USNWR 2012 Best Colleges Rankings (Prediction)

[beyphy]

<p>

UCLA receives more donations because it is a bigger school and has a medical component.

</p>

<p>much of the money donated to UCLA was donated to things which had nothing to do with the med school? The 100m luskin donation was donated to the school of public policy and to help establish the hotel or w/e they’re trying to build; the 200m dollar lincy foundation donation was some weird policy to like help promote the public good or w/e; 25m to the anderson school of management, and i believe 10m each to the law school and the music school; i.e. nearly 70% of the donations made had nothing to do with UCLA’s amazing medical school. You’re premise seems false.</p>

<p>

^ I have to agree with that. Berkeley would kill UCLA in donations if it included UCSF.

and i’m sure UCLA would kill berkeley if it was founded in 1868 as opposed to 1919. We can sit here and play hypotheticals all day, but if we’re to have a serious discussion, we should only go on the facts.</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>The HPI rankings deal purely with research citations, and in those UCLA was cited in the top 10 in every subject examined; berkeley was #1 in two STEM subjects, but in two non-stem subjects ranked 25 and 104. Berkeley is really really good at what it’s good at, but UCLA is more well rounded (or at least more cited) than berkeley is.</p>

<p>

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?

you’re missing some important points in both of your comparisons: 1) UCLA and berkeley have nearly identical admit rates and stats, yet UCLA has like 10k more applicants. I would think that this is not the case with the ivies, (i imagine that students who get admitted into cornell are much different than ones who get admitted into harvard.) 2) UCLA and Berkeley are both appliable on the same UC application, so it’s not as if one has to go and fill out a seperate application; all one needs to do is tick a box. While i can’t honestly say why that is, it’s no doubt surprising.</p>

<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.

I didn’t mean to imply that we should just neglect berkeley’s faculty; you are right though, both universities have prestigious professors, and this point cannot be ignored. </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>but what’s that based on? you make it seem like berkeley dominates UCLA, where this does not seem to be the case; in many of the rankings you listed, the difference between them is marginal at best: USNWR: Cal-22; LA-25; THE: Cal-8; LA-11. (QS have already been dismissed as joke rankings not to be taken seriously) What exactly am i missing here? I personally think it all comes done to perceived prestige. If you compare the THE “reputation” (i.e. prestige) rankings, berkeley is 4 whereas UCLA is 12. This data isn’t warranted by the comparison of subjects i’ve listed above, yet berkeley is ‘leaps and bounds’ above UCLA in this regard, whereas when actual ranking differences are compared, the difference is negligable in non-stem fields.</p>

<p>the truth is that UCLA and berkeley have diffent focuses. UCLA is focused on the entertainment industry and on medicine; berkeley is focused on stem fields and stem research. I don’t see in virtue of what factor why one subject should be considered better than the others. What annoys me is that the two seem so close to each other (with berkeley usually only just edging out UCLA) and yet everyone swears that there’s a world of difference between the two, although this, imo, is based mainly on preconceived notions.</p>

<p>

It doesn’t make sense to exclude STEM fields though, where Berkeley is still very far ahead of UCLA.

i didn’t mean to imply that we should exclude them. all i meant was that while berkeley is one of the best universities in the world for STEM fields, UCLA is not; but for non-stem, the two are very close.</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.

</p>

<p>I disagree with both of your statements. UCLA is a mix between Cal and SB. It has many parties due to living in the vibrant and lively city of los angeles, yet it’s also well regarded as one of the world’s best academic institutions. Hence, it’s sort of the best of both worlds, and it’s all in the nice, clean, affluent city of westwood, with the warm sunny beaches just a few miles away and the the entertainment industry probably like a 20min drive away. </p>

<p>in regard to your latter statement, it’s just a misconception that UCLA doesn’t have its share of stem majors who are also very tallented. In fact, we even edged out caltech not too long ago in the facebook hackathon competition.</p>

<p>[The</a> Daily Bruin :: App from UCLA team prevails in Facebook?s first SoCal Camp Hackathon](<a href=“http://www.dailybruin.com/index.php/article/2011/05/app_from_ucla_team_prevails_in_facebooks_first_socal_camp_hackathon]The”>http://www.dailybruin.com/index.php/article/2011/05/app_from_ucla_team_prevails_in_facebooks_first_socal_camp_hackathon)</p>

<p>

Please back off of the notion that UCSF Med is the ‘de facto’ med school of Cal.</p>

<p>Ridiculous…

</p>

<p>i do agree with this though lol.</p>

<p>

Drax, why does UCSF have undergraduate internships only open to Cal undergrads if UCSF is not Cal’s defacto medical school?

