In response to the many debates on ugrad quality

Colleges & Universities A-Z University of California - Berkeley
81

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While that seems reasonable Sakky, some majors just couldn't do it cause some majors are just naturally not very rigorous.

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<p>Only because they don't WANT to make it rigorous. It was a choice. You can make any major extremely rigorous if you want to. After all, notice how there are no Berkeley PhD programs that are derided for having boatloads of lazy students who just sit around and do nothing. The Berkeley engineering PhD students don't complain about how much easier the Berkeley history PhD program is. So why can't the undergrad programs be of comparable difficulty? The answer is, it can be, it's just that Berkeley CHOOSES for them not to be. </p>

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Also, I don't understand your use of the word "milquetoast."

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<p>Look it up. I think the metaphor fits well.</p>

82

<p>"You can make any major extremely rigorous if you want to."
I don't think you can. Berk has a lot of majors and even big majors like sociology are just naturally not very rigorous. Then add stuff like womens studies , american studies, ethnic studies, whatevr.</p>

83

<p>Again, it's a matter of choice. Berkeley COULD make any or all of these majors more rigorous. It simply chooses not to.</p>

<p>Since you brought up sociology, let's talk about it. My mother's friend has a PhD in sociology from a highly ranked program. She said that the year-long preparation for her PhD qual exams was perhaps the most stressful year of her life. That's because a significant percentage of PhD students in the program would fail the quals and would thus be kicked out of the program (and usually be given just a consolation master's degree). And even of those who passed, faculty dissertation advisor assignments were allocated on your qual score. So if you got a low but passing grade, you would almost certainly get stuck with an advisor you don't really want, which greatly complicates your chances of actually completing the PhD. Hence, a passing but low qual score is effectively a "de-facto fail". Furthermore, the scope of the qual was simply voluminous. You had to be extremely familiar with basically every single major sociology book ever written, plus be familiar with all of the current scholarly research. It is certainly no joke by any stretch of the imagination.</p>

<p>Now, obviously I am not saying that the Berkeley sociology undergrad program has to be THAT rigorous. But what I am saying is that it could be more like its highly respected PhD program. Sociology can be taught in a highly rigorous and demanding manner. If that weren't true, then people could just sleepwalk their way to a Berkeley sociology PhD. They can't. Plenty of people who try to get a PhD in sociology don't make it. They either can't pass their quals, or they can't produce an acceptable dissertation. Obviously I am not expecting undergrads to match the standards of PhD students. But I think it does show that the standards can be raised.</p>

<p>One quick way of doing so is simply eliminating all of the undergrad sociology classes right now, and replacing all of them with the Sociology PhD-track courses. For example, replace Sociology 1 with Sociology 201. Replace Sociology 3 with Sociology 202. If you did that, sociology would become rapidly known as one of the most difficult undergrad majors at Berkeley.</p>

<p>The point is, Berkeley could do this. Berkeley could make these majors harder. But Berkeley simply chooses not to do this. So it's not a matter of "can't", it's a matter of "don't want to".</p>

84

<p>But why should they make it any harder when you yourself, Sakky, have pointed out that Cal undergrads dont have especially spectacular acceptance rates to grad programs? If Stanford and Princeton and all the other grade inflated schools are so easy to get A's in, why shouldnt Berkeley follow their model and make it equally as easy? If Cal was grade inflated like may other top schools, wouldnt that attract more high-quality students, like you always claim you want?</p>

85

<p>yes, actually i've wondered the same thing. I'm sure you have some great reasoning behind your logic, but let's hear it anyway</p>

86

<p>Because it's clearly not working. We both see that Cal undergrad don't have great admit rates to grad programs, relative to undergrads from the top private schools, despite the fact that, as greatesteyn has pointed out, many of Berkeley's undergrad programs are indeed quite grade-inflated. This leads me to believe that the grad programs simply don't have a lot of respect for Berkeley's undergrad programs (again, relative to the top private programs), and this is further borne out by the fact that those grad programs actually demand HIGHER grades from Berkeley applicants than they do from their general admit pool at large. </p>

