<p>I know I would have gone to Stanford if I had gotten in at the time. Prestige, supposedly “better” resources.</p>
<p>But quite honestly, the low cost, location, people, resources at Berkeley make me feel damn relieved that I did not get in.</p>
<p>Yeah I really hope that my mind changes about Berkeley…
in the mean time, check out crappyschool.com and stanfordrejects.com</p>
<p>^yeah nobody cares. If you come in to Berkeley with that attitude, you’re going to end up like batman or anonymousername. Otherwise, you will appreciate Berkeley and end up being very happy here. Get some Berkeley pride please.</p>
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<p>That just means that you haven’t learned quite enough. There are quite a few people who have gotten into grad schools with low GPAs (provided they do a lot of research). Similarly, you don’t need much money to start a business – you just need to be good enough to get venture capitalists aboard.</p>
<p>I know a person who goes to UC Riverside for undergrad and excelled there (straight As and excellent research awards)…now that person is accepted to Stanford, Berkeley, and MIT for graduate engineering programs and chooses to stay at UC Riverside with full scholarship.</p>
<p>My point is that if you get into Berkeley, there really isn’t anything to worry about in terms of academics as long as you do well. In fact, it is harder to get a 4.0 at Berkeley than at Stanford, and being at the top at Berkeley will distinguish you among the tens of thousands of people as compared to a few thousands if you get the same GPA at Stanford.</p>
<p>I’m an international student, and I can tell you that Berkeley is considered to be just as good as Stanford, if not better by some. So, be proud you made it into either one.</p>
<p>I know a person who goes to UC Riverside for undergrad and excelled there (straight As and excellent research awards)…now that person is accepted to Stanford, Berkeley, and MIT for graduate engineering programs and chooses to stay at UC Riverside with full scholarship.</p>
<p>My point is that if you get into Berkeley, there really isn’t anything to worry about in terms of academics as long as you do well. In fact, it is harder to get a 4.0 at Berkeley than at Stanford, and being at the top at Berkeley will distinguish you among the tens of thousands of people as compared to a few thousands if you get the same GPA at Stanford.</p>
<p>I’m an international student, and I can tell you that Berkeley is considered to be just as good as Stanford, if not better by some. So, be proud you made it into either one.</p>
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<p>I’m not sure if this story is supposed to be surprising. If you’re talking about a PhD engineering program, a full scholarship + stipend can probably be assumed, especially at the top schools. I have yet to meet a single engineering PhD student at MIT, Stanford, or Berkeley who wasn’t offered a full scholarship + stipend. (Note, they may have turned it down because they may have been independently wealthy and didn’t want to fulfill the extra teaching or research requirements attached to the stipend, but they were nevertheless offered the stipend.) </p>
<p>If we’re talking about a master’s program, one well-worn tactic is to enter a school such as MIT or Stanford on a full PhD stipend and then leave with just a master’s. Many PhD students won’t finish, either because of loss of interest in research, failing their qualification exams, or because they found the career opportunity they want without needing to finish. Most famously, Sergey Brin and Larry Page left Stanford with just master’s in order to found Google, and they surely have no regrets. But they were nonetheless paid scholarship + stipend while students. </p>
<p>Hence, I have to wonder about the salience of the story. If the person simply wanted to stay at Riverside for family reasons or research interests, then that would be understandable. But if it was because the other schools would not provide funding, then that sounds suspicious. Either the person was not actually admitted to those other schools at all, or was admitted only to the unfunded master’s programs, which is relatively easy to do. </p>
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<p>That presumes that outsiders actually know and care about the grading differences between the different schools. Sadly, neither seems to be true. For example, if the adcoms for the top law and med schools knew about Berkeley’s harsher grading policies, then you would expect them to admit Berkeley students with lower GPA’s relative to the average. On the contrary, they usually demand higher GPA’s. This holds even for Berkeley’s own graduate programs!. For example, in 2009, the average Berkeley undergrad who was admitted to the Berkeley School of Law sported a 3.9 GPA - far higher than the average admitted Berkeley Law student. One would think that if any law school would know and care about Berkeley’s harsher grading scheme, it would be Berkeley’s own law school. The facts belie that notion. Also note, UCLA Law School isn’t any better, also admitting only Berkeley undergrads with significantly higher GPA’s than the average. </p>
<p><a href=“https://career.berkeley.edu/Law/LawStats.stm[/url]”>https://career.berkeley.edu/Law/LawStats.stm</a></p>
