<p>why would you want to go to the community college across the bay? haha.</p>
<p>jokes aside, you save tons of money, the city of berkeley is great, and the people you meet here are amazing.</p>
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<p>So, you’re going to base your judgment on one experience? (That’s what we in the know call “stupid generalizations.”)</p>
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<p>It’s usually a joke. Lighten up. Few if any really think that Stanford is a poor school.</p>
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<p>“Atmosphere”?</p>
<p>And I’d think you’re just happening not to see it. If there’s anyone elitist about it, it’s Stanford. I can tell you this: it will be difficult to find students at Berkeley who truly believe that Stanford is inferior, but it would not be difficult to find quite a few Stanford students who truly think that Berkeley is inferior.</p>
<p>(FWIW, as a student admitted to both, Stanford students have bashed Berkeley right to my face, even when I told them that it’s also my other top choice.)</p>
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<p>And guess what? My guides didn’t mention it once.</p>
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<p>Talk about your inability to read between the lines. (I think you’re the elitist one.)</p>
<p><em>slightly offtopic</em></p>
<p>kyledavid80: Can I expect to see you at Cal next year?</p>
<p>You might. Or you might see me across the Bay. Not 100% sure yet. ;)</p>
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I too visited both school, and my Stanford tour guide was so boring 
The guy at berkeley kept cracking jokes and make fun of Stanford while the Stanford guy just went on about the history of the school, the location, the classes, etc. It was like getting one of those hand held tours you rent at museums. Stanford reminded me of Raphael’s School of Athens: a perfect academic institution for bright minds to grow. No room for the fun and spontaneity at Berkeley.</p>
<p>^^… at Berkeley?</p>
<p>My tour guides were both really funny and energetic. The only time that they mentioned Stanford was when they explained the Axe and the Big Game–but didn’t make fun of the school.</p>
<p>apparently this year, eecs accepted about 300 students out of a pool of 2100 applicants for that major</p>
<p>Stanford looks like a really big Mexican restaurant to me. I do not like Mexican food. Reason enough for me not to apply–never mind that I couldn’t get in anyway :P</p>
<p><---- choosing between Cal and UCLA</p>
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Well, let’s see here. I also mentioned another experience that helped form my conjecture. I have other anecdotes…this instance merely augmented it. And everyone does “stupid generalizations.” When you stereotype someone–and EVERYONE does this–that is a stupid generalization. </p>
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Every insult can be brushed off as a joke. If that were the case, political slander would never be so offensive. Yet it is. Of course I know that few think Stanford is a poor school. That’s why I said that some students say these things out of bitterness and to elevate themselves. This is worse than truly believing that Stanford is a bad school. It’s a selfish attempt to feel better at the expense of another school. Is that nice?</p>
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<p>That is a stupid generalization.</p>
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And guess what? I have not found it difficult to find students at Berkeley who truly believe that Stanford is inferior. Also, I have not found it difficult to find quite a few Stanford students who truly think that Berkeley is inferior.
