<p>despite my excellent ECs, grades, and SAT scores, stanford denied me admissions for ED. alot of good applicants were :/</p>
<p>it might be because im asian. blah. but if the other ivys reject me, im off to berkeley… </p>
<p>imma explore my inner hippiness</p>
<p>also, good luck to all the stanford hopefuls! :D</p>
<p>“I think the reason behind Berkeley’s greater number of Nobel Laureates and what not is based more so on the size. With 25,000 undergrads rather than 4,000, you’d undoubtedly have more ‘successes.’”</p>
<p>Xombie is on the right track. Size alone does not explain Nobel Laureates, however, it is something that needs to be accounted for. If you really want to see which university is better at producing Nobel Laureates you need to calculate the probability that a person is a Nobel Laureate given that they went to Stanford and compare that to the probability that a person is a Nobel Laureate given that they went to Cal. I haven’t done the calculation so I don’t know which is better at it.</p>
<p>Here is why you need to control for size. Imagine that Ohio State offers an equivalent education to Harvard and no longer gives preference to in state. High school students also recognize that it is equal to Harvard. The cross admit yield rate is 50/50. Obviously the average Harvard student will still be better than the average Ohio student since Harvard will only accept people from the top of the pool while Ohio will need to go further down fill its class, but lets just incorrectly assume that the student bodies are equal too since I can still make my point without accounting for this.</p>
<p>If this were the case it would be expected that Ohio has more Nobel Laureates by several orders of magnitude than Harvard, but this does not prove Harvard’s dominance over Ohio, it is just a function of the size difference.</p>
<p>“Ohio State has 60,000+ undergrads and only 2 Nobel Laureates. Population is clearly not everything.”</p>
<p>All this post proved was how much Ohio sucks.</p>
<p>Yes, I know that hell would freeze over before Ohio is considered equal to Harvard, but I am sure you can see my point.</p>
<p>Is asian75 really an adcom!? You’ve got to be freakin kidding me.</p>
<p>Wouldn’t CC verify his identity and give him a little title under his name if he were an adcom?</p>
<p>Everyone says that undergrad isn’t as big a deal as grad, more of an ego boost 
Don’t worry, be happy now ooooo ooooo</p>
<p>He’s not an adcom!!! ^ you are right undergrad isn’t important, even when people say they aren’t applying to top 10 schools for prestige you know they are. Yes these schools are good and are at the top in research, professors, resources …but I think if they weren’t so high up on the rankings list MUCH less people would apply.</p>
<p>Undergrad is really just a time to explore one’s interest, meet new people, expereience new ideas, become indedpendent, think for oneself, and have some great memories to look back on. You can get this at any college you go to and I ALWAYS shrugged this off before but “FIT does matter”. Its the best school that matches what you need in a school and sometimes it may not be stanford or HYPMC. Can you honestly get that much a better learning expereince at stan instead of berk? maybe a little. I hope everyone at least goes to a school where they are happy for the next four years. I know people who go to harvard and say that the competition and all nighters are murder!!!</p>
<p>To be fair Berkeley would be way harder than Stanford. Stanford and HYPMC have huge grade inflation.</p>
<p>The Nobel #'s at Cal are because of Ernest. He was an amazing person and a true genius. A scientists scientist. And in WWII all the top scientific minds in the country rallied around him to develop radar and then many other war-tech projects. After the war most wanted to be with him so they left their universities and followed Ernest to Berkeley. Keep in mind that many of the Nobel winners from Cal are dead. And have been for a long time.</p>
<p>And Ernest Lawrence is a great ad for St. Olaf College not Cal if undergrad education is the discussion.</p>
<p>“To be fair Berkeley would be way harder than Stanford. Stanford and HYPMC have huge grade inflation.”</p>
<p>Is HYPMC Harvard Yale Princeton MIT Caltech?
If so, you must be crazy if you believe that MIT or Caltech have any sort of grade inflation. I’ve definitely heard of the insane inflation at stanford at harvard but I have heard no such thing at Princeton (no clue for yale).</p>
<p>HYMPC is columbia for the last one.</p>
<p>How hard a school is and the amount of grade inflation doesn’t really correlate ( in my opinion). My toughest class is AP Bio and I’ve worked my butt off with 2-3 hrs of homework every night. off course the class is curved since the highest grade is like an 85%. So there’s grade inflation but its still the hardest class I’ve taken in my life. </p>
<p>Some classes may be harder at berk than stanford but vice versa is true too. berkely might not be harder you just get lower grades</p>
<p>I agree with you collegestress16, however, receiving lower grades is obviously unfavorable. Berkeley does not have the grade inflation that Harvard and Stanford do, so competition is fierce. At Cal, in some classes for premeds, I know that a certain number of A’s, B’s and C’s, etc are predetermined and distributed. That being said, competition, at least for the premeds, is extreme. </p>
<p>Also, jimmyeatworld is right. Out-of-staters seem to look upon Cal more favorably and in higher regard than in-staters.</p>