Is Berkeley's quality slipping?

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of California - Berkeley
1

<p>I keep hearing more and more about how Cal's reputation and quality of education is slipping. </p>

<p>If you look at college ranking sites, Berkeley used to be very highly ranked but has now dropped several spots. I know that a college's ranking does not always reflect its quality, but it does affect its reputation. </p>

<p>Also, the admission rate actually increased this year (~%30 with spring admits), despite the economic downturn and budget concerns for the UCs. Maybe increasing lax standards of admission is contributing to this phenomenon?</p>

<p>Another issue that is often brought up is diversity concerns at Cal (46% asian-american).</p>

<p>In your opinion, is this valid or completely off-base?</p>

2

<p>off base. Look at the ‘peer’ category of the US News and World Report area, which is the view of other college staff of competitor schools. Cal is up very high and hasn’t moved down at all. The weighting of rankings include things like endowment size and counseling, facts that always favor privates vs public schools. Cal remains the top public school in the US. </p>

<p>Admissions is up by design - the UC system increased the budget for classes at Cal to have more students at the top campus, lowering the size of most of the others. There are many more highly qualified candidates than spots. As a holistic admissions school, Cal does not simply take the highest SAT + GPA, but includes other factors to build a diverse student body that fits their goals. As an example, the will pepper the class with applicants who are published authors, national first place winners of various arts and athletic competitions, and similar interesting people. They also implement public policy, thus preferring students from California and accomplishign social goals like helping disadvantaged applicants. Not that different from other top schools, other than the California bias since Cal is subsidized by the state taxpayers. </p>

<p>Cal has a good international contingent, in addition to americans of various ancestries. What is the percentage of the world population that is in Asia? </p>

<p>UCs do not practice racial quotas, thus admissions is based on merit not ancestry. Yes, there is a disproportionate number of highly qualified candidates who might be Americans with an asian historical origin, even if ten generations back, that is a result of the overperformance of those groups academically. What is the right solution? Quotas to minimize the number of top students by racial or ethnic category? How would that produce a better qualified student body or a better Cal? If for some reason you are concerned about meeting many students who are enthically Indians, Vietnamese, Chinese, Thai, Japanese, Malay, etc, remember that 54% of your peers are from historical origins in Europe or Africa. Also plenty of international students for diversity. The only complaint on diversity that is undeniable is the over-prevalence of California residents.</p>

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<p>The short and objective answer is that Berkeley seems to face this conflict between its role as being a public school, making education available to undergraduates in California, and its role as a top academic powerhouse. </p>

<p>Its academics are extremely high quality, but the quality of education may factor in such things as classroom size, professor accessibility, etc, which surely are lacking in some departments. Its admission rate can be especially high because of the conflict in philosophy I mentioned. </p>

<p>In many areas, only the “very top” Ivy League academic departments really come to the level of Cal’s. Nevertheless, as our resident Sakky might say, most undergraduates aren’t likely looking for such departmental strength, and would benefit much more from an Ivy League environment. Further, for the vast majority of undergraduates who won’t be going to grad school or something, their alma mater may be their ticket to the top jobs they may be seeking, and I am not sure if Cal is the place to go to be ideally placed for such jobs after undergrad. It’s certainly one of the best schools in the U.S. for almost anything, but there may or may not be better ones, depending strictly on one’s goals.</p>

4

<p>I think the answer to the question is, YES, mainly because of its overpopulation on the undergrad level. And, the sad part about it is that, Berkeley admin isn’t doing anything to address this problem. </p>

<p>As a world-class university that is Berkeley, it should be extremely selective for undergrad. A 10-12% acceptance rate is ideal to Berkeley. It should also offer scholarship grants to smart OOS and international students. In other words, the scholarship grants must be based on merit and/or financial status of the applicants’ parents.</p>

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<p>^^ Yeah it may for whatever reason hard to maintain that selectivity rate, I don’t know the details, but I’d be interested in learning why. </p>

<p>I think people very much overplay how little Berkeley can change, RML, and I think you probably feel the same; I have seen how vastly different UCLA’s admissions policies are growing to be. While it still may not be considered more selective than Berkeley, its admissions policies are probably the least straightforward of the UC’s at this point – in that sense, more akin to private schools. If LA could change like this (it certainly was NOT like this back when someone in her 30s I know went there), then certainly UCB could change at least to an extent. Not inconceivable to me at all. </p>

