What is UC Berkeley like? - Please answer(:

College Search & Selection
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<p>It is also dumb beyond belief to chastise somebody’s methodology in favor of an alternative, and then not actually provide any means of calculating that alternative. Do you have the data regarding those who apply to various grad schools? If not, then all you’re doing is complaining without offering anything constructive.</p>

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<p>In 2009, Donald Damon, Doug Miron, William Steele, Solomon Jackson, Rahul Patel, Jeff Wilson, Neal Wanless, and Palmira Nicolo each won tens of millions of dollars in Powerball.</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.powerball.com/powerball/pb_stories.asp[/url]”>http://www.powerball.com/powerball/pb_stories.asp&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>See? So that means that there are people who become filthy rich through the lottery. So does that mean that everybody should play the lottery? That I should empty my entire life savings for Powerball tickets?</p>

<p>That’s precisely my point. I have never denied that there are some people who will choose Berkeley over schools such as HYPSM. But the question is - how many are there? Heck, RML, you even admitted yourself that most people will pick HYPSM over other schools.</p>

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<p>Interesting story, for what have we here but a guy who majored in CS who did indeed go to med school. Granted, it wasn’t *Harvard * Med School (it was UTexas Med), but hey, it was still med school. I suspect he simply didn’t get into Harvard (or didn’t even apply because he knew he wouldn’t get in), but if he had, he would have gone there instead.</p>

<p><a href=“https://career.berkeley.edu/Major2006/CompSci.stm[/url]”>https://career.berkeley.edu/Major2006/CompSci.stm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Furthermore, I never said that I expectedall Berkeley students to want to go to Harvard Med, just as I never expected all UVA students to want to go to Harvard Med. However, the ‘diversity’ of the majors has nothing to do with the argument involved, for like I said, the vast majority of students do not pursue their majors professionally anyway. Poli-sci at Berkeley is a larger major than any of the engineering disciplines, yet as I have shown, only a tiny fraction of the poli-sci grads actually pursue careers in political science. Only a small percentage of Berkeley undergrads will actually pursue PhD’s (or even master’s degrees) in their undergrad fields. So simply by choosing to major in Buddhist Studies (actually Religious Studies) doesn’t mean that you actually truly care about those majors enough to want to pursue them professionally. You have the same professional career concerns that everybody else has. </p>

<p>Speaking of Religious Studies, what have we here but a bunch of graduates who went to law or med school. What were you saying again about the impact of undergrad diversity, RML? </p>

<p><a href=“https://career.berkeley.edu/Major2006/RelStud.stm[/url]”>https://career.berkeley.edu/Major2006/RelStud.stm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>Firstly, funding has not always been a huge problem at Berkeley: indeed, the original administrators of Stanford quailed at having to compete in the shadow of (at the time) the extraordinarily well-funded juggernaut across the Bay, and for probably the first half of its entire existence, Stanford’s facilities were outclassed by Berkeley’s. It was only beginning in the 1950’s that Stanford had grown to being a worthy competitor to Berkeley and eventually (sadly) surpassing it. </p>

<p>Secondly, if anything, your statements actually betray more problems of the Berkeley undergrad program. Why should Berkeley need full rides to attract undergrads away schools such as HYPSM? Except for Stanford’s athletic programs, those other schools don’t offer full rides to anybody who isn’t poor. If Berkeley needs to do so, then that only betrays Berkeley’s relative lack of desirability. Students would then be coming to Berkeley not because they truly thought it was the best school, but just because of the money. {In the same way, my brother chose Caltech over MIT simply because Caltech offered him money, but he nevertheless thought MIT was a better school.} </p>

<p>More poignantly, why are the Berkeley PhD programs so much more competitive, to the point that plenty of people will happily turn down HYPSM for Berkeley for their PhD? After all, Berkeley grad housing is far from luxurious, when it even exists at all. The funding is unremarkable relative to the packages available from the other schools, and in fact is often times significantly worse. Yet the fact remains that Berkeley is able to compete toe-to-toe with the other schools when it comes to attracting PhD students. So then why does it need to resort to bribing and housing undergrads?</p>

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<p>Believe me, I wish they would as well. The problem is, as I have discussed on other threads, those other jobs simply don’t pay as well as jobs in consulting and banking. They should, but they don’t. Instead, for whatever bizarre reason, companies would rather choose not to invest in their own innovators/manufacturers/marketers/salesmen but instead will choose to spend on consultants and bankers. </p>

