<p>Sounds like hard love. In the end it is a matter of choice and preference. There will always be arguments for both sides. If one is a product of a public and become "successful," then it is the best argument. Same, vice versa.</p>
<p>good post archermom!</p>
<p>how good is berkeley anyway?</p>
<p>looks like berkeley has a very good international reputation</p>
<p>lets just say that i know people who turned down harvard and stanford for Cal...</p>
<p>Im a 30 year old teacher that is looking to make a career change. I need some advise on picking a school in the southern cal area. I would like to enter the business field either with a finance or accounting background. As of now I have a liberal arts degree from cal poly pomona ( a state school). I ve always felt like it was a weak education I got. Part was my lack of motivation when I was in my early 20's, part really relates to what people are saying about public school on this forum. It was just so crowded with little to no guidance. I am now in a good financial situatation sitting on a lot of cash from working and saving. I want to invest in the education I never got and get out of teaching. Where would guys recommend I go for a solid graduate education in business, particularly a private one. Keep in mind that my academic background is mediocre. Thanks</p>
<p>Give USC a shot. Need a good GMAT score.</p>
<p>I can work on that. I just need a place that has a reasonable reputation and doesn't need me to be a genius.</p>
<p>Does anyone know anything about Unversity of La Verne business school.</p>
<p>Brown(15) mean GPA in 1999: 3.47
Wesleyan(10 LAC) in 1998: 3.46
Stanford (4) in 1992: 3.44
Harvard(2) in 1999: 3.42
Pomona(#7 LAC) in 2001: 3.39
Princeton(1) 1999: 3.34
Williams(1 LAC) in 1999: 3.34
Duke(8) in 1999: 3.33
Dartmouth(9) 1999: 3.31
UPenn(7) in 1999: 3.28
Chicago(9) mean GPA in 1999: 3.26
Harvey Mudd (14 LAC) in 1999: 3.26
Swarthmore(#3 LAC) in 1997: 3.24
Rice(17) mean GPA in 2001: 3.3
UVA(24) in 2001: 3.18
University of Florida (47): 3.13
Wisconsin(34) in 1998: 3.11
UC Berkeley(21) in 1996: 3.10<br>
USC (27) in 2002: 3.09
UT (47) in 1999: 2.96
UNC (27) in 1999: 2.93
UC Santa Barbara(47) in 1999: 2.93
Lehigh(33) in 1996: 2.9
Purdue (64) in 1999: 2.8
Georgia Tech (28) in 1999: 2.79
Auburn (88) in 1997: 2.76
UC Riverside(88) mean in 2000: 2.74</p>
<p>Obviously the numbers are out of date (more recent is available for some, but I tried to standardize it at 1999 for purposes of comparison) and I know for a fact that some universities, like Princeton, have made efforts to combat inflation.</p>
<p>I think the rankings are pretty silly, especially for comparing public vs. private and LACs to each other (Pomona and Harvey Mudd, probably the two most selective, are #7 and 14), but it's a baseline.</p>
<p>It appears rank and how technical the school is holds more importance than public vs. private. Swarthmore's vaunted deflation seems exaggerated.</p>
<p>On the other hand, Boalt Law School does seem to buy the Swarthmore hype (this takes into account the competition, not just the raw average):</p>
<p>The L.A. Times ran an article 7/16/97 "Grading the Grades:
All A's Are Not Created Equal "on how the admissions dept.
