UCLA, UCB, UMichigan and UVA alums will disagree here but if money is not a factor, 95% of students are choosing Duke or NW over UCLA and the equivalent top public, UNLESS $$$ is a big consideration and you are in-state. Good luck and congrats on the acceptances.
@stanfordGSB00 Duke and NW might have higher entrance scores, but what does that get you for that extra $150K? Nothing you have mentioned shows any real benefit, other than perhaps smaller classes. Greater prestige is highly doubtful in this case. Not worth it for $150K. If it was a $30K-50K difference, I might think about it, but not $150K.
Most top VC recruiting is focused around successful entrepreneurs who have completed a successful exit. They have money to add and they have contacts. And that list of people will have a wide range of ug you could imagine.
If we are talking about the pitch book prep and analyst level that’s a different story. They never lead deals or raise money. You want to be a big shot VC. Go start a company, get VC backing and then sell it.
If you want to get in the ground floor on the deal side in private equity and/or hedge fund math stars - the posts above are accurate. And there is an east coast and west coast bias. But there is also a lot of PE cross pollinated Harvard ab and Stanford MBAs in the mix. That’s a hot combo. Or vice versus. But plenty of Duke and other ug with the above named b schools. But it’s not monolithic.
Banking is focused on some other names on top of those already mentioned. But there are regionals and boutiques too.
As mentioned previously, only about 30 percent of the two year analyst programs are captured by the top ten schools. The other 70 percent come from a more varied bunch - the star students coming out of other unis and lacs. And no school represents more than 5 percent.
And believe it or not for those who don’t get why someone would choose the state school option, UT and some others are in the top ten group. They know they need to groom rainmakers there too.
Having just gone thru this with my ‘18 and now monitoring for my ‘21, the top public school threads (UMich, UCLA, Cal) are filled with complaints from posters with extremely high stats. For example, there are many posts on the UMich 2023 RD (and EA) thread of “yield protection.”
@stanfordgsb . . .
Per your quote, which I divvied up:
I’ll leave the defense of Michigan mostly to others because I don’t know much about its stats, etc.
I would probably guess that most UCLA students didn’t apply to either Northwestern or Duke. It’s probably a California thing.
I’m glad you brought this up, and superficially you are correct with respect to UCLA. But even if you spend just a small amount of time perusing various colleges’ CDS data, and if you apply even a modicum of discernment, you’ll find that the standards of reporting are entirely out of whack. One college will ignore the gpa reporting, some will report weighted; others will superscore SAT and ACT, and others, mainly public universities won’t – they’ll just report best sitting score, instead of combining the best component scores regardless of sitting. Taking the best component score and adding them, i.e., superscoring, increases a score by a good 20 points per section, because the range of superscore increase can be anywhere from 10 to a bit over 100 points, say, 120 or so. Over a group of students, let’s say to an incoming class of students to a college, this should manifest itself by an additional 40 points on average.
Here’s what UCLA reports: unsuperscored SATs (I’ll lay ACT scores aside and adjust them upward in concordance with the SAT at the various medians for UCLA); as well as an extremely high percentage of combined ACT and SAT reportage, 132%, for its incoming class of 2017-18 (it still has not reported its 2018-19 CDS, though its admissions website gives even greater stat information for this class).
I won’t adjust for the latter for UCLA, the redundant reportage, as I’ll just adjust for the superscoring. The intuition is that the 132% will materially lower the 25th and 75th percentiles, because the inclusion of redundantly reported scores by the University will include the low side of reported scores that the accepted student submitted besides the one that enabled him or her to gain admission. If the scores between, say, ACT and SAT were extremely close in the conversion of one to the other, then there would be no effect on the median reporting. There will indeed be a percentage of scores that do manifest similarity of ACT and SAT for particular groups of students, but the others will show some displacement, and I believe that this will be the significant part of the 32% of additional scores for UCLA. Again, if the higher score enabled the student to gain entry to the University, the lower one only serves to lower the medians, unless a student who scored, say, 1,580 would enjoy a challenge of taking the ACT and scoring a 35. Undoubtedly most students who switch from one college board to another will do so to improve their chances of being admitted because they perceive their scores as being too low.
For this percentage reporting, Northwestern cited 110% (2018-19) and Duke 101% (2017-18). Again, UCLA reported 132% for its 2017-18 scores. If I would hazard a guess, I’d say that UCLA’s redundant reporting would lower median scores by by ~ 20-30 points. I would think that Northwestern’s and Duke’s would manifest similar scores between ACT and SAT for a student, because if there were displacement between the two boards, the student would have blocked its transmission to both universities, because scores to both universities is a much more distinguishing factor in admissions; they are heavily score dependent. As it is, both N’s and D’s reportage of this percentage is typical of private universities; i.e., they are on the low side.
Let me proceed to adjust for superscores of the following:
…………………………………25th…………………50th…………………75th
…………Duke……………….1,390……………….1,490………………1,580
…………Northwestern………1,430……………….1,490………………1,550
…………UCLA………………1,280……………….1,360………………1,510 (unsuperscored)
………….”……………………1,340……………….1,430………………1,530 (superscore adjustment: 60 points at 25th and 20 at 75th)
So that > 100 difference between UCLA’s versus Duke’s and Northwestern’s SATs has dissipated. Additionally, this, again, is not inclusive of another possible increase of 20-30 points for UCLA because of the redundant reportage of scores.
With respect to gpa, UCLA reports a mean gpa on it’s 2017-18 CDS of 3.87 unweighted. Neither Duke nor Northwestern report this. In 2018-2019, UCLA’s average would be in the 3.89 range. It’s median (50th) gpa in the current academic year should be ~ 3.95, because a 3.92 gpa descends to the 38% percentile.
I don’t think it would be 1600 but it’d be close. But this is Harvard of which you speak. Clearly the most naturally intelligent students in the world.
You do err when you interchangeably mix the words “average” (or mean) with “median.” Mean stats for any university will be materially lower than its median.
UCLA and undoubtedly Michigan could improve their SAT profile significantly also. But they don’t because they’re looking to perform some social good by admitting a mix of students from underperforming high schools.
But you refer to RD admissions, where only the best and brightest can submit applications.
Edit correction:
Let me proceed to adjust for superscores of the following:
…………………………………25th…………………50th…………………75th
…………Duke……………….1,390……………….1,490………………1,580
…………Northwestern………1,430……………….1,490………………1,550
…………UCLA………………1,280……………….1,390………………1,510 (unsuperscored)
………….”……………………1,340……………….1,430………………1,530 (superscore adjustment: 60 points at 25th and 20 at 75th)
“Duke or Northwestern is significantly more impressive on the pedigree level / resume. Unless $$ is a big concern, why would you go to a large public school (which is still awesome but not quite the same level as Duke or NW) when you can go an elite private school with more resources, a higher caliber student body, smaller classes, etc.”
This would depend on the major, if you’re undecided, maybe going to a Duke or NU maybe better since you can switch easier, but if we’re talking econ as the OP is, there’s no difference between those schools and Berkeley and Michigan. And the Berkeley’s econ faculty are more accomplished than either Duke or NU. And this doesn’t even include Robert Reich who teaches public policy there or Janet Yellen who’s an emeritus. And once you get into engineering or computer science, there’s no comparison, Berkeley is head and shoulders above those two.