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I'm in L&S and my math score was higher than many engineers' while my friend who got a near 1600 on the old SAT got rejected to Berkeley engineering as an out-of-stater...something is clearly wrong with this.
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<p>No, nothing is wrong with this. Berkeley is a California state school. California students should, and do, get priority in undergraduate admissions.</p>
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Well Asians are the majority at Cal for some reason.
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<p>Well, 'majority' means at least half; I think Berkeley is 2/5 Asian.</p>
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I am going to offend a lot of people on this board, but it seems to me that in engineering theres too little diversity--its a bunch of asian nerds just studying. Its like that on the basketball court too, really cliquey (spelling?) asians passing to their friends...At least white people are really diverse and know how to have a good time (huge backlash expected).
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<p>I am an out-of-stater like so many others on this board (from a white, supposedly "redneck" and "racist" state) and I've noticed that Berkeley is one of the most segregated places I have ever been. It's probably more "racial" and "racist" than my "redneck" state. Everyone is super cliquey & they hang out only with their own race. There's very little intermingling. It's quite funny because here people ask me if my "redneck" state is very racist and segregated...and honestly Berkeley is far worse.</p>
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4 years of immaturity spent at one of the toughest schools in the world. And you made it through.
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<p>Uh, if you made it through. If. What if you didn't? Not everybody does. Not everybody graduates. What about them? Let's face it. Those students who didn't make it through would probably have been better off it they had gone to Stanford instead. That is, if they had gotten in. And that illustrates the point. Stanford is a safer choice. </p>
<p>Now, I know what some people are thinking. True, if you're good enough to get into Stanford, then you are probably going to do well at Berkeley. But you might not. There's a risk that you won't. Maybe it's a small risk. But there's still the risk. People buy insurance in order to cover themselves from small risks. For example, the chances of my house being burned down is quite small, yet I buy fire insurance anyway. You can think of Stanford as a form of insurance.</p>
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No, nothing is wrong with this. Berkeley is a California state school. California students should, and do, get priority in undergraduate admissions.
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<p>And why just for undergrad? Why not for grad also? After all, last time I checked, the Berkeley PhD programs were all "public" in the sense that they took state funding. Yet I have never heard of the PhD programs providing admissions 'preference' for instate students. In fact, there are some years when some of Berkeley's PhD programs won't matriculate a single instate student; every single incoming student will be either OOS or a foreign national. </p>
<p>So why are the PhD programs different? If Berkeley ought to provide admissions preference to California state residents for undergrad under the argument that Berkeley is a state school, then the same logic should apply to the PhD programs too, right?</p>
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and if you get raped by the curve here as Sakky mentions? If can't hack Berkeley's curve then you would not have done so well at say Stanford (I have friends who go here and I can tell you its NOT a cakewalk as Sakky makes it seem)
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<p>Uh, I never said it was a cakewalk, and I never said that you would do well at Stanford. </p>
<p>What I will say is that you will probably have done better at Stanford. You still wouldn't have done well, but at least you would have done better. That is, at least you would have probably passed. Probably not with good grades, but at least you'll pass, and you'll graduate. At Berkeley, you don't even have that assurance. Plenty of people flunk out of Berkeley. Practically nobody ever actually flunks out of Stanford. Sure, some Stanford students wind up with mediocre grades, but they practically never actually flunk out completely. </p>
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1) In Asia Berkeley is, on average, just as prestigious as HYPS, unless of course you are talking about an Asian with a lot of knowledge about the US education system
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<p>Uh, it doesn't even require a lot of knowledge about the US education system. It simply requires pointing your browser to USNews.com, which is obviously not that hard to do. The (relatively) low undergrad ranking of Berkeley will then surely tend to spark curiosity amongst those Asians who will then begin to question why. It then doesn't take that much more Internet digging to find out that perhaps Berkeley for undergrad is actually not as good as Berkeley for grad. </p>