I think you can find some future Berkeley students who “give the impression” that they believe Stanford is inferior. Not to list names, but some of them even post songs of how Stanford is in the “Middle of nowhere” with its student’s “preppy jeans” who probably regret their decision.</p>
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I think you’re the biased one. I’ve been on this forum for a while, and I’ve noticed that every time someone even mentions Berkeley in a negative light you come to its rescue. And I’ve seen in the Stanford threads that you are starting to defend it as well, but not with particular zeal. Yet you did not do anything in this forum for Stanford. Perhaps you should go to the school with less “elitists” (and more students with inferiority complexes).</p>
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<p>And I have countering anecdotes. Who is right?</p>
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<p>Ad populum argument?</p>
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<p>Tangential discussion…</p>
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<p>When it’s a joke, it’s fine. If you can’t tell the difference, I’m sorry, but that’s your problem. The jokes against Stanford are just that–jokes. Yet you’re (immaturely) taking them seriously, judging the school, and telling Berkeley students to “grow up.” Seems you’re the one who needs to grow up and stop being so serious.</p>
<p>Really, Stanford’s students make a lot of jokes about Berkeley, sometimes actually bordering on offensive. In fact, last year’s Big Game t-shirts had to be canceled because they were offensive (something along the lines of “I turned down a FULL RIDE to Cal so I could sneak into Stanford – Azia Kim”). Other shirts have said, “We’re not so different after all… we both got into Berkeley.” Things like that. Nobody takes them seriously. Neither should you.</p>
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<p>Er, that’s not a generalization. A generalization would be: “Stanford students think that Berkeley is inferior.” That is a generalization. That’s wholly different from saying, “You’d be hard-pressed to find students at Berkeley who truly believe Stanford is a poor school; it wouldn’t be as difficult to find some students at Stanford who really think Berkeley is inferior.” And here’s some anecdotal evidence (you seem to like it, anyway): I have not met one student, in all my involvement with Berkeley, who actually thinks Stanford is inferior; I have met more than a few Stanford students who think Berkeley is inferior. I can actually link you to a discussion of it, if you’d like. Hell, there are people on CC who have claimed things like, “Berkeley is full of Stanford rejects,” and such–and meant it in full seriousness.</p>
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<p>So that’s your evidence–funny jabs that are actually jokes? Yeah, that’s not what I meant by “truly believe.”</p>
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<p>Er, no. More often than not, I don’t say anything–or I agree with the criticisms. I will “come to its rescue” if the claim is completely off base. For example, “Students at Berkeley are really not very smart”–that’s a stupid claim that I’d refute. But I won’t deny that Stanford offers a better undergraduate experience, more funding, more plentiful resources for its undergrads, better advising, etc. I agree with those criticisms.</p>
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<p>Er, as soon as you can point out where Stanford was deserving of it, I’ll take you seriously.</p>
<p>There are quite a few times that I defend Stanford, when people make stupid claims. But as you would predict, that doesn’t happen nearly as often as for other schools–Stanford is one of the top-5 schools, and as such people hold it in godly status. Thus, they don’t bash it much. Surely someone who has “been on this forum for a while” would be able to see this.</p>
<p>And what’s your point in bringing up all this, anyway? Why does it matter what my past posts have said? Aren’t you supposed to be evaluating the validity of my claims in and of themselves? It seems you’re attempting to discredit them by questioning my motives–which is what we in the know call an ad hominem argument.</p>
<p>Not to mention you’re posting in the Berkeley forum, and even worse, in a thread that’s meant to glorify Berkeley, and even worse, in a thread from a student rejected from Stanford. Why you would expect anything else, I don’t know. I actually have no idea why you’re posting in this thread at all, if just to put down Berkeley students and tell them to “grow up,” when the only comments that praised Berkeley and bashed Stanford were offered as comfort to a despondent student. Really, look at the context before going on long-winded debates with such a petty basis that clearly puts you in bad light.</p>
<p>Wow tomtom6, you just made a stupid generalization that I think “Stanford is inferior.” How about instead of you assuming such things, I’ll tell you the truth–I don’t think Stanford is inferior, and the song was a joke!</p>
