<p>In the past, Berkeley was the best public research university in the US. That’s still the case and will be for the foreseeable future.</p>
<p>Cool story, bro.</p>
<p>Excuse me; but what is UNC?</p>
<p>Collegebound, I’m from NC, and UNC is an amazing school, but it doesn’t compare to many schools in this country: All 8 ivies, UChicago, Vanderbilt, Emory, MIT, Stanford, CIT, etc. I’d say it holds its own with UVA and UCB, but I’d give a slight edge to UCB.</p>
<p>Your assertion that OOS admissions are very selective is correct - I have friends accepted to top 10 schools who didn’t get into UNC OOS. This does NOT however make UNC a better school - selectivity in this case is simply due to the fact that North Carolina is a very state-centered state. Some of the public medical schools there (East Carolina, for example) don’t even ALLOW out of state applications. With so few spots for out of state students, the out of state acceptance rate is sort of artificially low. Again, however, selectivity does not make a school “better.” If a community college decided to take in only TEN students this year due to funding issues, the acceptance rate would likely be less than 1 percent - but it doesn’t make the community college the best school in the world. The only info your giving to support your claim is that the out of state acceptance rate is low and that you have “friends who turned down Harvard.” I don’t doubt that. If they were in-state UNC is an amazing buy, and if the parents didn’t want to pay for Harvard, I could see that happening.</p>
<p>Anyway, UNC is an amazing school, I almost ended up going there before choosing Cornell. I love the campus, and the students, and the location - but it’s not America’s best school by far.</p>
<p>On a side note - what do you guys think about Cornell’s rankings this year? I could see it going down, they just aren’t marketing themselves very well compared to others. The administration seems to resent the US News rankings and refuses to “play the game” like other schools do to raise their ranking…</p>
<p>Also, every year, students turn down top-tier Ivies and other universities for the Morehead-Cain scholarship at UNC.</p>
<p>[The</a> Morehead-Cain Scholars Program UNC Chapel Hill](<a href=“http://moreheadcain.org/]The”>http://moreheadcain.org/)</p>
<p>
Good to know. I thought that it was something else. I heard Duke is good. Is Duke better than UNC?</p>
<p>@thsfan345…True, but the same could be said for Regents at UCB; Jefferson, Echols, and Rodman at UVA; Monroe at W&M, etc. Most of the elite publics offer enticing honors programs and scholarships to their best applicants.</p>
<p>I’d say that top publics still lose the majority of students with big scholarships to top privates. IIRC, Berkeley has about 1000 Regents finalists, about 500 receive it, and about 200 attend, or ~40% yield. That’s the same as its overall yield. I have a feeling that other public schools that don’t ‘screen for yield’ in their scholarships have a similar yield. Clemson, for example, ‘screens for yield’ in some of its scholarships by ensuring that the student will attend (i.e. saying “if we give this to you, will you attend?”).</p>
<p>UNC makes its scholarship information available. The 2010/2011 yields:</p>
<p>Morehead 86%
Pogue 70%
Robertson 66%
Carolina Scholars 59%
Other scholarships 37-42%</p>
<p>Unfortunately, specific cross-admit data is not available. I suspect at least some of the students who turned down the Robertson accepted it at Duke; it happens to a few students each year.</p>
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</a></p>
<p>i’ll make some comparisons, mainly with UCLA, since it’s my school and i know the most about it.</p>
<p>For being such a great university, Berkeley sure does have trouble getting decent financial contributions. Going even to 2009, Berkeley was ranked # 19 (out of 20) for donations (compared to UCLA which was ranked 9 that year), and in '05 it was 20. (UCLA 12) </p>
<p><a href=“http://www.cae.org/content/pdf/VSE_2010_Press_Release.pdf[/url]”>http://www.cae.org/content/pdf/VSE_2010_Press_Release.pdf</a></p>
<p>While the two are close now, expect this number to drop greatly seeing as so far UCLA’s raised nearly 500 million dollars.</p>
<p>[Private</a> giving increases, reflecting confidence in UCLA / UCLA Today](<a href=“http://today.ucla.edu/portal/ut/gift-totals-rise-for-year-as-donors-213561.aspx]Private”>http://today.ucla.edu/portal/ut/gift-totals-rise-for-year-as-donors-213561.aspx)</p>
<p>Berkeley was edged out by UCLA in the high impact university rankings (which even though the website has been down for some time i’m still citing since i haven’t heard about it being discredited.) This is because although berkeley has amazing STEM faculty, it sucks for health sciences (compare UCLA: 4; Berkley: 104) and although berkeley has amazing stem faculties, overall UCLA is a better, more well-rounded university.</p>