<p>As a corollary,this is why it's difficult to get into a top grad school coming from a no-name school like a CalState, despite the fact that the CalStates are clearly easier than Berkeley, and a given person probaby would get higher grades at a CalState than from Berkeley. Yet the possibility of higher grades doesn't seem to attract that many top students. Not too many people are going to turn down Berkeley for a CalState, and clearly not too many people are going to turn down HYPSM for a CalState.</p>

<p>The reason why Berkeley can't really follow the Princeton or Stanford model is that their model consists of two step. Yes, those schools are grade inflated. However, on the other end, those schools are also very difficult to get into - far more difficult to get into than Berkeley. Both of these factors have to work in tandem. Hence, following their model requires copying both of these steps. Yet this is something Berkeley either cannot or will not do, because Berkeley cannot or will not raise is selectivity. </p>

<p>Think of this analogy. It's quite easy for people to get very high grades at a community college. But that doesn't mean that the community college is a great model, simply because CC's are open admission, meaning that there are no admission standards. That's a key reason why Berkeley is better than a community college (and better than a CalState) - becaue Berkeley is selective. It's just that it's not as selective as the top private schools, which means that it can't exactly follow the private school grade inflation model.</p>

<p>If Berkeley could raise its selectivity (i.e. by simply not admitting the bottom x% of its undergrads and replacing them by getting more students to turn down HYPSM for Berkeley), then Berkeley could follow this model.</p>

<p>But besides, even if you were correct, then that is simply a tacit admission that Berkeley's NON-inflated majors, such as engineering, MCB, CS, physics, and the like, ought to reform to inflate their grades the way that the other Berkeley majors do. Either way, some departments at Berkeley are behaving wrong. Either the humanities/ social science departments are too easy, or the technical departments are too difficult. But they can't both be right because they have such diametrically opposite philosophies about how to grade their students. So somebody at Berkeley is wrong.</p>

87

<p>okay sakky, that all makes a lot of sense, but shouldn't the same logic then also apply to its engineering and sciences departments. so Berkeley doesn't have the same selectivity as top privates, that is true. then by the same logic the science and engineering schools believe they must make it even more challenging so that the cream of the crop can really rise and get to the top grad schools</p>

<p>think about it this way. so you have double the acceptance to Berkeley as you do to the top privates, that means that it lets in less smart kids. Now if you have an easier engineering and science program that would mean that everyone would be making good grades. however, since it is not Harvard, the top graduate schools are simply going to see a whole lot of Berkeley students with high grades, and throw it off as if it were nothing. However, the truth of the matter is that there is that elite group of students even at Berkeley who match very well with the students and HYPS, but if they are making the same grades as the average student EVEN THEY will not get into the top grad schools. Now, by making the engineering school hard, yes, you are weeding a lot of students out of even having a chance at the top grad schools, but AT LEAST SOME of the students, the elite ones, still have a good chance of getting in. this is because the top grad schools, 1. will know that berkeley is competitve in engineering/science , and 2. will see the difference between the average berkeley student and the exceptional one. so, by that logic, i see very clear reasons for having competitve programs in a slightly-less-competitive-to-get-into school.</p>

<p>So, i guess I agree with you that somebody is wrong, but it is harder than it looks to identify who isn't it. honestly, i see clearer reasoning for the way berkeley is doing their engineering than they are doing their humanities. this is just my opinion, but it seems to me that the two step concept is dead on. meaning that if you have a less-competitive school, it is NECESSARY to raise your life of competitiveness WITHIN the school, to get your top students to the top grad schools</p>

88

<p>So, Sakky, you think that by increasing the difficulty of the easy majors (sociology, history, american stuies, etc...), that that will help Berkeley students' chances at grad school?</p>