<p>Secondly, while we can continue to debate the prestige level of YPS vs. Berkeley, there is one school for which, like it or not, there is no debate. Let's face it. Harvard is Harvard. When it comes to education, Harvard has by far the best brand name in the world, a brand name that actually transcends all others. Nobody else is even close. It's not fair, I think a lot of the Harvard hype/mystique is undeserved, but, like it or not, when it comes to sheer prestige, Harvard operates at a level that neither Berkeley nor, frankly, any other school, can touch. Come on, you know it's true.</p>
<p>^^That's why I said on average for the prestige thing.</p>
<p>Many asians believe that Berkeley is more prestigious than Harvard for the engineering program. Really Sakky, thats all most asians think of, the strength of the engineering program. And they also weight the better known grad program much more when accounting for prestige.</p>
<p>At the end of the day, would you not agree that a Berkeley engineering grad student is just as good as say a Harvard engineering grad student? That is what Asians think about! </p>
<p>Harvard has way more overall prestige than any school can touch! But remember we are talking about Asians and they are fixated on engineering! If you go to Asia and look at the billboards and signs you will see why...</p>
<p>Heck, my dad wanted me to apply to purdue two years ago yet he didn't care that I didnt' apply to Harvard (probably would not have gotten in, but he made me apply to all the engineering powerhouses)...Personal anecdotes are not worth anything, but that also happened to a few of my asian friends. </p>
<p>Lastly, here's a counterpoint to your USNews thing....True Berkeley as a National undergraduate university is ranked at 21 (a fair ranking IMO). Their ENGINEERING program, which is what asians care more about is ranked 3rd or tied for 2nd...</p>
<p>USNews.com:</a> America's Best Colleges 2008: Best Undergraduate Engineering Programs</p>
<p>Now you will counter this with: many asians would not stop to look at the engineering and look at the overall! Well, how much weight would they give a ranking that places Upenn ahead of MIT? And what if they don't use US news what if they use the Times Higher education (came in a common Asian newspaper last summer) or the Shanghai ranking?</p>
<p>I cannot stress this enough; Most asians are solely concerned about the engineering program! IF you go to an Asian dinner party in Asia all the men talk about is their new chip design.</p>
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So why are the PhD programs different? If Berkeley ought to provide admissions preference to California state residents for undergrad under the argument that Berkeley is a state school, then the same logic should apply to the PhD programs too, right?
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<p>Well, part of the mission of Berkeley is to be a world-class research institution, which is very good for the State of California. You couldn't have that if you limited PhD programs to in-state applicants. That would gut them. Top people, even if they happened to be in-state residents, wouldn't attend in that case. You'd be left with nothing.</p>
<p>You can argue, of course, that it would be better for UC Berkeley and the State of California to admit more out-of-staters to Cal as undergrads, since it is bringing top talent to the state. I think it's a reasonable idea. But that's different from saying that the current system is somehow "wrong" or unfair; it's not.</p>
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Many asians believe that Berkeley is more prestigious than Harvard for the engineering program. Really Sakky, thats all most asians think of, the strength of the engineering program. And they also weight the better known grad program much more when accounting for prestige.</p>
<p>At the end of the day, would you not agree that a Berkeley engineering grad student is just as good as say a Harvard engineering grad student? That is what Asians think about!</p>
<p>Harvard has way more overall prestige than any school can touch! But remember we are talking about Asians and they are fixated on engineering! If you go to Asia and look at the billboards and signs you will see why...</p>
<p>Heck, my dad wanted me to apply to purdue two years ago yet he didn't care that I didnt' apply to Harvard (probably would not have gotten in, but he made me apply to all the engineering powerhouses)...Personal anecdotes are not worth anything, but that also happened to a few of my asian friends.</p>
<p>Lastly, here's a counterpoint to your USNews thing....True Berkeley as a National undergraduate university is ranked at 21 (a fair ranking IMO). Their ENGINEERING program, which is what asians care more about is ranked 3rd or tied for 2nd...</p>
<p>USNews.com: America's Best Colleges 2008: Best Undergraduate Engineering Programs</p>
<p>Now you will counter this with: many asians would not stop to look at the engineering and look at the overall! Well, how much weight would they give a ranking that places Upenn ahead of MIT? And what if they don't use US news what if they use the Times Higher education (came in a common Asian newspaper last summer) or the Shanghai ranking?</p>
<p>I cannot stress this enough; Most asians are solely concerned about the engineering program! IF you go to an Asian dinner party in Asia all the men talk about is their new chip design.