<p>UCLA also outranked berkeley in forbes too by a significant margin (15 ranks), which might imply many things such as people enjoy UCLA more than berkeley or that, Berkeley’s faculty, as distinguished as they may be, may be nonetheless bad lecturers who have no interest in pedagogy.</p>
<p>Berkeley is what we might call an ‘historical university’ or, as some call actors, a ‘has-been’ university. The last time berkeley did anything big was in like the 50s lol. While on the berkeley forum, i heard people wondering why UCLA had more applicants than berkeley (and was the most applied to uni. in the US) if Berkeley is a better school. I laughed when i heard people conjecturing that the reason was that berkeley was considered much more difficult, and hence, people didn’t see the reason to apply (which would seem to go contrary to occam’s razer: many people probably just don’t want to go to berkeley.)</p>
<p>All berkeley really has at this point is some top-notch staff. But that’s just a contingent point. Other universities can, and will get better staff as well (did you read the story about those three famous UCSD professors that went to rice?) so i imagine that will even things out. </p>
<p>Considering that berkeley’s like 60 years older than UCLA, and the two are almost equal in non-stem rankings, that sure tells a lot about berkeley (and in regard to PHD programs, Berkeley lobbied to prevent UCLA from offering them. It’s in Murphy Hall at UCLA so it’s not too surprising that they’re unequal.)</p>
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<p>Yeah, i’d say so. Comparing duke to UNC is like comparing Stanford to UCLA. Both great schools, but one has significantly more opportunities than the other.</p>
<p>UCLA receives more donations because it is a bigger school and has a medical component. Berkeley doesn’t, and Med school costs are expensive. Alumni giving is about the same percentage as UCLA.</p>
<p>Berkeley is well on its way to raise $3billion by 2013.</p>
<p>Berkeley has accomplished much in 50 years and is way better than UCLA in non STEM majors as well. Your business and law programs are jokes.</p>
<p>^ I have to agree with that. Berkeley would kill UCLA in donations if it included UCSF.</p>
<p>Sorry, beyphy, but Berkeley is still leaps and bounds ahead of UCLA. For example, check out the THE rankings, QS rankings, US News subject rankings - Berkeley still has far more breadth and depth than UCLA. There’s only one other school that’s as well-rounded, and it’s not UCLA.</p>
<p>You also say that Berkeley’s distinguished faculty may be ‘bad lecturers’ but don’t seem to apply the same assumption to UCLA. I’m sure there’s little difference. The number of applicants has absolutely nothing to do with the quality of the university. Cornell has long outstripped most of the Ivies in terms of number of applicants, but does that make it the best? USC has far more applicants than most top privates, but does that make it better?</p>
<p>Berkeley and UCLA are not ‘virtually equal’ in non-STEM rankings. Berkeley likely lobbied against UCLA from offering PhD programs for the same reason that UCs would lobby against CSUs from offering PhD programs: UCLA was a CSU for many years since its founding.</p>
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<p>But if you know anything about how universities are run, you’d know that the faculty are the core of the university: they determine the prestige, the selectivity, the quality of facilities, the amount of research funding, etc.</p>
<p>UCLA is great - make no mistake - but most academics would agree that UCLA has a long way to go before it’s at the quality of Berkeley.</p>
<p>UCBChemEGrad: Calling UCLA’s law and business programs a joke in the service of your rhetoric is irresponsible. They are strong programs. Also, UCLA and UCB are both great schools. People realize that. You don’t have to resort to putting down the other school to get ahead in responding to beyphey’s post.</p>
<p>According to my arbitrary rankings I made 5 minutes ago, UCB is better than UCLA as shown below:</p>
<ol>
<li>UCB</li>
<li>UCLA
…
REST WHICH DON’T MATTER</li>
</ol>
<p>But, according to my new revised rankings I made 2 minutes ago, UCLA is better than UCB as shown below:</p>
<ol>
<li>UCLA</li>
<li>UCB
…REST WHICH DON’T MATTER.</li>
</ol>
<p>
You’re correct. Harvard usually comes in #1 in such rankings, and Berkeley does rather well too. Is the hyperbole necessary, however? Let’s check.</p>
<p>THE ranking 2010/2011
Berkeley: #8 world, #6 US
UCLA: #11 world, #8 US</p>
<p>QS ranking 2010/2011
Berkeley: #28 world, #15 US
UCLA: #35 world, #17 US</p>
<p>AWRU ranking 2011
Berkeley: #4 world, #4 US
UCLA: #12 world, #10 US</p>
<p>NRC
