<p>.... would that improve Berkeley's ugrad standing?</p>
<p>It's not just about cutting its undergrad population in half. It's about WHO you cut out, why you cut them, and how you apportion the remaining resources.</p>
<p>Heck, Berkeley could probably improve its ranking by only cutting maybe 500 of the bottom tier.</p>
<p>^ Of course, by cutting the student population, students with lower SAT scores are the ones eliminated.</p>
<p>Would that improve Berkeley's status? Would that create an impact to the mind of the people that it is a top school because it is very selective?</p>
<p>There's more to improving a university than just pure selectivity. Part of it will involve aggressive programs that give its undergrads better support at getting into top grad programs, better career guidance, and more aggressive programs geared toward raising funds.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, bureaucratic momentum is very hard to break. I say we reduce job security in many offices. It might shake things up a bit. </p>
<p>(BTW, please answer my PM, if only as a courtesy).</p>
<p>I think your question, put more accurately, is would Berkeley's undergrad population be improved if it were to take only the top 50% of the students it takes in now. I think it would be improved greatly, for a few reasons:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>I don't think impacted majors would exist anymore. Also, there would be greater ease of transferring between colleges since there are so many spots now.</p></li>
<li><p>Many opportunities are being competed for aggressively now, such as research opportunities. With only half the population it would be much easier to get such opportunities.</p></li>
<li><p>The average student quality would increase, which will do quite a bit for your education, as you tend to learn from your peers in discussion and outside of class.</p></li>
<li><p>No waitlists for classes or early-drop deadline nonsense since the classes won't be so overcrowded now. On that point, also smaller class sizes.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>There are just a few things. Of course, there are also things that probably wouldn't improve, like questionable teaching quality from many lecturers. Heck, some departments might STILL choose to impact their major. It's hard to say with such an unrealistic premise.</p>
<p>"(BTW, please answer my PM, if only as a courtesy)."</p>
<p>I believe I did respond all your PMs to me. If you think I missed something, please send it back.</p>
<p>"3. The average student quality would increase, which will do quite a bit for your education, as you tend to learn from your peers in discussion and outside of class." </p>
<p>Making Berkeley more selective would, for the most part, mean that the mean SAT and GPA's for admitted students would be higher. These are weak indicators of "student quality" (way to commodify us, man!) and even weaker predictors of the quality of discussion in and outside of class.</p>
<p>i agree with strawberries here, Cal can be more selective, but we don't want robots made from just numbers, we want leaders and free thinkers.</p>
<p>If Berkeley were to cut its ugrad student population in half it would probably cause a political disaster.</p>
<p>I can see it now: "UC wages war against high school students," "UC: A case study on the pernicious effects of a model minority," "UC rejects second changes, moves against transfer admissions, re-entry, and special education," "ACLU, NAACP, BAMN file suits, citing institutional racism."</p>
<p>There are many things students can do to make the ugrad experience a little better. But cutting the number of students by half would surely result in one heck of a fiasco.</p>
<p>Eh. I'm tired of hearing stories of Bay Area Hispanics with 3.5 GPAs getting into this school on academic scholarships, and then needing tutoring for College Writing 1A. Bull****. Isn't the Summer Bridge Program to blame?</p>
<p>Pretty sure AA is to blame...</p>
<p>^^ pretty much.</p>
<p>Raising standards for admission would solve many problems. See the thread entitled "Berkeley's shortcomings."</p>
<p>Seriously, somebody get the UC President and the CSU Chancellor, and start rearranging quotas, because there are eight CSUs which less than 8,000 students currently enrolled.</p>
<p>Some of the metrics would improve dramatically, like acceptance rate, SATs and GPAs, which would translate into a significantlyhigher USNWR ranking. that in itself wouldn't change things directly, but it would change perceptions, and those seem to be important with HS candidates as reflected on this board alone.</p>
<p>I think that the campus atmosphere and diversity would take a hit though. In summer school when enrollment drops to about 10,000, the campus feels a bit less lively and the atmosphere isn't as stimulating as it is in the Fall.</p>
<p>Raising the standards would be best, and many of the "lower" students (that is, students who don't show very much promise) could go to the Cal State U's instead. I think Cal should ask for recommendations and should stress passion/essays, while raising the standards for SAT, GPA, etc. It would weed out a lot of applicants, hopefully reducing the ugrad body to about 10,000, and then have 10,000 or so grads. Plus improving other areas (again, see the thread on Berkeley's shortcomings. Very interesting, for the first few posts).</p>
<p>I think instead of putting alot of emphasis on sat/gpa I think Cal should take the more holistic approach, but not just as to how many ec's one has. I agree that they should take a much bigger look at recommendations and weigh the essay much more strongly. Also, I think it would benefit Cal to look for people who are natural leaders, that is to say people who not only were President of a club, but who actually produced results. I think Cal should be preparing students to be leaders in today's society, and I dont necessarily believe that ones SAT score reflects an ability to lead.</p>
<p>damn straight LAX, SAT's should be a SIDE-NOTE in admissions, they're not accurate at all (especially since economically advantaged people can take classes for them). passion, essays, maybe recs (although that'd be tough for the UC's) and how much people show leadership should be number 1.