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<p>There is a fine line between playful joking and indignant, offensive joking. If I were to go in front of a rival school student and poke fun at their school, that’s one thing. It’s another to collectively post on a forum bashing a school just to downgrade it. I’m all for fun, too. But when someone characterizes a student body with “snobs” and “losers” with no apparent rationale, it gets offensive.</p>
<p>There’s laughing with someone (what happens in football games) and laughing at someone (what happens in forums with haters).</p>
<p>And I’m the one being immature…really…</p>
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In effect, you are generalizing a number of Stanford’s student body as seeing its counterpart as inferior and vice versa. And I’ve seen those comments. They don’t always come from Stanford students. I’ve mostly seen them from other students going to the UC’s, and private colleges.</p>
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Honestly, if the situation were reversed and Berkeley were being bashed out of “facetiousness,” it would be taken seriously. Why do we even need to put down a school anyway? So other students could get a chuckle? Why don’t we laugh at a hobo on the street behind his back while we’re at it.</p>
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But they do, as evident in this thread.</p>
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A debaters argument is stronger when considering the context of his intentions. Also, ad hominem attacks are not unlike your saying that I seem “elitist.”</p>
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I did not deride anyone’s glorification of Berkeley. Like I said, it is a great, prestigious school and I would be proud to go. But the OP said “cheer me up,” not “tell me why Stanford is bad,” at which point it would be acceptable to list Stanford’s flaws (bad location, dorms, etc.). I did not post to put Berkeley students down. I posted her in defense of Stanford, to take it easy on unfounded remarks. Your brushing off the comments and saying it is jocular in nature puts you in the same bad light. I guess we’re both in the shadows. </p>
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<p>Actually, that’s not a generalization. You were right in first asking people to pm you for the song. Why would you feel that it is okay to post it? You all would feel the same if you were labeled as “snobby” and the implied “you will not have to work for an easy A”–the impression I got from the song. Why couldn’t the post focus only on why Berkeley is good, OR logical, empirical evidence as to why Stanford is bad. Insulting a whole student body is repulsive.</p>
<p>Just make OP feel better. My S chose UCLA over Stanford.
This is an old article but
Quote
I went to Stanford as an Undergraduate in the late 1980’s, majoring in one of the engineering departments…
And it wasn’t worth it. Let me give you another example. For those of you who don’t know, Donald Knuth is known in the academic community as the “Father of Computer Science,” and has been at Stanford since the late 1960’s. He’s well known for writing the “Bible” of computer science, “The Art of Computer Programming”. Yet even though I took over half-a-dozen core courses in Computer Science at Stanford, I never ONCE heard the name Donald Knuth, I never SAW the guy in person (or even in a photograph until I looked on his website many years after I graduated), and I have never read his books. “The Art of Computer Programming” books were never part of the curriculum. But that’s typical of Stanford: Pay a bunch of professors a lot of money to do very little teaching. In fact, professors generally have to teach only one-quarter (10 weeks total) of classes a year, and that’s not even a full ten week period, because the lectures last all of 3 hours TOTAL in the week, and usually a couple of office hours placed at the most inconvenient times. This means that students are paying professors to devote 20% of a typical 40-hour work week to undergraduate matters, with the remaining 80% left to their own discretion. And for many professors, this schedule is in effect for only about 20% of the year (10 weeks out of 52 weeks in a year); the remaining 80% of the year is left to their discretion, such as doing research, consulting to other companies, doing lectures at other campuses, or running their own companies. (A rare handful of professors do teach for two quarters.) To add insult to injury, I had professors who skipped out on their office hours. A Stanford professor named Tom Campbell (Bachelors, Masters, and PhD degrees from the University of Chicago, PhD Harvard) actually served for five full terms in the House of Representatives of the United States Congress while simultaneously receiving his salary from Stanford. He spent so little time on the Stanford campus that some people started to get seriously upset. Critics charged that he was exploiting Stanford’s flexibility, while advocates argued that he was increasing the visibility of Stanford and thus enhancing its reputation. Most professors don’t grade papers, and leave it to the Teaching Assistants. This is like writing code without a computer in front of you, and never bothering to run the program on ANY computer. How do you know if your program works? How do the professors know if their teaching is any good? How many of Stanford’s Nobel Prize winning faculty attended Stanford as an undergraduate? I don’t think a single one.</p>
