Ranking for CAL

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of California - Berkeley
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<p>This actually leads me to start questioning the so-called “super-selective privates would admit”. A student will have higher chance of admission if one has some kind of hook such as parents alumnui, special talent and so on. Based on what I read, URM will also increase one’s chance. While for admission into Oxbridge, the interviews for prospective students are conducted by the professors of the subjects applied but for some of the so-called “super-selective privates”, the applicants are interviewed by fresh grad, young alumnui, or someone who’s graduated for a long time with no updated knowledge about one’s school. </p>

<p>Are we also saying that the homework from those “super-selective privates would admit” only target for bright students and not designed to help C students. I find it hard to believe.</p>

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<p>You guys know private schools can select students based on race right?
Supreme court cases burke and bakke.</p>

<p>reason: private schools can be racist because if you don’t like them, then go somewhere else</p>

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<p>The homework discussion was about homework in high school, not college.</p>

<p>However, colleges do tailor courses and curricula to their students. For example, MIT has no “calculus for business majors” or remedial precalculus courses. At the other end of the scale, the majority of freshmen at less selective four year universities like Arizona State have to take remedial precalculus courses, even though there may be some good-in-math students there who do not.</p>

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<p>@ucbalumnus The standard Berkeley math undergrad curriculum is easy enough for any dedicated math student to start taking grad classes in their second or third year. There are some more motivated students who start taking grad classes in their freshman year. I think that these students are great, but definitely not exceptional. They’re only forced to do this because of how easy the Berkeley undergrad math curriculum is. At schools like Harvard and MIT, there are undergrad classes tailored to strong math students who’ve encountered advanced topics like algebraic geometry as high schoolers. Sure, there might only be a handful of those in the entire country for any given graduating class, just as there are a handful of International Math Olympiad competitors every year split between the two schools, but how many people are going to Harvard or MIT to study math anyway? How many people total are going to Harvard or MIT to study anything? </p>

<p>@d313711 To my limited understanding, Columbia and Cornell are not particularly adept at drawing strong students and they are not (incredibly) selective. In certain aspects, Berkeley is the better choice. Realistically, only a small but existent portion of Berkeley students are comparable to HYPSM students. Berkeley has a massive student body compared to elite private schools. If a “good portion” of Berkeley students are comparable to HYPSM students, then it would have the strongest undergraduate student body in the entire nation. Truthfully, I honestly think that vast vast majority of Berkeley students aren’t academically or otherwise qualified for admission into any one of H, Y, P, S, or M.</p>

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<p>@Caiac: I’m pretty sure that Berkeley has undergrad classes for students who want to do proofs and encounter advanced topics early as well–they’re called honors classes. I can’t really address your comparisons between MIT & Cal’s math curriculum (I don’t go to both schools), but considering that the average GPA for math is ~2.8 (<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/uc-transfers/900945-average-gpa-graduating-students-major.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/uc-transfers/900945-average-gpa-graduating-students-major.html&lt;/a&gt;), I doubt it’s as ridiculously easy as you claim. Unless you want to claim that Cal’s student body is so bad that it can’t even pull a B-average under a “very easy” math curriculum, then you might’ve exaggerated the differences a bit.</p>

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<p>I want to claim that Berkeley’s student body is so bad that the average math major can’t even pull a B-average under an easy math curriculum and that any motivated or mildly interested student would have to turn to graduate courses for challenging material. </p>

<p>Everything’s relative. Berkeley still has one of the strongest student bodies in the country. I just don’t think it’s fair for Berkeley students to clamor about and claim that a great deal of them are as good as students at Harvard or MIT. It kind of diminishes the achievement of getting into those more selective schools.</p>

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<p>I just question the validity of the selection criteria from those “highly selective privates” given the hooks and low transparency. I wouldn’t argue that most students might quite likely ti choose to go HYPSM over Berkeley. But that doesn’t prove the student body of HYPSM is better than a “good” portion of that of CAL.</p>

<p>Sent from my GT-I9300 using CC</p>

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<p>@caiacs: Regarding the “can’t keep a B- average” comment: My understanding is that Cal, like most schools, grades math courses on a curve. If so, all the “B-” average means is that Cal has a tough curve. Just for argument’s sake, the Cal professors could suddenly decide to make the average grade a D-, but that would not make the students any dumber than they were the day before (when they were receiving B grades). Am I mistaken about this?</p>

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<p>Getting into the super-selective schools does require either near-maximum high school academic achievement, or some sort of favored characteristic (legacy, etc.). Beyond that, their admissions processes are opaque, and probably not all that consistent in that repeating the process with the same applicants in shuffled order could result in a significantly different admissions class. Of course, other non-academic characteristics can take a student out of the running; one who interviews poorly won’t go far at a school that uses interviews.</p>

<p>Obviously, not all Berkeley students had the near-maximum high school academic stats needed to be in the running at the super-selective schools. However, some do. These include those who “lost” the lottery at such schools, or were not interested enough in them to apply. The same is likely true at other big state flagship-level universities. Also, the students who got into the super-selective schools with favored characteristics may not have as impressive high school academic stats.</p>

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<p>Quote:
Originally Posted by andrewtdx
Furthermore, the idea that a lot of younger kids parents have now that, that having their kids do more than 4-5 math problems a night and constantly reducing the amount of homework as to not interfere with their playtime is really doing us no favors.</p>

<p>Quote:
Originally Posted by ucbalumnus
However, some parents and students also complain that homework can be voluminous, but with too many “busywork” problems apparently aimed at giving C students more practice on easier types of problems, but not enough other types of problems for the topic being covered, or problems challenging enough for B and A students to be interested and feel a sense of achievement in solving (remember the * and ** problems in you high school math books?).</p>

<p>I.e. instead of 10 or 20 similar easy problems, a better homework assignment could have 4 or 5 problems of different types for the topic being covered and/or different levels of difficulty. </p>

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<p>I think the problem is if we tailor to the lowest common-denominator, which a lot of schools are doing now, the better/brighter/more studious students get bored, fall behind, and lose interest totally. I was one of those kids until I begged and pleaded to get into Honors courses and AP courses. </p>

<p>BOOM! Suddenly, I went from a 3.0-3.3 student in middle and freshman year of high school to a 3.7-4.0 student the rest of the time. Why? Because I was actually challenged. And that was the problem, I got placed into regular courses and got bored, acted out, and got labelled as an underachiever. Once I finally cajoled my way into the more advanced courses, I came out of my shell. But there was even more ‘busywork’, and we had many many more problems that the ‘easier’ classes.</p>

<p>Of course, it’s been 10 years since I graduated high school, so my perspective doesn’t really matter, but I fear for the kids (and their parents) even in the advanced classes who complain about “busywork”. Having someone do 50 problems of the same type over and over again without any gradation in difficulty is make work, having the problems grow in intricacy as you went on is building a solid foundation.</p>

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<p>If that’s your opinion, that’s fine. I don’t know what qualifications you’ve had to come to that opinion (i.e. been through both Cal & MIT/Harvard math courses, served on math faculty, etc.), but I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. </p>

<p>Well, strictly on average you might be right @ “good students,” since a public school can’t really cherry-pick its undergrads nearly as much. I would add that it’s also not fair to assume that people went to Cal simply got flat-rejections by Ivies/MIT/etc. More people than you might think actually got an acceptance to one of those “elite privates” but have to turn it down for financial reasons. This is especially the case if you’re, say, you were an international student during high school (which means no financial aid). At their state campuses they can at least claim residency status.</p>