The New 2007 US News Top Colleges

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of California - Berkeley
121

<p>I believe it is overly harsh to suggest that people who do part of college, but do not graduate, have derived no benefit from the experience. Particularly at a large state school, many people have to leave for financial reasons, some of these may work at jobs for which they would not have been eligible without the courses they took in college. Some people return later to get degrees from the first college they attended or elsewhere. Some may step back and get associates degrees, in part using the courses they may have taken at the state university. </p>

<p>Many go to the state school precisely because it is cheaper, and in that respect you are looking at a different cohort of students than those who would attend a private university at the same academic level. State schools have broader mission, and they must serve a larger cross section of the state population. It is not fair to judge a state school by metrics developed for elite privates.</p>

122

<p>
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Research has shown that people who go through an emotional crisis during their teens are the ones who are MOST likely to NOT have an emotional crisis in college.

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<p>Please, read what I wrote. I did not say those that had experienced emotional crisis in high school should be excluded. Those that are emotionally fragile should be excluded. If you've experienced an emotional crisis, you probably aren't fragile anymore, because you know what it feels like.</p>

123

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[quote]
I'm not talking about the borderline cases. I'm talking about the OBVIOUS cases, where some sob story or desire to let in someone because of an ethnic/cultural reason leads to an admission to someone who more than likely would be better served by a less strenuous experience.

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<p>If sob stories or ethnicity or culture are getting students in to Berkeley, then we need to crack down on our admissions officers. It is not Berkeley's policy to admit based on ethnicity or gender or sob stories, unless they somehow demonstrate a student that will succeed at Berkeley. If there's an obvious case of a student being unprepared for college, I agree, Berkeley should not admit that student. But you somehow are under the impression we don't already do this.</p>

124

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We're not picking students which we know can't graduate. The students we pick we <em>think</em> will graduate (that else makes sense?). We can't know in advance. Now, if we took students with 500s on their SATs and 2.0 high school GPAs, then I would agree we should become more selective

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It would be lovely if we could tell definitively which students fall into this category. A college application can only fit so much information. We could certainly reduce our number of dropouts by picking better applicants, but wouldn't you agree our applicant pool is already pretty good? Is a 1300-1400 SAT score (in the old system) and top 10% of the class type of student not expected to be able to handle Berkeley? I know lots that do just fine. I know some won't, but should we exclude them all in order to weed those ones out?

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<p>Oh, it's a lot easier than you seem to think it is. Perhaps you don't appreciate the power of data-mining. Companies use statistical data mining techniques all the time to assess what insurance premiums you should pay, what sort of Internet advertisements are being shown to you or to optimize their supply chains. </p>

<p>I'll give you one very simple example. Berkeley can take all of its past data of the people who were admitted and then later dropped out, and then look examine statistical attributes of these students and then regress and correlate the data for trend analysis. For example, I strongly suspect that, after washing out obvious attributes such as high school GPA and test scores, one thing that the data mining exercise will find is that certain high schools seem to produce a disproportionate percentage of people who later flunk out. So then Berkeley would respond by simply admitting fewer people from that high school as, for whatever reason, that high school is not preparing its students properly for the rigors of Berkeley. </p>

<p>I can think of a wide range of other attributes that might cause a student to perform poorly at Berkeley. For example, not having taken certain classes (like AP Calculus) might mean a high fail rate in engineering. So that means that the School of Engineering should admit fewer people who never took AP Calculus. It could be geographic (i.e. maybe people from Fresno tend to flunk out of Berkeley a lot). It could be factors that have surprising correlations.</p>

<p>But the point is, it's not that hard to implement a statistical dynamic scoring system that assesses what attributes seem to contribute to failure. Then you admit fewer people who have these attributes so that you can admit more people who have attributes to contribute to success. So then it just becomes an optimization problem.</p>

