Reed vs Berkeley

College Search & Selection
1

<p>I'm a high achieving student at a competitive, highly ranked overseas private school.</p>

<p>I know that this is a pretty odd pair of schools to be comparing as they are SO different, but I applied to them both to fill up the quota of university applications that my high school offers, thinking I probably wouldn't go to either. I ended up getting waitlisted at my dream school and rejected from a couple other schools I also hoped to get into... oh well haha I guess I'll just cross my fingers and hope that that works out. </p>

<p>In the mean time, I'm having a lot of trouble deciding between the two and was hoping I could get some external opinions on the subject.</p>

<p>Berkeley pros:
- LOVE the location
- really close to family
- EPIC SOCIAL LIFE
- amazing weather
- very globally renowned
- huge - will never get bored of peeps (important factor as my entire schooling experience thus far was tiny and I got hugely bored and frustrated with the social scene very early on)</p>

<p>Berkeley cons:
- 45% Asian (I grew up in Asia in a school that is about 98% Asian and was looking forward to a drastic change of environment and interaction with different kinds of people)
- hugeass classes which i'm a little scared of (grew up in a private school where the max class size was 25. i'm not sure which learning style suits me best or the impacts of either - i've just never had any experiences with large classes and though i know what to expect in theory i don't know whether or not it's a good fit for me)
- not sure how negatively all the shiet with govt budget cuts and class availability etc. will impact me
- worried about the ability to obtain a high GPA due to grades being based entirely on standardized exams. the high school i come from bases a significant portion of grades on research papers and other such assignments so I'm a little uncertain about how that aspect of Berkeley will fit me</p>

<p>Reed pros:
- really fun quirky location (love Portland :D)
- really intellectually stimulating classes and discussion
- theres a little more hand holding initially in case i mess up (which i'm afraid i might) - this is not with regards to doing well academically, rather i'm referring to dealing with housing/signing up for classes etc
- less standardized exams more personalized papers/essays etc</p>

<p>Reed cons:
- less renowned (particularly in Asia, which I may end up returning to)
- weather is not amazing
- REALLY ACADEMICALLY HARDCORE - high dropout/burnout rate (i know i can handle it, but my high school was extremely intense and i feel pretty burnt out from all those years of sleep deprivation so it'd be nice to not have to kill myself over academics for general education requirements haha)
- less epic social life
- heard its some what a depressing environment
- really tiny - might get bored of people
- uncertain about general social dynamic - my high school was really weird in this respect and i was looking forward to having a traditional social experience in college</p>

<p>I'm a student who doesn't require hand holding with regards to academics. I can study very well on my own in a library though it is extremely helpful to have somebody to direct questions towards which I believe that Berkeley doesn't offer. I also really do enjoy the banter and discussion that is offered by Reed's small, intimate educational environment. However, the social aspect of my college experience is extremely important to me and I worry that Reed will not be satisfactory in that respect. </p>

<p>Concluding thoughts: I'm leaning more towards Berkeley because it's pros appeal to me and Reed's cons worry me. Plus, I enjoy the fact that I have family in the region, giving me someplace to go over holidays and somebody to rely on if I get myself in some deep ****.</p>

<p>Any thoughts/words of advice anybody can offer me?</p>

2

<p>I would say visit both schools if you can, and then go with your heart. “Fit” is important. Both are excellent schools.</p>

3

<p>The four years will fly by in an eye blink, so you might want to add a bit more consideration to the results. If you don’t plan on grad school, Berkeley will have more prestige in most Asian eyes, and an LAC does’t make as much sense. If you plan on grad school, the only people paying attention to your undergrad school are the grad schools. Berkeley (famous because of its grad schools) is one of the top destinations of Reed grads.</p>

4

<p>If grad school is the goal, Reed places a large percentage of its grads into grad school. It is one of the top PhD producers in the USA. Further, classes will be quite different. Almost all Reed classes are small, inquiry/discussion based, whereas UCB tends toward large lecture based courses. Some like one approach others like the other.</p>

5

<p>Another thing to think about: Reed is private, not subject to state budget problems. The UC system, on the other hand, is a political football in the ongoing California budget battle.</p>

6

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<p>I think nobody beats Berkeley when it comes to producing alumni to grad/postgrad schools. Berkeley is the number one producer of PhDs.</p>

7

<p>Actually, Reed does ‘beat’ Berkeley there, together with every school that’s not Swarthmore, Caltech or Harvey Mudd. Berkeley’s PhD production rate is worse than 40+ other schools’. You can check if you don’t believe me; the data is freely available.</p>

<p>Although I have no idea why this is relevant.</p>

8

<p>

</p>

<p>Completing a PhD is hard, in almost any field and and at almost any university. It requires mastery of current knowledge in that field, plus a book-length original contribution to that knowledge. So it is a fairly good measurement of how well an undergraduate program motivates and prepares students to do academic work at the next level. Schools with the highest per capita rates generally are selective schools with small classes and a rigorous arts and science (not pre-professional) focus. These include selective LACs, technical institutes (CalTech & MIT), Chicago, some of the Ivies, and a few less selective schools on the Colleges That Change Lives list. Reed is near the top. Just being famous among high school guidance counsellors gets you nowhere with this metric. </p>