from UC Berkeley's Boalt Hall re-formulated the law school's
applicant's G.P.A. The formula ranked each college
according to how its students perform on the standardized
law board exam, the LSAT, and how common a certain
G.P.A. is at that school.</p>
<p>The following is UC Berkeley's rankings of toughest schools
to get an "A"</p>
<p>Swarthmore 89.5
Williams 89.0
Duke 88.5
Carleton 88.0
Colgate 88.0
J. Hopkins 87.5
Chicago 87.0
Dartmouth 87.0
Wesleyan 87.0
Cornell 86.5
Harvard 86.5
Middlebury 86.0
Princeton 86.0
Bates 85.5
MIT 85.5
Haverford 85.0
Pomona 85.0
Virginia 85.0
Amherst 84.5
Reed 84.5
Vanderbilt 84.5
Wm & Mary 84.5
Bowdoin 83.5
Tufts 83.5
Vassar 83.5
Bryn Mawr 83.0
Hamilton 83.0
Oberlin 83.0
Rice 83.0
U. Pennsylvania 83.0
Clrmt. McK. 82.5
Yale 82.5
Brandeis 82.0
Northwestern 82.0
Colby 81.5
Michigan 81.5
Notre Dame 81.5
Wash. U. 81.0
Barnard 80.5
Columbia 80.5
Stanford 80.5
Brown 80.0
Georgetown 80.0
Smith 80.0
Wellesley 80.0
Emory 79.5
U. North Carolina 79.5
Whitman C. 79.5
Rochester 79.0
UC Berkeley 78.5
UC San Diego 78.5
Illinois 78.0
SUNY Bing 78.0
Texas 78.0
Trinity U. 77.5
Boston College 77.0
UC S. Barbara 77.0
Wisconsin 77.0
Florida 76.5
U. Washington 76.5
Santa Clara 76.0
Geo. Wash. 75.5
UC Davis 75.5
UCLA 75.5
Colorado 75.0
Michigan State 75.0
Boston University 74.5
Cal Poly SLO 74.5
Massachusetts 74.0
Penn State 74.0
Iowa 73.5
Purdue 73.5
SMU 73.5
SUNY Albany 73.5
BYU 73.0
Minnesota 73.0
Ohio State 73.0
Oregon 73.0
UC Irvine 73.0
Indiana 72.5
NYU 72.0
SUNY Buff 72.0
SUNY Stony 72.0
Mills 71.5
American 71.0
Arizona 71.0
Loyola Mary. 71.0
Maryland 71.0
Fordham 70.5
Kansas 70.0
Syracuse 70.0
USC 70.0
Arizona St. 69.5
CS San Diego 69.5
Catholic U. 69.5
Oklahoma 69.5
Pacific 69.5
Hofstra 69.0
UC Riverside 68.5
Utah 68.5
CS Chico 68.5
Miami 68.0
New Mexico 68.0
San Diego 68.0
CS Northridge 67.0
Pepperdine 67.0
CS San Fran. 66.0
CS Sacramento 65.0
Hawaii 64.5
Denver 63.5
CS Fullerton 63.0
CS Hayward 63.0
CS Long Beach 63.0
CS San Jose 63.0
CS Fresno 62.5
St. Mary's 61.5
CCNY 59.0
CS LA 58.5
Howard 57.5
San Francisco 57.5</p>
<p>So its harder to get an "A" at Pomona than it is at Stanford, Cal, or UCLA? That seems strange...</p>
<p>I am also debating whether to attend a public or private school. I want to major in English and minor in Spanish, with my top public school choices being Cal and UCLA and my top private school choice being Pomona. I also want to look into Occidental and UCI as safeties. The big problem for me is that I am really interested in music even though I have no desire whatsoever to get a degree in it. The music departments at Cal and UCLA are totally closed to non-majors at the upper-division (read: worthwhile) level, whereas the private schools allow all students to take upper division courses in music, including ensembles and private weekly lessons. That combined with the smaller atmosphere makes me think that a LAC would be a better fit for me- I was miserable at my large public high school but absolutely LOVED my small magnet middle school. </p>
<p>On the other hand, because I am a CA resident, my chances for the UCs are higher and the cost is significantly lower. Low enough that I could pay for private music lessons with all the money I would be saving! </p>
<p>Also, it seems that the best English department is at Cal. I'm not sure if Pomona's is as good. I asked in the Pomona thread but got zero info. Just the idea of going to a school with 30,000+ students is a little overwhelming, to say the least!</p>
<p>Well, a little surprising at first, given that Pomona has a pretty high average GPA. </p>
<p>I think the idea is that Pomona and Stanford have about the same quality student body (in terms of average LSAT score), but Stanford is more inflated, so the same quality students gets easier As. For UCLA and Berkeley, even though Pomona has a higher average GPA, the average student at Pomona is much better, so the same quality student will fall lower in the class and actually end up with a lower GPA.</p>
<p>However, certainly don't take these too seriously. LSAT is not the only (nor perhaps even a good) measure of quality and the data is very old.</p>
<p>Cherokee...Do you have a website for this info? Thanks.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I feel as though it is beneficial becuase it prepares you for real life. You either recognize your potential, or you do not. The bell curves at many publics help this to ring true. I think privates try to "make" students graduate by at least giving them C's. They are paying a lot of money to do that, and the administrations encourage high grad. numbers. At publics, you make it, or you don't.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I really think this is off mark. Where you see "coddling" or "giving easy grades to keep graduation rates high," I see professors who push their students on an individual basis to think and challenge their own assumptions.</p>
<p>I work at a large public, and our graduates articulate nicely that they like the lessons they learn in this environment--be assertive, look out for yourself, don't get stymied by bureaucracy, be proactive. Those are fabulous life skills and I think they're right to value them. I'm not running those down. However, I think it is a real mischaracterization to reduce what happens at a private institution to "administrators making professors go easy on students."</p>
