Turned down Berkeley

Colleges & Universities A-Z University of California - Berkeley
21

<p>
[quote]
Let’s take Berkeley’s engineering program for example. Top 25% students are as brilliant as any student body in any other top private schools. I would bet that if you place those top creams in MIT or whatnots, you would see absolute no difference in student quality/intellectuals. These top creams are usually going into top industry and graduate schools, making Berkeley’s name.

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<p>Can you prove this? I mean both parts of the statement. 1. That top engineering majors are going to top programs. and 2. That non-engineering majors add nothing to "making Berkeley's name."</p>

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When you go decades back, Berkeley was the birthplace for anti-war protest, woman’s right, and whatnots. I would bet those students sacrificing their bodies, bleeding heavily left and right against brutal police suppression for the spirit of “True Liberty” were composed of more of bottom 50% students than top creams!!!

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<p>This just isn't historically accurate. Berkeley merely represents the culmination of anti-establishment movements, not the "birthplace." Also, the students who protested in the 60s were disproportionally the ones with the higher-end grades. Why? Because the Free Speech Movement was fighting for POLITICAL free speech in Cal classrooms and on campus. In other words, many students who particupated in the FSM were more than likely to know and care about the transnational nature of U.S. foreign and domestic policy. Trust me, though the "bottom 50%" participated, so did the top "25%."</p>

<p>For a current view of Berkeley student liberalism, check out::</p>

<p>Freshmen::</p>

<p><a href="http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2005/01/24_freshmen.shtml%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2005/01/24_freshmen.shtml&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>General::</p>

<p><a href="http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2004/02/19_survey.shtml%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2004/02/19_survey.shtml&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

22

<p>Mr.Yen: If you compare SAT & GPA’s of top 25% Berkeley admits with those of top private college admits, you will see absolutely no difference between the two. In fact, you might be surprised to see Berkely’s numbers are actually higher than some.</p>

<p>Next, while I recognize Berkeley has other great non-techie programs (e.g., Haas, English, Philosophy, ** Sociology ), Techie programs (e.g., chemistry, ** Engineering **, etc) are recognized as top notch in the global sense:just like Law in Yale, Medicine in JHU, Politics/Business/History in Harvard. While I also concede that other non-techie programs are among the very best, it is still **engineering that makes Berkeley what it is today: two top dogs in engineering, along with MIT, in the known universe (see US News & THES).</p>

<p>If you didn’t like my liberal use of “birthplace” in the context of my depicting the origin of liberalism, you should know that semantics doesn’t mean much to me- I value those as curds found in conservative toilet -So don’t bother. </p>

<p>What’s important is that when you first step into the Berkeley campus, u can breathe “freedom” knowing its legendary “liberalism”, and you can rejoice in the fact that you are now a part of THE history, YOU CAN HEAR THE ECHOING ROAR OF FIGHTERS OF LIBERTY!!! In addition, you would know that you will get TOP-QUALITY education from world-famous professors!!!</p>

23

<p>Berkeley's name seems to be very highly-regarded out here on the east coast. Is this the same in Cali (or is it slightly less special due to more acceptances)? I heard that it's a lot harder to get in OOS, but I'm not sure by how much.</p>

24

<p>Sakky, you're right. Completely right. Berkeley's Ph.D. programs are very selective. However, as greatestyen stated, it isn't Berkeley's goal to allow everyone to get a Ph.D. It's not to allow unqualified hacks do crappy research and become GSIs for students who hate them (this happens, but naturally isn't their goal). I see Berkeley as having two primary goals: providing education to as many students as possible, and conducting world-class research. Having a large, less selective undergraduate class and a very selective graduate class emphasizes those goals exactly.</p>

<p>Regarding whether top Berkeley students get into top programs, just ask around. I know anecdotal evidence is generally frowned upon, but since I don't have statistics, I can tell you I know numerous individuals in engineering that will be attending places like MIT, Stanford, CalTech, etc. Here's a great example: <a href="https://tbp.berkeley.edu/forum/viewtopic.php?t=984%5B/url%5D"&gt;https://tbp.berkeley.edu/forum/viewtopic.php?t=984&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Some TBP folks posted where they and others they know are going to graduate school. TBP represents a subset of the top 25% or so seniors in engineering at Berkeley (GPA-wise). You can see a lot of them are going to great universities.</p>