<p>Most of the techie-Teaching Assistants didn’t go to Stanford either. I had guys from Purdue, UCLA, Dartmouth, Amherst, U. of Maryland, U. of Texas, and of course, the ubiquitous University of California at Berkeley (UC Berkeley). Several profs got their undergrad degrees from Berkeley. </p>
<p>The professors always view themselves as RESEARCHERS first, and teachers a distant third or fourth – if at all. If you look at the Stanford’s “Courses and Degrees”, which is a catalog that lists the courses being offered for a particular school year, you will see that many classes are taught by “Staff”. No, “Staff” is not the name of a professor, but a euphemism for “somebody who might be associated somehow to our department, such as a graduate student, and who may or may not have ever taught a class before, and who may or may not have any training in how to teach.” Many of my classes were taught by Staff. I recently found out that the Staff instructor for an important core class, spanning two-quarters (20 weeks), had not even earned a Master’s degree at the time he was teaching! He was a graduate student who only had a Bachelor’s degree. He had practically zero teaching experience, and it showed. The poor quality of that class wasn’t just my imagination, as that class has since been discontinued and is no longer offered, and that guy doesn’t teach anymore anywhere in the world. But such vindication is small consolation. It was a waste of money and time that can never be recovered. Other core classes have even been taught by currently-matriculated UNDER-graduates. It amazes me that Stanford gets away with it, especially when most HIGH SCHOOLS require that their teachers have a master’s degree and have passed state licensing exams. </p>
<p>In fact, some classes are so bad that Stanford undergraduates actually take courses at the nearby De Anza Community College and Foothill Community College. That’s right: Community Colleges. Don’t laugh – if you read the book on the history of the Apple Macintosh, “Insanely Great”, you’ll find that the hardware engineer attended one of those community colleges (I don’t remember which). And in my Freshman year, I knew a political science major who transferred from a California junior college into Stanford. As an out-of-stater, I was shocked, although I have learned that California’s junior colleges have a higher standard than the rest of the nation. Nevertheless, it makes you wonder: Why am I paying so much money? </p>
<p>“Sophomore Slump” occurs after the euphoria of Frosh year. You enter as a sophomore and realize “the honeymoon is over”, i.e. that your professors aren’t necessarily gifted in communicating their knowledge (one time literally a guy “taught” numerical analysis on computers by reading from a textbook!), and that the classes are bloated with too many students (I never had less than 50 in a class, so forget the 7:1 student teacher ratio published in US News and World Report’s annual college survey). </p>
<p>Years after I graduated, ex-president Gerhard Casper – being a great guy who experienced similar problems during his undergraduate years in Germany – tried to rectify the problem by creating Freshmen and Sophomore Seminars, to encourage faculty-student interaction and small class sizes. But the number of open slots for students is extremely limited, and most professors don’t participate. Thus the vast majority of undergraduates miss out with one-on-one faculty contact, even though 100% of the student body pays the full $30,000/year tuition. And some of the seminars are of questionable quality. Nobel Prize winning physicist, Doug Osheroff (BS Caltech, PhD Cornell) taught a freshman seminar in…amateur photography. What a joke! Talk about taking advantage of the system.</p>
<p>And don’t get me started on the undergraduate “advising system”, which is also a joke! Currently 78% of the faculty do NOT participate in advising undergrads. Many of the remaining advisers are upperclassmen trying to pad their resumes, or graduate students who are alumni of other universities and who are also trying to pad their resumes . You will not get good advice from these people, because they do not really have a track record to demonstrate the validity of their advice. It is the “blind leading the blind.” My own experience was a nightmare. Once I had declared my major, I chose a particular faculty member to be my adviser; he was the only guy in my field of interest. When I went to get my study list signed by him, he flatly refused, saying “I don’t advise undergraduates.” I was furious, but what could I do? I ended up signing the remainder of my study lists on my own. </p>
<p>How do Stanford’s engineering students fare when pitted against other students in competition? Not well. “NATCAR” is a contest for California electrical engineering students, in which radio controlled cars race around a track. Look at the results and search for the Stanford name: [Race</a> Results](<a href=“UC Davis NATCAR”>UC Davis NATCAR).