</p>

<p>probably because the two have a history together and Cal never went and built another medical school. There’d be no point in offering it to another school like Stanford since Stanford has its own medical school.</p>

[UCBChemEGrad]

<p>

Perhaps it’s because I’m a non-Californian, but I don’t really “get” the weird Berkeley-UCLA rivalry.

Attend the UCLA/Cal football game and listen to the bands at halftime.
Same mascot.
UCLA’s blue has been increasingly getting darker…closer to Cal’s Yale Blue.
[UCLA</a> Blue - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UCLA_Blue]UCLA”>UCLA Bruins - Wikipedia)

UCLA Blue is the dark blue color used in association with the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). It is described as a deep sky blue and is accompanied by a sun gold, UCLA Gold. Both are colloquially referred to as ‘blue and gold’.
UCLA Blue was approved by the Chancellor of UCLA in March 2004.

<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_Blue_(color[/url])”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_Blue_(color)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>UCLA is totally unoriginal.</p>

[UCBChemEGrad]

<p>

probably because the two have a history together and Cal never went and built another medical school. There’d be no point in offering it to another school like Stanford since Stanford has its own medical school.

Right. The two have a history together and it would be redundant for Cal to build another medical school since it already has a campus across the bay.</p>

[drax12]

<p>If you wouldn’t mind, UCB, could you consolidate your messages next time? </p>

<p>Let me ask you some questions wrt this supposed association of Cal and UCSF Med:</p>

<p>1) Does Cal benefit by UCSF Med the way that UCLA benefits from UCLA Med?</p>

<p>2) Do Cal students benefit from UCSF’s Med admissions? Is there a preferential policy towards taking Cal grads, maybe even with lower stats by these students to UCSF Med, than, say, UCSC, UCR, UCM’s as Vandy Med would do with its undergrads?</p>

<p>The answer of the two would of course be a resounding, ‘NO.’</p>

<p>The benefit of UCLA undergrad by UCLA Med is, one, it’s on campus. Students can watch surgical procedures; there are med students who TA UCLA undergrads; and there are definitiely internships and research ops for UCLA undergrads during the academic year. </p>

<p>Furthermore, the money that med brings in will indeed benefit UCLA undergrad if nothing more than their both bearing the name of UCLA.</p>

<p>It’d be stupid to think that some future biophysics major would think she’d have a better chance at UCSF Med by attending school at Cal rahter than at UCSC because such a policy in question 2, other than some pulling up factor of being around a lot more premeds at Cal rather than at SC.</p>

<p>I realize that of all the UC’s and probably of all u’s, there would probably be more Cal grads at UCSF med but that’s because Cal produces huge bunches of talented premeds, independent of some supposed med school association. </p>

<p>Bottom line: UCSF Med, a private institution, and Cal are entirely two separate entities. The money that UCSF rakes in doesn’t benefit Cal in any way, other than a some research ops and internships. Btw, ‘internships,’ just sounds like cleaning bedpans at the hospital.</p>

<p>And UCSF also has a pharm, nursing, and dental school. Are you going to claim these also? Why not claim UC Hastings and say that Cal has two L-schools?</p>

<p>Wrt the size of Cal and UCLA, UCLA has, what 1K more undergrads? The grad school is definitely larger, mainly because of teh med-school component.</p>

<p>Wrt school colors, these are colors of California. And UCLA’s blue isn’t darkening to match Cal’s. And I do like the way UCLA"s band plays Sons of Westwood much better than Cal’s band. The latter group tends to want to rush through playing it and it’s not nearly as catchy/melodic. ;)</p>

[drax12]

<p>And beyphy, I’m not downgrading UCLA"s STEM capability. Cal, though, does tend to do better with STEM PHD’s. I do agree UCLA has the best of all worlds, including campus atmosphere, etc.</p>

[phantasmagoric]

<p>drax12,</p>

<p>

Rephrase the last according to a lot if not most of UCLA grads: Why would UCLA want to be like Berkeley?

