<p>Undergraduate reputation is driven more by the selectivity of the institution and the strength of the student body, which is reflected in the hiring practices of most top American companies. This is why Chicago and Duke will always be a notch below the Ivy League and Stanford.</p>
<p>Duke is a basketball factory and Michigan is a football factory; Cal wants to be both.</p>
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<p>Of course, nobody is forcing me. Why do you state the obvious?</p>
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<p>I don’t really understand your point. Are you actually proud that Cal is becoming more of a football factory like Michigan?</p>
<p>How unbecoming of the nation’s #1 public!</p>
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<p>The embarassment to which I refer has nothing to do with win-loss records. It lies in that both Cal and Michigan seem to prioritize win-loss records at the expense of academic and admissions standards.</p>
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<p>Wanna bet???</p>
<p>[University</a> of Michigan Academics and Athletics - MLive.com](<a href=“http://www.mlive.com/wolverines/academics/]University”>http://www.mlive.com/wolverines/academics/)</p>
<p>The graduation rates of Michigan football and basketball players (especially African American student-athletes) is absolutely abysmal. Why does Michigan continue to admit recruits that it full well knows likely won’t end up graduating?</p>
<p>“Seventy-one percent of black football players enrolled in 2000 graduated from Michigan within six years, giving the group a four-class average of 46 percent. In last year’s data, which compares only scholarship players, the four-class average was 40 percent.”</p>
<p>“Men’s basketball at Michigan - a 38 percent four-class average…had the worst graduation rates at [the] school in the eight sports tracked by the report.”</p>
<p>[NCAA</a> releases graduation rate data for Michigan and EMU | Ann Arbor News Archives - MLive.com](<a href=“http://blog.mlive.com/annarbornews/2007/10/ncaa_releases_graduation_rate.html]NCAA”>NCAA releases graduation rate data for Michigan and EMU - mlive.com)</p>
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<p>Why don’t you quote some of the rest of that article, which would give a more complete and therefore more accurate picture?</p>
<p>“The NCAA’s graduation success rate, which differs from the federal data because it accounts for transfer students, had the graduation rate of athletes nationwide at 77 percent in this year’s report. Michigan scored at 83 percent rate in the NCAA rate, compared to 87 percent last year.”</p>
<p>The mistake you and many others make is to equate low graduation rates for athletes with high academic failure rates. 'Tain’t necessarily so, especially in high profile athletic programs like Michigan’s. A lot of football players come to Michigan looking to get to the NFL. And a rather high percentage of them do; there are currently 36 Michigan players on NFL rosters, making Michigan one of the largest sources of NFL talent. I don’t have the exact numbers, but many of the best of those players elect to turn pro before completing their senior years–and you can hardly blame them, since an injury incurred in your senior year could keep you from landing that lucrative spot on an NFL roster. A few of those early-entrants to the NFL manage to finish their undergrad degrees; most don’t, not necessarily because they’re academically incapable but because they’re already making a good living in the career they always dreamed of, and to many a college degree becomes essentially redundant at that point. Many more come to Michigan hoping to be starters and when it becomes clear they’re not going to get the playing time because someone better is ahead of them on the depth chart, transfer to other schools. You’re quoting statistics that treat all those transfers as if they were dropouts. In fact, over 80% of athletes who start at Michigan end up graduating from college. That’s in contrast to a nationwide 6-year graduation rate of 62% for ALL students at NCAA Division I universities. So I’d say Michigan is doing OK by its student-athletes.</p>
<p>Same is true in basketball, only perhaps more so. There, it’s a small-N problem. NCAA rules allow Division I schools to give only 13 basketball scholarships at a time. If everyone stayed 4 years, that translates to 3.25 scholarships per year. If one turns out to be a star who goes pro early, and one turns out to be a bust who doesn’t get PT and transfers to another school, that pretty quickly gets you down to a 33% graduation rate (using the method that doesn’t account for transfers, i.e., the figures you’re citing). Of course, that frees up two more scholarships for the next recruiting class. But you get the point. Just a very small numbers of early NBA draft entrants and transfers out of the program can pull your graduation rate down dramatically. By the way, a Michigan man, Juwan Howard, one of the famous “Fab Five,” was the very first early entrant into the NBA draft ever to come back and finish his undergrad degree after landing a spot on an NBA roster; he went on to have a very solid and very lucrative NBA career, playing in over 1,000 games and scoring over 15,000 points in a 15-year season that is still ongoing. Two others of the Fab Five, Chris Howard and Jalen Rose, also entered the NBA draft early; neither finished college but both had excellent pro careers, with Webber reportedly earning $176 million over the course of his career; both are now television analysts. Non-graduates, yes, but hardly failures.</p>
<p>Look, I don’t want to oversell this. Some football and basketball players do drop out, and most don’t make it to the pro ranks. Graduation rates could be higher. But among big-time football programs, Michigan consistently has one of the higher graduation rates, as well as one of the highest success rates in getting its players into the pro ranks. And its record of graduating athletes across all sports is very strong indeed.</p>
