<p>You cannot rely school prestige on the basis of % of OOS and International Students in a particular school. That’s a misguided notion. </p>
<p>I’m sure USC has higher Int’l Students than Oxford. But is USC more prestigious than Oxford? I don’t think so. </p>
<p>Hawkette also failed to understand that the sheer number of Berkeley OOS and Int’l Students alone is higher than the total student population of USNews’ top 5 LACs.</p>
<p>To summarize: School Prestige is not dependent on the % of OOS or Int’l Students. School prestige is a product of the following:</p>
<p>Excellent Faculty
Excellent Students
Great, powerful, wealthy alumni
Great academic facilities
Great Research Output</p>
<p>I did not say Berkeley is the best. I would never say such a thing. I would also never say that Berkeley is prestigious in every corner of America or Asia or Italy or UK. It’s you who said that.</p>
<p>monydad, there are two valid reasons why Northeasterners (or people living east of the Mississippi River in general) don’t apply to Berkeley. </p>
<ol>
<li><p>Student Demographics. The UCs cater specifically to Californian residents, and it’s obvious with their 90+% in-state populations. The tuition and fees for OOS students is also among the highest for public universities. The cost of living is also high (something people tend to forget easily). If you are one of the lucky OOS students to get in, the financial aid is not that generous. </p></li>
<li><p>Distance. In these tough economic times, every penny counts. Why fly over 2000 miles for an undergraduate education that you can obtain at similar schools within 500 miles of your hometown? The vast majority of students today attend colleges near their families. Unless you’re independently wealthy, the transportation costs are huge and are not worth it – unless you receive a full ride. </p></li>
</ol>
<p>Regarding Michigan, I think U-M is popular among Northeastern students because there is a significantly large U-M alumni base in the region. U-M also happens to be in the same time zone (Eastern Time). A plane ride is less than 2 hours, and a road trip will take less than 12 hours. The large OOS student population (~35%) at U-M also makes it worthwhile for students to apply.</p>
<p>Berkeley is an excellent school, but when it comes to undergraduate education, it is very much another regional university that caters predominately to Californians and international students who hail from Asia.</p>
<p>^ I don’t have the link to it now but I remember Berkeley publishes the top 10 countries where their students come from. Canada was the number 1 senders of students to Berkeley followed by India, China, UK, France, Russia and Mexico.</p>
<p>Regarding Canadians, it would be interesting to know whether the majority of the students are from the western provinces (e.g. British Columbia, Alberta, etc.) because the majority of Canada’s top-ranked universities are located in Ontario and Quebec – which are much closer to Michigan and New York.</p>
<p>I think all of you are simply underestimating the extent to which “prestige” and reputation are largely regional, and that outstanding schools that are a far distance away are, indeed, often out of sight, out of mind. It’s not that Berkeley’s unobtainable; it’s that it’s just not visible. Big whoops. Wellesley’s not visible to Southern California, either, and Swarthmore’s not visible to the midwest, and blah blah blah. Doesn’t make them not good schools. Again, why do people keep conflating awareness-by-the-masses with prestige?</p>
<p>Well, even a 2500-student LAC has a list of the top 10 countries where their students come from. That’s not the point. Like it or not, because Berkeley is so heavily skewed towards in-state California students, many of whom stay in Cal, its alumni base – no matter how talented and blah blah blah – just aren’t as visible as those of other schools, who both pull from elsewhere and whose students wind up all over. Look, that’s why Michigan does so well – their alumni network isn’t just Michigan-based.</p>
<p>It also seems to me that a lot of it is based on how appealing they happen to find San Francisco as a destination. (I happen to love SF, myself.)</p>
<p>I donno, lots of Northeasterners where I was were interested in going to San Francisco after college, I can’t see why they would feel completely opposite about it before college. I certainly haven’t heard much negative about it.</p>
<p>My cousins live in SF and even they don’t think that UCB is as prestigious as the Ivy League and higher-ranked private schools. They tell me it draws a lot of students from the region mainly because of its high visibility in the area and the draw of low-instate tuitiion. In reality though, they tell me that for those students who come from wealthy families, Berkeley is seen as a backup to the Ivy League, Duke and even USC in some cases.</p>
<p>Stanford is seen as the pinnacle of higher education in California by high schoolers and parents in the state. My cousins and all their classmates are literally obsessed with the school and think it’s on the same level as Harvard and above Yale, Princeton and MIT.</p>
<p>I think that’s why Duke’s gotten so popular in California since it’s seen as a backup school to Stanford and is the institution that can most closely provide the “Stanford experience”. California has actually become the most highly represented state in the Duke applicant pool and it wasn’t even top 5 a mere decade back.</p>
<p>I would venture to guess that Duke is more prestigious than Berkeley even in California.</p>
