UC Berkeley vs UCLA

Applying to College
1

I’ve done a lot of research about it, and before I reveal what I believe the better college is, I would like to discuss the various areas of concern.

Reputation:
Berkeley had a far earlier start on gaining reputation, and still has an alumni pool that’s 100,000 more than UCLA’s. Many of the greatest discoveries were made there, including the most famous Computer Science discoveries. Even now, Cal has many VERY famous alumni and students that weigh disporportionately compared to the contribution they have made to society. For example, nobody at UCLA has amassed nearly as much fame as Glen Seaborg.
Internationally, especially in India, Berkeley is widely recognized, and that perception may never change considering the slow spread of information in developing countries. Very few people in India or China even know UCLA. Those looking for reputation must choose Berkeley, hands down.

Now, it’s too bad that neither school will be able to make as much of an impact as Berkeley did 30-10 years ago. UC’s have far less money than the private colleges, and that is slowing research a lot.

Result:Berkeley >> UCLA

Academic Experience/ Strength of Students:
It’s the very very smart people who set the standards, and although the admissions rate at UCLA is 1.5% lower than at Berkeley, a LOT more people with high grades/ big contributions go to Berkeley. Berkeley has over 100% more people who performed flawlessly on the SAT I than UCLA. As of Fall 2004, the GPA of acceptees to UCLA was 0.01 point higher, but the avg. SAT I score was still lower.

Now, the most important factor: The academic experience. The environment at Berkeley is a lot more tense, owing to the higher competition. Even if acceptees at Berkeley became worse than at UCLA, they would learn more in classes, and end up graduating better citizens.

Result: Berkeley>UCLA

Campus Life:
Berkeley’s campus life involves studying and studying. There is little free time. To provide a striking example, 60% of students dont ever participate in protests, and many more students commute. No longer is Berkeley as liberal as it used to be. Simply put, going to Berkeley is no fun.

UCLA is located in a much larger urban area, the campus life is rich. Students have more time to enjoy themselves. Going to UCLA feels like living.

Result: UCLA> Berkeley

Final Word: If you want to enjoy college life, pick UCLA. If you want to live in an unforgiving environment before graduating, but make more of a contribution to society, Berkeley is definitely the better choice. Colleges can be thought of as forges, with the students being the ore. Although the ore does matter, it’s the processing that makes the difference.
And Berkeley is the more high-tech industrial quality forge.

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<p>Wow, bubbles - your "research" for your very first post is relatively flawed. To highlight a few areas of ::ahem:: deficiency...</p>

<p>Many of the greatest discoveries were made there, including the most famous Computer Science discoveries.</p>

<p>Like what, exactly? Name a computer science discovery more famous than the internet (started at UCLA), and maybe Berkeley has a chance in this area, but since there is no way in hell you'll be able to do that, UCLA wins.</p>

<p>For example, nobody at UCLA has amassed nearly as much fame as Glen Seaborg.</p>

<p>I dunno - it really depends on who you talk to - personally, I had to Google mr. Seaborg's name to find out what was so special about him. Also, may I remind you that the Lawrence Livermore labs are not a "UC Berkeley Production", but are rather run by the whole of the University of California? Also, UCLA has one of the most prestigious med schools in the nation, and the biomed research that goes along with it. Tell me, how are Berkeley's Medical facilities? (in anticipation of your answer, UCSF is a separate school)</p>

<p>Ever heard of Tyler Burge? Maybe not? Well, he is quite possibly one of the most famous philosophers of our century, and is known worldwide for his contributions to philosophy. Entire books have been devoted to his works. Wanna know where he teaches? Yep, he's a professor at UCLA.</p>

<p>Internationally, especially in India, Berkeley is widely recognized</p>

<p>Actually, I think it could be successfully argued that UCLA is more well-known outside of the US. </p>

<p>Now, it's too bad that neither school will be able to make as much of an impact as Berkeley did 30-10 years ago.</p>

<p>So what were Berkeley's contributions 10-30 years ago?</p>

<p>Wow that was just the first paragraph. But i hope you get the idea.</p>

<p>they would learn more in classes, and end up graduating better citizens.</p>

<p>Okay, what is that about? You've got to be kidding me - both are great schools. How can you say that Berkeley students learn more and are better citizens than UCLA students. That is a blatant non sequitur, by the way, in case you couldn't recognize that. </p>

