<p>You are falling into the trap of equating admit rate with selectivity. Berkeley’s high number of applications (due in part to the ease of applying if one is also applying to other UCs) means its admit rate will be necessarily low. Other schools improve their “selectivity” this way by spending a ton of money on marketing to get kids to apply (i.e., Tulane) or by just being one of the schools many kids dream of attending (i.e., NYU). There are numerous schools with higher average stats of entering students than Berkeley that admit a greater percentage of their applicants.</p>
<p>"Why it is important to relentlessly compare it to schools that recruit and enroll on a national basis as opposed to mostly local and regional is beyond me. They are different schools and end up with very different student bodies. </p>
<p>No wrong or right. Simply different mission and construction."</p>
<p>That’s why they make chocolate and vanilla. Different schools for different tastes. What’s so hard to understand?</p>
<p>It’s not a zero sum game. It doesn’t take away from Berkeley’s excellence if Vandy etc are also good. More than enough room. But for some reason, RML needs acknowledgment that everyone adores Berkeley. Well, it’s not gonna happen.</p>
<p>You’re showing up was anticipated as well. Perhaps you should look in the mirror one of these days; RML isn’t the only one around here who’s obsessed with UC Berkeley.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>The USNews is part of the CDS organization. The issue is that Cal is playing games with the reporting by NOT including the Spring admits but including the applications in the denominator. This is why the admission rate for 2011-2012 is above 25 percent but reported at 21 to USNews. I will give you the correct number of admits later.</p></li>
<li><p>The admission rate for THIS fall will, however, be lower and at around 21 percent if the UCOP estimates are confirmed. I was quoting the 2011-2012 numbers in my previous posts. But again, the next CDS will have a misrepresented and lower number of admitted students. Unless Cal stops playing the Middlebury game.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>No I’m not. I understand there is more to selectivity than the admit rate.
That’s why earlier (#23) I cited a formula that considers not only admit rate but also test scores and class rank. How you weight each of those factors is rather arbitrary. However, Berkeley’s average test scores and GPA also are rather strong. So, I think it is likely to come out among the most selective schools (roughly the top ~20-40) by any reasonable measure (unless the reported numbers really are out of whack.)</p>
<p>Everybody seems to agree that Berkeley is well within the top 20 to 40 as the most selective schools in the whole US. My question now is: Are the schools ranked in the top 20 to 40 can be considered selective schools? Or, only those schools in the top 1 to 20 are considered selective schools?</p>
<p>Sure, schools in the top 20 to 40 are selective schools. Why wouldn’t they be? Selectively is misleading for something like Berkeley, however – simply because a) it has a mission to serve the people of California, so it has more of a mission to “go down the ladder” (so its bottom level students will be “lower” and it accepts a lot more comm college transfers) and b) it’s easy as pie for people applying to other UC’s to apply to Berkeley since it just requires checking a box, which inflates the applicant pool.</p>
<p>But again, so what? It provides an excellent education, so why is it important to you that you somehow prove it’s “as selective” as the elite privates who have an entirely different mission and geographic pull? Why isn’t “it’s very good” good enough for you?</p>
<p>RML, can you possibly try to think of the elite schools in the US - of which Berkeley would certainly be one - as just a “pool” of various options offering different flavors to fit different people’s tastes and preferences – instead of ALWAYS trying to rank and pretend that there are major differences between them and that some are uniformly better than others? Because, really, in the US, you can’t go wrong attending one of these excellent schools, and it’s really pointless and fruitless to fret over the differences or pretend that they have any more meaning other than personal preferences.</p>
<p>Schools such as Vandy or WashU have done an excellent job of moving out of their core geographic area and targeting good students in geographic areas outside their own backyard. To what extent does Berkeley do that to raise its profile, I don’t know. Perhaps it’s hampered (quite rightly) because what California taxpayer wants his tax dollars to go to promote a California school to non-Californians. But that’s a natural “limiter” on how wide Berkeley’s reach is in the US that private schools don’t have. And make no mistake about it, RML - no matter how large Berkeley looms in California (and in Asia), it just doesn’t loom all the large in a lot of other areas of the US. WHICH IS NOT A SLAM, but an observation.</p>
<p>I don’t really get how Berkeley treats their admission. First of all, they require self-report grade, meaning they have no idea about applicant’s school profile, if they took most demanding course, class rank, percentile (especially for internationals)… They simply look at numbers out of 100 which I think it’s ridiculous. GPA means nothing without context. And if you have basically 4.0 GPA, and 1800 SAT, u have good chance of getting in. </p>
<p>I personally saw someone from our school who took the easiest courses ever and got 4.0 GPA, and 1700 SAT admitted no SAT 2, and someone who took the most demanding course with tons of 5s on AP with 3.7 GPA with 2200 SAT, 800 on 2 SAT2s got rejected. </p>
<p>Yes, Berkeley is amazing school, probably top#7 in US, however, they are not selective because they just admit 4.0 GPAs…</p>
<p>Fussing all over the internet literally everywhere about “Berkeley’s prestige” or “Berkeley’s selectivity” only shows that you feel insecure over the school that you go to.</p>
<p>Whatever you want to do, you can do it! Your own actions are your own responsibilities. It doesn’t matter if you go to Berkeley or Princeton or sit inside a dumpster for four years.</p>
<p>The purpose of a public university is to give as many people as possible the best education it can offer. Given this, I don’t quite understand the obsession with selectivity. Past a certain point, stats no longer become a reasonable way of judging whether a school is of better quality than another. Rather, the quality of instruction, the undergraduate experience, etc. should be the focus. Of course, if we want to talk about selectivity, then we can talk about Berkeley Regents, which is far more selective than any Ivy League, but why does it matter? Professors teaching at Cal are just as qualified as those teaching at Ivy Leagues. I have never met a Berkeley grad that was unsatisfied with his education at Cal while many of my interviewers for Ivies expressed their miserable undergraduate experiences at brand name schools.</p>
If I remember correctly, RML doesn’t attend/never attended Berkeley.</p>
<p>RML, honest question: Why do you constantly feel the need to defend Berkeley? You attended one of the best schools in the entire world and yet you seem to have a Berkeley obsession–despite no connection?</p>
<p>I know it may seem like I am being antagonistic, but I really am just curious. I don’t get it.</p>
<p>^ I am a product of a public education thus I know not all publicly-funded institutions are instantly mediocre just because they are publicly funded. When I first joined in on this message board way back in 2008, I noticed that Berkeley was being criticized all the time (because it’s a publicly-funded school) and there was no one who was defending it. It was terrible. My wife is an alumna of L&S – graduated with a degree in economics. Other than that, you’re right, I have no affiliation with Berkeley.</p>
<p>For the record, I also support Michigan, UVa and UCLA. It so happened that I’m more familiar with Berkeley than I am with those other top-State U’s.</p>