<p>In my opinion, per capita PhD production probably is a better indicator of undergraduate academic quality than the opinion polls that factor significantly into the USNWR rankings. It is probably confounded somewhat by self-selection effects that generate false negatives (since graduates of some excellent schools choose high-status, non-academic paths at higher rates).</p>

9

<p>completing a PhD is hard but WHERE you get your PhD from is much more important. In many fields especially science, it is virtually impossible to get a good post-doc and get on a strong tenure track unless you attend a top 10 PhD program. That is also increasingly the case in the social sciences and the humanities.</p>

<p>Several studies looking back at where the students in top PhD programs in the STEM fields went to college found that students who attend research universities as undergraduates do significantly better than those who do not. So, if you want to go MIT, Caltech, Harvard, Stanford, Michigan or Berkeley for a PhD, you are much better off attending one of these schools for college. See for instance Table 6 page 18. </p>

<p><a href=“Faculty and Research | The ILR School”>Faculty and Research | The ILR School;

<p>So for instance, Berkeley sends 48% of its PhD candidates to top 10 PhD programs only beaten by MIT, Harvard, Yale and Princeton in getting admission to top programs. On the other hand, Amherst, arguably one of the best LACs only sends 25% of its PhD candidates to top ten PhD programs. Some LACs do very well: Swarthmore sends 44% of its PhD candidates to top 10 programs and Williams sends 39% (the same as Michigan), very respectable numbers. But the number drop off rapidly: Carleton, known for graduating many science majors only sends 28%. Reed is not mentioned but I suspect is most likely worse than the mores selective LACs. In my years at MIT, I never saw a Reed graduate, but i saw plenty of Berkeley grads. So quantity of PhDs is not really a good metric: quality is much better. many PhDs never finish their degrees, and among those that do a small percentage will get unto a tenure track. </p>

<p>There are many reasons why research universities predominantly recruit PhD students from their own pool. Undergraduate students at these schools are exposed to advanced research through college and are immediately usable as RAs in the labs of the universities. Undergrads at research universities are also more likely to have any publications. Since PhD students are admitted by the respective departments and not the university , students with reference letters from known professors in the field are much more likely to get the attention of the departmental dean than somebody with a reference from an unknown source. After all, leading professors in academia know each other well and the environment is highly incestuous with professors hopping from one top institution to another. </p>

<p>It would be useful if colleges published the list of universities where their students are admitted for PhD programs. The current PhD productivity number is useless. It does not even account for the large drop-out rate, typically greater than 50% or for the huge variation in the quality of programs. The reason is probably that with a few exceptions, the reality is not pretty.</p>

10

<p>Not all classes at Cal are exam-only. English, for example, actually requires you to write a paper or two for a grade. Ditto Philosophy and History and a bunch of other lit/hume courses. Even the upper division social science courses will require papers. And, there is plenty of easy A’s in those departments.</p>

<p>What is your planned major?</p>

<p>For an international and for social, the choice is easy: Go Bears!</p>

11

<p>

</p>

<p>You suspect wrongly.</p>

<p>[REED</a> COLLEGE | LIFE AFTER REED](<a href=“http://www.reed.edu/ir/success.html]REED”>Life After Reed - Institutional Research - Reed College)</p>

<p>Graduate schools most frequently attended by Reed alumni: Berkeley, U of Washington, UChicago, Stanford, U of Oregon, Harvard, Cornell, UCLA, Wisconsin-Madison, Columbia, Yale, Johns Hopkins, Princeton, UCSD, Michigan.</p>

<p>Reed is extremely well regarded in academic circles and frequently sends graduates to the best universities in the nation. Selectivity has absolutely nothing to do with it. As evidenced by schools like Swarthmore and MIT, an institution’s overall PhD production rate is much more closely related to the percentage of its postgrad students who are admitted to top-10 programs than its undergraduate admission rate.</p>

12

<p>Reed offers a premier undergraduate education that I believe would beat Berkeley on almost every count. About the only way I would see UCB as superior would be for someone pursuing a specialized STEM that wasn’t available at Reed.</p>

<p>But that comes from an unrepentant LAC advocate who has spent a career teaching at state universities.</p>

13

<p>“Not all classes at Cal are exam-only.”</p>

<p>That’s comforting! :slight_smile: I don’t know how many of Reed’s are; more than none?</p>

<p>20% of Reed grads later earn PhDs, 8% of Berkeley grads do; considering Berkeley’s pre-professionals, the difference doesn’t seem so great. The overall campus experiences will be so different, visiting both should give you a strong feeling where you belong.</p>

<p>Berkeley 3,303 x 8% = 240 per year, Reed 262 x 20% = 52 per year (grads from CDS, PhD rate from IPEDS)</p>

<p>“In my years at MIT, I never saw a Reed graduate, but i saw plenty of Berkeley grads.”</p>

