What is UC Berkeley like? - Please answer(:

interestingguy · December 13, 2009, 1:05pm

I know you are. I just find it odd that you’d justify Jeff Tedford’s salary from a football point of view (by his win-loss record vis-a-vis Rich Rodriguez’s).

For one thing, I am arguing from an academic point of view. For another, I am talking about Cal and Cal only, not Michigan or any other school, for that matter.

And since when do two wrongs make a right?

interestingguy · December 13, 2009, 1:08pm

This is from someone who thinks that UC-Berkeley is as prestigious and selective as the ivies. more “lol”

RML · December 13, 2009, 1:40pm

^ well, not all ivy league member schools are uniformly selective. Cornell isn’t as selective as Dartmouth and Dartmouth isn’t as selective as Yale and so on.

I repeatedly said that Berkeley’s admissions are departmental. Meaning, it’s harder to get into Berkeley when applying for engineering than applying for L&S and so on.

Berkeley Eng’g’s admissions are just as hard as the lower ivies. Berkeley’s L&S, however, is slightly easier than the lower ivies’.

If you’re not in the top 10% of your graduating class, you have very little to no chance of getting into Berkeley even if you have a stellar SAT scores, but not at some ivies. In short, only those students who belong to the top 10% of their HS class are accepted at Berkeley. You can get into some ivies with so-so class rank/standing.

USNews ranked Berkeley number 14 most difficult university to get into in the whole nation, a position which is higher than one of the ivies and equal to 2 of the ivies.

interestingguy · December 13, 2009, 1:49pm

Which leads us to conclude that, generally speaking, Berkeley is less selective than the (lower) ivies…

That said: to be fair, a Berkeley EECS degree is probably more prestigious (and certainly more difficult to earn) than, say, a Columbia or UPenn SEAS degree.

lesdiablesbleus · December 13, 2009, 3:30pm

So, the key to getting admitted to Berkeley is to take the easiest classes possible to attain the highest class rank? What a great admission policy the so-called #1 public school in the country has! This is clear evidence of how public schools try to game the USNWR rankings. Duke could enroll a student body who is statistically as strong as Harvard’s if it simply admitted the strongest kids, but it rightfully chooses to have a holistic admissions policy to ensure that it has a diverse and well-rounded group of kids enter the Gothic Wonderland every year.

No one would turn down the opportunity to attend Harvard Med or Yale Law because of the geographical distance. That is quite possibly the dumbest thing I have ever read posted on this site. In this globalized world we live in, it is not that difficult to travel from one end of the country to another. To suggest that West Coast students would give up the opportunity to go to HY grad schools and attend a far, far inferior local grad school is ludicrous.

If Berkeley students aren’t rich enough to attend Harvard Med or Yale Law, then they would take out loans just like every other college student. Going to one of these programs is an INSTANT TICKET TO SUCCESS so they wouldn’t have to worry too much about paying back those loans. In this economy, everyone is going to be trying to maximize their career prospects and people are even going to travel internationally for grad school and jobs if things don’t pick back up in the US.

Basically, you fail to understand that Berkeley is not as good as UVA with regards to grad school and employer reputation.

Duke grads earn more than Berkeley grads by the way, which is sad considering most Berkeley grads reside in an area which has a very high cost-of-living (Silicon Valley) while most Duke grads settle in comparatively cheaper locations like DC and Atlanta.

[PayScale</a> - 2009 March Madness Predictions](<a href=“http://www.payscale.com/2009-march-madness-predictions]PayScale”>PayScale - 2009 March Madness Predictions)
Duke: $102,000
California: $91,400

You would think the high number of engineers at Berkeley would offset the prestige advantage that Duke has and give the two schools comparable salary statistics, but Duke is just an absolute powerhouse in producing investment bankers/management consultants/corporate lawyers.

Now, please never compare your crumbling, insolvent state school to a top-notch private school ever again.

Cuse0507 · December 13, 2009, 3:34pm

Berkeley undergraduate enrollment: 25,000
Duke undergraduate enrollment: 6,500

Given the huge disparity in overall size and the relatively comparable average income between the two schools, I’d say that Berkeley is probably doing a better job than Duke.