<p>EDIT: Maddie, regarding our view of Berkeley, I would say it has less prestige than what I've heard from others out of state. Berkeley accepts quite a few people, and is generally not considered that difficult to get accepted to (compared to the historically prestigious private schools). It is quite a bit easier to get accepted in state than out of state (out of state it's considered as difficult as any of the top private schools).</p>

25

<p>
[quote]
ive heard different sakky. My org chem prof last year was on the medical admissions board for cornell. He told us that Berkeley notoriously has really low stats in comparisson to the ivies.... he told us that med schools would take this into account. Also when u claim that Berkeley students have to have on average a higher GPA than the ivy students... where do u get this info from. If it is from the berkeley carreer website this info is skewed... as many students do not report thier acceptances and scores to Berkeley.

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<p>Sure, the information on the Berkeley career website is skewed. But so is the information on ANY school's website. After all, not everybody at Stanford reports their information. Not everybody at Harvard, MIT, Princeton or Yale reports their information. I am not aware of any compelling reason why the Berkeley data would be any MORE skewed than the data from any other school.</p>

<p>What you should do is sit down and compare the data from various schools side-by-side, and then note how Berkeley compares. You will find that in many cases, the reported data indicates that the admitted Berkeley students require HIGHER grades than average, whereas students from other schools require the same or lower grades than average. </p>

<p>But don't take my word for it. Look at the data yourself. Here's Princeton's data. Compare it to Berkeley's data. </p>

<p><a href="http://web.princeton.edu/sites/hpa/data98-03.htm%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://web.princeton.edu/sites/hpa/data98-03.htm&lt;/a>
<a href="http://career.berkeley.edu/MedStats/top20.stm%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://career.berkeley.edu/MedStats/top20.stm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Take the UC Med Schools. Here, I think you will agree that I am stacking the deck of favor of Berkeley for the simple reason that a far higher proportion of Berkeley students than Princeton students are California state residents, and the UC Med schools tend to prefer to admit state residents. Yet notice how in the majority of cases, the Princeton premeds are getting admitted into UC Med Schools than are the Berkeley premeds. For example, UCSF Medical admits Princeton premeds with a 3.73 GPA, but Berkeley premeds with about a 3.88 GPA (averaged over the years provided). UCLA Medical admits Princeton premeds with a 3.62 GPA, but Berkeley premeds with a 3.83 GPA. You also talked about Cornell Med. Well, look at the numbers. Princeton premeds admitted to Cornell Medical have a 3.68 GPA. Berkeley premeds are admitted to Cornell Medical with a 3.88 GPA. </p>

<p>The point is, I don't see any evidence to indicate that medical schools are adjusting Berkeley GPA's upwards, relative to the Ivies. That is, unless somebody can posit a theory as to why the Berkeley data is not only more skewed than the Princeton data, but is also skewed DOWNwards - or in other words, that there are a lot of Berkeley premeds with low grades who are nonetheless getting into med-school but simply not reporting the fact that they got in. </p>

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[quote]
Berkeley has for long prided itself on providing "more opportunities to more people" as far as UNDERGRADUATE, not graduate education is concerned. (See the California Master Plan for Higher Education, which all UCs follow.) </p>

<p>So, it seems to me that if you have an problem with Berkeley's under/grad admissions, you shouldn't look towards Berkeley but towards Sacramento. All Berkeley is doing is following the law.

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<p>Oh come now. That's a little disingenuous, don't you think? Surely you are aware of the phenomenom of regulatory capture? Look, the fact is, all large institutions have a large say in what sorts of political accomodations they want to make. The California Master Plan was not a plan that was foisted upon UC, it was something that UC played a crucial role in creating. UC administrators work hand-in-hand with Sacramento politicians to create the Master Plan. Individual UC institutions could have opted not to participate in the undergraduate bylaws of the Master Plan by simply not running a significant undergraduate program In fact, that was precisely the choice that was made by UCSF which runs only a tiny Dental Science undergrad program (and which is scheduled to be phased out anyway). </p>