<p>I really think the ideal admissions policy (IF Berkeley could sustain this) is for UCB to admit students on a somewhat straightforward academic scale, so that a ton of those exceptionally qualified people who were rejected on a whim from HYP type schools, given how unpredictable it is these days, could end up at UCB, find it not overcrowded, and make tons of their undergraduate years. Some of UCB’s best students come there because its admissions system runs differently from many of its peer institutions. I think it’s already being smart in a sense that way, but not smart enough, perhaps – i.e. certainly room for improvement.</p>

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<p>Selectivity can be such a psychologically misleading measure. Remember Groucho Marx’s line? “I would never want to join a club that would select me as a member?”</p>

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<p>Frankly, the way I see it, the answer is yes. There is change that could and should be done with admissions and classes at Berk, but since my uncle came here years ago and told me about it, the system’s still pretty much the same. It’s one of the reasons I think why schools like UCLA and USC are slowly catching up to Berk, no matter what hardcore Cal kids like to say or admit. </p>

<p>Mathboy, sakky, and a few others had a similar discussion a few months ago that went on for so long in some transfer topic lmao.</p>

<p>And regarding Asian overpopulation, in the next few years, Berk is gonna start reaching for a more diverse population or so they said in that one newsletter.</p>

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<p>The rankings can’t be taken literally. How much changes in 1 year? US Newsweek has to change it in order for people to buy and read their magazine. Cal is amazing and will always be.
There is nothing wrong with a large Asian population. If you aren’t asian, then you don’t realize how diverse asians are. Different nationalities and huge differences even in the same country.</p>

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<p>In terms of prestige and everything, we all know that what we really mean is rankings. Luckily, berkeley is fantastic at playing number games with admit rates. It’s fall admit rate is roughly equal/greater to that of other UCs accounting for a difference in applicants, and USNWR only cares about fall admit rates anyway.</p>

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<p>Even though UCLA is more selective, Berkeley continues to enroll students with higher GPA’s and SAT scores. The most reasonable explanation is this:</p>

<p>Berkeley attracts students who don’t care much for balance - all they care about is academics. Consequently, they leave university with a very developed left brain but without much social skills.</p>

<p>UCLA attracts students who want balance in their lives - great weather, great food, great social scene and nationally recognized education. UCLA graduates will rarely discover be the ones making scientific breakthroughs but at the end of the day, they’ll have the same salary as their Berkeley counterparts and a good social life to boot.</p>

<p>Yes, these are generalizations; you can still go to Berkeley and have great balance in your life but the macro trends of the populace at these universities still stands.</p>

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<p>Wait, when did that happen?</p>

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<p>UCLA isn’t more selective than Cal (… at least, not yet …). UCLA is simply more popular among applicants, it has the highest number of applicants than any other college in the world (over 55,000 compared to Cal’s 44,000ish applicants). But UCLA admit rate percentage is still slightly higher (by either 1 or 2%) than Cal’s.</p>

<p>But to answer OP’s question, I unfortunately have to say yes. Although Berkeley is still the number 1 public university in the nation, and ranked top 10 in almost all departments - its rankings have declined over the recent years. Classes are more crowded, and especially this year, Berkeley accepted a lot of students that I personally think shouldn’t be qualified. I know several people with low SAT scores (1800-1900s) and almost no ECs got accepted to Cal, but got rejected from UCSD and UCLA. Several years ago, I think UCLA changed their admissions policies to make the admission progress more selective (largely due to the large pool of applicants), and I think Cal should do it as well.</p>

<p>And yes, Cal has a large Asian population … but what’s wrong with that? If you don’t like Asians, go to some other college. :D</p>

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<p>I seriously don’t understand what the deal with Cal is – I mean, sure it’s a public university, but LA is changing, and I find it’s not changing enough in the right direction. Its academics are world class, and if it just tried to act like a private school and were very selective, following the LA model of increasing selectivity, its appeal would definitely increase, and could easily equal that of the very top privates.</p>

