There is a world of difference between Berkeley graduate schools – which are still top notch – and the undergraduate experience. which is mixed at best. It also does not help that Berkeley’s law school appears in free fall in the latest rankings. The UC problems generally are having an impact.
What’s mixed in the review of UCB undergrad rating? Haas is tied for second in undergrad business education, English is tied for first with Harvard and Yale. CS is top in the nation with MIT. Chemistry is tops also. What are the lower rated or ranked undergrad colleges or majors? Is it like Cornell where Arts and Sciences is considered ivy while many of the other schools are NY state colleges?
Many of these undergrad rankings you are referring to @preppedparent are quite suspect. USNWR does not even have undergrad ranking in computer science. Others such as for computer engineering are generated by peer surveys (chairs or deans at other schools). They finish representing the research reputation over undergrad experience.
In computer science, while Berkeley’s coursework might match anyone, the student to faculty ratio, flexibility in taking classes and finding other opportunities isn’t really comparable to top private schools.
@osuprof. This just isn’t our experience. Are there any particular weak majors you are aware of?
@preppedparent English is tied in first place with UChicago. Check GRADUATE rankings just out on USNWR.
What’s mixed is that although the faculty and research are top notch, the underage caste experience is marred with problems. Lack of individual attention, high teacher student ratio, no access to professors, huge classes, house Inc problems and oversubscribed courses.
thanks, @Chrchill
Academically, UCB in the same league as HYPSM by every measure. However, being a public school its reputation is much lower, similar to Northwestern, Rice, WashU. The cross admit percentage split between schools is a good approximation of the relative popularity (you can get it from Parchment). Typically peer schools split somewhere between 50/50 to 60/40.
At an institutional level, Berkeley is a peer of HYPSM. At the undergrad level, as imperfect as it is, I think US News is the best proxy:
- WashU
- Emory
- Georgetown
- Berkeley
- USC
- CMU
- UCLA
So WashU, Emory, GTOWN, USC, CMU and UCLA are likely Berkeley’s closest peers at the undergrad level.
In terms of academic research output Berkeley is not just on HYPSM level, it is in fact better than Yale and also maybe Princeton and below Harvard, Stanford, MIT.
For undergrad though it is considered much lower because of the big size, limited resources per student, big classes etc.
Its standing definitely varies depending on what lens one is looking through.
Judging from the people I know who have undergraduate degrees from Berkeley, I’d rate it as a peer of schools like Michigan, Texas, North Carolina, Virginia, Washington. I don’t consider it a peer of the HYPSM-level schools.
At the graduate and research level, I’d place Berkeley among the top five in the world.
For undergrad only, I’d say WashU, CMU, and USC (based on the selectivity I’ve observed).
“The main reason Berkeley is in competition with top privates is because it is a more affordable option, especially for in state.”
dragonmom, if by top privates, you mean Harvard and Stanford, then I agree. Cal may compete with Harvard and Stanford at the graduate level but not at the undergraduate level. But OOS students at Cal choose it over private universities like Carnegie Mellon, Emory, Northwestern, Rice, Vanderbilt, WUSTL etc…frequently, and with good cause.
“My son at Berkeley-who was no slacker and ended up at Stanford for grad school) felt that he was much less prepared than his peers in grad school. Same for my nephew in Econ.”
I am not sure how relevant this side note really is. Your son and nephew are hardly statistically relevant. My best friend studied Mechanical Engineering at Cal, and he was a star PhD candidate at MIT. Recently, one of my own students graduated from Cal and is now a graduate student at Stanford, and he is doing great. Obviously, in both our cases, we are speaking anecdotally. Suggesting that Cal does not prepare its students well for the world is implausible. There is no evidence to suggest that Cal’s product is inferior.
“Finances aside, my kids at WASHU and Vanderbilt got a much more rigorous and rewarding undergraduate experience.”
The main complaint against Cal isn’t academic rigor/intensity, or how well prepared its graduates are to face the world, be it as graduate students, entrepreneurs or employees. In fact, one of the reasons many are discouraged from going to Cal is academic rigor. Cal has its problems to be sure. Large freshman classes (which is common at most universities), research-driven faculties (same goes for private and public elites), lack of resources and impacted majors (mainly a problem in UC campuses) etc…, but academic rigor is not one of them.
To answer the OP, Cal’s peers, at the undergraduate level, are:
Carnegie Mellon University
Columbia University
Cornell University
Georgia Institute of Technology
Northwestern University
University of California-Los Angeles
University of Chicago
University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign
University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
University of Pennsylvania
University of Texas-Austin
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Of course Berkeley is prestigious enough. How ridiculous to think otherwise. You’re splitting hairs.
@ANormalSeniorGuy are you sure you read the chart right? It doesn’t appear the Ivy League schools choose any public schools as peers. Public schools may choose Ivy League schools as peers.
@Chrchill the world may have changed, but what it really reflects is which schools are cited as peers, which is not necessarily the same as which schools are actually peers.
Berkeley and Michigan closely followed by UCLA and UVA are the clear elite publics. It is difficult to compare the undergrad experience at UCB and Mich with the privates. It’s apples and oranges.
Chrchill, I attended Michigan and Cornell. Where it counts, they are identical. Northwestern and Penn are also similar.
I have always thought that the top publics are underrated. But based on admissions this year, it’s clear that Michigan has become a reach school even for tippy top high school grads from elite private schools. Berkeley has been beset with problems seriously negatively affecting publics perceptions of it. But it is still the top public and has global name recognition at the very top of US universities.
Privates:
Cornell, Dartmouth, Duke, JHU, Rice, Brown, maybe NU
Public:
UMich, UCLA, UVA, UNC (the latter two have an extremely small drop-off from UCB, IMO)