<p>Trust me, it wouldn't be that hard or that expensive. Much of the software is available as free open-source packages. Hardware is cheap and getting cheaper all the time. Heck, you probably don't even need to get independent hardware, as the data mining package would only have to be run once a year (when admissions are being decided), so it could be run as a batch job on one of Berkeley's existing clusters. You can get some of the graduate CS students to code the project up. Berkeley grad CS is widely renowned for its database strength, so it wouldn't be that hard for those grad students to build. Have them build a simple datamart and then mine it for the relevant statistical parameters that will allow you to dynamically score your admissions.</p>

125

<p>Very well, if this is indeed feasible, I would support it completely. I believe we do attempt this already (for example, the past has shown poor high school students make poor college students--hence, we select based on SATs, GPAs, and AP scores), but you may be right. On the other hand, I would also deem it unnecessary for us to become more selective either, unless our statistical analysis shows that there simply aren't enough applicants that would be unlikely to drop out.</p>

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Much of the software is available as free open-source packages. Hardware is cheap and getting cheaper all the time.

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<p>It's not the costs of hardware or software that would be an issue. Hardware and software are both cheap. You are also correct we make great DBs (for example, Berkeley DB), but that doesn't matter. You have to hire people to enter the data from the applications in some machine-parseable manner. That takes a long, long time, especially if you want to train the system on past data. Guess what, someone's going to have to sit and enter data from all those paper admissions from the past. In the future, since we do it all electronically (or at least this is what I recall), this could be automated into the process (or at least to an extent), but the man hours necessary to enter in the data would be enormous.</p>

<p>Of course, while the students do enter their AP scores and GPAs and SAT scores on the applications, the university typically verifies in paper all of these statistics (which is why we have to go through the hassle of mailing all that crap in). That means the extent to which it could be automated despite being electronic is still limited.</p>

126

<p>Oh, I don't think it's THAT hard to operate. You could easily hire some work-study students at say, a rate of $15.00 per hour, which really only costs the office $7.50. Or, just get current students who work in the office as assistants to do it.</p>

<p>Actually, I am rather concerned about the graduation rate of 56% in 4 years. The ~30% who graduate in 5 or 6 years really should be reduced, as it is unnecessarily taking up resources from the university. It's horrible when compared to other top universities which have 90+%. And of course, those who never graduate at all, should really not have been admitted in the first place. This seems like a good time for me to shamelessly advertise the idea that Berkeley should become slightly more selective and start rejecting the bottom 10%. They are the ones who would most likely drop out. Of course not necessarily the bottom 10%, since we have better ways of trying to predict who would drop out which sakky has already described. These students would then attend their second choice, probably a school like UCSD, which is less rigorous, and they would have a higher chance of graduating. Then, UCSD readjusts its admissions, and rejects their weakest students who would go to yet a lower UC. This works well because UCR and UCM are currently UNDERenrolling. Ideally, this would increase selectivity at all UCs, increase graduation rates at all UCs, and increase strength of student body at all UCs.</p>

127

<p>Having a data-mining system that just churns out numbers and probabilities is inherently racist. It's no secret that non-whites and people from the lower end of the economic spectrum perform poorer than their rich, white peers. I don't need a data-mining program to tell me this. The end recommendation would ultimately be something like, "don't accept people from so and so neighborhood, because they disproportionately flunk out of Berkeley." Then, when you look at every single neighborhood recommended, you find out that those are neighborhoods that are predominantly populated by lower-income minorities. Hmmm, I wonder how good that would look in the headlines: "UC-Berkeley dramatically cuts acceptance rates for the poor and racial minorities in favor of richer, whiter students"</p>

<p>great proposal, sakky, I'm sure this is just the kind of thing that would get us ahead in the US News rankings</p>

128

<p>Forget all of you racist, classist, elitist people. Just come out and say it. Poor blacks and poor hispanics are screwing over UC-Berkeley by failing out, is that what you want to say???? It's not about predicting whose gonna fail out and whose gonna get straight As, it's about providing an education to the residents of the state. And a good education, damnit! Minorities and people from poorer backgrounds have had to deal with a crappy education system their whole lives, and it isnt fair that a bunch of elitist and privileged people like yourselves are trying to deny that from them!</p>