89

<p>It's hard to fail a sociology course at Cal, but it's also difficult to earn A's. I took 3AC last semester and term papers (worth 30% each) were scattered outside the lecture hall for students to claim. I saw that the absolute worst essays received grades in the C range, but only a small handful received A's. Over half of the grades were in the B-range. The instructor, Brian Powers, regarded B's as the "golden standard."</p>

90

<p>Sakky you are seriously crazy. Some of your complaints apply to all schools and these ideas- to get rid of reg classes and replace them with grad classes, just ridiculous. </p>

<p>and i think youre wrong bout grad school acceptance rates. Berk is a BIG SCHOOL, with THOUSANDS of students; that's why the rates are lower, not because the grad programs don't respect berk undergrad.</p>

<p>man, you're negative</p>

91

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Personally, I think what Berkeley should do is print the median grade of each class you take on your transcript, next to the grades that you got. Berkeley should then also mark your grades in color.

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<p>I think the A-B-C-D-F system should be dealt away with completely, and instead replaced with a decile or quintile system based on your class rank percentile. So if you rank #32 out of 200, the transcript should print the course name, and "2nd decile" or "1st quintile." And grade points can still be assigned as appropriate.</p>

92

<p>I think that is a stupid idea, STUDENT.</p>

<p>You guys seem to forget that grades should be objective measures. sometimes one kid in a class does the work to get an A, sometimes no kids do the work. It shouldn't all be on a curve or all based on what the kid did next to you.</p>

93

<p>The physics dept. uses a rigid 25-40-35 (A-B-C) scale in all of the 7 series. It doesn't matter if one year the students are exceptionally bright--only the top 25% will receive A's unless there are ties in the final percentages. That's not objective...but it's been in place for quite a long time from what I've heard.</p>

<p>It will work for all technical courses, where ranking the class can be done in a snap. I admit it won't work so well for humanities and social sciences.</p>

94

<p>that 35% for Cs and below, right?</p>

95

<p>Yes, the 35% is C's, D's, and F's.</p>

96

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Sakky you are seriously crazy. Some of your complaints apply to all schools and these ideas- to get rid of reg classes and replace them with grad classes, just ridiculous.

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<p>First off, I never said that I seriously wanted regulat classes to be replaced with grad classes. It was a simple thought exercise to show that a major like sociology could be made more rigorous. There is no "law" that says that sociology has to be easy. Like I said, nobody thinks that the sociology graduate courses are easy. Nobody thinks that the Berkeley sociology graduate program is easy. So that shows that the undergrad sociology program could be made harder. If it is not, then it's because Berkeley doesn't WANT it to be harder. This is a CHOICE.</p>

<p>The point is not that I want regular courses to be replaced with grad courses. But it just proves that regular courses CAN be made to be harder. </p>

<p>Secondly, sure, some of my complaints apply to other schools. But so what? Just because other schools do things badly doesn't mean that Berkeley has to do the same things badly. Like our mothers told us, just because your friends jump off a bridge doesn't mean that you also have to jump off a bridge. Put another way, if Berkeley fixes its problems and those other schools don't, then Berkeley will be better than those other schools. </p>

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and i think youre wrong bout grad school acceptance rates. Berk is a BIG SCHOOL, with THOUSANDS of students; that's why the rates are lower, not because the grad programs don't respect berk undergrad.

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<p>So what if Berkeley is a big school? You can have a big school that nevertheless is extremely successful in grad-school placement. Oxford and Cambridge are big public schools with thousands of undergrads. What you have to do is get rid of your lowest-performing students and replace them with better students. </p>

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So, Sakky, you think that by increasing the difficulty of the easy majors (sociology, history, american stuies, etc...), that that will help Berkeley students' chances at grad school?