<p>But anyway, the point is, it's not just a simple matter of UC following the law. They are following the law that * UC itself had a hand in creating *. So in many ways, it's its own law. Hence, it is entirely appropriate to question UC for creating this law. If you are a part of a committee, you can't just throw up your hands and disavow responsibility from any decisions that are made by the committee. If you really don't want to be held responsible, then you should resign from the committee.</p>

26

<p>
[quote]
Maddie, regarding our view of Berkeley, I would say it has less prestige than what I've heard from others out of state. Berkeley accepts quite a few people, and is generally not considered that difficult to get accepted to (compared to the historically prestigious private schools). It is quite a bit easier to get accepted in state than out of state (out of state it's considered as difficult as any of the top private schools).

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<p>Thanks for explaining this! I've been wondering about it for quite some time. By "top private schools", do you mean the likes of HYPSM? (Because if so, that would be pretty awesome. Hehehe...)</p>

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<p>what does the M in HYPSM stand for? MIT?</p>

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<p>sakky, Berkeley made a choice. You can ask why, but asking us or yourself doesn't do any good. I think their choice is fine. It's just one of many equally good choices. Berkeley has a role to fill now, which is to get a lot of undergrads and some highly selective grad students. If Berkeley were to suddenly accept 10% fewer undergrads in favor of boosting it graduate program numbers, that would probably screw up a lot of the college dynamics in California, where we already have way too many people wanting to get an undergraduate education than we can support. The current setup isn't bad or good, it just is.</p>

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<p>So yeah Berkeley>NYU, look at all the fun people you're missing out on!</p>

30

<p>
[quote]
Sakky, you're right. Completely right. Berkeley's Ph.D. programs are very selective. However, as greatestyen stated, it isn't Berkeley's goal to allow everyone to get a Ph.D. It's not to allow unqualified hacks do crappy research and become GSIs for students who hate them (this happens, but naturally isn't their goal).

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<p>Uh, what are you saying there? By extension of your logic, then that means that it's not OK for Berkeley to disallow unqualified hacks to do crappy PhD research, but it is OK for Berkeley to allow unqualified undergrads to lounge around, never go to class, and, for some of them, almost seem to be competing on who can be the laziest? Is that what you are saying? </p>

<p>I suspect that you're probably not saying that, but it still leaves as an open question why Berkeley allows so many undergrads in who, quite frankly, are simply not interested in studying hard or learning anything. You know what I'm talking about. Surely you've seen these students, so have I, and so has anybody else who knows Berkeley. </p>

<p>By no means am I saying that ALL Berkeley undergrads behave this way. Indeed, I agree that the top undergrads can compete with everybody. But there is that conspicuously long tail end of mediocre undergrads. They don't learn much, and sadly, they don't * want * to learn much. </p>

<p>
[quote]
Regarding whether top Berkeley students get into top programs, just ask around. I know anecdotal evidence is generally frowned upon, but since I don't have statistics, I can tell you I know numerous individuals in engineering that will be attending places like MIT, Stanford, CalTech, etc. Here's a great example:

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<p>Well, TBP is a rather skewed view of the student body, don't you think? There are a lot of rather bad students at Berkeley too who can only get into mediocre graduate schools, or for some of them, no graduate school at all.</p>

<p>For example, take the pre-law admissions data. While it is obviously true that some Berkeley students get admitted to some of the best law schools in the nation, some of them get admitted to only mediocre 4th tier law schools. What is even worse is that some Berkeley students apply to these mediocre law schools, * and get rejected *.</p>

<p><a href="http://career.berkeley.edu/Law/lawStats.stm%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://career.berkeley.edu/Law/lawStats.stm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Take California Western Law School. I had never even heard of California Western until about a year ago. It's a 4th tier law school. Yet as you can see, a significant percentage of Berkeley prelaws who apply to this 4th tier law school don't get in. And the ones that do get in have quite decent GPA's. The same can be said for those who apply to other 4th tier law schools such as Chapman Law, Golden Gate, Thomas Jefferson School of Law, Western State, or Whittier Law School. I don't want to be overly harsh, but let's face it, these law schools aren't exactly Harvard or Yale. Yet the fact remains that some Berkeley prelaws are getting rejected from even 4th-tier law schools. In the last few years, for example, Golden Gate Law has actually rejected about half of its Berkeley applicants. </p>