<p>I don't care if it takes someone 6 years to graduate from Berkeley, and quite frankly, I don't care if our ranking plummets in US News. The people who are accepted to UC-Berkeley deserve to be there. Numbers and figures don't tell the entire story, so you shouldn't be making value judgements about people whom you know nothing about. Don't think that people can't read between the lines. What you are recommending is just plain wrong. If you don't like it, you should have gone to Stanford, or USC, or any other private. Stop trying to turn Berkeley into something it isn't.</p>

129

<p>
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I'm not at MIT.

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<p>Well, maybe you're on vacation. But haven't you carried out some of your graduate studies at MIT?</p>

130

<p>Slimclic2001, don't you see what the REAL problem is? You talk about helping minorities? Well, presuming that my proposal really does start rejecting more minorities, it would only be rejecting those minorities who would have flunked out anyway. Exactly how does it help these students to bring them into Berkeley and then toss them right back out, which is exactly what is happening now? Are these students really being helped?</p>

<p>Let me put it to you this way. My friend who I have talked about a lot, who flunked out of Berkeley and ended up having to work at FedEx, is Hispanic. He got into Berkeley in the old days pre-Prop 209. Within 2 years of his admission to Berkeley, he was expelled. He freely admits (and I agree) that he would have been better off if he had just gone to an easier school. Going to Berkeley didn't make him better off, if actually made him WORSE off. That's because not only did he never get a degree from Berkeley, he also can't easily get a degree from another decent school, because no other decent school wants to allow to transfer in a student who flunked out of his prior school, not when there are other transfer students who didn't flunk out of their previous school. So basically, what that means is that, because he went to Berkeley, he can't get a degree from anywhere now. And certainly he can kiss goodbye any chances for any graduate school. What grad school wants to admit somebody who flunked out of undergrad? </p>

<p>So the point is, even if minorities do become the focal point of the issue (which I don't know if it would), how does the current situation really help minorities? Do you think they are really helped by being brought into Berkeley, only to flunk out? Wouldn't it be better if they just went to a school from which they could actually graduate from? My friend certainly believes so. He says all the time (and I agree) that it's better to graduate from San Jose State than to flunk out of Berkeley. Right now, he can't even graduate from San Jose State because he can't get in, because his tattered Berkeley academic record prevents him from doing so.</p>

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"UC-Berkeley dramatically cuts acceptance rates for the poor and racial minorities in favor of richer, whiter students" great proposal, sakky, I'm sure this is just the kind of thing that would get us ahead in the US News rankings

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<p>As far as the racial minorities thing is concerned, the drop with URM's already happened with the passage of Prop 209. And of course the BIGGEST surge in enrollments into Berkeley were not whites. It was, you guessed it, Asian-Americans. Berkeley was already a highly Asian school before 209, and is an even more Asian school now. Asians are minorities too, last time I checked. I suspect that there are not more total minorities at Berkeley than there were pre-209, when you include all the Asians. </p>

<p>"[In 2006] For the first time, more Asian-American students have been admitted to the University of California than any other racial group."</p>

<p><a href="http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cctimes/news/local/states/california/14385365.htm%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cctimes/news/local/states/california/14385365.htm&lt;/a> </p>

<p>But anyway, that's really neither here nor there. I don't know if my proposal will hut poor minorities. It might, it might not. It may well hit lazy rich white students, of which there are plenty of at Berkeley, and who I would like to get rid of. I don't know who it will hit. But see below. </p>

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The people who are accepted to UC-Berkeley deserve to be there. Numbers and figures don't tell the entire story, so you shouldn't be making value judgements about people whom you know nothing about.