As you can see, Stanford placed 10th in 2001, but is otherwise a no-show. In at least one of the years, the Stanford team tried-- but failed – to get a car running. It looks like they have now simply abandoned the idea of entering. </p>
<p>Stanford’s marketing department has used deceptive tactics to imply that Stanford has produced successful people. Look beneath the superficialities, and you’ll find that the overwhelming majority did not attend Stanford as an undergraduate, and sometimes, not even as a graduate student. All of the following people have been used in Stanford marketing literature and press releases: </p>
<p>-Donald Knuth did not attend Stanford for his undergraduate degree; he went to Case Institute of Technology (Case Western Reserve). His PhD is from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). </p>
<p>-The founder of MIPS, John Hennessey, did not attend Stanford for his undergraduate degree. His alma mater is Villanova University. He got his graduate degrees at State University of New York, Stonybrook. Take a look at the Senior Management and the Board of Directors at MIPS (<a href=“http://www.mips.com)%5B/url%5D”>www.mips.com)</a>. Not a single one received a degree from the undergraduate school of engineering at Stanford, even though MIPS is only 15 minutes away from the Stanford campus! Yet Hennessey was a provost for the school of engineering and is currently the president of Stanford! Does he know something you don’t? </p>
<p>-The inventor of the mouse, Doug Engelbart, did not attend Stanford for his undergraduate degree. Engelbart picked up a degree in electrical engineering from Oregon State, and a Bachelor of Engineering and PhD from UC Berkeley. </p>
<p>-The founders of Sun Microsystems did not attend Stanford for their undergraduate degrees. Vinod Khosla went to the Indian Institute of Technology and picked up his masters at Carnegie Mellon, Bill Joy went to U. of Michigan and picked up a Master’s at UC Berkeley (in addition to inventing the sockets protocol for the Berkeley System Distribution of UNIX), Andy Bechtolsheim got his undergraduate training in Germany and got an MS from Carnegie-Mellon, and Scott McNealy went to Harvard. </p>
<p>-The founders of Silicon Graphics did not attend Stanford for their undergraduate degree. Jim Clark attended a college in New Orleans, Louisiana, and picked up his PhD from the University of Utah. Marc Hannah went to U. of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. Charles Rhodes picked up his BS, MS, and PhD’s from Purdue University. Kurt Akeley got his undergraduate degree from U. of Delaware. </p>
<p>-The founders of Cisco System did not attend Stanford for their undergraduate degree. Len Bosack got his BSEE from U. of Pennsylvania. Sandra Lerner got her BA in Political Science from California State in Chico. </p>
<p>-The founders of Google did not attend Stanford for their undergraduate degrees. Larry Page went to U. of Michigan. Sergey Brin’s alma mater is U. of Maryland. </p>
<p>-The founder of defunct VA-Linux and the fully functional Sourceforge did not attend Stanford for his undergraduate degree. Larry Augustin went to U. of Notre Dame. </p>
<p>-The founders of Apple Computer did not attend Stanford for their undergraduate degrees. Steve Jobs attended (and dropped out of) Reed College. Steve Wozniak received his BSEE from UC Berkeley. </p>
<p>-The co-inventor of the transistor, William Shockley, did not attend Stanford for his undergraduate degree. His alma mater is Caltech, and he got his PhD from MIT. But he grew up in Palo Alto, California (the town that surrounds Stanford University), and moved back to found one of the first transistor companies that would spawn off into the half-a-dozen companies that put the “silicon” in “Silicon Valley”. (The founders of Intel didn’t attend Stanford either.) </p>
<p>-The founders of EBay did not attend Stanford for their undergraduate degrees. Pierre Omidyar went to Tufts and transferred to UC Berkeley. After founding EBay, he gave $10 million to Tufts. Jeff Skoll attended the University of Toronto. </p>
<p>-The founders of Microsoft did not attend Stanford for their undergraduate degrees. Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard. Paul Allen graduated from the University of Washington in Seattle. The reason I bring this up is that the two nevertheless have their names on two buildings on the Stanford campus. The Gates Building houses the entire Computer Science Department. I wonder why Stanford needed to solicit their funds? Don’t they have scores of successful alumni who could have donated the money? It’s a rhetorical question, of course. Many of the buildings on campus were funded by non-alumni, including the massive Green Library and Green Earth Sciences building, Stern Hall, the Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for the Visual Arts (which was renamed from the Leland Stanford Jr. Memorial Art Museum), and others. Non alumnus and Silicon Graphics/Netscape founder Jim Clark recently caused a furor when he decided to stop funding the building of the Clark Biological Sciences building for Stanford’s new department fusing biology and engineering. Explaining his decision in a published letter to the New York Times, Clark made it unequivocally clear that he gave the money for the building because he expected a return on his investment, and not out of love or loyalty to Stanford. </p>