<p>The reality is that numerous outside parties demand top grades. If you don’t have them - perhaps because you chose a tough school or a tough major - they don’t care why. All they’ll see is that you lack top grades. Sad but true.</p>
<p>OP you’d get more accurate results for this question if you posed it in the College Search & Selection forum.</p>
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<p>The days when VC’s would provide funding on nothing but an idea are a decade long gone. The VC industry has been on a long losing streak - suffering from negative returns for several years now - and as a result, only working technologies will be funded. Hence, you require enough personal funds to turn your idea into at least a working prototype. </p>
<p>VC is also, for better or worse, still a deeply elitist business, where if you don’t have a Harvard, MIT, or Stanford pedigree, you will it difficult to be granted a meeting. Berkeley unfortunately still lacks strong connections to the VC industry. </p>
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<p>A lot of strong research, that is. If you were simply cleaning test tubes or other gut work, that’s not going to help you win admission to grad school. Strong research will indeed help, but then that begs the question of how you were able to do strong research yet not earn top grades.</p>
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<p>So freaking true!!</p>
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<p>Well, grades are also a huge function of how much of your energy you sink into them. A top researcher with great potential may be able to get great results in classes, but may sacrifice those a decent extent to get research experience. This can pay off. A <em>bad</em> GPA tends to indicate a real issue. But indeed, I find in most cases, it’s unlikely that someone with a shot at graduate schools with decently strong people in their areas of interests would have this issue - they’d have to be at the level of being able to achieve good grades at Berkeley too.</p>
<p>Also, I doubt that in many fields (toughies), it’s much easier to get <em>top</em> results at a school with overall less grade deflation.</p>
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<p>This is probably mostly applicable to the professional schools. I think I stand by the fact that someone wanting to do research in the future and attend grad school as opposed to professional school would be at an advantage, and really no disadvantage at Berkeley.</p>
<p>berkeley because people who go to stanford are a bunch of wieners</p>
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<p>That’s because of the ample amount of research opportunities at Berkeley and not because of the Berkeley “name,” right?</p>
<p>^^ Both in a sense. Berkeley as a research university is on par with the best in the world, and whatever professional schools do, graduate schools will care. Graduate schools are in a way run by academia, which is an incredibly elitist thing and the big name scholars trust each other a lot.</p>
<p>I was accepted to both and after visiting the two schools and pouring a lot of thought and research into it I picked Berkeley. Money was a factor, but definitely not my top reason. After talking to an advisor at Stanford Law (which is one of a few schools I’m considering for law school) I was told that going to Stanford for your undergrad may actually hurt your chances for acceptance as they look for a class filled with variety, so the spots they give to the massive volume of Stanford grads that apply are exponentially more competitive than those going to transfer grads. I also strongly prefer to be on semesters instead of quarters, it’s less stress and more time to absorb the material in my opinion. On top of that, I honestly just didn’t like the feel of the campus. At all. I know that’s not a quantifiable difference or anything you could ever hope to prove, but there’s something to be said for it. You’re gonna spend two or more years there, you have to like the place.
Also… “Fear the Tree”…? Really? I can’t go to a school if I can’t wear the shirts and keep a straight face. ;)</p>
<p>This thread is making me so much happier to be coming to Cal. :)</p>
<p>Hahaha… “Fear the Tree” Is that really a shirt?? Anyhow, my son wouldn’t even apply to Stanford. He didn’t like the feel of the campus at all. To be honest, he hated it. I’m not sure why really. He just didn’t like the vibe. He loved Berkeley - the campus, the diversity, the city, the education he would get, everything. It was his first choice school and that is where he will be going in the fall.</p>
<p>@momfirst3: Yes it’s really a shirt! It cracked me up! I flew all over the country to look at all the schools I got accepted to, and I was going in the gift shops at each picking up a T-shirt and a shot glass. When I got to Stanford’s “Fear the Tree” shirts were prominantly displayed. They don’t have an actual mascot apparently, the color Cardinal Red is their “official” mascot. But apparently the tree is a secondary. And yes, I’m with your son. There was this really offputting vibe at that campus. Like I said, I just hated the feel.</p>
<p>hahaha… I still can’t believe that is an actual shirt! I’ve got to tell my son that… Glad you decided to go to Berkeley. Go Bears!</p>