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<p>Uh, don't you see that it's NOT ME that is making the value judgment. It is BERKELEY ITSELF that is making a "value judgment". Whenever Berkeley expels somebody, that's basically Berkeley making a "value judgment", or more specifically, a judgment that this person is not worthy of maintaining their student status. These "value judgments" are already taking place.</p>

<p>What I am proposing is that if these judgments are being made anyway, might as well move it up to the admissions step. Why not? If a person isn't going to make it at Berkeley, isn't it better for that person to not be admitted in the first place, so that that student can then go to another school where he actually can make it? </p>

<p>It's not "compassionate" to bring in students who aren't going to make it. That is actually FALSE COMPASSION. You're taking away their money, you're taking away their time, and (in many cases), taking away their self-confidence. Again, for a long time, my friend suffered from depression and despair because he flunked out of Berkeley and so for years he felt like a failure. He was ashamed to tell his family. He was ashamed to tell his friends. He was actually borderline suicidal for awhile. So wouldn't he have been better off if he had never been admitted at all? He thinks so. So do I. </p>

<p>If anything, I think my proposal is MORE compassionate to poor URM's, if they are indeed shown to be the ones that are affected by my proposal. After all, ANYTHING is better than what happened to my friend. I don't want what happened to him to happen to anybody.</p>

131

<p>
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You have to hire people to enter the data from the applications in some machine-parseable manner. That takes a long, long time, especially if you want to train the system on past data. Guess what, someone's going to have to sit and enter data from all those paper admissions from the past. In the future, since we do it all electronically (or at least this is what I recall), this could be automated into the process (or at least to an extent), but the man hours necessary to enter in the data would be enormous.

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<p>Actually, I think much of the data has already been placed in an electronic format for several years now. I am not interested in looking at admissions data from, say, the 1950's. I think even having 10 years worth of data is already good enough to do some trend analysis. I KNOW for a fact that the alumni from 10 years ago have at least their transcript completely computerized, and your transcript contains your high school name. That's why an alumni of 10 years ago can show up to the Registrar's Office and get an unofficial version of his trancript with no waiting. This would obviously not be possible unless at least some of your academics records weren't computerized. </p>

<p>Furthermore, as far as doing the manual handwork involved in transcribing paper documents, this sounds like a prime candidate for outsourcing. Ship it off to India or China, where labor is dirt cheap. Those of you who worry about privacy problems fret too much - as right now, plenty of Indian outsourcing companies today handle credit card help desks, insurance claims, bill collection, and so forth. If you can trust Indian outsourcing companies with credit card accounts and insurance forms, I don't see why you couldn't trust them with admissions documents. </p>

<p>Lest you think this is outlandish, let me tell you that one of the first instances in tech outsourcing history was a company that had the entire Yellow Pages manually transcribed by Chinese laborers so that that company could sell the first CD-version of the Yellow Pages. I don't see how transcribing a bunch of paper admissions documents would be any different.</p>

132

<p>
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Well, maybe you're on vacation. But haven't you carried out some of your graduate studies at MIT?

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<p>I refuse to comment on my biography publicly, except so far as to say that I stand by my statement - I am not at MIT.</p>

133

<p>
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The ~30% who graduate in 5 or 6 years really should be reduced, as it is unnecessarily taking up resources from the university.

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<p>I think there is actually 2 aspects to this. First off, there are some students who genuinely are unable to graduate in 4 years. These students tend to be in majors that require certain sequences of courses in lockstep, and if you are unable to get certain courses at certain times, then you are going to fall behind, through no fault of your own. Many of the engineering disciplines fall into this category. For example, the gateway course of ChemE, which you are supposed to take in your 3rd semester (the 1st semester of sophomore year) is ChemE 140. To take ChemE 140, you need to be at least concurrently in Physics 7B, which means that you have to have taken Physics 7A, which in turns means that you have to have taken Math 1A. So if you can't get those courses in their proper sequence, then you aren't ready for ChemE140. </p>

<p>{Incidentally, what tends to kill you are the labs. It's not hard to get into the lectures of 7A and 7B. The difficulty tends to come with the labs, as the labs force you to carve out a block of time in your schedule, and each individual lab doesn't have that many spaces. So you run the risk of not being able to find a lab that will fit your schedule that has available seats. And if you can't schedule the lab, then you can't take the class. </p>