IBclass06 · December 13, 2009, 4:30pm

PayScale data is useless for comparison purposes.

[ul][]It’s self-reported.
[]It fails to take location and cost of living into account.
[li]It excludes people who obtain higher degrees.[/ul][/li]

That argument does not hold. Looking at the Ivies, Penn is more than twice the size of Columbia, but its graduates supposedly earn more than $20K more.

A more suitable argument would be that Berkeley has extra schools Duke lacks (e.g. Natural Resources) that usually lead to lower-paying jobs.

Pizzagirl · December 13, 2009, 4:44pm

That’s only meaningful if your end game is money. And who are the people seeking money above all? They aren’t the elite - they are the wannabes. It’s far more elite to be able to do what you enjoy than to be a drone who thinks the world revolves around i-banking and m-consulting.

blaw · December 13, 2009, 5:07pm

Have you looked at pay scales of Duke Fuqua (sounds like f*** you)
schhol of biz vs Berkeley Hass? The H*******s laugh all the way to the bank with stock options that earn them millions while in their twenties. You won’t find much of Fuqua there!

lesdiablesbleus · December 13, 2009, 5:16pm

What kind of idealistic world are you living in? The country is emerging from its worst economic crisis since The Great Depression, half of the investment banks don’t even exist anymore, there are hiring cuts in every sector, law firm job placements are at an all-time low, college tuition rates are as high as they have ever been, student loan debts are through the roof and you’re suggesting that the top graduates of our nation’s most elite schools are “drones” because they want to make a decent living and validate their tremendous academic accomplishments? Well, shame on you I say!

So parents should send their kids to expensive private schools like the Ivies, Duke, Northwestern, Chicago, etc. for the tune of $200k so they can become traveling playwrights, international volunteers or local comedians with no steady incomes and shaky futures? Turning down a top finance, consulting or media gig in this economy is DOWNRIGHT IRRESPONSIBLE on the part of a student or any parent that motivates that sort of behavior.

Also, why can’t investment bankers or management consultants be interesting people? The job that one performs shouldn’t be indicative of one’s personality or interests. I know investment bankers who are incredible chefs, bibliophiles, world-class skiers, competitive athletes, etc.

This sort of elitist thinking really touches a nerve with me.

Pizzagirl · December 13, 2009, 5:39pm

Huh. Well, my H and I are both Northwestern grads and we intend to put our children through wherever they pretty much like (as long as it’s decent), full-pay so that they can do whatever they like. If that’s finance or consulting, great. If it’s becoming a librarian, great. If it’s working for a non-profit, great. If it’s becoming an art historian, great. Ewwww … like I’m going to pressure them to become i-bankers if that doesn’t interest them? Gross. How very un-elite. This is an investment in their education; what they do with it is up to them. I’m not so needy that I need to have their career earnings vindicate my parenting. Maybe one day you’ll grow up and realize that it’s not just all about money.

Pizzagirl · December 13, 2009, 5:41pm

Who says they can’t? I’m a consultant myself, LOL. I just find it amusing that so many college students define the world of business as i-banking or mgt-consulting, instead of, well, the actual world of business – you know, people who dream up / create / manufacture / market / sell actual goods and services?

Pizzagirl · December 13, 2009, 5:42pm

This’ll blow your mind, lesdiables – many of the fortysomething top 20 grads I know (Northwestern and other schools) are SAHM’s, earning no income. Oh no! They must be failures.

sakky · December 13, 2009, 5:50pm

Like I said, I’m agnostic to the highly charged issue of major college sports.

I’m simply pointing out that whatever problems and academic paradoxes Jeff Tedford’s relationship with Berkeley poses, the relationship between Rich Rodriguez and Michigan is worse. Like I said, whatever else may be happening, at least Jeff Tedford wins.

sakky · December 13, 2009, 6:02pm

I think I have to agree with other posters on this board here and say that that’s, frankly, a ridiculous position to take. If anything, the poorer students should be among the most interested in attending Yale Law or Harvard Med, for doing so would truly be a lifestyle-changing choice for them. A rich guy turns down Yale Law or Harvard Med, so what? Whether he goes to the top grad schools or never even bothers to graduate from high school at all, he’s still rich. No degree of any kind will make much difference because he’s already rich. But a Yale Law or Harvard Med degree represents a seismic improvement to your station in life if you’re poor.