</p>

<p>Most schools want to be like Berkeley, just as they want to be like Stanford and Harvard. When it comes to faculty, top programs, facilities, etc., there are few schools that can rival them. Ask any university president and they’d say the model schools are those. It’s not even a question.</p>

<p>

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>Source? Does LA have more underperforming high schools than the Bay Area? And even if it did, that doesn’t say anything about the students who actually enroll at the local schools (e.g. Nor Cal schools like Stanford and Berkeley draw a huge proportion of in-state students from the LA area).</p>

<p>

UCLA probably takes the highest % of at-risks and tries to live up to a public-school commitment

</p>

<p>UCLA and Berkeley are almost exactly alike in this regard - ‘at-risks’ being those who are low-income or first generation. That’s why both are at the top in the Washington Monthly ranking.</p>

<p>

Please back off of the notion that UCSF Med is the ‘de facto’ med school of Cal.

</p>

<p>I never said that. In fact, you’ll find the opposite in my posts. But I can also see the obvious problem in the claim that UCLA gets more donations and is thus better than Berkeley, etc. (there are additional factors that lead to that difference).</p>

[phantasmagoric]

<p>beyphy,</p>

<p>

The 100m luskin donation was donated to the school of public policy and to help establish the hotel or w/e they’re trying to build; the 200m dollar lincy foundation donation was some weird policy to like help promote the public good or w/e

</p>

<p>Look at what these donations actually go to. I discussed this in another thread, but IIRC only $100m (of the $300m big-dollar donations) ends up going to non-medical purposes.</p>

<p>

and i’m sure UCLA would kill berkeley if it was founded in 1868 as opposed to 1919. We can sit here and play hypotheticals all day, but if we’re to have a serious discussion, we should only go on the facts.

</p>

<p>That has absolutely nothing to do with present-day donations. Stanford was founded hundreds of years after Harvard, yet it has sometimes nearly doubled the total $ in donations. (A hundred years ago, Stanford had 6x the endowment of Harvard. Back then, donations - for the purpose of the endowment - were not nearly as developed as they are today. Look at the endowments of only 30-40 years ago and you’ll see that many of the top schools were on equal ground.)</p>

<p>

but UCLA is more well rounded (or at least more cited) than berkeley is.

</p>

<p>Prove it.</p>

<p>

UCLA and berkeley have nearly identical admit rates and stats, yet UCLA has like 10k more applicants.

</p>

<p>And what does that say? I think it most likely has to do with the fact that UCLA draws a lot of low-quality applicants from the LA area. Look up the statistics from UC statfinder. Berkeley has a far higher quality applicant pool than UCLA.</p>

<p>

but what’s that based on?

</p>

<p>As I said, it’s based on the faculty. Berkeley’s faculty is still leaps and bounds ahead of UCLA. As a result of this faculty, Berkeley has far more programs that are rated at the top. As a result, it has far greater research. As a result of that, it’s more prestigious. As a result of that, it’s more selective. Again, everything rests on the quality of the faculty.</p>

<p>

UCLA is a mix between Cal and SB. It has many parties due to living in the vibrant and lively city of los angeles, yet it’s also well regarded as one of the world’s best academic institutions.

</p>

<p>That sounds like rationalization and wishful thinking, but if it makes you feel superior to Berkeley and other schools, that’s fine.</p>

<p>

UCLA is focused on the entertainment industry and on medicine; berkeley is focused on stem fields and stem research.