<p>I would therefore propose that there be a way to take these lab classes on a lecture-only basis. You don't really need to know the lab of physics in order to be ready for the gateway engineering courses. All you really need is the lecture. Then, in some other semester, you would do the labs. You would get a grade of "I" (for Incomplete) for that lecture-only class until the later semester when you do all the labs and hence replace that "I" with a real grade. But at least not being able to get a science lab section wouldn't prevent you from moving on with your engineering coursework. </p>

<p>Of course an even better solution would be for more lab seats to be available. But I am not holding my breath for that to happen. </p>

<p>So that's the first category - people who graduate late because they genuinely couldn't get their classes on time. A second category would consist of students who run out of money and have to thus drop out for a while to work to earn money. This is also a problem that seems as if Berkeley should be able to solve by just providing more loans, or at least, providing more connections to jobs (whether work-study or not). There are a lot of jobs, not only in campus, but in the city at large, that could be done by students. Why not have students work as janitors? Or cutting grass? Or working as secretaries? Berkeley students are capable of far more than the grunt monkey work that present work-study often times consists of. </p>

<p>Take a gander at the postings here, and you will see that there are a lot of jobs at the university that regular students could do. It seems a bit paradoxical that some students need money but can't find work while at the same time, Berkeley is hiring outsiders to fill all these jobs. </p>

<p><a href="https://hrw-vip-prod.berkeley.edu/servlets/iclientservlet/jobsprod/?ICType=Script&ICScriptProgramName=WEBLIB_MENU.ISCRIPT3.FieldFormula.IScript_ERecruitHome&target=main5&Level=0&RL=%0A&%5B/url%5D"&gt;https://hrw-vip-prod.berkeley.edu/servlets/iclientservlet/jobsprod/?ICType=Script&ICScriptProgramName=WEBLIB_MENU.ISCRIPT3.FieldFormula.IScript_ERecruitHome&target=main5&Level=0&RL=%0A&&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>But then, there is the third category, which basically consists of, to be blunt, lazy students. The sad truth is that there really are some students who are just not trying very hard to graduate on time. For example, I knof of one student who hung around Berkeley for more than 8 years - and STILL hadn't graduated. His family was rich, so it wasn't like he needed to work. He wasn't in a major with lots of lockstep classes. Basically, he just wasn't really trying to graduate. And for these students, I would say that these students ought to have their in-state subsidy cut off. If you want to lolly-gag around campus, that's your problem, but the taxpayers shouldn't have to support your laziness. </p>

<p>I would couple that with another proposal - which is to 'reward' people who graduate early by paying them part of whatever state subsidy they would have gotten if they had stayed for all 4 years. For example, if you graduate in 3 years, then you get half of whatever the state subsidy would have been if you had stayed for your 4th year (and Berkeley keeps the other half). That way, you are incented to graduate early, which frees up a spot that some other student can use.</p>

134

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Poor blacks and poor hispanics are screwing over UC-Berkeley by failing out, is that what you want to say???? It's not about predicting whose gonna fail out and whose gonna get straight As, it's about providing an education to the residents of the state. And a good education, damnit!

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<p>I don't think I mentioned anywhere about poor blacks or poor hispanics. But if the people flunking out are indeed poor blacks/hispanics, well I think Berkeley is screwing them over much more than the other way around. I don't think anyone, minority or not, like coming to a school, putting in years of classwork and thousands of dollars, only to flunk out and not get a degree. I do agree that IF Berkeley were to admit less URMs that would look bad politically (just look at all the heat UCLA is currently taking), which just goes back to my beef with politics' involvement in education, but that's a different matter.</p>

<p>To sakky's reply, what I see are things the college can do to help students graduate on time. For the first group, what is needed is better scheduling and management for these classes, especially the [blank] series ones. Perhaps allot more space in classes although that seems iffy and if labs are really the problem then it's hard to expand them. Maybe another solution is to offer more prerequisite possibilities, so that if a student miss a class he could take another similar class and fulfill the requirement (I don't really see this happening either, as it is hard to substitute something like Math 1A with Math 16A, but at least we could try to come up with some creative scheduling).</p>