<p>But why we’re debating this on a Berkeley thread, I’ll never know.</p>
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<p>Why would you assume that everyone who would major in economics at Chicago would want to end up as an Investment Banker? What about those who would want to become an economist or economics professor? Don’t you think those people exist in the real world as well? </p>
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<p>First of all, please stop mentioning Duke in the same sentence with HYPSM. We all know Duke isn’t on HYPSM’s level. </p>
<p>Second, I beg to differ that selectivity is the main driving force for school prestige. There are thousands upon thousands of very selective university all over the world. Do you think selectivity is conclusive to HYPSM? No. Peking U is quite selective. Tokyo U is quite selective. Those Indian schools are extremely selective. Heck, there are even quite selective schools in Pakistan, Indonesia, Bangladesh or South Africa. But do they ever come close to HYPSM in prestige? No. Therefore, your assumption that SELECTIVITY is the main driving force for school prestige is INconclusive. </p>
<p>The main driving force of school prestige is high faculty caliber. Oftentimes, and whether you would agree with me or not, faculty drives school prestige. When you would have a star faculty assigned in an unknown university, that university would become controversial, and later the people would try to dig deeper about the standard of that institution, for why would a “star” faculty, Nobel prize caliber, etc… want to teach there instead of HYPSM? </p>
<p>HYPSM are prestigious, and are attractive to the best students out there because they have been, for a long time now, employing top quality faculty. If you would replace those faculty at HYPSM with those from a California community college, I’m sure they wouldn’t be HYPSM anymore. HYPSM are HYPSM because of a combination of things. But I am certain that even way before we were born, HYPSM have already been employing top quality faculty. The very high prestige level that they’ve enjoyed now is the product of what they were in the past. And, again in the past, they’ve been hiring and staffing the best faculty. And, naturally, the best students followed them there. Wasn’t the other way around.</p>
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<p>Uh… I’m not sure if those schools, apart from Stanford and Harvard, can hold against Berkeley in NorCal particularly in the bay Area and Silicon Vally. I’m not sure if a Yale or Dartmouth or Penn or Columbia Engg would hold well against Berkeley’s eng’g or even in computer science.</p>
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<p>Okay. So you’re saying that the University of Michigan is basically a minor or developmental league for the NFL. Gotcha!</p>
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<p>Care to name any Michigan alumni currently in the NBA?</p>
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<p>Because you’re extremely insecure and defensive about your alma mater…</p>
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<p>RML, the Dukies cannot help themselves. </p>
<p>Just as you should not blame the mentally ill, you should not blame those who suffer from delusions of grandeur, Dukie-style.</p>
<p>For undergraduate education, isnt Berkeley just a STATE school? Yes, there are many top students there (most from CA), but you have to admit that most of the students at Berkeley are no way (even close) to be admitted to other top undergraduate institutions (like Duke, Chicago, etc…). </p>
<p>For OOS students, how many chose Berkeley over Duke, Chicago, even UVA? Close to none.</p>
<p>Yes, Berkeley is a power house for its research programs, but it is just good if you are talking about the undergraduate education.</p>
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Eh, I’d dearly like to see the actual cross-admit data rather than depending on hearsay.</p>
<p>Berkeley’s in-state yield is 38%, which means it loses the majority of its admits to other schools (compared to 49% at UVA and 60% at UNC). While it probably loses a hefty chunk to UCLA and maybe UCSD, I would be very willing to bet that at least as many are lost to Stanford and comparable privates. </p>
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Look, I grew up in NC. I was raised a Carolina fan, and although I’ve been educated outside NC since graduation from high school, I’m still a Carolina fan. The elitism of that statement, however, is repugnant.</p>
<p>If I placed you in any two classes randomly selected at Duke and Yale/Harvard/Princeton/Stanford and asked you to tell me which class belonged to which university, could you do it? Maybe, but only by guessing. </p>
<p>Yes, HYPSM are some of the most selective colleges in the country. Yes, they have some of the best academics in the country. Yes, they certainly have <em>the</em> best track records in the country for placement and postgraduate awards. To say that they are floating in the aether far out of the reach of other, more pedestrian universities is, however, ludicrous in the extreme. There are at least [15</a> schools](<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1062096759-post1630.html]15”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1062096759-post1630.html) that I would consider to be on “HYPSM’s level.”</p>
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This argument cuts both ways. Why should prospective undergrads want to attend Berkeley over a CalState (if instate) or local state U (if OOS) if departmental strength doesn’t matter? You can hardly jump on the prestige bandwagon if PoliSci grads from Berkeley are working as Round Table managers - it’s possible to get that job without a big-name diploma.
