<p>This may be the wrong forum within College Confidential for this thread, but I'll post here for now...</p>
<p>My friend and I were just discussing UCLA vs UCB, grades, majors, etc.
One big question we had was, how do graduate schools (such as UCSF, for example) look at your transcript once you get your bachelors degree, when deciding to accept/reject? My friend wants to go to UCLA, because he hears that the academic side there is less rigorous than Cal's.</p>
<p>He reasoned like this:
F(11:15:47 PM): but the academic could backfire couldnt it? if we go to graduate school
F (11:15:53 PM): i think theyll care more about our grades
F (11:15:55 PM): than about ucla vs cal
F (11:16:01 PM): so if we can get higher grades in ucla
Me (11:16:07 PM): really?
F (11:16:11 PM): we'd have an advantage, and then for work the masters degree would count anyway
F (11:16:12 PM): right?</p>
<p>Does it work like that? In high school, from our experience, the better school school you're in (=more smart kids and competition), the less chance you'll have of getting into a good college. We had a friend who went to Lowell High in SF, which was an excellent school. His intelligence and study habits were equal to that of ours, but he was only in the top 50% or so, and in the end, didn't get into UCLA or Cal. We, on the other hand, went to 'inferior' high schools with more "gangsters" and less "nerds," and were in the top 1% and got accepted into UCLA and Cal.</p>
<p>So, I guess after all of that, my question is, how is academic-related aspects of college like grades, ranking, etc. weighted in comparison to the school's reputation?</p>
<p>I'm planning on going to Cal, but if I have to study my butt off every second I'm out of class to earn that grade, whereas if I can party and socialize in UCLA and still earn the same grade in a similar class, then UCLA would be the better choice, no?</p>