<p>Those who cannot graduate because they do not have enough money: I haven't really heard much about these students, except those who work while concurrently take classes. If the student really cannot afford the university common sense seems to tell me that the student shouldn't have come in the first place. Or, a better solution would simply be for them to attend a CC for two years first and then transfer. Work-study jobs always seem to be available throughout the year so I don't know why more students aren't doing them.</p>

<p>For the lazy students who simply don't want to graduate, I would suggest perhaps blocking registration after a certain period (say, 8 years). I believe one of the L&S policies is that if a student has taken over 90 units and still has not declared a major registration is blocked and the students gets a pep talk, because the university is worried that the student will not graduate. I don't see why this can't also apply to students who simply stay around for too long. Ideally the university should help those 5th and 6th year students get a plan together to make sure they graduate in 6 years. Although, having in-state subsidy cut off too seems like a possible solution.</p>

<p>I don't know about the "rewarding people who graduate early" proposal, because I think it could possibly encourage students to graduate early, and I really don't see the point in rushing to graduate. I think the four years of college life/classes are a good experience and good preparation for what comes next and a student who graduates early will miss out. I actually wouldn't mind if no one graduates in less than four years, but when one of the top universities in the nation only graduates about half their students on time that worries me.</p>

135

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He freely admits (and I agree) that he would have been better off if he had just gone to an easier school. Going to Berkeley didn't make him better off, if actually made him WORSE off.

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<p>Perhaps he would also admit that working hard and getting help while at Berkeley would've been better than either a) not going to Berkeley, or b) going to Berkeley, slacking, failing, and dropping out. What were his high school stats like? Would you think from knowing him (I'm trusting your evaluation of him here) that he couldn't have gotten passing grades at Berkeley?</p>

<p>As for staying beyond 4 years, what I've heard of our system is you have to petition to get every extra semester, and it's near impossible to get two extra semesters approved. The guy you knew that was around 8 years--that should be impossible under the current system. It probably either occurred awhile ago, or was an extreme anomaly.</p>

136

<p>Well, there is about a 30% difference between the 4 year graduation rate and the 6 year graduation rate so I'm thinking there are quite a few students who take at least 5-6 years to graduate.</p>

<p>By the way, has anyone heard of the unit ceiling? Supposedly you can only take so many units before you can't take anymore?</p>

137

<p>Every person has a right to fail, Sakky. The university (or rather some data-mining program) should not reject someone just because he/she came from a school/neighborhood that has a history of students who fail out of Cal. If you make the grades, attain the scores, and involve yourself in the activities- your merits earn your acceptance. In essence, the program you are proposing punishes a student for being poor, for being a minority, for being under-privileged. Your system rewards students from affluent backgrounds and punishes those students who overcame great adversities to earn the grades/scores they did- only to be denied admission because of the place they come from. Why stop there though? Why limit the data-mining program to school/city/region you came from? Why not just go a tiny step further and examine entire ethnic groups, or countries? Students from Asian backgrounds have a far higher graduation rate than those from Hispanic and African-American backgrounds...so let's just altogether eliminate admission for the people in these undesirable ethnic groups, because no matter how hard they try, no matter how good their grades and scores are- they'll simply fail out of Cal. We know they will- the all knowing and wise data-mining program told us so. Great system sakky, excellent...you should be nominated for the Nobel Prize for your work on educational reforms.</p>

<p>"Carry not the sins of thy father with thee, for thou art thine own person and accountable only for thine own actions—not the actions of thy father."</p>

<p>The sins of thy father (or in this case, the neighborhood, school, or ethnic affiliation) should not be reflected upon the son (the student). I absolutely fail to see how implementing a blind system similar to what you are proposing is not back-door racism. Simply put: if a student meets the admissions requirements, then that is good enough for me. It's none of my concern whether the student has a greater likelihood to fail because of x, y, or z factors. Why not hire more counselors, more professors, more advisors to actually FIX the problem- instead of denying the students the right to fail, or dare I say- succeed. (gasp!)</p>