<p>Wow - anyway, my point is, don't post this stuff unless you're prepared to back it up in some way that makes sense.</p>

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<p>"Cal has nurtured a number of key technologies associated with the early development of the Internet and the Open Source Software movement. The original Berkeley Software Distribution, commonly known as BSD Unix, was assembled in 1977 by Bill Joy as a graduate student in the computer science department. Bill Joy also developed the original version of vi. PostgreSQL emerged from faculty research begun in the late 1970s. SendMail was developed at Berkeley in 1981. BIND (Berkeley Internet Name Domain package) was written by a team of graduate students around the same time period. The Tcl programming language and the Tk GUI toolkit were developed by faculty member John Ousterhout in 1988. SPICE and espresso, popular tools for IC Designers, were also invented at Berkeley under the direction of Professor Donald Pederson.</p>

<p>Perhaps the most pervasive contribution to computing from UCB has been the algorithms and analysis of floating-point arithmetic, led by Professor William Kahan. These include extensive and ongoing contributions to the IEEE 754 standard.</p>

<p>In 1992, Pei-Yuan Wei, an undergraduate, created ViolaWWW, one of the first graphically-based web browsers. ViolaWWW was the first browser to have embedded scriptable objects, stylesheets, and tables. In the spirit of Open Source, he merely donated the code to Sun Microsystems, thus inspiring Java applets. ViolaWWW would also inspire researchers at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications to create the Mosaic web browser."</p>

<p>-Wikipedia</p>

<p>In India, Berkeley is highly recognized. I've been to there and China, and people there know Harvard the most, followed by Stanford and Berkeley.</p>

<p>As for difficulty of contemporary research, Berkeley was once ranked #2 by all major publications. It made huge discoveries, especially in Chemistry and CS. From now on, it seems that the trend is, the privates get more funding (Harvard has over 20 billion endowment compared to Berkeley's 1.9 bil and UCLA's 1.2bil) and more research done.</p>

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<p>For example, nobody at UCLA has amassed nearly as much fame as Glen<a href="sic">/i</a> * Seaborg.</p>

<p>Your statement would be credible if it weren't for the fact that UCLA was where he got his undergrad education. Glenn Seaborg (two ns) amassed his fame at Berkeley, but he first amassed his knowledge at UCLA...</p>

<p><a href="http://www.ucla.edu/about/nobelwinners/seaborg.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.ucla.edu/about/nobelwinners/seaborg.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>By the way, I really like how you just signed up for an forums account on College Confidential and your very first post here is to compare UCLA and Berkeley. How peculiar.</p>

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<p>well.. if you really want to rank departments head on... berkeley would crush ucla... however, ucla is getting much much better. Anyone here check out the department rankings and how many each university has in the top 5,top 10, etc. Berkeley is up there with Harvard and Stanford. However, Undergrad is a different story. Unless you want to do engineering or undergrad business, its left up to personal preference really. both are great universities and both would provide the student(s) a great start to their careers. Really, you can't lose going to either college.</p>

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<p>Your statement would be credible if it weren't for the fact that UCLA was where he got his undergrad education.</p>

<p>pwned! :)</p>

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<p>irock1ce...lol, you aren't biased... :P</p>

<p>You are sadly misinformed my tree-hugging, birkenstock-wearing granola-crunching poster.</p>

<p>Anderson v Haas in Businessweek:</p>

<h1>14 UCLA</h1>

<h1>17 Cal</h1>

<p>Total R&D expenditures at universities and colleges according to National Science Foundation:
UCLA... $787 mil
Cal... $456 mil</p>

<p>William Hung Factor
UCLA...No William Hung
Cal...William Hung is icon of cool to Cal Bears</p>

<p>If William Hung went to UCLA he would have had his non-rhythmic a$$ kicked.</p>

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<p>"Very few people in India or China even know UCLA."</p>

<p>um, UCLA is one of the most well-known schools in asia. more well known than top privates like dartmouth, cornell, brown, etc. but so is berkeley. berkeley, due to its strong graduate programs, would still be more prestigious than ucla overseas, but to say that "very few people" know about UCLA is absurd. in fact, asians would love the opportunity to come study at UCLA (and at berkeley, too). </p>