Berkeley ranks first among U.S. universities in the number of highly ranked graduate programs. In a report published in September 2010, the National Research Council (NRC) placed 48 out of 52 ranked UC Berkeley doctoral programs within the top 10 nationally. This compared to 46 of 52 programs for Harvard University, which came in second, and 40 of 59 programs for UCLA, in third place.</p>
<p>[Berkeley</a> Research in Numbers | Research](<a href=“http://vcresearch.berkeley.edu/berkeley-research-numbers]Berkeley”>http://vcresearch.berkeley.edu/berkeley-research-numbers)</p>
<p>I agree with UCB above; Berkeley is the best public research university in the US. In fact, I’d even go so far as to call it the best public in the world, with only Oxbridge giving it serious competition. At the same time, UCLA isn’t exactly chopped liver.</p>
<p>Perhaps it’s because I’m a non-Californian, but I don’t really “get” the weird Berkeley-UCLA rivalry.</p>
<p>^ when I mentioned the THE and QS rankings, I specifically meant the subject rankings. For non-STEM fields, Berkeley is still marginally ahead of UCLA, though for most subjects there’s a considerable difference. It doesn’t make sense to exclude STEM fields though, where Berkeley is still very far ahead of UCLA.</p>
<p>Again, UCLA is great, as I said above, but for most general disciplines, Berkeley is still ahead, often far ahead.</p>
<p>I’ll correct this statement, UCB:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Later:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>… which is poor for both. But such is life as a public university. I guess that actually bodes well for both: If both can rake in decent amounts/year with ‘paltry’ giving % rates, the potential has to be pretty high if the administration pressed alumni at both and tried to increase these %'s.</p>
<p>And Phantasmagoric:</p>
<p>I remember a couple of your prior posts, you stated that “UCLA is a UCB ‘wannabe,’” and wondered “why wouldn’t UCLA want to be like Berkeley?”</p>
<p>Rephrase the last according to a lot if not most of UCLA grads: Why would UCLA want to be like Berkeley? The following is also for warblersrule… </p>
<p>The schools are nothing alike. A lot of this is because of geography, NorCal being more of a tech hotbed; SoCal being more entertainment. </p>
<p>UCLA consequently is great in Dance (World Arts and Cultures), Theater Arts, Film, etc. A lot of UCLA grads are in entertainment directly and peripherally, wrt the latter, entertainment law/agency, etc. But generally and professionally, we know that UCLA produces as many MD’s as Berkeley (I prefer ‘Cal’ if nothing more than a savings of letters) as well as probably more attys.</p>
<p>Undoubtedly, Cal pretty well outpaces UCLA in STEM PHD’s (baccalaureates from both proceeding forth with/in PHD programs). But that’s okay, even awesome, with a lot of UCLA grads.</p>
<p>Of the UC’s, I would say, that UCLA is probably more like UCSB, than it would be like Cal, probably because the amount of BS’s from the U would probably be more like the mix of SB’s. There are more mid to north campus majors BA candidates who aspire to be attys, commercial real estate brokers, sales and advertising people rather than physicists, engineers, research biologists/chemists. The exception would be MD’s, dentists, pharmacists, more of the professionals within the STEM area.</p>
<p>And there is a statistical … more related to SAT, difference between the two. The reason is UCLA takes more at-risk students than Cal because there are more underperforming high schools in the LA area than, say, the East Bay (and certainly the South Bay or Peninsula area of SF Bay) because both take more of a bit of a local element to admissions, especially for these at-risks.</p>
<p>In fact, of all the top 30 USN u’s, UCLA probably takes the highest % of at-risks and tries to live up to a public-school commitment, which reflects in its fairly pedestian SAT medians, and for which it sometimes goes overboard with in rejecting a lot of students the U should never consider doing so. </p>
<p>The U tries to back this up by having a large academic services staff, probably the biggest in the nation to get these students up to speed, and often succeeds with a lot of bootstrap stories (unlike Harvard, say, plucking an absolute star from a really bad hs).</p>
<p>There are a lot more reasons why UCLA and Cal are different, and many associated with UCLA could contribute many more reasons. And I think a lot of these within this group would undoubtedly say that Cal has a more prestigious name, undoubtedly.</p>
<p>And one more thing:</p>
<p>Please back off of the notion that UCSF Med is the ‘de facto’ med school of Cal.</p>
<p>Ridiculous…</p>
<p>UCLA has more undergrads. That has nothing to do with medical school students.</p>
<p>Sorry for saying the programs were a joke…it was unduly harsh and my apologies to the offended 'ruins.</p>
<p>Drax, why does UCSF have undergraduate internships only open to Cal undergrads if UCSF is not Cal’s defacto medical school?</p>