<p>Your proposal unintentionally (or intentionally, depending on how you look at it) creates a distinct class in American society. Not only do minorities face the difficulties of culture barriers, language barriers, economic barriers, steretypes, etc...they also have to face discrmination when they attempt to enter the one place where they should be treated equally, where they will be provided the vehicle that will propel them out of their rut and get them on their feet- EDUCATION. Great proposal, once again, I'm astounded at your perceptiveness...after all, wasn't it your apt observation that it wasn't YOU making the value judgments? It's the machine doing it, sir, not MEEEE....I would never DREAM of being racist, it's the machine I tell you...</p>

138

<p>Furthermore, your whole argument about your friend being better off had he not gone to Berkeley I don't buy. The reason? Because he was given the <em>chance</em> to fail, the <em>chance</em> to succeed...Though he did not take full advantage of all the opportunities that were before him, he still had the opportunity. There have been plenty of Hispanics, just like your friend who failed out, who actually made it. Yet if we go with your logic, you would greatly reduce the number of opportunities for Hispanics to go to Berkeley, because of people like your friend who were not ready for Berkeley. Your friend is not representative of his high school, of his neighborhood, nor his ethnicity. He is a representative of himself. His mistakes should not affect the people of his hometown. His siblings, who once looked with admiration at their older brother who had been accepted to Berkeley, should not be punished because of his failure. Education isn't about predicting who is going to get by and graduate, it's about educating, about providing opportunities when there seem to be none. Through education, and in most cases ONLY through education can one rise out of poverty and improve his place in this life. Therefore, to have that taken away because of the results of a stupid, heartless, mindless "data-mining" machine is just absurd. End of Story.</p>

139

<p>In that case why not just grant open admissions? Why does Berkeley keep rejecting 75% of those who apply? Why not give EVERY Hispanic/Black graduate who apply acceptance?</p>

<p>Every person does have a right to fail, but why would he want to? If he is so eager to fail, he could take classes at a CC and fail. At least that will save him some money.</p>

<p>Berkeley isn't the end-all of higher education. There are other UCs and Cal States, CCCs, private schools, and so forth. If a student (URM or not) has a much better chance of succeeding at a similar university but less rigorous university (such as UCSD) why not send him there instead? It's not like we're saying Berkeley or no university at all.</p>

<p>The way I see it, two things can happen. Berkeley can either pour more resources into factors that help students graduate on time (more class openings, more freshmen seminars, programs, inflated grades, whatever) or Berkeley can not let these students come at all. I would certainly prefer the former but I'm not sure if that's achievable right now with such a large undergraduate population.</p>

140

<p>
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The way I see it, two things can happen. Berkeley can either pour more resources into factors that help students graduate on time (more class openings, more freshmen seminars, programs, inflated grades, whatever) or Berkeley can not let these students come at all.

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</p>

<p>But if you're talking about URMs, your statement doesn't make much sense to me.</p>

<p>Let's face it, most URMs at Berkeley are probably in non-impacted majors that have plenty of openings in their classes, inflated grades, etc. Even URM students in science fields can get extra support, as with the Biology Scholars Program. On top of that are efforts carried out by URM recruitment and retention centers and programs at the Cesar Chaves Center which, I think, prove that most URMs at Berkeley actually have plenty of resources available to them.</p>

<p>The reason they fail to graduate is, I think, more tied to economic and parental issues. It's no secret that Berkeley has thousands of poor URM students whose parents hold extremely low-end jobs. Those parents might very well be hostile to their kids going to college for so many years. And that's to be expected. After all, it's not like white parents were very happy about their kids going to college in the 60s - they wanted their children to stay close to home, take on a traditional job, and get married early.</p>

<p>I am of the opinion that Berkeley should continue to admit students from those kinds of backgrounds. (of any race)</p>