<p>Right now, I think most of the especially academically serious students I know would still choose Cal over LA in a heartbeat, though. The thing is, Cal and LA can both be very selective and yet appeal to different student types. Your very traditional academic enthusiast tends to find a huge group of similar students at Cal. </p>

<p>Right now, those who can somehow avoid the issues commonly associated with Cal probably would consider it one of the utmost top choices – interesting environment, wonderful weather, and more academics than anyone could possibly do.</p>

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<p>it will never slip, no matter how much easier haas gets, you get free A’s in haas and you’re set for life if you go to haas, this is not coming from me but people i know who went to haas, and they barely studied hard, work is hard, berkeley is easy</p>

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<p>haas is supposedly gonna get a hell lot harder as an fyi.</p>

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<p>ever heard of something called tenure, and professors saying i don’t give a s h i t about what i’m suppose to be doing</p>

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<p>if the grading is going to change, its not going to be that different, and companies will steal give the best salaries to haas graduates like the have and will ALWAYS give</p>

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<p>Actually, and it was in the LA Times recently, UCLA’s Fall admit rate was 21% and Cal’s was 23%. Cal’s overall admit rate was 29% including Spring admits. 2009 Freshman SAT and GPA scores are within points of each other. This can all be found under the statistics portion of the UC website or individually on the schools’ websites. UCLA was harder to get into this year due to the huge amount of apps and lower acceptance rate. It had been around 23% the last few years. Cal and UCLA did not have to cut seats due to the budget cuts as did some of the other UC’s.</p>

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<p>I would say yes: Berkeley’s undergraduate program suffers from a lot of deficiencies that prevent it from being top-tier:</p>

<ol>
<li>Enrollment issues</li>
<li>The difficulty of switching majors</li>
<li>Large and impersonal: simply put, no one gives a **** about you, and even if you try to consult advisers on your own, many of them operate in a very bureaucratic manner</li>
<li>Large inconsistencies in grading standards between departments (2.7 average to 3.9)</li>
</ol>

<p>A particularly frustrating incident happened to me last fall:</p>

<p>I was #1 or #2 on the BA 133 waitlist when the Haas administration was set to finalize enrollment for all undergraduate classes. (This usually happens on the second week of classes, far earlier than any other departments.)</p>

<p>At least one student decided to drop on the same day enrollment was due to be finalized. However, the next day I was told that I wouldn’t be able to get in the class. After I emailed Barbara Felkins [the person in charge of enrollment] politely explaining my situation (I’m a graduating senior who would have no more opportunities to take the class, and the newly-dropped student has cleared space), I got a canned response saying basically “Too bad, enrollments are finalized and we don’t give a **** about you.”</p>

<p>The maximum enrollment was set at 32, due to the supposed “inability to find a larger classroom.” (I looked around in Cheit Hall and empty classrooms with 60+ seats were all over the place.) However, by the end of the following week, I saw that enrollment had dropped to 30, making the class underenrolled. So the Haas bureaucrats just denied at least two interested people who’d never be able to take the class again.</p>

<p>I’ve also tried to waitlist BA 131 three semesters in a row starting from Spring '08, and I’ve never gotten in.</p>

<p>Sure, I would have gotten priority if I had applied to the business major, but to do so requires all these **** “breadth” prerequisites that have absolutely nothing to do with business, just so that the people who are rejected have some place to go. I had already declared an EECS major upon admit, which in hindsight I painfully regret. The econ, math, etc. prereqs are all fine and dandy, but apart from those, you should be free to prove your worth through any combination of classes. This is not how a supposed “world-class” university should operate. At Stanford, switching majors is as easy as going to their Bearfacts equivalent and changing it.</p>

<p>You get what you pay for, I suppose.</p>

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<p>^ That’s not only the case with undergrad, but it is also the same for grad. Last semester I got waitlisted for Quantum Mechanics, and basically the same thing that happened to you - happened to me. I was #1 on the waitlist, and then 2 people dropped out. They first told me that I will get the class, but then a day later they said that I wouldn’t be able to get in. I emailed them about the issue, and they basically said “Too bad”.
And yes switching majors is a nightmare. I switched from Chemical Engineering to EECS (something that I still regret), and the process is ■■■■!</p>