UC Berkeley.. UCLA

Colleges & Universities A-Z University of California - Berkeley
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<p>
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Again, the UC system is public education largely funded by California taxpayers, therefore the children of those taxpayers get priority, even if they are not as qualified as your out-of-state student.

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<p>I wish it was that simple. Take the Berkeley Chemistry PhD program. The program is publicly funded the last time I checked. Yet that program doesn't go around rejecting highly qualified nonresidents in favor of less qualified California state residents. In fact, I'm not aware of a single doctoral program in the entire UC system that does that. There isn't a single UC doctoral program that I am aware of that gives admissions preference to state residents. The Berkeley EECS department doesn't say "We're going to admit some less-skilled EECS PhD applicants because their parents are California taxpayers." Hence, relatively few Berkeley EECS PhD students came in as California residents (while it is true that most of them will establish residency during their doctoral studies, relatively few came in as residents). </p>

<p>The point is that just because a program receives funding from the state does not automatically mean that state residents will get priority in that program. They may or may not. It depends on the program. However, it certainly is not a requirement. Or if it is, apparently somebody forgot to tell the UC doctoral programs.</p>

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<p>Tupac and company are delusional in their west coast (or maybe its just a california thing?) overhyping of the UC undergraduate education- rampant all over collegeconfidential since californians make up a good bulk of the posters on this board. Everyone in the right mind would know that his hearsays are nothing more than that- lies. Where do you people come up with such crazy statistics that it requires a 1550+ SAT minimum to be considered by cal? Don't even try to compare the admission difficulties of Harvard to cal- that's just laughable.</p>

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<p>Regardless, as a California resident, Cal and UCLA are great places to get an education that is in large part on par with most of what the big privates can offer.</p>

<p>Yes, there are a lower tier of students at the UCs, but the top student is just as capable as far as her gray matter goes.</p>

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<p>Look, Berkeley and UCLA are good places to get an undergraduate education. They don't compare favorably with the best privates like HYPSMC at the undergraduate level, but they are still good programs. I believe that they are severely flawed and could be made a whole lot better than they are, but even I would not call them bad programs. I believe they are definitely not as good as they ought to be, but they are still pretty good. </p>

<p>It is at the graduate level, particularly the doctoral level, that the UC's really hit their stride. I've said it before, I'll say it again, the UC's are a very good place to get your doctorate, and Berkeley is an absolutely fantastic place to get your doctorate.</p>

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<p>Would you say that someone who went to Harvard would generally be more educated than someone who went to Berkeley?</p>

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<p>If we're talking undergrad programs, then yeah, on average, your statement would be true. </p>

<p>The fact is, the Harvard undergraduate program is significantly more selective than is the Berkeley undergraduate program. While the Berkeley undergraduate program does indeed have some superstars, it also has a rather long tail of, shall we say, 'non-superstars', and these students pull down the averages. </p>

<p>Happily, the Berkeley PhD programs don't have this problem. I would put the Berkeley PhD programs up against the programs of any school, including Harvard. The Berkeley PhD programs do not have the problem of a long tail of 'non-superstar' students. All those students are of invariably high quality.</p>

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<p>sakky: I remember you saying that there are some, very few, but some 4.0 students at Cal. Are these stats posted/sited anywhere? I was wondering what major/etc. they were. Are grad school placements for 4.0 Cal students anywhere near the grad placement of above average students at HYPSMC?</p>

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<p>Look at the stats of the Berkeley students applying to Law school everywhere...you'll see that there were quite a few students with 4.0s</p>

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<p>Do you have a link? How about med school?</p>

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<p>... 10k? >:-o!!!</p>

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Do you have a link? How about med school?

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<p>I think this is what you're looking for.</p>

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

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

<p>
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Look at the stats of the Berkeley students applying to Law school everywhere...you'll see that there were quite a few students with 4.0s

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<p>Well, I think the phrase 'quite a few' is a bit strong. Take a gander at the law school stats. Keep in mind that the LSDAS counts an A+ grade as a 4.33, this is why you see some (rare) people with a better than 4.0 GPA.</p>

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

<p>So, for example, according to the data, in 2004, the 3 Berkeley prelaws who got admitted into Stanford Law had an average GPA of 3.99. Yet that was only 3 students. In 2003, the one Berkeley prelaw who got into Yale Law had a GPA of 4.03. Yet that was just one student. Do the analysis yourself and I don't know that you can say that there were 'quite a few' Berkeley students who had a 4.0 </p>

<p>Also let's keep in mind that even if you have a 4.0, that still doesn't guarantee that you're going to get into a top law school. It obviously improves your odds, but there still are no guarantees. </p>

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Are grad school placements for 4.0 Cal students anywhere near the grad placement of above average students at HYPSMC?

