<p>UCLA and Berkeley, Each school has around 1000 students(4000/4)</p>
<p>SAT Range 1440-1600</p>
<p>But that is the 0-100% range of those schools (within the 25% subset), while almost all schools report 25-75% scores. So those are not comparable numbers.</p>
<p>Plus I assume that many of those kids with high SAT scores have low GPAs. Otherwise, they wouldn't be at UCLA or Berkeley in such high numbers.</p>
<p>Not to mention state schools are all much more stats driven. I know more than a few 1600/ valedictorian or near kids rejected from the Ivies because of a lack of ECs.</p>
<p>Oh NO, lack of dubious resume padding activities. They should be commended.</p>
<p>I go to UCLA and I think that probably only the top 10% or less can compare with HYPS students.</p>
<p>Assumptions can be dangerous -- especially when one assumes that one's own preferences hold for the entire high school population. For a California resident, it makes perfect sense financially to attend Berkeley or UCLA, even if one's stats are extremely high. Compare $6000 in yearly registration fees at a UC to $30,000 per year at a private. </p>
<p>Of course if you get a full ride (or close to it) at HYPS, you should probably take it. But if attending one of those schools entails taking on a lot of debt, a top UC is certainly competitive, especially if you end up working west of the Mississippi. I attended undergrad at UCLA and grad school at Columbia and I can tell you that the whole notion that an ivy league education is superior to a state education is way overblown. Professors are a mixed lot wherever you go. Sometimes they're good and sometimes they're not so good -- even at an ivy league institution. The same applies to the student bodies in general. Blanket statements about large student bodies are usually nothing more than sophomoric platitudes. </p>
<p>As for state schools being purely stats driven, that simply is not the case for the University of California. A large portion of each class is admitted under a policy known as "comprehensive review" which takes factors other than numbers into account.</p>
<p>I guess this puts me in the top 25% of UCLA students... :)</p>
<p>From A M (parent Forum)</p>
<p>"...The students ambitions [at Harvard] are those of well-trained meritocratic elite. In the semi-aristocracy that Harvard once once, students could accept Cs because they knew that their prospects in life had more to do with family fortunes and connections than with GPAs. In today's meritocracy this situation no longer obtains. Even if you could live off your parents' wealth, the ethos of the meritocracy holds that you shouldn't, because your worth as a person is determined not by clan or class but by what you do...What you do, in turn, hinges in no small part on what is on your resume, including your GPA...Thus the professor...as a dispenser of grades...is a gatekeeper to worldly success. And in that capacity [Harvard] professors face upward pressures from students...horizontal pressure from their colleagues, and downward pressure from the administration (If you want tof ail someone you have to be prepared for a very long painful battle with the higher echelons," one professor told the Crimson)...</p>
<p>It doesn't help that Harvard students are creatively lazy, gifted at working smarter rather than harder. Most of my classmates were studious primarily in our avoidance of academic work, and brilliant largely in our maneuverings to achieve a maximal GPA in return for minimal effort. It was easy to see the classroom as just another resume padding opportunity, a place to collect the grade necessary to get to the next station in life. If that grade could be obtained while reading a tenth of the books on the syllabus, so much the better...</p>
<p>In this environment, who can blame professors if, when it comes time to grade their students, they take the path of least resistance - the path of the gentleman's B-plus?</p>
<p>One might expect Harvad's Core Curriculum to step into the breech...It has long been an object of derision among students and a curriculm review committee recently joined the chorus, observing dryly that the Core "may serve to constrain intellectual development...My experience of th ecore was typical. I set out with the intention of picking a comprehensive roster of classes that would lead me in directions at once interesting and essential...What I found were unengaged professors and over burdened teaching assistants who seemed to be marking time until they could return to the parochial safety of their departmental classes...The few Core classes that are well taught are swamped each year, no matter how obscure the subject matter....</p>
<p>A Harvard graduate may have read no Shakespeare or Proust; he may be unable to distinguish Justinian the great from Juilan the Apostate, or to tell you the first ten elements in the periodic table...As in a great library ravaged by a hurricane, the essential elements of a liberal arts education lie scattered every where at Harvard, waiting to be picked up. But little guidance is given on how to proceed with that task...Mostly I logged the necessary hours in the library and exam rooms, earned my solid (if inflated) GPA and my diploma, and used the rest of the time to keep up with my classmates in our ongoing race to the top of America (and the world). It was only afterward, when the perpetual motion of undergraduate life was behind me, that I looked back and felt cheated..."</p>
<p>Honestly, that is true anywhere, and definetly at the top publics as well! </p>
<p>Padding ECs? How is it padding to be an amazing artist, pe passionate about music, or be a leader in school. I can tell you that these experiences are critical. In business I am using the leadership skills I learned in high school as a leader to this day. Sure there are padders, but many, many people have awesome passions and interests that sometimes detract from schoolwork. I know for a fact that my over-involvement detracted from my gpa. Regrets? No way.</p>
<p>and this. THis is not true anywhere, and not at the top publics.</p>
<p>"Before I begin the lecture, I have a brief announcement concerning the class's grading policy," he said that day. "As many of you know, I have often been, ah, outspoken concerning the upward creep of Harvard grades over the last few decades. Some say that this climbin which what were once Cs have become Bs, and those Bs are now fast becoming Asis a result of meritocracy, which has ensured that Harvard students today are, ah, smarter than their forebears. This may be true, but I must tell you that I see little evidence of it."</p>
<p>He paused, flashed his grin, and went on. "Nevertheless, I have recently decided that hewing to the older standard is fruitless when no one else does, because all I succeed in doing is punishing students for taking classes with me. Therefore I have decided that this semester I will issue two grades to each of you. The first will be the grade that you actually deservea C for mediocre work, a B for good work, and an A for excellence. This one will be issued to you alone, for every paper and exam that you complete. The second grade, computed only at semester's end, will be your, ah, ironic grade'ironic' in this case being a word used to mean lyingand it will be computed on a scale that takes as its mean the average Harvard grade, the B-plus. This higher grade will be sent to the registrar's office, and will appear on your transcript. It will be your public grade, you might say, and it will ensure, as I have said, that you will not be penalized for taking a class with me." Another shark's grin. "And of course, only you will know whether you actually deserve it."</p>
<p>....What lay behind this trend? Writing in the college newspaper, the Crimson, Mansfield posited some historical factors. "Grade inflation got started when professors raised the grades of students protesting the war in Vietnam," he argued. "At that time, too, white professors, imbibing the spirit of the new policies of affirmative action, stopped giving low grades to black students, and to justify or conceal this, also stopped giving low grades to white students." (As you might imagine, this theory was hotly contested.) But the main culprit now was simply this: "The prevalence in American education of the notion of self-esteem." Mansfield wrote, "According to that therapeutic notion, the purpose of education is to make students feel capable and 'empowered,' and professors should hesitate to pass judgment on what students have learned</p>