</p>

<p>This is so far from true, both for UCLA and Berkeley. UCLA has strength far beyond entertainment and medicine; Berkeley has strength far beyond STEM fields.</p>

<p>

in regard to your latter statement, it’s just a misconception that UCLA doesn’t have its share of stem majors who are also very tallented. In fact, we even edged out caltech not too long ago in the facebook hackathon competition.

</p>

<p>Where did I say that UCLA doesn’t have talented STEM majors? By the way, such competitions show absolutely nothing. You’ll find random unknown schools at the top of some CS competitions where Stanford and MIT don’t place well or even participate in; the reason is that they just don’t care. ;)</p>

[beyphy]

<p>

Look at what these donations actually go to. I discussed this in another thread, but IIRC only $100m (of the $300m big-dollar donations) ends up going to non-medical purposes.

UCLA stated what the luskin money went to. So far what they’ve listed from the lincy foundation money (the other 200m) afaik, they’ve only used 20m on creating scholarships. If you have any evidence that the money is going toward the medical school, i’d like to see it.</p>

<p>

Stanford was founded hundreds of years after Harvard, yet it has sometimes nearly doubled the total $ in donations.

</p>

<p>you’re comparing apples and oranges again. While harvard and stanford were indeed founded hundreds of years appart, neither were funded by the same funds, like UCLA, berkeley, and other UC schools are.</p>

<p>

Prove it.

</p>

<p>unfortunately my ability to do this has been very hindered since the website was taken down, so all i can provide is the wikipedia entry with a 3rd party detail of the rankings:</p>

<p>[Another</a> World Ranking: High Impact Universities Registrarism](<a href=“http://registrarism.■■■■■■■■■■■■■/2010/09/30/another-world-ranking-high-impact-universities/]Another”>Another World Ranking: High Impact Universities – Registrarism)</p>

<p>[High</a> Impact Universities - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Impact_Universities]High”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Impact_Universities)</p>

<p>however it should be noted that the ranking was taken seriously by some prestigious universities like MIT:</p>

<p>[MIT</a> Office of the Provost, Institutional Research: Rankings - Academic Ranking of World Universities](<a href=“MIT Institutional Research”>MIT Institutional Research)</p>

<p>

This is so far from true, both for UCLA and Berkeley. UCLA has strength far beyond entertainment and medicine; Berkeley has strength far beyond STEM fields.

</p>

<p>i shouldn’t have phrased that the way i did. What i meant to say was that they both have strong interests in seperate departments. Berkeley has little, if any, interests in having its own film school whereas UCLA has a great interest in doing so since it’s so close to the film industry; the medical school is also another thing that UCLA focuses a lot on. For berkeley on the other hand, due to its proximity to silicon valley, it’s good for it to have amazing STEM. This doesn’t mean that berkeley can’t have a great film program, or UCLA great stem majors, but i don’t think it would be naive to deny the interests that both schools seemingly have to their own powerhouse industries (hollywood and SV.)</p>

<p>

Where did I say that UCLA doesn’t have talented STEM majors?

</p>

<p>that was actually quoted from, and directed toward Drax12. Sorry, i assumed you’d know that the text which was written wasn’t quoted from you :p</p>

<p>

By the way, such competitions show absolutely nothing. You’ll find random unknown schools at the top of some CS competitions where Stanford and MIT don’t place well or even participate in; the reason is that they just don’t care.

</p>

<p>Yes because we all know that CS students wouldn’t be taking a competition sponsored by Facebook seriously :rolleyes:</p>

[phantasmagoric]

<p>

If you have any evidence that the money is going toward the medical school, i’d like to see it.

</p>

<p>Straight from the horse’s mouth:</p>

<p>[UCLA</a> receives $200 million gift to create unique philanthropic fund / UCLA Newsroom](<a href=“http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/ucla-and-private-foundation-partner-192057.aspx]UCLA”>Newsroom | UCLA)</p>

<p>Specifically:</p>

<p>

the Dream Fund at UCLA, a community-based fund devoted to the support of medical research and academic programs at UCLA, as well as the support of a wide range of charitable projects throughout the United States

</p>

<p>

you’re comparing apples and oranges again. While harvard and stanford were indeed founded hundreds of years appart, neither were funded by the same funds, like UCLA, berkeley, and other UC schools are.