<p>You need to get out more!</p>

<p>[MIT</a> Community Innovator’s Lab >> People](<a href=“http://mit.edu/cil/web_scripts/www_backups/06.26/people/]MIT”>http://mit.edu/cil/web_scripts/www_backups/06.26/people/)
[MIT</a> School of Architecture + Planning](<a href=“http://sap.mit.edu/resources/portfolio/six_professors/]MIT”>http://sap.mit.edu/resources/portfolio/six_professors/)
[New</a> faculty - Fall 2006 Soundings](<a href=“http://web.mit.edu/shass/soundings/issue_06f/faculty.html]New”>New faculty - Fall 2006 Soundings)
[Jody</a> Hoffer Gittell | Relational Coordination | High Performance Healthcare](<a href=“http://www.jodyhoffergittell.info/content/gittellcv.html]Jody”>http://www.jodyhoffergittell.info/content/gittellcv.html)
[Sally</a> Haslanger’s CV (March 2005)](<a href=“http://www.mit.edu/~shaslang/HaslangerCV.html]Sally”>Sally Haslanger's CV (March 2005))
[Jessica</a> Ying Chan | The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab](<a href=“http://www.povertyactionlab.org/chan]Jessica”>http://www.povertyactionlab.org/chan)
<a href=“http://web.mit.edu/tfhavel/www/Public/HavelResume.pdf[/url]”>http://web.mit.edu/tfhavel/www/Public/HavelResume.pdf&lt;/a&gt;
[url=&lt;a href=“http://cms.mit.edu/news/features/2008/09/cms_welcomes_the_class_of_2010.php]CMS”&gt;http://cms.mit.edu/news/features/2008/09/cms_welcomes_the_class_of_2010.php]CMS</a> welcomes the Class of 2010 | MIT Comparative Media Studies<a href=“The%20above%20reference%20Reed%20grads%20working%20at%20MIT;%20I%20stopped%20at%20the%20end%20of%20page%20two%20of%20twelve%20MIT%20pages%20finding%20Reed%20College%20mentioned.”>/url</a></p>

<p>“… likely to get the attention of the departmental dean than somebody with a reference from an unknown source…”</p>

<p>Irrelevant since we’re comparing Berkeley and Reed.</p>

14

<p>^Also commenting on the MIT post, I have talked to a number of Reed graduates currently doing their Master’s/PhD at MIT through my campus job. And, of course, all the people vossron mentioned.</p>

<p>

In Portland? With 1,400 peers, most of whom are incredibly nice, smart, and friendly? I haven’t experienced this at all.

Do you mean the campus dynamic or the city in general? I have found it to be a very intellectually stimulating environment and not the least bit depressing.

I’m confused—do you not plan on keeping friends for any significant amount of time? While the school does only have 1,400 students, I go to Hum lecture MWF and constantly see people, most of whom are in my graduating class, that I have never seen before.</p>

15

<p>Ghostt, I don’t think you understood my post. I was talking about absolute number in which Berkeley has the highest grads entering PhDs amongst all research universities in America. Of course, you don’t expect every Berkeley grad to get into postgrad school since a number of programs they offer are rather technical and vocational (examples business and engineering), where the vast majority of those grads enter the work force. (2/3 of Berkeley grads work right out of college.) Aside from that, Berkeley attracts the top employers and hire them and pay them well, something that we can’t say the same thing for Reed. Plus a number of Berkeley grads do volunteering works too, and a few join in government and public service sectors. </p>

<p>[Hiring</a> surge to bring more recruiters to campus job fair](<a href=“http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2011/04/18/job-fair/]Hiring”>Hiring surge to bring more recruiters to campus job fair | Berkeley News)
Typically at UC Berkeley, two-thirds of graduating seniors enter the workforce, one-quarter pursue graduate studies, and the remainder enter the military, the Peace Corps or take a year off to travel or explore other options.</p>

<p>Reed does not attract as much top employers as Berkeley does.</p>

16

<p>“I was talking about absolute number in which Berkeley has the highest grads entering PhDs amongst all research universities in America.”</p>

<p>This is relevant to prestige seekers, not high school seniors where per capita matters. :)</p>

<p>“Reed does not attract as much top employers as Berkeley does.”</p>

<p>It might have something to do with the size of the graduating class, Berkeley having over ten times as many.</p>

17

<p>@vossron

</p>

<p>I was specifically referring to the STEM fields in the post. Virtually all the references you linked were in the humanities. </p>

<p>I quickly browsed through the MIT science and engineering departments and failed to find anybody with an undergraduate degree from Reed on the tenured faculty and of the departments that listed the baccalaureate origins of current PhD students I didn’t see any Reed grads either. There were literally dozens from Berkeley. I believe that Mollie at can provide a similar view as to the science departments at Harvard.</p>

18

<p>This is a no brainer - BERKELEY</p>

19

<p>School Name / STARTING MEDIAN SALARY / MID-CAREER MEDIAN SALARY</p>

<p>University of California, Berkeley / $57,100 / $112,000</p>

<p>Reed College / $39,800 / $79,900</p>

<p>Huge difference.</p>

20

<p>“Huge difference.”</p>

<p>After all the criteria we’ve discussed, this one should be the deciding factor. ;)</p>

<p>I wonder if the cost of living is a tad lower in Portland.</p>