<p>*Students at </p>

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<p>For the record, I never said that I thought Berkeley was worse than UVa with regards to grad school or employer reputation. If anything, I suspect the opposite is true. The Berkeley brand name is indeed powerful - more powerful than UVa’s. </p>

<p>However, what I did say is that I wished the Berkeley undergrad program could adopt some of the best practices of UVa, especially with regards to the graduation rate and overall coherence of the program, and, pertaining to those specific metrics, UVa may actually be better than Berkeley. Moreover, UVa runs an entirely different model of undergrad education that shows that you don’t really need top-ranked departments to provide an excellent undergrad education. </p>

<p>Nevertheless, if I was an OOS student to both Berkeley and UVa and was given the choice to attend either, I would probably pick Berkeley. However, what would be even more desirable would be a blend of the two that mixes Berkeley’s brand with Virginia’s coherence.</p>

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<p>lesdiablesbleus </p>

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<p>LoL …</p>

<p>If that’s the way you think about Berkeley’s admissions, then the more I have reasons to believe that you won’t get into or haven’t got accepted to Berkeley. </p>

<p>There were many Berkeley applicants with almost perfect to perfect SAT scores that were denied admissions. There were applicants who had both the best grades and SAT scores but were also denied at Berkeley. Berkeley’s admissions are holistic. Meaning, grades and test scores aren’t the only bases for acceptance. Things such as ECs and history of thriving under bad circumstances matter heavily as well. In short, Berkeley looks at the person behind the test scores. And, Berkeley adcom repeatedly say that they do that. So, even if you’ll end up valedictorian in your HS, you’re not assured an admission at Berkeley. That is why you’ll meet students who have been accepted at some ivies but turned down at Cal. Of course, you’ll also see otherwise. My understanding about this is that, Berkeley and the lower ivies are just as hard to get into, but Berkeley just has different admissions criteria than the ivies. </p>

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<p>Well, I didn’t say Duke has lousy admissions criteria. I think Duke is also quite selective. I think Duke is one of the most selective schools in America. But I don’t think the school is on par with HYPSM overall. I think that for undergrad, it is just as good or slightly as good as Cal overall, but inferior to Cal COE in prestige, standard, and opportunities after graduation. </p>

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<p>Of course there are. There are students at Boalt that have been admitted to Harvard and Yale Law. And there are plenty of Stanford Law students who also have been accepted at Harvard and Yale Law. </p>

<p>17 of the current Haas MBA students have also been accepted at Stanford GSB and Stanford GSB is considerably more prestigious than Haas. If Haas can steal Stanford GSB aspirants considering that it’s just a stone’s throw away from Haas, what more can distance do to schools that are thousands of miles away. One blogger told a story how she dislikes Yale after visiting, so she went to Boalt. I saw her stories on youtube, but I could not find it now anymore. FB accounts would also tell you that a few Boalt students have gotten into Yale and Harvard but thought they’re too far and too costly. </p>

<p>UCSF isn’t considerably inferior to Harvard Med. The valedictorian of Berkeley last year got into Harvard Med but chose to attend UCSF. Aren’t they real people? </p>

<p>There are so many factors why Harvard and Yale professional schools don’t enjoy a 100% yield rates. Distance, cost, admitted at some other prominent schools, scholarship privileges are some of the biggest reasons for that.</p>

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<p>Your source was obsolete and your statements are full of assumptions. Here are the recent figures from payscale.com:</p>

<p>University of California, Berkeley $57,100 $112,000 - [Top</a> State Universities By Salary Potential](<a href=“http://www.payscale.com/best-colleges/top-state-universities.asp]Top”>http://www.payscale.com/best-colleges/top-state-universities.asp)</p>

<p>Duke University $56,800 $116,000 - [Top</a> Southern Colleges By Salary Potential](<a href=“Human Verification”>Human Verification)</p>

<p>Take note of both schools’ population and number of undergrad programs. Berkeley has 25k with over 200 undergrad programs, whilst Duke has only about 6-7k with less than 40 undergrad programs. </p>

