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<p>The main practical issue is simple: much as I would like to believe otherwise, the fact is, I know I won’t be able to convince most people. Most people don’t read CC. And even if they did, most people won’t listen to me. Let’s face it. Most 18 year old kids who got into Berkeley are overconfident. Heck, why wouldn’t they be? If they got into Berkeley, that means that they’ve done well in high school. They’ve probably never felt any academic failure before in their lives. So even if I was to prove to them the statistical facts that demonstrate the some of them will fail, they are all going to think that it’s not going to happen to them. Hence, even if we convincingly told them that some of them may be better off at a lower UC or a CalState, come on, how many 18 year old kids are really going to listen to us and turn down a school with the brand name of Berkeley? They will continue to come, major in a technical discipline, and many will perform poorly. </p>
<p>I also have to take exception to your notion that Berkeley doesn’t offer “honors” sequences in the disciplines in question. Like I said, actually, they do. They offer graduate courses, which are de-facto “honors” sequences; Berkeley can therefore offer those graduate courses as the mechanism for undergrads to prove their mettle. {Frankly, any undergrad who is seriously thinking about graduate school should already be seriously considering graduate courses anyway.} Those who do well within those graduate courses now have a highly reliable signal to present to PhD adcoms, regardless of whatever information the undergraduate grades may fail to convey. What that also means is that those undergrads who have no interest in grad school can simply choose not to take those grad courses. </p>
<p>Look, the fact of the matter is, an undergrad major is simply a course of study that you choose for 4 years of your young adulthood. It isn’t your life, nor should it be. As I’m sure you know, lots of engineering students won’t actually take jobs in engineering. {Which is hardly surprising compared to the fact that most students in any major won’t actually take jobs in that major.} Hence, I don’t see why it is so controversial for somebody to want to come to Berkeley, study engineering for 4 years, but still retain maximum flexibility as to whatever else he wants to do with the rest of his life. If he decides he wants to go to law school or med school, he should be rendered fully competitive for those options. If he decides he wants to be an investment banker or management consultant - two career fields that tend to use GPA as initial screens - he should be allowed to do that. Simply choosing engineering shouldn’t render such a student less competitive (through GPA deflation) for any other career path that he may choose.</p>