</p>

<p>This is irrelevant. We’re not talking about the typical funding models (state support vs. endowment support); we’re talking about donations, which both types draw on. You asserted that Berkeley’s earlier founding had something to do with the donations it receives (in reply to my comment that including UCSF in Berkeley’s funding total would bring its donation total far past UCLA’s). I said that the founding year is irrelevant to present-day donations. To demonstrate that, I pointed out that Stanford is far younger than Harvard yet still manages to raise more money.</p>

<p>

unfortunately my ability to do this has been very hindered since the website was taken down, so all i can provide is the wikipedia entry with a 3rd party detail of the rankings:

</p>

<p>That’s about what I expected. I look to subject rankings to determine breadth and depth, and a variety of sources (NRC rankings, US News subject rankings, QS subject rankings, THE subject rankings, Faculty Scholarly Productivity Index, etc.) all support my point - that Berkeley is far more well-rounded that UCLA in terms of both breadth and depth. I’m rather surprised that this is even being debated. Berkeley’s well-roundedness is perhaps its #1 claim to fame: only Stanford can match it in breadth and depth. (Harvard comes in after these two, given its weakness in engineering - although it’s still strong in engineering overall, contrary to popular belief.)</p>

<p>

This doesn’t mean that berkeley can’t have a great film program, or UCLA great stem majors, but i don’t think it would be naive to deny the interests that both schools seemingly have to their own powerhouse industries

</p>

<p>But your overall point is rather misleading. Sure they have their strengths - as every school does - but you’re comparing a single discipline (film) and saying that it’s somehow comparable to Berkeley’s strength across all STEM disciplines (I’ll ignore the fact that you don’t acknowledge its strength across most other disciplines). Medicine is a different matter altogether.</p>

<p>

Yes because we all know that CS students wouldn’t be taking a competition sponsored by Facebook seriously

</p>

<p>This was discussed at length on the MIT forum about why Stanford, MIT, and other top CS schools didn’t place well in the big ACM competition. The conclusion was that some schools go out of their way to field teams, others not so much. I can say that at Stanford, most CS students don’t care or don’t even know about the ACM programming competition. In general they’re too busy with other commitments (classes, research, activities, etc.) to care much about something as trivial as a CS competition.</p>

<p>I’m in CS, and I’ve never even heard of that Facebook competition. And Facebook headquarters is on Stanford’s campus. (The only ‘hackathon’ that Stanford does AFAIK is during Dance Marathon.)</p>

[RML]

<p>I have always considered UCLA as Berkeley’s younger brother and so I don’t want any rivalry to exist between them. Besides, I think the UCLA-USC rivalry is more interesting. :D</p>

<p>Academically speaking though, I would rank UCLA number 3 amongst the public universities, that’s after Berkeley (#1), and Michigan (#2).</p>

[jhaverford4587]

<p>

@RML

Academically speaking though, I would rank UCLA number 3 amongst the public universities, that’s after Berkeley (#1), and Michigan (#2).

I’m not sure what you mean by “academically”, but UVA is normally considered to be the #3 public school if not the #2 public school ahead of Michigan.</p>

<p>

@UCBChemEGrad

Drax, why does UCSF have undergraduate internships only open to Cal undergrads if UCSF is not Cal’s defacto medical school?

Source please? I’m sure Stanford and UC Santa Cruz undergrads can intern, shadow or volunteer at UCSF Med if they so desired.</p>

[RML]

<p>^ I’m sorry; you are correct. UVa is either 2nd or 3rd, so that would make UCLA #4 top public in the nation.</p>

[rjkofnovi]

<p>“I’m not sure what you mean by “academically”, but UVA is normally considered to be the #3 public school if not the #2 public school ahead of Michigan.”</p>

<p>I’m not sure why you say that either. Michigan is academically stronger than UVA in most comparable disciplines. UVA is relatively weak in engineering and the hard sciences. Michigan really has no academic weaknesses. Only Berkeley bests Michigan in overall academic strength. I would put UCLA up there with Michigan before UVA.</p>

[jayfromla]

<p>I’m trying to understand why this is a real discussion.</p>

[jhaverford4587]

<p>

@rjkofnovi

I’m not sure why you say that either. Michigan is academically stronger than UVA in most comparable disciplines. UVA is relatively weak in engineering and the hard sciences. Michigan really has no academic weaknesses. Only Berkeley bests Michigan in overall academic strength. I would put UCLA up there with Michigan before UVA.

