<p>"When UC Berkeley's top graduating senior Josh Biddle walks the stage to receive his diploma this Sunday, he will be capping off a saga that has taken him through the jungles of Latin America and the classrooms of community college.</p>
<p>The 28-year-old integrative biology major with a 4.0 GPA will be recognized as the top graduating senior when he receives the University Medal and $2,500 at Sunday's Commencement Convocation ceremony. Biddle bested four competitors for the title and is the first community college transfer student to win the award since it was established over 139 years ago in 1871".</p>
<p>lol dont trip, guys. i went up to berkeley and asked all my friends (and their friends) what they thought of transfers, and they said that the only people who hated on transfers were the ones with crappy gpas.</p>
<p>Transfer students are subpar to the students that got in as freshman. Let’s be realistic here. There are some legitimately dumb people that make it into Berkeley as transfers that should not be there. We all remember our high school, and the quality of the kids who went straight to Berkeley.</p>
<p>I mean, on the whole, if you made all the transfer students and all the freshman admits take the SAT, the freshman would dominate us transfers.</p>
<p>At the end of the day, however. It’s all about graduate school.</p>
<p>We’re evaluated on different standards, so we’ll never REALLY know the difference… because I know some unintelligent folks from my high school that got into Cal with a 1400/2400 on their SAT. X_X</p>
<p>I just hope not everyone at Cal is as narcissistic and…opposite of humble…as those the alleged Cal freshman admits in the comments thread are.</p>
<p>i had a higher sat score than everyone else who got in from my high school as a freshmen except 1 w/o studying at all…it was gpa that killed me XD lol, and many freshmen who get in are just as “subpar” as the “subpar” transfers who get in…</p>
<p>rileyjohn, i’m NOT saying that transfers are always as qualified as freshman admits. cause i know they’re not. however, i am sure that there are people like me (who went to a ccc by choice) even though they were qualified for freshman admissions. </p>
<p>once again, nearly everyone at cal doesn’t give a rat’s ass about whether ur a transfer or a freshman admit.</p>
<p>I agree. There are just as many freshmen who ‘don’t deserve’ to be there as there are transfers. But what bothers me is when people group all transfers the same. There are millions of reasons (not just poor academic standing in HS) why people choose CC over a 4-year. I had a near perfect score on my SAT and had a lot of options as a HS senior, too, but I chose CC. And I know more than two handfuls of kids who attend CC by choice because they didn’t want to settle.</p>
<p>How many times have you guys gotten into the “transfers are inferior” argument? This is maladaptive if anything. Just do well and move on, shesh.</p>
<p>It’s a lot easier to BS the high school process. Even the toughest AP high school classes are a joke (I believe the program should be abolished entirely), and the purpose of the SAT is completely defeated when you study for it (which is what most people with 2xxx scores do). </p>
<p>For a spoiled brat teenager with no responsibilities to get straight As in HS AP precalc, chem, english? Compared to college calc and physics with professors that tend to have hefty research backgrounds? </p>
<p>Especially in the engineering realm, I think the suggestion is absurd. The quality of physics and calculus teachers I’ve met at the CCCs up here in NorCal destroys anything I ever saw in a high school. </p>
<p>If anything, UCB isn’t giving these medals out due to prejudice for 4 year students.</p>
<p>Sure some people are dummer as transfers…but definitely not all. I can assure you, my SAT score beats a lot of freshman’s.
And I don’t know what you’re talking about with dumb people getting into Berkeley as transfers. maybe that’s true of SD or UCD or UCSB or something, but not berkeley. You must not have many friends like I do, who, with 3.8+ GPAs were actually turned down by berkeley.</p>
<p>@wwlink…actually, most of my ap classes were significantly more rigorous than the CCC courses i took with a few exceptions such as AP physics which had been a joke and AP chemistry (though the ap chem i had was still harder than the horrible chem classes i got at ccc, supposedly the other chem teachers on the ccc campus are significantly better than the ones i got lol), otherwise, i found ap calc a/b (this was the same as the calc i took at ccc, though this is probably because i ended up learning it from my ap calc teacher’s best friend/roommate/coinstructor at the college for over 30 years! haha), ap us gov, ap us history, ap biology to be SIGNIFICANTLY harder than the ccc courses i ended up taking to the point where i didn’t even buy textbooks for these classes at the ccc and still ended up with at least the 3rd highest grade in the classes based off of what i remembered from the ap’s a year or two ago…</p>
<p>oh, and not sure what to say about ap eng lit lol, i tend to feel eng is bs as a subject in general…</p>
<p>transfers to UCB are generally subpar. Same with UCLA.</p>
<p>guess why…
it’s way more relaxed as far as getting in.
That said once you’re there it won’t really matter much and most people won’t know you’re a transfer unless they talk to you a fair bit.</p>
<p>
I half assed HS and college.
I’d have argued that there is A LOT more work in HS.
that said not doing homework is what usually killed me since I am a good test taker. I’ve put minimal effort into school throughout and as it stands I don’t know what was harder, AP European History in HS or Honors Calc 1+2 in college.</p>
<p>AP Bio was a lot harder than Intro to bio, I took intro to bio because I wanted a GPA booster. Bio 100 was basically the non- AP version of bio with a few small things lobbed on.</p>
<p>most of my CC classes I didn’t even buy textbooks for. I’d say college econ was harder but not by much, I still slept in class, didn’t do HW and still got an A.</p>
<p>keep in mind I’m trying to make my judgements as though I didn’t take the AP version of the course. Taking the AP version of the course just made it a complete breeze.</p>
<p>Honors English my freshman and sophomore years of HS was harder than college english, didn’t take AP eng due to a lack of giving an Eff and scheduling conflicts.</p>