<p>Hey, sorry if I came off in a bad way, I suppose I exaggerated a bit. The thing about choosing LACs and mid-tier privates over Cal even with the doubled price tag is definitely true though.</p>
<p>And yeah, I have to admit, my school is pretty crazy and probably not representative of all of Cali. Most people here understand Berkeley is a great school, but I still wouldn’t say it’s “highly regarded” because so many people get in. This opinion seems to be present in NorCal too according to John117’s post and some of my friends living there. Also, a lot of people have a bad vision of Cal as being a ridiculously hard and depressing school, which kind of detracts from it’s rep too. I don’t blame them; my Regent’s scholarship interviewer told me they accept a lot of people and don’t expect many of them to succeed (sink or swim, basically).</p>
<p>Anyway, the Naviance for my school is down so I don’t know the exact numbers, but I think 200-250 applied to UCSD, UCLA, UC Berkeley each and 30-50 to each HYPSM. Berkeley and UCLA were probably 50-60 acceptances each, more for UCSD. I think 5 H, 5 Y (I’m the only one going), 7 P, 7 S, 8 M … granted many of these acceptances are from the same people, but yeah.</p>
<p>^Hey, do you know a certain school in the San Jose area called Monta Vista, I believe? This school had 93 acceptances to UC Berkeley…a class size of 450 students…its scary…</p>
<p>Apparently its rival school named “Lynbrook” and “Harker” and “Bellarmine” have come up on the news. They send 70 people each to Berkeley every year…its truly scary.</p>
<p>It appears that you attended one of the better high school in California.</p>
<p>by the way, it is hard to understand a student saying that a University is not a good University if the same student says that it is “ridiculously hard” at the school. This just doesn’t make sense.</p>
<p>For instance UC Berkeley might be hard compared to Pepperdine, Loyola Marymount, USC, UCSB or even UCLA, but schools that are equally hard to UCBerkeley are Princeton, MIT, Swarthmore, Pomona, Chicago and Harvard. So therefore when the student states that UCB is “ridiculously hard” he is putting UCB at the level of the schools that I just mentioned.</p>
<p>Why is that scary John? Some high schools in the East Coast send 10-20 students (out of their 150-300 student graduating class) to Harvard, Princeton or Yale each year. Harvard and Yale are 4 times smaller than Cal. We are talking about matriculations, not acceptances. Acceptances are obviously going to more more plentiful. </p>
<p>I don’t see why it is scary for a university with a freshman class of 4,000-6,000 students to accept 70-100 students out of a 400-500 high school class but not for a university with a freshman class of 1,000-2,000 students to accept 20 students out of a 150-300 high school class.</p>
<p>I know all about the small NYC private schools and the Andovers and Exeters of the world that accept and enroll the best students in the country and therefore expect those students to get into the HYP’s. But this is a PUBLIC high school from California.</p>
<p>and by the way, where did I say “scary”?..can you copy/paste my EXACT wording on this?</p>
<p>Yeah, I realized I must’ve sounded contradictory there … but the thing is, no one says Cal is a bad school. It’s just that when you said it’s “highly regarded” here, I got the impression that you thought we were all like the Cal students on these boards who never cease to promote their school and try to include it with the top privates, etc. In that sense, it’s not highly regarded here; it’s just for those good, but not outstanding students. It’s not viewed as particularly selective and prestigious (they aren’t saying it’s not a GOOD school) and, like I said, there are many people who feel they are too good for the people who barely scrape their way into Cal and thus choose LACs or other privates even though Cal is half the price and perhaps just as good. For instance, one of my friends chose Amherst over Cal (eventually he ended up at Duke after he got off the waitlist) and his reasoning was what I mentioned above. You can say “oh, he probably liked LACs and Amherst is a better school, so that makes sense,” but the fact that he chose Duke off the waitlist kind of makes that a moot point. And yeah, I do attend one of the better CA schools haha.</p>
<p>@John117: I live in SoCal but yeah, I know some of those schools. Two of my friends here used to go to Monta Vista (they chose CMU and Caltech over Cal). One of my family friends goes to Lynbrook and he’s going to Cal. Not sure about the other ones.</p>
<p>EDIT: Yeah, my school, Monta Vista, and Lynbrook are all public schools I’m pretty sure.</p>
<p>do you think that the 200 out of the 250 students from your high school that applied, but DID NOT GET ACCEPTED AT UCB, still say that it is not a good school?</p>
<p>by the way, I know of a great public high school in the SD area that would have the academics as yours, Torrey Pines, which also happens to have among the best athletic programs in the State.</p>
<p>Dang, you hit it right on the money. I go to Torrey Pines, yes We do have a great athletic program, as well as a nationally-ranked newspaper, etc. It’s kind of funny; I think everyone who’s had a high position on our newspaper recently has gone to a top school … this year our editor-in-chief is going to Harvard, asst. is going to Wharton.</p>
<p>Oh, I’m sure those who get rejected still think of it the same way: not an “ooh” or “wow” school, just a good school.</p>
<p>Idk, it could’ve also been a bias for privates and/or against publics.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Is this more of a California-specific thing, because my school sends 30/600 kids to UT and it seems like UT retains a very, possibly even undeserved, high level of prestige around here.</p>
<p>I really have no idea … it could be.
I mean, I’m sure my point of view has some bias though, considering most of my close friends are very motivated people and thus expect to get into great colleges. But regardless, I think my main point holds true, that Cal isn’t really prestigious here.</p>
<p>@JohnAdams: Thanks for the link. It’s kind of scary how I recognize so many of the high schools on the list because some of my suitemates/floormates/people I met at Yale graduated from those schools …</p>
<p>Torrey Pines is among the top 2 or 3 public high schools in california, academically and also athletically.</p>
<p>My guess is that most public high schools would be lucky to have 10 students accepted to UC Berkeley and would consider UCB an incredible university.</p>
<p>haha, JohnAdams, I’m curious, how do you know about all these high schools?! mine in particular.</p>
<p>EDIT - I guess … there’s another school in our district that has about 15 Berkeley matriculants in a class of 300-400 though. And one of my NorCal friends who went to an unknown high school is going to Berkeley, and while she’s excited, I think her attitude kind of follows what I said. But hey, who knows, I shouldn’t have tried to represent all of California with my comments :)</p>
<p>EDIT2 - Oh wow, that’s cool! It’s a nice place huh sometimes it’s hard to believe that I’ll be spending my next four years on the opposite side of the country in opposite weather.</p>
We do have a great athletic program, as well as a nationally-ranked newspaper, etc. It’s kind of funny; I think everyone who’s had a high position on our newspaper recently has gone to a top school … this year our editor-in-chief is going to Harvard, asst. is going to Wharton.</p>