<p>And not inflation. Is this true? And if so, why would it be true? I thought that Berkeley is generally full of really smart and hard-working students who would normally get pretty good grades. Is it just that the bar is set so high that it's hard to get good grades at Berkeley even if you try really hard? And I haven't heard this same description being used for other schools, so that makes me curious.</p>
<p>It’s hard to say such a generalized statement about grade inflation or grade deflation about a whole <em>university</em> when it varies so much from class to class. Some classes are an easy A, while others are total GPA killers without any curves.</p>
<p>Without commenting too much on deflation and whether it’s real or not, the people who study their blanks off here definitely get A’s. If you really understand the concepts and know how to apply them, you’ll get an A. The tests I would say are definitely challenging but if you know EVERYTHING, you can still do well.</p>
<p>I agree with bbb360.</p>
<p>grade deflation by definition is grades getting worse and worse over time, Berkeley doesn’t have that. Berkeley however has a much slower level of Grade inflation than any other school around. Other UC’s and private schools included. I’m in 2 classes this semester with jacked up curves, one that gives 20% A’s, and on that gives 10% A’s. At private schools this will not be the case pretty much ever. If I had to go back and do it over I would go to USC, lol. Private schools will hold your hand and help you increase your gpa, Berkeley does not care about your GPA they care about their stats in the media so that they can maintain their rankings and continue to obtain large grants from the government for research and the like.</p>
<p>Don’t come here for math, premed, or stats, unless you are willing to study 40 hours per week, and even then you have to deal with the savants and the asperger’s kids that literally do nothing but study because it’s all they know how to do. I have 3 of those in my stats class. weird people but amazing academics.</p>
<p>that being said I’ve already been accepted to a few private schools for my senior year, debating on whether to make the move or not. to be competitive for grad school and top level jobs you really need a 3.8+, at Berkeley that is no easy task without popping adderall, drinking unhealthy amounts of caffeine, or cheating. all 3 of those things I am morally against. </p>
<p>good luck</p>
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<p>Seriously? 3.8+ for grad school and jobs? Grad school in non-theoretical fields will accept someone with strong grades (say 3.6+, meaning lots of A’s with a fair sprinkling of B’s) and terrific research experience (something you can get if you really care and apply yourself), at least most of the time I think.</p>
<p>For theoretical fields, you probably are right that one should almost always be getting A’s to stay competitive. But then again, you have the chance to center your life around school a lot more, since you don’t have to do as much external research. And where there aren’t projects that are hands-on, there is more flexibility, and work is more about thinking and less time-consuming. So it balances out.</p>
<p>If you really like your major, and care about it, you’ll be fine. Now I can’t speak for paths where by designation, academic competition is the name of the game (premed, pre-Haas, etc come to mind). And yes, a lot of people want top positions in these fields. They should speak to someone knowledgeable to determine if this is right for them.</p>
<p>Berkeley does have [grade</a> inflation](<a href=“http://www.gradeinflation.com%5Dgrade”>http://www.gradeinflation.com), though perhaps less of it than at many other (especially private) schools. You can compare different schools’ average GPAs with the links at the bottom of the referenced page.</p>
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<p>Nominally, N units of courses is supposed to correspond to *N**3 hours per week of school work (including class time and out of class studying). Although realistically, lab courses tend to be higher workload than their units relative to non-lab courses. Don’t know why math or statistics would be a particular workload problem, since they tend not to have lab courses.</p>
<p>Pre-med is a different story; medical schools encourage grade inflation by undergraduate schools by focusing heavily on GPA. The result is the compression of GPAs at the upper end of the scale, so that the effect of a single grade lower than an A is quite large. In the 1950s, a C+/B- average (2.5 to 2.6 GPA) was what an average student at a top university had; now it is more like a B+/A- average (3.4 to 3.6 GPA) at the top private universities, and a B+ average (3.3 GPA) at the top public universities.</p>
<p>Most upper-div stats classes have labs.</p>
<p>Stat 133, 102/135, 151A, 151B, 152, 153 all have labs.
Stat 101/134, 150, 155, 157 don’t have labs.</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-california-berkeley/830488-selling-textbooks-back.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-california-berkeley/830488-selling-textbooks-back.html</a></p>
<p>Make money for ur textbooks easily using the link above. I got a lot more than selling mine at neds or the student store.</p>
<p>“Don’t come here for math, premed, or stats, unless you are willing to study 40 hours per week, and even then you have to deal with the savants and the asperger’s kids that literally do nothing but study because it’s all they know how to do. I have 3 of those in my stats class. weird people but amazing academics.”</p>
<p>I’m pretty sure that’s an exaggeration. Also, I don’t really know how you lumped those together. Savants don’t make good pre-meds, and math/stats don’t need to study that much, it’s more of a “get it or don’t” thing. Some problem sets can take awhile but unless you’re taking 4 math classes a semester that all have really hard professors I don’t really know how you can get up to the 40 hour range.</p>
<p>sanitydc what are you smoking? o__O</p>
<p>I say if you’re not going to study for that amount of time, 40 hours or whatever it takes, then you should probably choose another path. If you’re premed, this is probably the minimum amount of time you will have to put in. Once you graduate and become a doctor or whatever, you’ll be on-call ALL day, you’ll be working for most of the 24 hours, etc.</p>
<p>it’s not as bad as people say. top 25% in most classes get A’s, next 30-35% get B’s. pretty generous if you ask me. </p>
<p>it’s much harder to do well in the upper divs though.</p>
<p>Grades in one context cannot be compared to grades in another. Quite simply put, a 3.3 at Cal is very different than a 3.3 at your local community college.</p>
<p>The grading standard is simply defined in such a way so that people have lower numbers than that of several private institutions.</p>
<p>For example, in my major (EECS), the guidelines state that the average upper division class GPA should be a 2.9, or slightly lower than a B average. If you have research experience, even a 3.3 will be a competitive GPA for graduate school. However, a 3.3 at, say, Stanford (who generally have much higher numbers) will look really bad.</p>
<p>whosthat1234,</p>
<p>the ‘good’ stuff.</p>
<p>what in particular gave it away? :D</p>
<p>It is all in the timespan over which you evaluate it. GPAs prior to the Vietnam War were lower at every college, but with active students given a deferment from the draft, the grades handed out climbed quite a bit to minimize the number of students who had to leave college prematurely. </p>
<p>Here is a discussion of the topic from the College of L&S [Undergraduate</a> Education Colloquium, The College of Letters and Science, UC Berkeley](<a href=“http://ls.berkeley.edu/undergrad/colloquia/04-11.html]Undergraduate”>http://ls.berkeley.edu/undergrad/colloquia/04-11.html)</p>
<p>[Actual</a> average EE and CS grades in 1999](<a href=“http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~hilfingr/report/index.html]Actual”>http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~hilfingr/report/index.html) were higher than 2.9, despite the guidelines. There has been [grade</a> inflation](<a href=“http://www.gradeinflation.com%5Dgrade”>http://www.gradeinflation.com) at Berkeley in general since then.</p>
<p>Re: [Undergraduate</a> Education Colloquium, The College of Letters and Science, UC Berkeley](<a href=“http://ls.berkeley.edu/undergrad/colloquia/04-11.html]Undergraduate”>http://ls.berkeley.edu/undergrad/colloquia/04-11.html)</p>
<p>The information contained in that may be useful for some pre-meds chasing grades for their GPA.</p>
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