<p>But even that is obviously not the most egregious phenomenom. There are plenty of Berkeley students who know they can't even get into even a 4th tier graduate school, so they don't even apply. Again, looking at the data, you can see that most the prelaws who get into the 4th tier law schools actually have somewhat reputable GPA's. There are plenty of Berkeley students who have "disreputable" GPA's. For example, the Berkeley prelaws who got admitted to Golden Gate had an average GPA of 3.5. If you have a 2.5[i/], you probably aren't going to apply to *any law school, not even to Golden Gate.</p>

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sakky, Berkeley made a choice. You can ask why, but asking us or yourself doesn't do any good. I think their choice is fine. It's just one of many equally good choices.

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<p>That is exactly right. Berkeley made a choice. All I'm saying is that Berkeley should take responsibility for the choices it made. You can't just slough off all responsibility for a particular choice onto a third party when you yourself had a hand in making that choice.</p>

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<p>
[quote]
what does the M in HYPSM stand for? MIT?

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<p>Yep, the M stands for MIT.</p>

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<p>
[quote]
Uh, what are you saying there? By extension of your logic, then that means that it's not OK for Berkeley to disallow unqualified hacks to do crappy PhD research, but it is OK for Berkeley to allow unqualified undergrads to lounge around, never go to class, and, for some of them, almost seem to be competing on who can be the laziest? Is that what you are saying?

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<p>Wow, you used way too many negatives in that first phrase. Not, dis, un...What I'm saying is that it is NOT okay for Berkeley to allow UNqualified hacks to do Ph.D. research. It is okay for Berkeley to allow undergrads who are less qualified than those admitted to the most selective private universities, but still qualified nonetheless (by their admissions standards--naturally there will be slackers and idiots at any campus, statistically), to reap the rewards of a Berkeley education (or fail miserably if they choose to do so).</p>

<p>Berkeley doesn't mandate that all of its students will do well and be successful. That isn't Berkeley's fault. We could take only valedictorians that received perfect SAT scores and saved a child's life, but that doesn't mean they'd do well in college and not suddenly start to slack (though it's probabilistically less likely I'm sure). It's about giving the opportunity to as many students as we can support. If they take advantage, that's great. We know not all will. Doesn't mean they should never have the chance. Again, our goal is not to have some elite group of 10 students that are super-awesome-genius kids. Our goal is to give an undergraduate education to as many students as possible. We do that by not being as selective as other universities and tolerating slightly worse average student performance as a result. Our unsightly "tail end" doesn't affect us other than existing, and better have a tail end that tried rather than not having given those students even a chance.</p>

<p>Regarding TBP, the point wasn't that all Berkeley students are successful and will go to graduate school. Look at my first qualifying phrase: "Regarding whether top Berkeley students get into top programs". I'm sure you could go to MIT and find kids that applied to some crappy school and got rejected, too. There are less than in Berkeley, but they're there. However, you won't find that there are no students at Berkeley that didn't get accepted to top graduate programs. The point being, it doesn't matter if my roommate gets C's and has a sub-3.0GPA. It doesn't matter if the average SAT and GPAs are Berkeley are lower than Princeton or Harvard. You can still get as good an education and go to as good a graduate school regardless, because the opportunity is there.</p>

<p>The top at Berkeley are just as good as the top anywhere else. That's the point. The bottom goes low, but that doesn't drag down the top in Berkeley's case.</p>

<p>If you want to talk about this law school stuff, fine. But you have to talk about it in the context of what we're talking about. I never said all Berkeley students were good. Of course there are kids that can't get into that crappy law school. They probably had sub-3.0GPAs, since it looks like a 3.4 is needed for acceptance. I know a lot of people with sub-3.0GPAs, and in fact the majority of the campus has GPAs that low. Thus, it's a non-issue that bad students are getting rejected from law schools.</p>

<p>Furthermore, those that were accepted did NOT have what I'd consider "reputable" GPAs. If you're applying to higher education and you don't have a 3.5, don't bother. I feel 3.5 is bare minimum, while 3.7 is where "reputable" comes in, meaning the number that the top 10 schools will look for in an applicant. Their LSATs suck, too, for the 4th tier acceptees.</p>

<p>What's your point in all of this, anyway? The only thing I keep seeing is that Berkeley isn't as selective as the top privates, which we all know and accept. I haven't seen how that affects anything, really, except costing us money by having more students to support.</p>

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<p>
[quote]
By extension of your logic, then that means that it's not OK for Berkeley to disallow unqualified hacks to do crappy PhD research, but it is OK for Berkeley to allow unqualified undergrads to lounge around, never go to class, and, for some of them, almost seem to be competing on who can be the laziest?