No one cares about academic strength unless you’re an aspiring PhD student. UVA has higher selectivity, lower class sizes and better advising than Michigan. A UVA bachelors degree is just as valued as a Michigan LSA bachelors degree, if not more so.</p>

[drax12]

<p>

Rephrase the last according to a lot if not most of UCLA grads: Why would UCLA want to be like Berkeley?

Most schools want to be like Berkeley, just as they want to be like Stanford and Harvard. When it comes to faculty, top programs, facilities, etc., there are few schools that can rival them. Ask any university president and they’d say the model schools are those. It’s not even a question.

</p>

<p>You’re backtracking again. Now you’re saying things in a more general context. </p>

<p>If a school like UCLA wants to improve its faculty, and its faculty is just fine already, why does that mean that UCLA is trying to be more like Cal? Why does this propose a Cal model or now a Stanford or Harvard one? That’s dumb…</p>

<p>Facilities? Are you kidding me … why are Cal’s so much better than UCLA’s?</p>

<p>

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>

Source? Does LA have more underperforming high schools than the Bay Area? And even if it did, that doesn’t say anything about the students who actually enroll at the local schools (e.g. Nor Cal schools like Stanford and Berkeley draw a huge proportion of in-state students from the LA area).

</p>

<p>Are you serious?</p>

<p>You’re questioning whether there are more underperforming schools in the LA area? It’s a trend on this board to question something that is obvious and reply, “Source?,” and if you can’t see this, I can’t help you. Actually … go to statfinder and type in schools like Washington, Fremont, Dorsey, Crenshaw, and LA under school reports and you’ll see how underperforming these schools are. Do a county report of schools… to see the shear number of them. Schools that used to be good like Birmingham and Franklin are now lower performing schools because of the influx of immigrants and even Dream Act kids.</p>

<p>And, btw, try to keep Stanford out of the conversation when it’s not mentioned, for once.</p>

<p>

UCLA probably takes the highest % of at-risks and tries to live up to a public-school commitment</p>

<p>

UCLA and Berkeley are almost exactly alike in this regard - ‘at-risks’ being those who are low-income or first generation. That’s why both are at the top in the Washington Monthly ranking.

</p>

<p>You have no idea…</p>

<p>You can’t refer to some publication to see the differences in at-risk students at both u’s. It’s not a only %-of-students thing only; it’s also a stat-differential thing. </p>

<p>Let me put it this way: there are more at-risks at UCLA, and the depth of their being at-risk with significantly lower stats is more profound at UCLA than at Cal. </p>

<p>Not all near the 25th percentile are at-risk, but do you think that UCLA has to take a 3.75/4.00/1590 at this level? Off of the rejected students from the numerous top-performing high schools in CA, obviously not. If it were a pure stat thing with equal significant weights to scores as with grades, UCLA could admit to > 2000 at the 25th %-ile. </p>

<p>As it is, there’s almost seemingly a counter-action by UCLA to reject students with high scores and often combined with extremely high grades because they are usually pretty wealthy and UCLA is ALL about diversity wrt economic background – this not entirely true of course, but there’s a lot of leapfrogging admissions of students even within a specific high-school set. </p>

<p>And listen to Chancellor Block talk sometime – Stanford grad, btw, and the first words out of his mouth are ‘UCLA’s a public school, and should be about diversity,’ like some robotic spiel. This is how he became Chancellor, and the first question from the academic senate when his name was put forth was undoubtedly this question of diversity. I don’t see Cal’s Chancellor approach this question anywhere near UCLA’s.</p>