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<p>Depends on what you mean by 'grad school'. If you mean PhD programs, then definitely the answer is yes. The PhD adcoms know which undergrad programs produce high quality graduates. Put another way, MIT and Caltech are notorious for harsh grading, yet grads from those programs seem to enjoy unusual success getting into top PhD programs anyway. For example, I know a guy who got a 2.8/4 GPA in physics from MIT, yet got into a number of top physics PhD programs, including MIT itself. </p>

<p>If you're talking about professional schools, then I agree that in the short-term, students would probably take a hit. But in the long term things would correct themselves. After all, as greatesteyn has said, there is already quite a bit of grade inflation in many of Berkeley's majors. But that doesn't seem to help students get into the top professional schools, as these schools are now apparently demanding that Berkeley applicants present HIGHER grades than other applicants are. That seems to indicate that these professional schools have lost respect for Berkeley's undergraduate program, and something should be done to get that respect back. </p>

<p>One thing that I think Berkeley could do in tandem is, simultaneous to making courses harder, also stop handing out low grades. For example, instead of handing out D's or F's in a course, just don't give any grade at all, and don't have that course appear on the transcript at all. It will be as if the student had never taken the course. Hence, while it will then be harder for students to get A's in creampuff courses (because there won't be any creampuff courses), they also won't have to fear the punitive effect of a D or an F (which would really help out the engineers). </p>

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okay sakky, that all makes a lot of sense, but shouldn't the same logic then also apply to its engineering and sciences departments. so Berkeley doesn't have the same selectivity as top privates, that is true. then by the same logic the science and engineering schools believe they must make it even more challenging so that the cream of the crop can really rise and get to the top grad schools...So, i guess I agree with you that somebody is wrong, but it is harder than it looks to identify who isn't it. honestly, i see clearer reasoning for the way berkeley is doing their engineering than they are doing their humanities. this is just my opinion, but it seems to me that the two step concept is dead on. meaning that if you have a less-competitive school, it is NECESSARY to raise your life of competitiveness WITHIN the school, to get your top students to the top grad schools

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<p>But then the logical flaw in your argument is that it means that all of the other departments at Berkeley should do the same thing. Specifically, if it's "good" for Berkeley science/engineering programs to put their students through the gauntlet to allow its top undergrads to identify themselves, then why doesn't the Berkeley American Studies program to do the same thing? Why doesn't the history department do that (for, as stated by greatesteyn, it does not)? Shouldn't ALL of Berkeley's programs want to identify their top undergrads? Why is is that only the science/engineering programs want to do that? The simple conclusion of your logic is that the Berkeley history department is just not interested in identifying its top undergrads. </p>

<p>So it gets back to the question I posed before. 2 diametrically opposite grading philosophies are being used by the various departments at Berkeley. They can't BOTH be right because they are mutually exclusive. Whichever one is right should be used by ALL of the departments.</p>

97

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think about it this way. so you have double the acceptance to Berkeley as you do to the top privates, that means that it lets in less smart kids.

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<p>This is a fallacy that I have seen over and over again. Double the acceptance does not necessarily mean letting in less smart kids. You can have a big program that admits lots of students, and STILL admit the best students by simply getting lots and lots of top candidates to apply in the first place and then convincing more of those who actually get admitted to matriculate (i.e. increase the yield rate). </p>

<p>I've used Harvard Business School as an example, and I'll do it again. HBS has arguably the best MBA program in the world. Yet it is also the biggest one in the world, literally 2-4 times the size of many of its competitors. HBS pulls this off because while its size means it has to admit many applicants , its quality means that it attracts lots of applicants in the first place, and rarely loses cross-admit battles. It has the highest yield rate of any of the B-schools by far, with a yield of 87% in 2004. Yes, it sometimes loses cross-applicants to Stanford or Wharton, or to a school that offers somebody a full ride, but it stands head-and-shoulders above all other MBA programs in terms of yield (Stanford GSB was 76%, Wharton was 68%). </p>

<p>The point is, it is possible to combine large size with high selectivity. Just because you are big doesn't mean that your student quality can't be high. HBS has managed to do it. In fact, HBS has a MBA program that is better than the Haas School does, despite HBS being far bigger.</p>

98

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I think that is a stupid idea, STUDENT.</p>

<p>You guys seem to forget that grades should be objective measures. sometimes one kid in a class does the work to get an A, sometimes no kids do the work. It shouldn't all be on a curve or all based on what the kid did next to you.