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<p>Uh, no, I completely disagree with the premise that Asians only care about engineering. They do not. Not exactly. Sure, I agree that in terms of engineering, Asians (and everybody else) would consider Berkeley to be more prestigious than Harvard. But that's not the real issue on the table.</p>
<p>No, what Asians care about is advancement. They care about social mobility. Engineering just happens to be one path that Asians predominantly use for social advancement, after all, many Asians don't speak English well and are unfamiliar with Western culture, but that doesn't really matter in the world of engineering. </p>
<p>But, as I have discussed numerous times in the engineering forum, the truth of the matter is that many engineers - especially at the top engineering schools - don't really want to be engineers. To give you one case in point, 25% of the undergrads in the EECS program at MIT don't take engineering jobs or go to engineering grad school. Instead, they take jobs as management consultants and investment bankers. These guys will never work a day in their lives as engineers. And surely, more than 25% wanted to get those kinds of jobs, but just didn't get an offer. But think about what that means. These aren't just some scrub engineering students at some scrub school. This is MIT we're talking about. These are some of the best engineering students in the world. And yet even many of them don't really want to work as engineers.</p>
<p>To give you another example, you can peruse the 'Student Profiles' of the top MBA programs and notice that while many incoming MBA students do indeed have engineering undergrad degrees, a smaller fraction actually worked as engineers as their prior job function. To just give you one example, consider the MBA program at the MIT Sloan School of Management. A whopping 43% of the entering MBA class has an engineering undergrad degree. But only 17% actually worked * as engineers as their primary job function. What that means is that of those people who have engineering degrees, the *vast majority of them were not actually working as engineers, but were doing something else (i.e. general management, consulting, finance, etc.). </p>
<p>Class</a> of 2009 Profile - MBA Program</p>
<p>Harvard Business School doesn't publish details of its incoming class profile, but trust me when I say that there are numerous incoming MBA students who have engineering degrees, but who don't work as engineers. That's why you'll find so many people who had graduated with engineering degrees from, say, Stanford, but then immediately joined a private equity firm or hedge fund, etc. </p>
<p>Just consider this thought exercise. Think about all those Asians that you previously mentioned who are so 'obsessed' about engineering such that, like you said, they spend all their dinners talking about chip design. Now ask yourself what you think they would do if they were offered a job as a management consultant or investment banker. Or, maybe more poignantly, think of an Asian who is actually working and the employer coming to him and offering to promote him into management, but away from the engineering division (i.e. a manager of, say, the marketing division, etc.). I think you would have to agree that a lot of them would take such an offer. In fact, most probably would. Not all, but most. But then that means that most of those Asians don't actually care about engineering at all, rather, what they really care about is advancement. </p>
<p>So, no, I have to completely disagree with the premise that Asians only care about engineering. They care about engineering because, frankly, that's what is readily available to them. Asians, like all other people, want to advance. Engineering just happens to be a common way for them to do so, but if they had another path, they would surely take that instead.</p>
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Well, part of the mission of Berkeley is to be a world-class research institution, which is very good for the State of California. You couldn't have that if you limited PhD programs to in-state applicants. That would gut them. Top people, even if they happened to be in-state residents, wouldn't attend in that case. You'd be left with nothing.</p>
<p>You can argue, of course, that it would be better for UC Berkeley and the State of California to admit more out-of-staters to Cal as undergrads, since it is bringing top talent to the state. I think it's a reasonable idea. But that's different from saying that the current system is somehow "wrong" or unfair; it's not.
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<p>Uh, no, I am not saying that it is 'wrong' or 'unfair'.</p>
<p>What I am saying is that it is arbitrary. UC arbitrarily decided that undergrads should receive instate preference but PhD students should not. Whether that's right or wrong is a different question, but what is indisputable is that it is arbitrary. In other words, you cannot say that UC must provide preference to instate undergrads just because UC is a public school. UC could have arbitrarily decided that undergrads should not receive instate preference, just like PhD students don't. On the other hand, they could have also decided that PhD students should also receive preference. The point is that these are arbitrary choices. UC was not required to make the choice that they did, they do so arbitrarily.</p>
<p>I have cousins from Taiwan and other family members from China. It seems the populace from these countries hold UCB in very high regard. The less informed (which probably accounts for 90% of the people) have only heard of 5 schools from the US. Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Berkeley, and MIT.</p>
<p>A friend of mine that went to Princeton 2 years ago was telling me that after he had made is his decision, his aunt called from Taipei. All she wanted to know was if he was going to UCB or Stanford-- she had no idea what Princeton was and was rather disappointed.</p>
<p>So, yes, I think UCB is tremendously prestigious in East Asia, at least as far as these two countries are concerned.</p>
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Uh, no, I am not saying that it is 'wrong' or 'unfair'.