<p>"Now, it's too bad that neither school will be able to make as much of an impact as Berkeley did 30-10 years ago. UC's have far less money than the private colleges, and that is slowing research a lot."</p>

<p>it is? i thought the los alamos lab is begging the UC's to continue control of the lab. and the UC's just decided to continue with the lawrence lab and with more biotech measures being passed like the stem cell prop., its not only going to be berkeley and ucla but many of the other UC's as well will have great research opportunities. </p>

<p>"a LOT more people with high grades/ big contributions go to Berkeley."</p>

<p>really? look up the matriculation data. the grades are about the same. in fact, most kids get into both schools and just end up choosing the one that is a better fit for them because the academic quality of the schools and the strength of the student body are about the same. by the way, what do grades have to do with big contributions? if you mean "go" to berkeley as in matriculate, well, high school grades dont mean much and nobody's contributions in high school are big enough to make any impact. if you mean "go" as in attend, well... for an example, bill gates didnt have the grades, but he made a big contribution. also, one can study really hard, earn top grades, get him/herself a good job, and be a regular productive member of society, and never make a really big contribution to society. this can happen at any school. </p>

<p>"Berkeley has over 100% more people who performed flawlessly on the SAT I than UCLA."</p>

<p>do sat scores really mean everything? is a 1590 not good enough or something? is there a correlation between the impact that someone has on society and his/her sat score? wow...</p>

<p>"The environment at Berkeley is a lot more tense, owing to the higher competition."</p>

<p>i hear berkeley is pretty intense in competition, but from being a student here at ucla, the competition is pretty crazy here too. especially if youre pre-med! </p>

<p>"they would learn more in classes, and end up graduating better citizens."</p>

<p>quite honestly, do you learn to be better citizens from your classes? NO SCHOOL produces good citizens just from classes. you learn to be a better citizen through real-life hands-on experiences, like doing community service or getting involved in extracurriculars, and ucla has plenty of that. </p>

<p>"Simply put, going to Berkeley is no fun."</p>

<p>okay, while i have to admit that UCLA is more fun than berkeley, let me tell you something. COLLEGE IS WHAT YOU MAKE OF IT. you can go to ucla have a boring time if you dont participate in anything, and you can go to berkeley have the best time of your life if you find your niche. thats why kids choose the school that better fits them. besides, who said protesting was the only form of fun? LOL</p>

<p>"From now on, it seems that the trend is, the privates get more funding (Harvard has over 20 billion endowment compared to Berkeley's 1.9 bil and UCLA's 1.2bil) and more research done."</p>

<p>endowments are used for many purposes, not just research. you cant say that the endowment size of a university correlates with the amount of research that they will be doing. well, texas a&m has an endowment of 3.8bil, rice has 2.94bil, notre dame has 2.57bil, dartmouth has 2.12 bill (all data 2003). i dont see them making famous discoveries. the fact is, these endowments are also spent on scholarships/financial aid packages, construction/campus maintanence, graduate programs, etc., and because these top privates arent state-supported, they will need to spend their endowment money on more than just research. </p>

<p>but anyway, i dont see where your argument is leading to. berkeley is the state flagship and should be better than ucla, but truthfully, you can get a great undergraduate education at both. and when you look at graduate schools, which is where schools get most of their fame, you can see that berkeley and ucla rank close to each other in law, business, education, and social sciences/humanties. the only differences are: ucla has a world-renowned medical school and theatre/film/arts department (while berkeley has doesnt), while berkeley engineering and sciences are much better than ucla.</p>

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<p>I guess this means that 40% do participate in protests, which is an amazingly high number given the rarity of of protests on all campuses these days. </p>

<p>What percentage of UCLA students participate in protests?</p>

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<p>Westwood (UCLA) is much nicer than the area around UCBerkeley.</p>

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<p>But, Damom, You have to admit, San Francisco is the most beautiful City in the USA.</p>

<p>Berkeley is more well known than UCLA outside the continental USA, butI don't think a student should choose one school over the other because a coctail waitress in Calcutta may have heard of it.</p>

<p>"Ever heard of Tyler Burge? Maybe not? Well, he is quite possibly one of the most famous " </p>