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<p>The problem with this is simple. In the current setup, in certain classes at Berkeley, no kids do the work, and they all get top grades anyway. I've seen plenty of Berkeley students do nothing and know nothing, and get high grades anyway. The sad truth is that there really are classes at Berkeley in which everybody gets quite good grades, including students who do little work and have no idea what is going on. </p>

<p>Consider what Jasper Rine said regarding the study he did on Berkeley's undergraduate grading. </p>

<p>"Rine described the shock he felt during his three years on the Committee on Teaching from roughly 1998 to 2000 when he reviewed teaching records for large undergraduate classes, with more than 100 students, in which no one got less than an A-, year after year. At the time, Rine asked Associate Registrar Walter Wong to assemble some data looking at upper division and lower division grading in the physical sciences, biological sciences, social sciences, humanities and engineering, so that he could distinguish trends from anecdotal exceptions. The results were clear. "The physical sciences and engineering had rigorous grading standards roughly in line with the recommendations from 1976," stated Rine, "while the humanities and social sciences in many classes had all but given up on grades below a B, and in many courses below an A-, "</p>

<p><a href="http://ls.berkeley.edu/undergrad/colloquia/04-11.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://ls.berkeley.edu/undergrad/colloquia/04-11.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>That just begs the question: why even have grading if everybody is going to get a good grade anyway? If a class is going to give even the worst students an A-minus, then you might as well just not have grading at all.</p>

99

<p>By the way Sakky, you always seem to bring up the fact that med school admissions dont accept Berkeley grads at very high rates. Well, most applicants to med school from Berkeley will have majored in MCB or Chemistry. You dont consider these to be easy majors, do you? Ive heard that they are extremely difficult and very competitive. So, if the high difficulty of these programs isnt helping Cal med schools applicants to get in, what makes you assume that making the history major more difficult would help law school applicants that major in history?</p>

100

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hey, DRab, if Harvard students did BETTER on the LSAT, why do they get an additional boost? Why not give Berk students who did good on the LSAT a boost for being standouts from berk? </p>

<p>why not just let the higher lsat scores win out from harvard, why extra boost

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<p>The logic of the move was that ability is linked between LSAT ability and grade-getting ability, so schools with very higher testing and lower grading deserve to be noted and helped because of their lower grading. Schools with higher grading and lower test scores should be hurt. Those in the middle should not be affected.</p>

<p>Sakky, you act as if there are two stances in grading philosophies. The reality is most departments at Berkeley are probably in between the two you describe. You also seem to pretend as if getting solid As in every classes from any department on Berkeley is meaningless. I think that the top students in say, engineering, are more clearly the top students than others in the discipline (at least at doing what gets the best grades), but in history, you seem to imply that the top students aren't the same. Do you not think that the difference is history is just doing less sorting? You sound as if its doing essentially no sorting. </p>

<p>The physics 7 series has 65% As and Bs. You act as if the fate of Berkeley students in the sciences are doomed, grading wise. You don't think any humanities or social science classes breakdown like that?</p>

<p>I think the way that engineering does grading is pretty stupid. From what I can tell, I think that many ways the engineering department runs stuff is pretty dumb. But guess what, the quickest way they are going to change will be by dealing with them. They seem rather self-sufficient and seem to, in many ways, design their own policies. If every single non-CoE student wanted change in the CoE, do you think the CoE would care? I'm sure many of the CoE want some things changed, and I bet they should have many of them changed, but I think I know why many aren't going to change many things. They survived (and thrived) in what is essentially the current system.</p>

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That just begs the question: why even have grading if everybody is going to get a good grade anyway? If a class is going to give even the worst students an A-minus, then you might as well just not have grading at all.

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<p>If a B- is a good grade, as good a grade as the students with As (which is not the case), maybe. I think that the sorting is better than no sorting at all, even if the lowest students are just receiving A-s (which probably shouldn't be the case unless all of the students are doing a great job in the class).</p>