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<p>Godfrey was saying that. That is what I was replying to.</p>
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UC arbitrarily decided that undergrads should receive instate preference but PhD students should not. Whether that's right or wrong is a different question, but what is indisputable is that it is arbitrary.
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<p>It's arbitrary to distinguish between grad and undergrad at all. It's arbitrary to have two semesters rather than five quinters. It's arbitrary to give UC admission to the top 10% of students rather than the second decile. What exactly isn't arbitrary?</p>
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In other words, you cannot say that UC must provide preference to instate undergrads just because UC is a public school.
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<p>No one said that. In its infinite wisdom the California state legislature could decree that ONLY out-of-state students could attend UC Berkeley, in an effort to attract the best and brightest to our state. So what?</p>
<p>Godfrey was saying that it was absurd for his 1600 SAT out-of-state friend to be denied admission to Cal when there were so many people with lower SAT scores admitted in-state. I just said that such a system is completely reasonable considering the mission of the UC system.</p>
<p>^ I think that UCB needs to raise its standards for in-state admissions, or at least try to even things out a bit. I understand that Cal is a public university dedicated to Californians, but to admit in-state students with 300+ lower SATs relative to OOS, while rejecting the latter is ridiculous to me.</p>
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It's arbitrary to distinguish between grad and undergrad at all. It's arbitrary to have two semesters rather than five quinters. It's arbitrary to give UC admission to the top 10% of students rather than the second decile. What exactly isn't arbitrary?
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<p>Exactly: so you agree with me that Cal is not forced to do anything, that they chose to do what they do. That's the point I'm raising: it's all a matter of choice. Whether they are good or bad decisions, Cal owns those decisions.</p>
<p>Godfrey, I understand your position on this, but I think, if anything, the winds are blowing in the opposite direction. The trend is to make Cal more diverse and inclusive, within the strictures of California law forbidding race-based affirmative action. It's not trending towards more emphasis on standardized test scores.</p>
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Exactly: so you agree with me that Cal is not forced to do anything, that they chose to do what they do. That's the point I'm raising: it's all a matter of choice. Whether they are good or bad decisions, Cal owns those decisions.
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<p>Well, that's simply false. Cal is part of the University of California system, which has its own governing body. The UC system is in turn controlled by the state legislature and the governor. Cal is not free to do whatever it wants, not in the slightest.</p>
<p>^ This is why Berkeley's undergrad isn't as good as the top privates'. Everyone applying to a good undergrad has impressive ECs, or at least many do. Why can't we be more like the privates? Diversity, GPA, and scores? The privates manage it and maintain a certain caliber, so why not us?</p>
<p>I feel as if I worked during the high school years for the goal of trying to get here, only to realize that I worked 10 times harder than I needed to. I could have done way less in terms of everything. I took way too many AP classes, did way too many ECs, spent too much time on everything...</p>
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I feel as if I worked during the high school years for the goal of trying to get here, only to realize that I worked 10 times harder than I needed to. I could have done way less in terms of everything. I took way too many AP classes, did way too many ECs, spent too much time on everything...
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<p>Highly doubted. If you had slacked, you probably wouldn't have gotten in. Those who don't have all that you did probably had things you didn't -- things that were compelling.</p>
<p>If you worked hard just to get into Berkeley, then that's just plain sad. And if you look down on others and feel your work has been compromised... well, that's sad too.</p>
<p>"Compelling"....maybe some. I highly doubt that most people were homeless who had stories of being a self-made man or something along the lines of that. </p>
<p>I agree, it is sad. Considering I applied OOS and got into every single undergraduate university I applied to (I applied to lower Ivies, all the top publics like Berkeley and Michigan), yet still came here...it is really sad. I should have applied to HYS, to at least get some rejections on my plate. Like my friend told me, I probably didn't aim high enough. You have to apply to the point of rejection.</p>
<p>Anyway, my friend got a perfect SAT and still came to Berkeley...it's the students like my friend that motivate me to think positively.</p>
<p>^^ I think you're expecting too much. You'd have probably been disappointed by Cornell or Penn too.</p>
<p>Perhaps, but I think that I would have learned a lot more had I gone to one of those universities.</p>