<p>It is hard to be famous if people haven't heard of you, UCLA must be quite remarkable to overcome that fact. I don't think he was the most famous of philosophers...Betrand Russel, Sartre, come to mind, but don't worry they didn't go to Berkeley.</p>

<p>Seaborg was educated in one place, got to know it and then went someplace else to work....what did you want me to get from that?</p>

<p>I actually like both schools and don't think the rivalry is emblematic of a superior education but it is fun to watch. Which student population wakes up earlier? Who is better looking? Who has the nicest clock tower? You folks crack me up.</p>

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<p>Glad we could amuse you, Mr. B....</p>

<p>You have to admit, San Francisco is the most beautiful City in the USA.
It most certainly is not.</p>

<p>It is hard to be famous if people haven't heard of you, UCLA must be quite remarkable to overcome that fact. I don't think he was the most famous of philosophers
is... not was - so perhaps I should rephrase to say "living today". And just because you personally haven't heard of someone dosn't mean they aren't famous.</p>

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<p>Which student population wakes up earlier?
Berkeley..duh.</p>

<p>Who is better looking?
UCLA of course.</p>

<p>Who has the nicest clock tower?
It's a tie.</p>

<p>You folks crack me up.
Likewise.</p>

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<p>Mr. B: this thread is certainly entertaining....</p>

<p>But, IMO there really isn't any rivalry between the schools. Doesn't it take two (or more) to have a rivalry? I don't know anyone up north that considers the "Southern Branch" (kids do some research here) to be competition of any sort, not since John Wooden retired. Their ONLY academic competition is across the Bay.</p>

<p>A factoid on Prof. Seaborg: even after he an element named after him (the only living man to be so honored), he still continued to teach the Frosh in Chem 1 in Berkeley because he wanted to. Altho it was rather disconcerting to many kids when Glenn, who was well over 6' tall, strolled into chem lab and offered to "help" ...most 18 year olds just stood there slack-jawed.</p>

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<p>"But, IMO there really isn't any rivalry between the schools. "</p>

<p>when i was with marching band up at cal for practice before the game, the cal band actually went to watch us practice and clapped after a show run-through. were more like friendly brothers who just compete like brothers. the atmosphere of the rivalry is nothing like cal-stanford and ucla-usc. </p>

<p>also, by looking at the rivalries, you can get a sense of the attitude of the schools. berkeley is a little more academically-oriented, ucla is a little more socially-oriented.</p>

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<p>IMHO, which is proven by lots and lots of research (I asked some people in China and India), there is no rivalry between Stanford and UCB undergrad. There is no sane person who would choose cal over stanford. The rivalry is just sparked by cal students to boost their self-esteem after having to deal with the hardships of a stanford rejection letter.</p>

<p>Stanford lures Harvard professors Bobo, Morgan.- Highbeam.com. The famous Bobo works at Stanford therefore Stanford >> Cal.</p>

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<p>Stanford: $30k/yr
Berkeley: $5k/yr</p>

<p>Virtually same education...dramatically different price. Hardships? Yeah, for Stanford people selling their kidney to pay for their senior year.</p>

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<p>virtually same education exilio? i think not! the recognition of Stanford both inside the US and abroad is unsurpassed based on my hard researched evidence! I believe the mnemonic goes HYPSM, not HYPSMucb or HYPSMc or however they wish it were. Theres something called financial aid and scholarships and theres probably 1% AT THE MOST who would choose to go to cal over Stanford for financial reasons, and those who make up the 1% are the ones who dont even make it into Stanford to begin with!</p>

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<p>We visited a number of the UC schools last spring deciding which my son might apply to. I like the academic qualities of both schools, too, but my son found the UCLA campus cramped and stiffling compared with Berkeley and decided there was nothing he liked in LA and the area around the UCLA campus, while he enjoyed the lively nature of the city area around the Cal campus. YMMV, I guess.</p>

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<p>Bubbles:</p>

<p>better google on the new Dean of the Boalt School of Law if you insist on name-dropping. :) </p>

<p>Many kids would choose a renown private school with rampant grade inflation over a renown state school if the money was the same; heck it's be worth it for a more student-friendly admin with less bureacracy. But, my point was that I don't believe Berkeley and UCLA see themselves as rivals, just kin.</p>