We need leaders, I want to see more Mario Savio's and revolutionary people start coming back to Cal, that's what made it great in the first place; not number crunching book-worms, but excellent people all around. Also, people who came from disadvantaged backgrounds who had to work their asses off deserve admission as well, maybe they weren't in leadership positions, but had to work part time through HS and what not.
I think that's what the Comprehensive Review is trying to do, but it just hasn't come around yet.</p>
<p>On another note, how 'bout making fees for in-staters what it used to be: FREE</p>
<p>well I don't want dumb leaders so better keep the sat/gpa criteria...</p>
<p>
[quote]
I think instead of putting alot of emphasis on sat/gpa I think Cal should take the more holistic approach, but not just as to how many ec's one has. I agree that they should take a much bigger look at recommendations and weigh the essay much more strongly. Also, I think it would benefit Cal to look for people who are natural leaders, that is to say people who not only were President of a club, but who actually produced results. I think Cal should be preparing students to be leaders in today's society, and I dont necessarily believe that ones SAT score reflects an ability to lead.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Well that's a nice thought but with nearly 50,000 applications it's impossible for the admissions committee to take every application and look at recommendations, look at leadership positions, achievements, and try to pick out which ones are "potential leaders." </p>
<p>
[quote]
damn straight LAX, SAT's should be a SIDE-NOTE in admissions, they're not accurate at all (especially since economically advantaged people can take classes for them).
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Really? Do you know any 2300+ scorers who were dumb as a rock? Or any geniuses who scored 1000? I think the SATs have quite a bit of correlation with intelligence. It's not a perfect measure of intelligence, but it can be useful. That's why it's been used for so many years.</p>
<p>
[quote]
We need leaders, I want to see more Mario Savio's and revolutionary people start coming back to Cal, that's what made it great in the first place; not number crunching book-worms, but excellent people all around. Also, people who came from disadvantaged backgrounds who had to work their asses off deserve admission as well, maybe they weren't in leadership positions, but had to work part time through HS and what not.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Well, I see this as threefold. 1) students who show tremendous leadership ability and outstanding academic achievement usually are admitted into an Ivy and they choose to attend there over Berkeley. 2) There are simply way too many applicants for Berkeley to look closely at every one and try to decide who has "leadership potential" and who does not. 3) Because it's such a large school, Berkeley has trouble supporting its students fully and cultivating students into becoming leaders. Regarding the disadvantaged students, Berkeley has been stressing that and do admit these students, but they often underperform and are weeded out. I think it's better to not admit them at all than to admit them, then flunk them out.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Well that's a nice thought but with nearly 50,000 applications
[/quote]
</p>
<p>47,000 (freshman-admit + transfer) to be more precise. </p>
<p>
[quote]
it's impossible for the admissions committee to take every application and look at recommendations, look at leadership positions, achievements, and try to pick out which ones are "potential leaders."
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Oh, I don't know about that. Harvard has about 21,000 applicants to its undergrad program every year. It's not like Berkeley's applicant pool is an order of magnitude larger than Harvard's. Yeah, it's bigger (by 2.2 times), but it's not THAT much bigger. </p>
<p>Besides, I'll put it to you this way. While I don't know exactly how many total applications that all of the Harvard * graduate * schools get per year, it's probably a lot close to 47,000 than 21,000. Just consider the major professional programs at Harvard. According to USNews, Premium Edition, the MBA program at Harvard Business School gets something like 6500 applications a year, the JD program at Harvard Law School gets around 7000 applications a year, and the MD program at Harvard Medical School gets around 4500 applications a year. And there are a LOT of other Harvard graduate programs. Keep in mind that Harvard has around 13,000 graduate students, which makes it one of the largest graduate schools in the world (with about twice the number of graduate students compared to Berkeley). Yet I think we can all agree that Harvard does a pretty thorough job of picking out 'potential leaders' among the graduate applicants it admits, or at least, a more thorough job than Berkeley does with its undergrad admits.</p>