<p>-Finally, you’ve no doubt read in “Burn Rate” that Yahoo! was started by a couple of undergrads in their dorm room. Unfortunately, that’s not true. The majority shareholder, David Filo, attended Tulane University as an undergraduate. He met up with another GRADUATE student Jerry Yang (who DID attend Stanford as an undergrad) at Stanford in Kyoto, Japan – surprising to me, because I always thought the world wide Stanford centers were reserved for undergraduates.( But with over 900 electrical engineering GRADUATE students enrolled, versus maybe about 80 electrical engineering undergrads, it’s clear that that the graduate students have the upper hand.) </p>
<p>I could go on and on. Intel. National Semiconductor. Texas Instruments (which manufactures the chips for Sun.) None of these were founded by undergraduate alumni, and Stanford should not try to take credit and inflate its own resume based on the successes of non-alumni.</p>
<p>StanfordAlum, very well said. </p>
<p>When I was doing my own research and making my own decisions, I wanted to go to stanford but decided not to apply (I had no letters of rec). I am now at Cal. I discovered that Stanford is probably a better place to go for Grad school, since most of the famous Stanford Alum went their for either business school or graduate engineering.</p>
<p>tomtom6: learn to recognize jokes on an internet forum that is obviously biased towards one school.</p>
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<p>And what about the Stanford students who bash Berkeley? Out to defend it then too?</p>
<p>Really, it’s a song. A playful song. Get over it.</p>
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<p>That still makes no sense. I’m not generalizing if I qualify it with “some”–I am saying only some students think that; and they do. If I said “most” or “all,” that’d be a generalization. Really, this is basic…</p>
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<p>I didn’t say they were.</p>
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<p>Um, no, it wouldn’t. That stuff goes on in the Stanford forum all the time. Nobody takes it seriously…</p>
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<p>Dude, honestly–this has been asked before, and the general consensus is: it’s fun to have a rival. That’s why schools have rivals. It’s fun to poke fun at one another, but it’s not really serious like you’re making it out to be…</p>
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<p>I didn’t say they didn’t. I said they do it seldomly. And in the case of this thread, it’s complete jesting.</p>
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<p>Er, no, you’re really not supposed to consider the “context of his intentions” in a debate; that’s a pretty standard rule. You question the arguments themselves. It’s the logical thing to do, y’know.</p>
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<p>An ad hominem attack, in this case, would be me attempting to invalidate your claims by saying you’re elitist. I have not. I have simply stated a fact that you seem elitist. The end.</p>
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<p>Um, you told them to grow up.</p>
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<p>Er, plenty of reasons were given why Berkeley is awesome. For contrast, Stanford is brought in.</p>
<p>Really, tomtom6, you’re fighting a losing battle. Give it up–this is all a joke. (I don’t even know why you’re posting in this forum/thread…)</p>
<p>This discussion can be over.</p>
<p>As the one who started this thread, i say that the bickering should really stop. I don’t feel like scrolling past HUGE posts regarding two people who are bickering with each other.</p>
<p>I don’t think anyone reads any of those posts so why are you guys posting them anyways?</p>
<p>stick to your informative posts kyledavid. i actually enjoyed reading those not the debate posts.
tomtom6…i hope you don’t reply again to kyledavid’s last remarks.</p>
<p>anyways, i have a question. I’m getting really scared about the so called grade deflation at Cal. Do you think this will put me at a disadvantage when I apply to graduate school? Or will the graduate schools recognize how Cal grades?</p>
<p>Any thoughts?</p>