Now, granted, you could perhaps make the argument that Berkeley students might be more incentivized to attend some of the elite counterpart local professional schools. However, no cost savings are to be found at Stanford Law or Medical School, relative to Harvard or Yale, and, frankly, only relatively minor instate savings are to be found at UCSF Medical or Berkeley Law, given the high professional ‘fees’ that instate grad students must pay. Furthermore, I am confident that the cross-admit battle is not closely contested: the vast majority of people, even from California, who are admitted to Berkeley Law & Yale Law will choose the latter, as will the vast majority of those admitted to UCSF (or Stanford) Medical & Harvard Medical. Hometown inertia is not so powerful as to cause a significant number of people to turn down Harvard or Yale.

lesdiablesbleus · December 13, 2009, 6:09pm

Well, they must be living a fun life with no money and a $200k pile of loans on their head. What exactly are you trying to prove here? They are failures in my mind and if I were their parents, I would be extremely disappointed in them and in my own foolishness to spend my hard-earned money on their delusional adult fantasies.

Well, your case is unique and the vast majority of parents in this country are not in the same fortunate position as you to give your kids the freedom of choice with regards to what career they pursue. Unfortunately, many families ARE SO NEEDY that they need their investment in their kids’ education pays a handsome return just in order to subsist themselves or to justify their expenses given their economic hardships.

My question is, would you and your husband be singing the same tune if the two of you were a barrista at Starbucks and a local librarian respectively?

So, why don’t you quit your cushy MBB job and go into the “actual world of business” instead of preaching to the moral choir in every thread and encouraging every bright college graduate to pursue an idealistic career instead of the more economically viable career you yourself have pursued? You know, the same consulting job that has allowed you to have the financial freedom to let your kids dictate their career paths out of choice rather than necessity!

Don’t you want me and every other kid still in college to have the ability to allow our kids to pursue their dreams like you have done?

noimagination · December 13, 2009, 6:39pm

@sakky: How much difference does a major make?. Here is some information on the top ten most popular bachelor’s degrees at Berkeley:

Maybe some of you can make use of it.

@lesdiablesbleus: You seem to live in a world where one either becomes a hotshot consultant or a starving artist. Isn’t the idea of a “decent” salary somewhat subjective?

sakky · December 13, 2009, 6:54pm

Your examples actually serve to bolster my point. Sure, many people may dream of becoming pilots, lawyers, dentists, or whatnot. But the key is, with the minor exception of architecture, which I will address shortly, a specific undergraduate major is not required. Many (probably most) pilots did not major in aeronautics, although they may have taken some aeronautics classes. Heck, some pilots never even graduated from college at all. Chesley Sullenberger, the hero pilot of USAirways flight 1549 that successfully completed an emergency water landing in the Hudson, earned a bachelor’s from the US Air Force Academy and then a master’s degree from Purdue… both in psychology. You can major in anything you want and be admitted to law school, med-school or dental school, as long as you complete the necessary requirements, and those requirements are not exactly on the cutting edge of academic research. Let’s face it, you don’t really need a star chemistry researcher to teach you what you need to know to score highly on the OChem section of the MCAT. The OChem questions involve reactions and formulae that have been well established for decades and are covered in any standard textbook; the newest research discoveries in the latest issue of Science or Nature are not part of the exam.

Even architecture as a professional discipline is having the prevalence of the B.Arch. reduced in favor of a standardized M.Arch., a program which you can enter with any undergraduate degree as part of a “pre-Arch” program. Many top Architecture Schools such as MIT and (yes) Berkeley no longer offer an accredited B.Arch degree anymore, instead offering only unaccredited Architecture bachelor’s, and accredit students only at the master’s level, and Harvard doesn’t even offer an undergrad concentration in architecture at all. The Harvard and MIT (and I assume also the Berkeley) M.Arch. programs allow you to major in anything you want as an undergrad, as long as you fulfill a ‘pre-Arch’ sequence of rather generic coursework in basic math and sciences.

