<p>Nah, Berkeley students are dumb.</p>
<p>nice thread necromancy there, broski</p>
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<p>Pretty smart, but not as smart as those ivy league kids.</p>
<p>I think you have to define smart. I donât think Berkeley wants purely academics who study all the time. Like not all of the students plan to be researchers, go to grad school, etc. (I assume the previous is what CC sees as smart.)</p>
<p>However, most of the students will probably succeed in their fields. A case in point: friend had âbadâ SATs (<2000s, although I forgot the exact number), got into Cal while a lot of people with higher scores in my school got rejected. Sheâs probably more interested in partying than studying. However, sheâs a damn good writer (majoring in English), and a lot of her short stories and poems are published. She works hardâjuggling a job and a 4.0UW in high school. Yet sheâs not gonna talk to you about philosophy or physics, and is one of the people who asks the âdumbâ questions in class and asks the professor to repeat everything. Yet sheâs probably going to be a great and famous writer one day because sheâs just that good. Sheâll probably make the deanâs list at Cal, but a lot of people will probably see her as not smart. Does that make sense?</p>
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<p>You knowâŠI think the average Berkeley undergrad student is pretty smart. I noticed a lot of the previous posters say that HYPS people are smarter. I donât know if this is completely true (especially where Yale is concerned) since the people I know who are going to HYPS schools are all pretty similar to people you can find at Berkeley. The only one who truly stands out in my mind was my high schoolâs star bastketball player who goes to Princeton. No, this guy was not a genius, having a good though not exceptional GPA, but he was extremely charismatic. Even the HYPS alums I met at interviews seemed like smart people who I can meet at Berkeley. I feel like the main difference between your average Berkeley student and your average HYPS student is about $25,000 a year, and maybe $300,000 worth of private lessons/school/extracirriculars in the 18 years before college. Then again this is relative to my own experiences, and I know way more engineering students than non-engineering students so I can only accurately say that engineering students are pretty genius.</p>
<p>Way to go for reviving an old threadâŠ</p>
<p>Answer to this question is easy: average undergraduate student at no decently sized school in the U.S. is extremely intelligent by my standards at least. Thereâs absolutely no way the average HYPS student is that intelligent, and neither is the average Berkeley student. </p>
<p>Average grad student Iâve met at Berkeley is very impressive to me, however.</p>
<p>I agreed with aduouspallorâs post. Before jumping in who are the smartest kids, whether undergrad students are âintelligentâ enough, one must define what you mean by intelligent. If majoring in EECS or something in the maths or sciences are the only qualifiers to being smart, I think youâre making too many assumptions based on stereotypes,etc. I think in Berkeley, everyone can live up to their fullest potential and will still meet challenges, no matter what their background is. Like what arduous said, itâs difficult to assume what one will be doing 10 years from now, and how you can predict oneâs success from a major.</p>
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<p>^ So true. I think everyone has their own idea of what intelligence is.</p>
<p>For instance, my GSI for Scandinavian R5B may not be proficient in the hard sciences or math⊠but he is an expert in Old Norse folklore and history-- in addition to a whole bunch of literary concepts that I canât even begin to comprehend. I think heâs incredibly intelligent. </p>
<p>There also a few art-majors at Berkeley that I think are absolute geniuses (b/c of their ability to create masterpieces left and right). But maybe thatâs just me.</p>
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<p>Not sure who this was referring to, but I personally think itâs clear why graduate students at Berkeley would be more âintelligentâ by far * on average* than your average undergraduate students who donât even go to grad school would be. I think most of us define intelligence in terms of the ability to either produce something exceptional or think about things that elude most others. Some of us look at the fine arts, others look at EECS and math and physics, others look at terrific writers, others at philosophers. Whatever it is we value, one of the reason grad students at Berkeley are impressive in many cases is that Berkeley is a powerhouse for graduate school â its PhD programs are truly elite and top of the line, in several different departments. The kind of talent and commitment those take is not something most undergraduates have. </p>
<p>Now many undergraduates may choose no to go to graduate school, but may still be terrifically bright. But I think itâs self-explanatory why enough posters in this thread have expressed some admiration for the grad students here. They are truly impressive minds. </p>
<p>Hereâs the way I look at it. A public school is a school one can get into, especially being in-state, just by getting past a certain âdummy checkâ â having pretty good grades and test scores. Average HYPS admit has that plus usually some decently significant achievement in the form of a good extracurricular or two, some good essays. Conclusion: average HYPS student probably has something more to offer than the average public school student entering college. More diverse talents. But guess what? Those extracurriculars and essays were often a story of the past, and thatâs it â they were a high school thing. Sure, the exceptions are the admits who were the best piano players within so and so miles of their place, amazing artists. What happens then? Well college is, I think, a time where a person often develops true talent in a given area. Itâs when people do things that can really impress. Being valedictorian of oneâs class is great and dandy, but the real game starts in college and beyond. </p>
<p>Which is why, when I meet a 5th year PhD student in math at a renowned program like Berkeleyâs, I see something far deeper and more impressive in terms of talent and brilliance than I can in general with undergraduates. Graduate students truly are at an age when theyâve matured intellectually to a good degree, and their talents are inspiring to behold.</p>
<p>High school accomplishments are great, but one must put them in perspective. Very few undergraduates are really all that good at anything yet, and their best bet is to be humble and try to grow up in college. HYPS or Berkeley. This is why, frankly, I dislike questions like âhow smartâ is a school when one is comparing very good schools. Once the school is pretty competitive and the departments are good, I think one really needs to get off the topic. Else it comes down to immature high schoolers arguing over their whimisical notion of intelligence, before theyâve seen anything real.</p>