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<p>Actually, I think there's some truth to this. Crappy PhD research is not okay because Berkeley heavily depends on research for its reputation. Everyone knows about the Manhattan project, the 14 elements discovered at Berkeley, that made it so famous. A University is largely judged by its graduate programs and its research. And Berkeley wants good research to make itself prestigious so its BA/BS degrees are "worth" more.</p>

<p>Why is it okay to allow so many lazy students? Well, it's hard for Berkeley to find (and cajole them into matriculating) 23,000 hard workers. Yet they need to admit that many because they want to provide as many prestigious BA/BS degrees as possible. Some of this is politics. Anyway, by having great graduate programs/research and inferior undergrad Berkeley remains: 1. prestigious and 2. serves many Californians. Can you imagine if Berkeley had a great undergrad and a pretty good grad? The situation would be a lot worse.</p>

<p>Now, that said, I do agree with a lot of your ideas sakky, in that while this "great grad, good undergrad" gets things done, frankly the undergrad could be a lot better. I like the idea of shifting resources from the "easy" majors to the impacted majors. I suspect it's not being done because there's a high demand for some of these "easy" majors because frankly people know about them and many want to take them out of laziness or something. Since there's a high demand, it's hard to justify the school's drainage of resources from that major.</p>

<p>So what's the solution? I guess one way is to simply admit less lazy students. That way the demand for those "easy" majors would probably go down, and resources can be shifted to those impacted majors. How is this done? Get more selective. Reject those normally accepted with lowest GPAs, since the key to getting a good GPA is most often, hard work.</p>

<p>Which brings me to another idea that I like: shift students around the UC system. What I mean is that while some schools like UCSD and UCD over-admitted, other schools like UCR and UCM under-admitted. If you look at the number of undergraduates at each UC, UCLA and UCB have the most undergrads(and the smallest campuses!). So, admit less students. Those who were borderline probably applied to other, lower UCs because UCLA/UCB were reaches. So, the bottom 10% goes to UCSD/UCI/UCD instead of UCLA/UCB. The bottom 10% of UCSD/UCI/UCD goes to UCR/UCM. That way, UCLA/UCB have less students and more resources per student, and quality of student body goes up. UCSD/UCI/UCD student body quality also goes up, having received top students who would have otherwise gone to UCLA/UCB, and getting rid of its bottom 10%. UCR and UCM would also benefit because now they're not under-admitting, and they get strong students who would have otherwise gone to UCSD/UCSB/whatever. All the UCs win. AND, now Berkeley would have less lazy students, less "easy" majors, more resources for impacted majors, it's more selective, smaller student body = smaller class sizes, better student body, more resources per students, etc.</p>

<p>This is just an idea of course. :)</p>

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<p>
[quote]
Regarding TBP, the point wasn't that all Berkeley students are successful and will go to graduate school. Look at my first qualifying phrase: "Regarding whether top Berkeley students get into top programs". I'm sure you could go to MIT and find kids that applied to some crappy school and got rejected, too. There are less than in Berkeley, but they're there. However, you won't find that there are no students at Berkeley that didn't get accepted to top graduate programs. The point being, it doesn't matter if my roommate gets C's and has a sub-3.0GPA. It doesn't matter if the average SAT and GPAs are Berkeley are lower than Princeton or Harvard. You can still get as good an education and go to as good a graduate school regardless, because the opportunity is there.

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<p>I disagree. You're saying that even though there are less people at Berkeley who get into top grad schools (% wise) than Stanford, since there are still Berkeley students and Stanford students getting into top grad schools, that the two are the same? Well, I know of someone who went to Florida State and got into Stanford for grad. Can I say that Florida State offers the same opportunities as Berkeley, since they both send students to top grad schools?</p>

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The top at Berkeley are just as good as the top anywhere else. That's the point. The bottom goes low, but that doesn't drag down the top in Berkeley's case.