[MArch</a> Admissions](<a href=“http://architecture.mit.edu/masters-march-admissions.html]MArch”>http://architecture.mit.edu/masters-march-admissions.html)

[url=<a href=“http://www.gsd.harvard.edu/academic/arch/degrees.html]Architecture[/url”>http://www.gsd.harvard.edu/academic/arch/degrees.html]Architecture[/url</a>]

Perhaps the confusion stems from a key difference between the US and foreign higher education systems or socioeconomic systems in general. Many foreign university systems lock students into specific majors from the very start, and the available jobs for those students are then highly circumscribed. In contrast, the US system exhibits ‘dynamic typing’ in which students are largely free to shop for different majors, and the major has relatively little impact in their future career choices. An art history major can become a doctor, pilot, or investment banker. What that therefore means is that just because you may want a certain career doesn’t mean that you are forced to pick a certain major.

People also tend to shift their career desires as they discover new information. I freely admit that I had never heard of the ‘management consulting’ industry before I went to college (and the notion of newly minted college graduates with no work experience dispensing advice to grizzled managers of Fortune 500 companies still strikes me as preposterous to this very day). I had never seriously considered tech entrepreneurship as a viable career until I personally witnessed others becoming filthy rich quickly. College is supposed to be an eye-opening experience, where you learn about career opportunities that you never knew about before. {It would be most sad if you spent 4 years in college and never learned of a single career possibility of which you were not previously aware.}

On the contrary - I believe that all schools should attempt to improve their departments at all times…for the PhD students, for those are the students that actually do and should care about the quality of their departments.

However, we should also be cognizant of the undeniable fact that departmental quality - as currently measured by research acumen - simply doesn’t matter to most undergrads, who are far more interested about career opportunities, networking opportunities, and general brand name recognition than they are with the specific (research-oriented) reputations of their programs. Whether a particular department is successfully publishing boatloads of papers in the top journals simply doesn’t matter to most undergraduates, for they are never going to read those journals. For example, only a tiny handful of economics undergrads would know what AER, QJE, or JPE even look like, wouldn’t even be able to comprehend a single article within them anyway, and frankly don’t care. They’re far more interested in finding a lucrative job in consulting or banking, or heading to law school, or similar careerist desire.

sakky · December 13, 2009, 7:00pm

I certainly agree that individual majors matter a lot, but the reputations of the individual departments of those majors matters little. For example, Berkeley has the #1 ranked English department in the entire country, yet Berkeley English grads earn far lower average starting salaries than do those who graduate with degrees in chemical engineering from a mediocre school. The research acumen of the Berkeley English department therefore doesn’t really seem to bolster the fortunes of the undergrads much.

sakky · December 13, 2009, 7:19pm

And I suppose Ernest Boyer’s statements are also a matter of opinion, not fact.

*
Faculty who bring in large grants are more highly valued than faculty who teach well. Teaching excellence is so often undervalued that the late Ernest Boyer, vice president for Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, quipped that, “Winning the campus teaching award is the kiss of death when it comes to tenure.” *

Besides, what exactly is a ‘fact’ anyway? A fact is simply an opinion that happens to be held by most people who have studied the matter deeply. For example, nobody really ‘knows’ whether a neutron truly has zero electric charge; it just happens to be believed by the vast majority of physicists, based on the evidence collected thus far.

Feeling pride about the academic quality of your school is quite different from truly caring, for that fails to capture the intensity of your emotional investment. For example, I may feel proud that my friend’s daughter performed well at her kindergarten dance recital. But if she hadn’t, who cares? It’s just a kindergarten dance recital. My neighbor is not trying to train his daughter to become the next champion of ‘So You Think You Can Dance’. He just wanted his daughter to enjoy a positive experience with her schoolmates.

Similarly, while Berkeley students surely feel proud that their school is well respected academically, frankly, it doesn’t matter much to their daily lives. Who cares if their department is able to publish a bunch of widely cited papers in top journals? They’re never going to read those journals anyway. What matters far more is that they obtain the job or grad school admission that they really want.

The same parallel could be said about college sports. While you can be proud that Cal football enjoyed a winning season and bowl invitation this season, at the end of the day, so what? Who really cares? It doesn’t impact the daily lives of anybody except the players themselves. Surely most Cal students would happily take a completely winless football season in exchange for the post-graduation job offers that they really want.

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