And you consider this a good thing?</p>
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<p>I don’t believe it does cut both ways. The notion is that a more prestigious school will increase your odds, but obviously won’t guarantee, your chances of obtaining a high paying job. Put another way, the top investment banks and consulting firms recruit at Berkeley, but not at the CalStates. So while there’s obviously no assurance that you’ll obtain such a job, at least you have the chance. You don a seat belt not to guarantee your chances of surviving a car accident - for you might die even if belted - but simply to improve your odds.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, fact remains that the vast majority of Berkeley undergrads take jobs - whether as Round Table managers or as investment bankers - that have little to do with their majors. Hence, the notion of departmental strength is irrelevant to them.</p>
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<p>I consider it a realistic thing. The fact is that most people attend college not for the idealistic pursuit of knowledge but simply for the practical benefits of improving their career prospects. Nor do I find this particularly surprising or irrational. Indeed, given the costs of college, even leveraging an instate subsidy, people are behaving entirely rationally by maximizing their return on investment. Be honest with yourself - how many parents would still pay for their kids’ college educations if they didn’t actually improve their career prospects?</p>
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<p>Actually, I’m not so sure about that, particularly in the case of Y & P (and arguably even M). Princeton, as an example, has been one of the most prestigious schools throughout the entire history of the United States, but didn’t become a true research university - in fact, didn’t even have a graduate school at all - until the early 1900’s, decades after the establishment of Johns Hopkins and other imported facsimiles of the German research university model. Princeton didn’t became a center of major research until WW2 and Princeton faculty didn’t win a single Nobel Prize until the 1960’s. MIT, while well established as a top vocational school by the end of the 1800’s, did not become a major research center until the 1930’s under Vannevar Bush. {Caltech, in contrast, and despite its youth, had actually become a well-established center of pure research decades before MIT did.} Hence, I would argue that those schools actually became well established centers of the best faculty after already being prestigious for other reasons.</p>
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<p>Actually, I don’t think it is beside the point, for most of the ‘choices’ made by most incoming freshmen seem to be after-the-fact rationalizations. To take your example, I suspect that most (not all, but most) of the UChicago econ majors were students who would rather have gone to HYPSM but didn’t get in, and so chose econ at UChicago - which they did get in - in order as a matter of sour grapes to justify to others (and perhaps even to themselves) as to why they wound up at UChicago as opposed to their true first choice. {Similarly, a guy who gets rejected by Jessica Alba will find some other girl who will date him, and then will convince both her and himself that she was who he really wanted all along.} After all, I suspect that the vast majority of incoming UChicago econ majors will never become professional economists at all. Many will shift to some other major entirely because they were never really interested in economics in the first place. Even of those that do complete the major, many will not pursue economics as a career, instead pursuing careers in investment banking or consulting (which are at best tangentially related to economics). </p>
<p>Now, to be sure, there probably are some freshmen who truly do know exactly what they want to major in and are not exhibiting post-hoc rationalizations. But this seems to be a vanishingly small percentage. Let’s be honest. This isn’t grad school. The vast majority of incoming undergrads don’t really know what they want to major in. In fact, that’s the whole point of allowing students several years to shop around different majors before having to declare one. If students knew exactly what they wanted, they wouldn’t need such an extended shopping period. </p>
<p>But again, even once you’ve declared a major, that’s not to say that you’re actually going to pursue it professionally anyway. A poli-sci grad can end up as a manager at Round Table. Heck, seems like the vast majority of poli-sci grads took jobs that had nothing to do with poli-sci. What does it matter how strong the poli-sci program is if you’re not actually going to pursue it professionally?</p>
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<p>Jamal Crawford
Juwan Howard (I can’t believe he’s still playing!)</p>
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<p>I’m not saying that it’s either a good or bad thing. I’m simply pointing out that it is a fact that Cal aspires to be a top football power. {Whether it will actually do so is a different story.}</p>
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<p>I doubt that. Keep in mind that Cal is a far bigger school than UVa is, with 25k undergrads vs. only 14k at UVA. Speaking of Harvard Business School, there have been 560 MBA’s who were Berkeley undergrads, compared to around 400 who were Virginia undergrads, for a ratio of around 1.4:1. Yet the total ratio of all undergrads for each school is higher, at 1.8:1. Hence, Berkeley has fewer undergrads sent to Harvard Business School than does Virginia on a per-capita basis. Similarly, Berkeley sent 16 undergrads to Yale Law, compared to 10 from UVa, but that’s a ratio of only 1.6:1. Payscale rankings? I think that’s heavily affected by the sheer difference in cost of living between California and Virginia. It’s not at all clear to me that somebody making $50k in the Bay Area is truly better off financially than somebody making $40k in Richmond Virginia. </p>
<p>[Yale</a> Law School undergraduate representation](<a href=“Yale Law School undergraduate representation Forum - Top Law Schools”>Yale Law School undergraduate representation Forum - Top Law Schools)</p>
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<p>I’ve faced off (and, frankly, have been allies with) hawkette numerous times before. I’ll be happy to incur her wrath.</p>