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<p>I see this argument a lot, and I think that the bottom does drag Berkeley down.</p>

<p>Example: Harvard has 50 really great students, and 100 pretty good students. Berkeley has 50 really great students, 100 pretty good students, and 100 mediocre students.</p>

<p>Now, you would say "the top 50 students at both schools are the same, so it doesn't matter."</p>

<p>But a lot of your college education comes from discussions with classmates in and outside of class, so I think student body quality does matter.</p>

<p>Look at the example again: you don't know who's a really good student and who's not. If you are at Harvard, 1/3 of the people you talk to will be really great students, whereas at Berkeley only 1/5 are. In fact, 40% of your friends (statistically) will be mediocre, while you don't meet these people at Harvard. So, I think interacting with those mediocre students (assuming you are a good student) will ultimately hurt your undergrad education/experience.</p>

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What's your point in all of this, anyway? The only thing I keep seeing is that Berkeley isn't as selective as the top privates, which we all know and accept.

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<p>The point is, that first of all, Berkeley can get more selective if it wants to. I think the law originally mandated that the top 12.5% of Californians goes to UCs, and now the UCs can't even hold all those qualified students. I don't remember if they changed the law, but the UCs are not doing what the law says. Also, the law didn't specify how many Californians BERKELEY has to accept, so Berkeley can accept less students while UCR accepts more. I believe this is how things are, but I could be wrong.</p>

<p>Besides, even if Berkeley's selectivity remains the same (it's still one of the most selective Universities in the nation) there are still other things it can do to improve its undergrad.</p>

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<p>Pages and pages of things, and I'll read up, but for now, on the first page, I see a few things.</p>

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There is no grade inflation at Berkeley, which helps out when applying to grad school.

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<p>Both the first and second part of this statement is (are?) incorrect. There is grade inflation (a rising average GPA over time), and as sakky has probably said on pages two and three, how much grade deflation (or low grade inflation) helps applicants to graduate and especially professional schools is dubious.</p>

<p>maizey214,</p>

<p>
[quote]
Oh, thanks! Yeah, I turned down Berkeley for NYU-Stern + scholarship. I was pretty much split even between the two. Ironically, in the end, I chose NYU because Berkeley has notoriously hard grading, and I just didn't want to be under that kind of pressure and cutthroat competitiveness (which I heard the pre-Haas crowd was known for?). Oh, and also the thought of those weeder classes really scared me. However, Berkeley's top-notch education and beautiful campus and weather was really hard to pass up (esp. for NYC's permanent smoggy days)!

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<p>Perhaps you have legitimate reasons, I think they're pretty good. The thing is, the only thing I've heard about NYU Stern is that they have hard curves and hard grading as well, so I'm not sure how much of a bullet you really dodged. The good thing is you are a business major from the start, and as long as you keep up your GPA, will graduate, and there is not chance you won't be able to major in business for almost all reasons. Also, I think the average pre-Haas student (who yes, I think are generally known for being one of the more competitive groups of kids on campuses, like the MCB majors and pre-med people (often one-in-the-same)) only takes three real weeder courses, UGBA 10, econ 1 or 2, and math 16a or b or 1 a or b, the first two of the maths being fairly easy, although I guess people consider it a weeder course. Anyway, I hope you enjoy NYU- it has some really cool features. :)</p>

<p>PS Befriend the Olson twins for the ultimate business contacts/networking. ;)</p>

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<p>
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Surely you've seen these students, so have I, and so has anybody else who knows Berkeley.

