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By the way, the majority of kids who get into UVa choose to go there. The majority of who get into Berkeley choose NOT to go there.
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<p>Considering UVa is such as easy school to get into (about 50% compared to Berkeley's less than 25%), that shouldn't be too much of a surprise. Berkeley needs to compete with schools like Stanford, Caltech, and UCLA. Those that are able to get into Berkeley might be hoping to get into these other school. Considering UVa doesn't have any comparable competition (because Virginia universities just can't compete with California universities), it's no surprise many Virginians choose UVa.</p>
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Though I would think it would be common sense to correlate applications to population. For being in a state that's 4-5 times the size of Virginia, UCB obviously can't expand to a 60K Person school so they reject numerous people in their populous state. Sometimes you need to think about what's behind the statistics before you report them.
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<p>My previous post applies to your misunderstanding. Also, realize that UCLA, a near-equal to Berkeley (incidentally, this is also how I regard UVa) in terms of undergraduate education, admits even more students than Berkeley. These two institutions put together are near to 60k. You just can't look at the population as a whole. This isn't even counting the other lesser UCs whose reputation and ranking alone surpass UVa in several areas. The key here is competition; in Virginia, you get the short end of the stick. Sometimes you need to think about the context before you draw conclusions.</p>
<p>50%? Last time I checked it was around the high 30's. And easy school to get in to? ..<em>sigh</em> maybe in state it is relatively easy, but OOS? Well its not even worth debating about this really.</p>
<p>obviously cal receives more applications than UVa. california is the most populous country in the state with 36.1 million people. Virginia has a population of 7.5 million people. california has nearly 5x as many people as UVa. quick breakdown for ya smirf.</p>
<p>cal received 37000 applications for 4000 spots in its freshman class and admitted 26% (remember, 1/3 of cals student body is composed of transfer students). about 40% of the people who are accepted went. </p>
<p>UVa received 16000 applications for 3000 spots in its freshman class and admitted 36%. about 55% of the people UVa accepted went. </p>
<p>now, you can say cal is better because of that...however, the numbers clearly show the opposite. While cal receives more bulk applications, it receives far fewer applications with relationship to the size of its home state than UVa does. california is nearly 5x larger than virginia, but cal receives just over 2x as many applications. Remember that while berkeley's undergrad is almost 2x the size of UVa's, its freshman class is only 1000 larger (due to high # of transfer students), therefore driving down the admit rate. Also, cals application is substantially less tedious than UVa's, and anyone who wants to apply to any uc, not just cal, can apply to it by simply checking off an additional box - which artificially inflates the number of true applicants.</p>
<p>It seems that UVa is in much more demand than cal is - given the population discrepancies.</p>
<p>What's with all the over-analysis? Anyone can make an arbitrary measure of a school. But who cares? They're both damn good universities and undoubtedly the best two publics in the nation (though interchangable for the top spot according to preference). I think everyone can agree to that.</p>
<p>Well, first of all, you may want to get your admittance stats right. I think jags took care of that for you, though.</p>
<p>Cal Tech only has a handful of CA freshmen going there each year (like 75-100). Stanford only has a few hundred freshmen CA residents attending that school. For Berkeley's size, it's not losing many students to these schools- Virginia as well loses many to schools like Georgetown, Duke, etc in a similar fashion. I think the only real 'competition' in which many students split is UCLA and Berkeley- though I don't have any cross-admit data on that. I don't even know why you'd bring in any UC outside of UCLA or UCB- unless there are mass numbers of students who are rejecting their chance to go to either of these top schools for UCSD (which I believe is the next highest) lol. Even so, UVA has its own state counterpart which you convieniently or unknowingly ignored- William and Mary. Together they make up about 4500 incoming freshmen in Virginia. UCLA and UCB combined total for about 8500 incoming freshmen. Jags has already discussed the implications of that, in which public schools with 2x slots but 5x population drive down the acceptance rate.</p>
<p>Of course, that's still an arbitrary assessment of the two schools. Because in the end we all know UChicago is so much worse than UVA and Berkeley with that 40 percent acceptance rate.</p>
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Berkeley needs to compete with schools like Stanford, Caltech, and UCLA. Those that are able to get into Berkeley might be hoping to get into these other school. Considering UVa doesn't have any comparable competition (because Virginia universities just can't compete with California universities), it's no surprise many Virginians choose UVa.
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<p>Oh Communist Smurf, oh how little you know about UVa. Well, let me refer you to this article written by US News about the University of Virginia.</p>
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...the quality of U.Va.'s student body...is chock full of academic stars who turn down private schools like Duke, Princeton, and Cornell for, they say, a better value.
<p>Right, because people that have 5 more points on their SAT and 0.25 more GPA than I do are so much better than I am in every aspect of the word.</p>
<p>The statistics of IN-state accepted applicants for each of the two schools are very similar. Good/great grades and good/great SATS. </p>
<p>The stats for OOS accepted applicants at the schools are also very similar. Super students only--great grades and great SATS (with a few exceptions). Berkeley may be more numbers driven--who knows.</p>
<p>Beyond that, the UC system has such an abundance of good public schools, that it is just silly to talk about matriculation stats. The UC app makes it very easy to apply to schools that you may or may not want to go to, and there are other schools besides UCLA and UDSD that are good choices. My D (2nd year-UVa) would have chosen UCSB or Davis if she stayed in-state. Forget rankings--they are all good--and all very different.</p>
<p>Oh Communist Smurf, Im going to tear a page from our dear friend Jags861s postings. So, heres the rub. Over 7,000 (nearly 1/3) of Berkeleys 23,000 undergrads are transfers, mostly from community colleges and "lesser" universities. (At UVa, transfers make up less than 10%.) If you included the SAT scores & high school GPAs of these students to the admissions numbers, Berkeleys average stats would be significantly lower. </p>
<p>smirf, if all cal students are like you - you definately don't win.</p>
<p>i could go into detailed explanation on why those numbers don't mean anything, but to keep it short and simple, cal uses a weighted uc system of grading, which would give an advantage to the students gpas. also 5 points on the sats isn't going to make that big difference. And don't forget, those numbers are like 4 years old.</p>
<p>the 25-75 sat scores of UVa's most recent incoming class is 1280-1490. cal has not reported what its scores are yet, but i am curious to see where they are.</p>
<p>regardless, we've...well i've had this conversation before with many people on this website. simply citing sat scores and gpa's of incoming students does not make one school better than the other. it especially doesn't make cal better because, like globalist already said, it ignores 1/3 of the population of the school...which i could imagine would only lower, not raise those stats. </p>
<p>For every person with a 4.24 "uc recalculated" gpa and 1320 on his SATs that goes to a community college I will show you 100 who had a sub-3.0 gpa and sub 1000.</p>