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<p>Well, I'll put it to you this way. I don't know about 4.0 Cal students, but I can show you the following.</p>

<p>Take a look at these following overall premed placement stats.</p>

<p><a href="http://career.berkeley.edu/MedStats/19992003seniors.stm%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://career.berkeley.edu/MedStats/19992003seniors.stm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Look especially at the column of Berkeley premeds who have a 3.9+ GPA. Even these premeds who are sporting killer grades and applied to med-school only got admitted with an 84% success rate. Success means getting into a single med-school. Hence, 16% of Berkeley premeds who have a 3.9+ still get rejected from every single med-school they apply to. Yep, that's right, every single one rejected them. </p>

<p>Contrast that with the placement rate of Princeton premeds (on page 4 of the pdf). Harvard and Yale data are similar to the Princeton data, although the data for HY is only available in hardcopy, so I can't show it to you over the Internet. But in any case, you can see from the data that about 90% of all HYP premeds who apply to med-school get in somewhere. Note - that's not just 90% of those who have a 3.9+. No. That's out of ALL the premeds from HYP who apply. </p>

<p><a href="http://web.princeton.edu/sites/hpa/2004.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://web.princeton.edu/sites/hpa/2004.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Hence, the data shows that even those Berkeley premeds who have a 3.9+ GPA still cannot beat out the AVERAGE HYP premed in terms of success rate. </p>

<p>And as you can see from page 2 of the PDF, the average Princeton premed has only a GPA from anywhere from 3.3-3.5. Nevertheless, these Princeton premeds with such grades are still more successful in getting into med-school than Berkeley premeds with a 3.9+. After all, 90% > 84%. </p>

<p>Finally, let's stop looking at med-schools in the aggregate, and let's instead look at specific med-schools. After all, some of you might be thinking that perhaps Berkeley premeds are just applying to more difficult med-schools than are HYP premeds, and that's why Berkeley premeds are getting admitted at a lower rate. In particular, let's look at the average GPA's of Berkeley and Princeton premeds who got admitted into various medical schools. </p>

<p>Let's start with the UC medical schools. Here, I think we can agree that I am stacking the deck in favor of Berkeley, because the UC medical schools strongly prefer California state residents, and the proportion of California state residents in the Berkeley premed pool is almost certainly going to be higher than the proportion of California state residents in the Princeton premed pool. I list first the range of average Berkeley premed GPA that got admitted to the school from the years 1998-2003, and the average Princeton premed GPA that got admitted to that medical school from 1998-2003.</p>

<p>UCSF Medical - 3.84-3.91, 3.73
UCLA Medical - 3.77-3.92, 3,62
UCSD Medical - 3.83-3.9, 3.67
UCIrvine Medical - 3.83-3.91, 3.58
UCDavis Medical - 3.71-3.87, 3.62</p>

<p>Hence, you can see that from the data that even if you are only looking at the UC Medical Schools, you need about a consistently HIGHER Gpa to get admitted coming from Berkeley than to get admitted coming from Princeton.</p>

<p>Let's continue the analysis, looking at some elite private medical schools.</p>

<p>Stanford Medical - 3.88-3.98, 3.77
Harvard Medical - 3.96, 3.79
Yale Medical - 3.78-4.0, 3.71
Washington University Medical - 3.84-3.92, 3.78
Johns Hopkins Medical - 3.86-3.91, 3.81
Duke Medical - 3.87-3.89, 3.81
UPenn Medical - 3.95-3.99, 3.77</p>

<p>In each case, the data is consistent. You can see that Berkeley premeds require significantly higher GPA's to get into various med-schools than do Princeton premeds. This despite the fact that Princeton is a grade inflated school and Berkeley is not.</p>

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

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<p>why does school have to be so hard! bleh!!!!!!</p>

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<p>It really isn't that tough, compared to the many other possibilities, such as hard labor. If you think that acing every single difficult class at your school, curing a few diseases, winning every award imaginable, scoring perfectly on every test, and writing a few world-changing essays are the only way to go, leading to Harvard, MIT, Cambridge, Oxford, or something like that to JHU Med or some situation like that, ti might be. Real people don't do those things.</p>