Citation, please. According to the HERI/CIRP survey, approximately 62% of students at “highly selective” institutions (which includes top publics) come from greater than 500 miles away. </p>
<p>I think you’ll find that publics are a bit worse in this regard. Setting OOS/in-state aside for a moment, you’ll find that nearly 50% of all Berkeley undergrads come from four counties, and 34% come from the Bay area alone (Alameda, Contra Costa, Santa Clara, and LA are the big counties). Granted, these areas are as populated and diverse as they come, but this is purely addressing geographic distance.</p>
<p>
Eh, I think you’d find me an exception. While I have friends pursuing everything from primatology to directing musical productions after graduation, it’s true that a hefty percentage aim for medicine, law, or business.</p>
<p>Roughly 25% of Duke seniors apply to med school, which is fairly high compared to Berkeley (15%). Duke actually has more raw numbers of white and black applicants and virtually the same number of Hispanic applicants as UCB; Berkeley gets the lead by having 3x as many Asian(-American) applicants, which make up roughly 2/3 of its pre-med applicant pool. </p>
<p>In terms of admission, students accepted to med school make up 18% and 15% of each class at Duke and Berkeley, respectively, so not a huge difference there. The difference is that Duke students perform better on the MCAT (an average of 34.3 as opposed to 29.6), as the student body is more uniformly selective, which results in a higher percentage of admits at Duke.</p>
<p>According to the Career Center, an additional 26% of Duke students go into finance or banking. The inclinations of Duke students be seen in its most popular employers – Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, ExxonMobile, The Boston Consulting Group, Barclays Capital, and Microsoft. (Teach for America is #1, but it’s the odd man out.)</p>
<p>“I donno, lots of Northeasterners where I was were interested in going to San Francisco after college, I can’t see why they would feel completely opposite about it before college. I certainly haven’t heard much negative about it.”</p>
<p>IMO, there’s a difference between living somewhere for employment (industry-based) and going somewhere for college (to get a high-quality education).</p>
<p>For instance, I enjoyed working in Washington DC but I wouldn’t want to attend college there.</p>
<p>100% agree with this. Berkeley is actually not as highly regarded in its home state of California. You say you go to Berkeley, you’ll get an “oh cool.”
Stanford? Columbia? Duke? “Wow, damn”
Harvard? “HOLY ***”</p>
<p>Dude, you’re wrong.
No one cares that much about Berkeley (here meaning my school and surrounding schools). In our class of 600, we get over 50 Berkeley acceptances and we’re a public school. Many students opt to go to LACs or “mid-tier” private schools (regardless of whether or not the extra 20-30k per year is worth it) just so they aren’t grouped together with the many, many people from our school who end up at Berkeley. I’m sure people even closer to Berkeley have an even lower opinion of it. It is by no means a bad school; in fact, it’s one of the best out there. It’s just that nobody really cares about it or is impressed by it because so many people get in. Only HYPSM gets big wows.</p>
<p>^^@JA12:
I understand. I don’t mean to put down Berkeley at all (it DOES have great faculty!). Sorry if I came across that way. But the reason why people in California go “oh cool” is that there are simply too many people in California who have gone to Berkeley (which is unsurprising due to the 25,000 undergrads who go there each year).
Berkeley isn’t as selective as the Ivies, MIT, Stanford, Caltech, and Duke. Its admit rate is above 20%, which according to CC standards, isn’t competitive.
The fact that many people end up attending due to the immense size of Cal and because its undergrad admission is rather transparent (just get a high GPA and SAT scores) and because its forced to pick students from every Californian high school doesn’t help either.
Its budget cuts (not to mention the increasing CA debt) is tarnishing the UC system rapidly. My counselor says its only a matter of time before the Berkeley faculty moves out to other universities for better payment.
I remember seeing threads that considered Berkeley as a safety. </p>
<p>But for graduate schools, Berkeley is definitely a selective powerhouse as I hear. This is all coming from the mouth of my uncle who went to
UCLA undergrad (turned down Cal) and eventually Berkeley grad.</p>
<p>Most universities are often taken for granted in their respective region, especially by the younger crowd. That is not to say they aren’t repsected, but they are taken for granted. It is human nature to want what is different I suppose. The grass is always greener on the other side.</p>
<p>An honest and valuable perspective from a Californian, for which we should all be grateful.</p>
<p>Everyone and her mother in the Heartland and the Deep South dreams of going to NYU, but we New Yorkers know it’s not that hot. Great school, known all around the country and the world, with many top grad programs and a respectable undergrad division, but not among the best. (If it were less expensive, many more sons and daughters of Asian immigrants would enroll–a handful of superstars might make it big, return home, and sing its praises. If it were to impose draconian standards on OOS and international applicants, it would have a cult of worshipers too.)</p>