<p>Oh, and as a note, for those undergraduates who donât go to graduate school, well if they take up jobs, they will grow and mature in that setting.</p>
<p>No, I completely agree with you that the graduate students are exceptionally bright here, and most of them truly are brilliant in the work they do. Ofcourse, you canât compare the minds of graduate students with those of undergrad; theyâre just at two different levels. Berkeley graduates are amazingly talented and Iâm sure most will turn to be very productive in their respective fields. </p>
<p>The part I was slightly upset over, however, was when they were comparing undergrads from berkeley to those from HYPS or schools like Stanford. I think more and more research is showing how SAT scores arenât the greatest indicators of how well one will do in college, and if a student a higher score on the SAT, it doesnât necessarily mean theyâre more âintelligentâ. Thereâs much more to intelligence than testing oneâs abilities to tackle math problems or verbal sections through tactics they learned in college prep courses. I donât want to get in the SAT debate, Iâm just arguing that you canât judge intelligence with these standards. People come to berkeley with such diverse backgrounds, that some donât have the economic advantages that students who are going to HYPS schools do. Furthermore, how people on this thread were distinguishing between smart students and not-so smart students was based on their own view of intelligence, and most agreed that only EECâs students or other hard-core science majors were truly smart. I totally disapprove of this view, as itâs more about the productivity and commitment one puts into the subject, whether it be in the arts or the maths. Your definition of intelligence is more comprehensive of what Iâm referring to, and I just felt that the older posts didnât consider it.</p>
<p>Sure, and of course I guess what I meant by âcomparingâ undergrads and grad students was to say that usually only after 4 years of really specially studying something, and then going on to either graduate school or getting a job does one generally discover anything worth speaking of. I, like you, think a lot of the postersâ definitions of intelligence are largely childish. Plus, itâs pretty futile to attempt to generalize about entire schools that are full of very diverse people.</p>
<p>Maybe one can generalize a little about the student body at a school like Caltech, which is a very very very specific kind of school with a particular type of student body.</p>
<p>A few people here seem to be under the impression that you need to have a very high degree of excellence in your ECs to stand a chance at HYPSM, and looking at the people from my high school who were admitted to those schools, that is not the case. Yes, your ECs need to be good, but they donât need to be âHumanitarian Work in 3rd World Country,â â1st Place National Violin Competition 1st Place or International Science Science Competition,â or âPublished Scholar or International Political Debate Hostâ good.</p>
<p>Again, Iâm working inside a relatively limited pool here, but the people from my school who got into HYPSM were (with one exception) on about the same level of intellect as the people who wound up at Berkeley and Harvey Mudd, if not below it. The difference was in the priority they attached to going somewhere âbetterâ and the number of hours of sleep they were willing to sacrifice for it.</p>
<p>In addition, while touring around HYPSM, MIT was the only one that gave me an impression of student intelligence equal to the one I got at CalSO (colleges of Engineering, Chemistry, and Environmental Design). It might just be that my gauge of intelligence is somewhat biased towards the qualities youâd expect to see in a good scientist or engineer, but stillâŠ</p>
<p>In other words: âBased on what Iâve seen, if youâre going in as EECS, youâre not missing anything.â</p>
<p>wez all dumb here so yaâll shouldnât come if yallre too smart now</p>
<p>i aregreeze⊠wee knotte berry enteligent or smarht</p>
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<p>Whether or not youâre biased, note that Berkeleyâs engineering school is extremely good and sought after, so MIT is one of the few schools people would put alongside this engineering school. It isnât surprising to find a very excellent student body there.</p>
<p>I agree that there have been HYPSM admits that plainly didnât impress me much at all, but thatâs how it goes. I donât think the average undergraduate at any one of these schools would impress me much, because theyâre all too young and should wait until theyâre older and have worked hard towards actually achieving something. I.e. until theyâre working for a great company or headed to grad school or writing the next superb novelâŠ</p>
<p>âWhether or not youâre biased, note that Berkeleyâs engineering school is extremely good and sought after, so MIT is one of the few schools people would put alongside this engineering school. It isnât surprising to find a very excellent student body there.â</p>
<p>This.</p>
<p>Still, the engineering school should be of special relevance to the TC, since heâs going into EECS and will have a lot of classes composed largely of other engineering students.</p>
<p>There are a lot of dumb undergraduates at Berkeley in a way that isnât the case at Ivies. On the other hand, you wonât find many dumb people in EECS. Awkward and sexually repressed? Sure, but not dumb.</p>
<p>Oh yah since people from Ivies like George Bush and other legacies who buy themselves in are much smarter >.></p>
<p>yeah⊠these posts are getting pretty annoying, especially when they canât provide any support. âThere are a lot of dumb undergraduates at Berkeley in a way that isnât the case at Ivies.â what makes this statement true? who are you to judge whoâs dumb anyway?</p>
<p>Part of growing up is realizing that intelligence is a measure of oneâs capability to learn not just a single field of knowledge but also a multitude of concepts in life. That oneâs achievement in any particular area is largely dependent on oneâs devotion and determination, often more so than oneâs innate abilities, and that the quality and success of a human being cannot simply be measured by mere academic performance, test scores and GPAs. I hope more students will walk out of Berkeley having learned this lesson more than anything else.</p>
<p>Chase after the subject(s) in life that titillates you and moves you, and your intelligence will be reflected by your experience and achievements.</p>
<p>Carry on.</p>