<p>Fine, I'll respond to Gutrade's views seriously, although it is hard to take some punk, naive high school kid's views on college seriously........</p>
<p>"The very fact that you guys believe the difference in caliber between Stanford and Berkeley is so minute speaks volumes of the hyperinflated sense of self that plagues the Berkeley student body."</p>
<p>-No, the "difference" between Berkeley and Stanford is a product of numerous rankings that place Berkeley's undergraduate programs up at the top (USnews, Gourman reports, etc)</p>
<p>"Quite frankly, I am astounded that you guys think Berkeley is up to par with the likes of Stanford, Yale, and MIT. Didn't that Berkeley admissions offer to the doofus 900 SAT scoring student in the back of your class open your eyes to the HUGE divide between the mediocrity of Berkeley and the excellence of Stanford?"</p>
<p>-I looked at your previous posts, YOU'RE FROM NEW JERSEY....WHAT THE F#CK DO YOU KNOW ABOUT WHO GETS ADMITTED TO BERKELEY. The lowest SAT among my friends who are not athletes/under-represented minorities is 1290. And as I said before in my previous post, the only Yalie I know is a white guy with a 1200 in his SATs. Oh, and don't forget our brilliant president. </p>
<p>"To those of you who already go to Cal, didn't your run-ins with those dumb, lazy, incompetents who never lift a finger make you wonder if Berkeley is actually a university and not some glorified night school?"</p>
<p>-Yeah, i've met idiots at Berkeley, and I've met idiots from Harvard and Stanford as well. And that aforementioned Yalie with 1200 on his SATs says "There's nothing special about Yale." A Guy with 1200 on his SATs can say that about Yale??? I remember watching the news about some Yale transfer who was getting kicked out because he forged his junior college transcripts/ letters of rec to get into yale...he got kicked out a month before graduation and he had a B average at Yale... while he had something like a 2.4 GPA at junior college. HUH????? </p>
<p>"Whether or not you choose you answer those questions"</p>
<p>-Is that a deep philosophical statement or Yale-grammar?</p>
<p>"I think it is positively undeniable that there are countless aspects of Berkleley that make you think twice about calling it a first-class school. Aside from the large lecture halls, unremarkable student body, poor resources, and the lack of undergraduate focus"</p>
<p>-large lecture hall.....in this day and age of advanced audio/visual equipment, do you think it matters? There are large classes at every major school, and many lectures are even webcast.
-Unremarkable student body.....There are plenty of smart kids at Berkeley, by sheer numbers, much more than there are at Yale, that's for sure. If we're talking engineers or physical science majors, Berkeley trumps Yale....hard. So get over it. More Berkeley undergrads go on to get PhDs than undergrads from any other institution in the US. Chances are, many of your TAs and profs are Berkeley alumni.
-poor resources.....what does that mean, not having an escalator that takes me from building to building? Like I said before, you're a naive highschool kid.
-lack of undergrad focus.....the biggest b<em>ll</em>*** of alll. I have so much attention that it's actually a pain in the ass to have to meet wth my faculty/major advisors all the time....at least in the college of chem. As an undergrad, if you want attention, you SEEK attention. That's true in every college that acknowledges that its students are fully-functioning adults in society. So maybe you were talking about academic focus on undergrads......another b<em>ll</em>***. In 3 years of Berkeley, I've had a grad student teach only one class that i've taken at Cal...it was a summer class, and he was the best math instructor i've EVER had. Most departments at Berkeley only let senior grad students teach....As a side note, I had/have 2 profs team-teaching my upper-div physical chem class, BOTH semesters. </p>
<p>"there is also the problem of a rabid jealously/inferiority complex that is poisoning the student body."</p>
<p>-The only jealousy/inferiority complex is from you. Looking at your post history, somewhere between a third to a half of your posts regard Berkeley. That's strange considering you're some punk New Jersey kid who didn't even apply to Berkeley....and was rejected from Stanford</p>
<p>"To constantly hate on Stanford and make-believe that there is an academic rivalry between Berkeley and the school across the Bay is not only laugh out loud funny, but is also harmful to the school in general. Berkeley students are deluding themselves about the quality of education they are recieving and are hence preventing any significant improvements in the undergrad system from ever occuring."</p>
<p>-It's a rivalry, twit, not a hatred. It's a tradition that's been going on for over a 100 years. I already answered the academic part.</p>
<p>"After all, one can think that "If my school competing with the likes of Stanford, then things here are doing pretty good." </p>
<p>-And that's why Virginia Tech has a rivalry with UVA right? Your opinions are garbage, and you lack knowledge of Stanford/Cal's history.</p>
<p>"In reality, however, I feel like the situation is not unlike the rivalry between the United States and the old Soviet Union. Sure on the surface it may seem like the Soviet Union is somewhat decent, but lo and behold their entire infrastructure was crumbling apart before their very eyes, and their "rivalry" with the United States only served to bankrupt their already wheezing economy. In the end, the Soviet Union fell...and fell HARD. If only they paid more attention to domestic issues rather than trying to mask all their troubles behind the facade of a "rivalry" did they have a chance to survive. The only difference here is that Berkeley does not even have the prestige of the former Soviet Union. At least the Soviet Union had the APPEARANCE of a real head-to-head rivalry, but Berkeley doesn't even have THAT."</p>
<p>-I believe someone else responded to your odd analogy.</p>
<p>"Anyway, in the end I would encourage all you Berkeleyans to lay off the rivalry, stick that Stanford rejection letter in the back drawer, and get on with your lives. There's no need to over-compensate by pretending that your backup school is up to par with your dream school. Who cares if you didn't get in? There's always graduate school."</p>
<p>-I didn't apply to Stanford. Berkeley IS on par with Stanford, and yes, there is always graduate school. </p>
<p>-NOW, HERE'S AN EXCERPT FROM ONE OF GUTRADE'S PREVIOUS POSTS:</p>
<p>"You can get a good education anywhere you go......including state and community colleges. The only thing that sets schools like Stanford and Harvard apart from schools like Berkeley and Chico State is the prestige and recognition of going to the best school in the world vs going to a run-of-the-mill school. I'm sure the same mathematical concepts and works of literature are taught at all colleges in America. But a Harvard or Stanford diploma is just seen in a much different light than one from a regular school."</p>
<p>-Berkeley is ranked number 2 in the WORLD according to the London Times. SO YOU CONTRADICTED YOURSELF. Go to a forum at your level, where you won't get pimp-slapped. Try : <a href="http://www.network54.com/Forum/68552%5B/url%5D">http://www.network54.com/Forum/68552</a></p>