<p>If you don't believe me, consider how public universities expend a lot of resources trying to offer underclassmen experiences that are more like those they would get at LACs or smaller privates. That is, smaller seminars, one-on-one time with professors, mentoring, etc. If these represent mere mindless coddling that hurts "survival skills," why on earth would they value them?</p>
<p>hoedown: Sorry, but I don't think that small seminar-style classes, one-on-one time with professors, and mentoring were invented by LACs and smaller privates. Good publics have this, too, minus all the hand-holding and hovering that tends to go on at a lot of small private schools.</p>
<p>"hoedown: Sorry, but I don't think that small seminar-style classes, one-on-one time with professors, and mentoring were invented by LACs and smaller privates"</p>
<p>Ironically, the large public that Hoedown works for is the first major US university to use the seminar method in the classroom more than 150 years ago.</p>
<p>I went to both public and private universities. The ranking of the private university is a lot higher than the public university but I found that I got my money's worth at the public university. I never had any of the problem mentioned from one poster as he had at UCI. Don't forget it's one person experience. In general, I found most teachers are reasonable, if they make a mistake with your grade, they will fix it.</p>
<p>The only thing that I like about private university is that they often let you stretch out your tuition payment over the number of months. That is not going to happen at public school. You must pay everything up front for everything.</p>
<p>BTW, I've just read Fiske guide book and it states UCB has 700 students per intro class. If you think this is what makes UCB above the rest of the UCs then I have to disagree.</p>
<p>
[quote]
On the other hand, Boalt Law School does seem to buy the Swarthmore hype (this takes into account the competition, not just the raw average):</p>
<p>The L.A. Times ran an article 7/16/97 "Grading the Grades:
All A's Are Not Created Equal "on how the admissions dept.
from UC Berkeley's Boalt Hall re-formulated the law school's
applicant's G.P.A. The formula ranked each college
according to how its students perform on the standardized
law board exam, the LSAT, and how common a certain
G.P.A. is at that school.</p>
<p>The following is UC Berkeley's rankings of toughest schools
to get an "A"
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Uh, no, that is not exactly what the Boalt ranking was measuring. The ranking was an attempt to measure *all * of the factors associated with success at Boalt, relative to one's undergraduate GPA. In other words, the ranking has to do with not only how hard it is to get good grades, but also about how well the school prepares students for law school. </p>
<p>Let met put it to you this way. The Boalt ranking grants a higher "score" to Duke than to MIT. I think few if any people would argue that it is actually harder to get an 'A' at Duke than at MIT - heck, I would doubt that even many Duke students would argue that this is the case. The real issue is that while MIT is clearly not an easy school to get top grades at, it is also a school that, frankly, doesn't exactly prepare you well for law school, relative to more liberal-artsy schools do. MIT is mostly an engineering school, and engineering, while obviously being extremely difficult, is not exactly the best kind of prelaw training.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Good publics have this, too, minus all the hand-holding and hovering that tends to go on at a lot of small private schools.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>That was my point--well, the first part. If you reread my post on this page, you'll see that I said that large public dedicate resources to providing exactly these kinds of experiences. </p>
<p>I don't believe that a small-college experience means "hovering" or "hand-holding." I'm having a difficult time understandiong why people elect to characterize it in such a derisive way.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I don't believe that a small-college experience means "hovering" or "hand-holding." I'm having a difficult time understandiong why people elect to characterize it in such a derisive way.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Possibly because when people describe what they like about small schools, it almost always centers around "lots and lots of individual/personal attention." When I consistently read this here, I always wonder-- just how much personal attention does one need, and how much is too much? </p>
<p>I don't know the answer; that's obviously relative, but for students who search for schools that they imagine will give them "lots of and lots of individual/personal attention," and that goal is at the top of their wish list, I suspect they're looking for some hand-holding. I also suspect that they get it.</p>
<p>Even though public universities also offer excellent advising/mentoring, seminars, small classes, wonderful research opportunities for undergraduates, and outstanding accessible faculty (again, none of which was invented by LACS or other smaller privates), I do suspect the students at public universities are more independent and know (or learn) how to be proactive. I think that should be part and parcel of being a college-student, frankly (a high school student, too, for that matter).</p>
<p>I used to work at a small private (actually, an Ivy) some years ago. Frankly, I thought there was an awful lot of hovering and hand-holding going on.</p>