<p>Wrt to your mentioning the Dream Fund, why would UCLA put some aside for medical research? What kind of research do you think UCLA would * want to* conduct on its own aside from a national grant? I’ve probably never heard of this, especially since the donation by Mr. Kerkorian wasn’t earmarked.</p>

<p>And RML, I couldn’t care less where UCLA is ranked within the public-school set, either by anyone’s single opinion or by USN’s, which we know are heavily flawed.</p>

[rjkofnovi]

<p>"No one cares about academic strength unless you’re an aspiring PhD student. </p>

<p>Then by all means go to a school that is considered weak academically.</p>

[GoBlue81]

<p>

UVA has higher selectivity, lower class sizes … than Michigan.

Selectivity rank: Michigan #26; UVa #27
SAT range: Michigan 1830-2130; UVa 1840-2150
Student/Faculty ratio: Michgian 15:1; UVa 16:1
% classes under 20: Michigan 46%; UVa 52%</p>

<p>Looks pretty even to me.</p>

<p>

UVA has … better advising than Michigan.

How do you know that? Source please.</p>

<p>

No one cares about academic strength unless you’re an aspiring PhD student.

Academic strength is an indicator that the school may have more accomplished faculty, better facilities, more advanced research, stronger industrial connection, and stronger alumni network. As an undergraduate student, you can benefit from all of the above.</p>

<p>Undergraduate research is quite common nowadays. For example,
“A 2008 student survey found that 52% of Berkeley seniors have assisted faculty with research or creative projects.”</p>

[RML]

<p>

And RML, I couldn’t care less where UCLA is ranked within the public-school set, either by anyone’s single opinion or by USN’s, which we know are heavily flawed.

</p>

<p>I like the attitude. Dissecting the top4 public unis is like dissecting HYPS. I couldn’t care less too if someone says yale is better than Princeton and vice versa. They all are fantastic schools regardless how I or USNews rank them.</p>

[UCBChemEGrad]

<p>

Bottom line: UCSF Med, a private institution, and Cal are entirely two separate entities.

UCSF is not a private institution. It is part of the public University of California system and is the only graduate-only campus dedicated to medical sciences. In the 1960s, UCSF was given more autonomy from Cal (i.e. its own chancellor and administrative staff). However, there are many ties that still bind the UCSF and Berkeley campuses:
[Welcome</a> to the Joint Medical Program | Joint Medical Program](<a href=“http://jmp.berkeley.edu/]Welcome”>http://jmp.berkeley.edu/)
[Bioengineering</a> Graduate Group](<a href=“http://bioeng.berkeley.edu/gradhome.php]Bioengineering”>http://bioeng.berkeley.edu/gradhome.php)
[Medical</a> Anthropology Graduate Program - Anthropology Department, UC Berkeley](<a href=“http://anthropology.berkeley.edu/programs/graduate/medical.php]Medical”>http://anthropology.berkeley.edu/programs/graduate/medical.php)
[UC</a> Berkeley, UCSF join forces to advance frontier of brain repair](<a href=“Berkeley News | Berkeley”>Berkeley News | Berkeley)
[Berkeley/UCSF</a> | Scholars in Health Policy Research](<a href=“http://healthpolicyscholars.org/category/program-site/berkeleyucsf]Berkeley/UCSF”>http://healthpolicyscholars.org/category/program-site/berkeleyucsf)</p>

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@jhaverford4587

Source please? I’m sure Stanford and UC Santa Cruz undergrads can intern, shadow or volunteer at UCSF Med if they so desired.

[UCSF</a> School of Medicine](<a href=“http://obgyn.ucsf.edu/education/whuri/whuri_2011.aspx]UCSF”>http://obgyn.ucsf.edu/education/whuri/whuri_2011.aspx)

these internships are available to undergraduate students enrolled at the University of California at Berkeley who are planning to attend medical school after graduation, and who have an interest in women’s health, pediatrics, or primary care. Students have to be enrolled in the fall of 2011 at UC Berkeley as an undergraduate.

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