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<p>So if you don't know these students, you don't really know Berkeley, and if you know them, then you really know Berkeley. So one is either ignorant or agrees with you. Makes sense to me.</p>

<p>Sakky, on the first page you bring up the Boalt document that adjusts points based on LSAT scores and GPA, yet you only mention "other law school fitness factors." It dirrectly adjusts points based on the GPA and applicants from different schools. You should more accurately represent what was done in the document by representing it more accurately and explicitly talking about the LSAT being the adjusting factor.</p>

<p>vicissitudes, easy might mean popular, yet you say you want to shift resources from the easy majors to the popular ones. In many cases, these goals will create a contradiction (as in with "easy" and popular/highly in demand majors). Also, people might want to take them in part because they're interested in them. But again, who would think people go to college to study something that interests them</p>

<p>[qutoe]mediocre (statistically)

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<p>You're drifting into sakkian absolutism (which he often does when talking about how mediocre and poor (statistically) the "tail-end" of Berkeley's student population is. Keep in mind things are very relative in this situation. Relative to the top students at the best schools, the "trailing tail-end" of Berkeley students is mediocre, but compared to most students in America, I think most of them are pretty good. They may not be amazing, but keep things in perspective. Anyway, what percentage of Berkeley is tihs "tail-end?" How much of Berkeley is the "tail-end," and how much of the population is comprised of worthwhile students? Sure, if the "tail-end" is the bottom 5% or less (statistically), they are fairly low compared to the top students, but how big is the tail you guys are talking about?</p>

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<p>"Both the first and second part of this statement is (are?) incorrect. There is grade inflation (a rising average GPA over time), and as sakky has probably said on pages two and three, how much grade deflation (or low grade inflation) helps applicants to graduate and especially professional schools is dubious."</p>

<p>I don't know about that, almost every link posted here shows no grade inflation. Even Boalts own metric is on the side of slight grade deflation. Where did you get that statistic? </p>

<p><a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20000829094953/http://www.pcmagic.net/abe/gradeadj.htm%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://web.archive.org/web/20000829094953/http://www.pcmagic.net/abe/gradeadj.htm&lt;/a>
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grade_inflation%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grade_inflation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>As for it helping in grad school, it was really just a trite comment, but I suppose what I really meant to say was that Berkeley reputation for academic rigor is not a bad thing. And most grad schools will take that into account.</p>

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[quote]
vicissitudes, easy might mean popular, yet you say you want to shift resources from the easy majors to the popular ones.

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<p>Yeah, I mentioned in my post that these "easy" majors might also be in high demand which is why sakky's suggestion to shift resources from those to impacted ones might not be as feasible. One solution I brainstormed was to lower the high demand for them by weeding out some lazy students during the admissions process. How/if this can be accomplished, I'm not too sure. It's just an idea.</p>

<p>
[quote]
How much of Berkeley is the "tail-end," and how much of the population is comprised of worthwhile students? Sure, if the "tail-end" is the bottom 5% or less (statistically), they are fairly low compared to the top students, but how big is the tail you guys are talking about?

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<p>DRab, I generally use about 10%, although we all know it's hard to come up with a definite percentage that can be called "the weakest students." I think everyone knows that Berkeley is a great school and even the weakest students are pretty amazing in their own right. But I just think Berkeley and other UCs can get even better by allocating some of these relatively weak students there to lower UCs (where they will become relatively strong).</p>

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<p><a href="http://gradeinflation.com/berkeley.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://gradeinflation.com/berkeley.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Other people throughout this site have posted the Berkeley report which showed grading practices only a year or two ago which showed the grade inflation that has occurred over time. I'm sure sakky or somebody else could locate it easily and link to it.</p>

<p>
[quote]
As an example of adjustments for grade inflation, the L.A. Times (Grading the Grades: All A's Are Not Created Equal, 7/16/97) reported on how UC Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law re-formulated the G.P.A.'s (Grade Point Average) of student applicants. Under the Boalt formula, each college is ranked according to how its students perform on the standardized law board exam, the LSAT, and how common a certain G.P.A. is at that school.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>They do not disclose how they find each school's average GPA, and I assumed that they use those who apply, but perhaps they collect some data from each school. I don't know at it doesn't say, but I guess we can assume they do some research.</p>

<p>vicissitudes, of course it's an idea. We can talk about ideas, but we also have to talk about how feasible they are at some point. sakky knows and you must know that more exclusive admissions at Berkeley is a politcal unlikelyhood. In fact, many seem to want to admit more (Angelides increasing the higher education in CA by 20% of its current population).</p>

<p>And if it's just 10%, that tail-end doesn't seem like the monster sakky often describes.</p>