<p>Again, Duke is a fine school. It may not have the brand power that Berkeley has overall, but it is a fine school for undergrad. Its professionals schools are not comparable to Berkeley. Its business school is not as great as Haas. Its law school is not as great as Boalt. Its engineering would look goofy when it’s pitted against Berkeley. It’s only fighting department to rival Berkeley is its undergrad and sports program. Other than those two, Duke is so-so compared to Berkeley. As a computer science grad, I would never ever consider Duke as one of the respected schools in the field. It’s decent but it would certainly look rubbish compared to Berkeley’s. I think you are over-inflating Duke. Whilst it’s a fine school for undergrad, the rest of their departments aren’t on par with Berkeley. So, stop pimping Duke as if it’s on par with HYPSM. It doesn’t even have the brand power of Berkeley overall.</p>

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<p>Somehow, I got lost with our conversation, Sakky. Can you be more precise and concise? </p>

<p>What exactly should the undergrad students be studying if you think each academic departments shouldn’t be improved then?</p>

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<p>Undergrads should be studying whatever they find interesting and/or relevant to the general career path they think they might take. For example, somebody who is interested in technology would be well served by majoring in an engineering or natural science (or possibly business administration) major. </p>

<p>However, students should also be well apprised of the fact that a wide range of uncertainty exists between not only what they think they want to study, and what they will actually find interesting, but also what they think the future career opportunities will hold as opposed to what will actually happen. 15 years ago, practically nobody outside of academia had even heard of the Internet, and a mere 5 years ago, practically nobody outside of the Harvard student body had ever heard of Facebook; and YouTube and Twitter didn’t even exist at all, and 2.5 years ago, the Iphone didn’t even exist. Nobody knows exactly what new technology will sweep the landscape or what new industry - be it biotechnology, commercial space travel, health care, or investment banking (again) will be providing the most exciting career opportunities at the time you graduate. What therefore matters is that you provide yourself with flexibility: while you may think you want to major in CS as an incoming freshman, you should be cognizant of the fact that that desire may change unexpectedly, and even if you do complete the CS major, you may embark upon a career that has nothing to do with that field. </p>

<p>I also never said that academic departments should not improve. What I said is that that improvement - as currently defined - translates towards a boost in the department’s research productivity, which has little relevance to the average undergraduate. As I’ve said throughout this thread, the average undergraduate will never read academic journal articles. Heck, he probably doesn’t even know what the journals in his field even look like, nor could he understand the vast majority of the content in those journals, nor does he particularly care anyway. By and large, academic research papers are read only by other researchers, and enjoy no audience beyond the subgroup of academics who are also studying the specific phenomenon that is the subject of the paper. Many an instance can I recall researchers decry why they spend so much effort writing papers that only a tiny handful of people in the world will ever read - and zero undergrads within that handful. </p>

<p>Not only do improvements to a department’s research ranking not matter for most undergrads, they may actually make the department worse for those undergrads. If researchers spend more time producing academic papers under a ‘publish or perish’ regime at the expense of teaching, then the quality of the undergraduate experience actually declines. I would again invoke the example of my brother whose experience with undergraduate teaching at Caltech was so poor that he would generally spend his time in his room reading the textbook rather than attending poorly taught lectures. Nor was his experience unusual - I can think of quite a few students at Berkeley who followed the same strategy because they realized that attending low-quality lectures only served to confuse them and they were better served learning the material by themselves. {Which then begs the question: why even bother to have lectures at all if they’re so poorly taught that students actually fear attending them?} </p>

<p>What Berkeley and other schools should do is improve the academic departments regarding undergraduate teaching. Unfortunately, the viability of such a procedure is doubtful for, #1, we have no easy metric by which to measure teaching quality from school to school, and, far more importantly, #2, a lot (probably most) faculty at Berkeley, no differently from other top research universities, are attracted to the school precisely because they know they can devote the bulk of their efforts to research while not having to worry about teaching quality. The primary goal of the faculty is to publish readily and thereby earn the respect of their academic peers, not to provide strong undergraduate teaching. </p>

<p>{One can also invoke game theory to explain the behavior of the faculty: even if Berkeley were to emphasize undergrad teaching, the other top schools won’t do the same, and so any Berkeley faculty who fails tenure promotion because of poor teaching but whose research productivity is high should garner an offer at another top school. Faculty are interested in advancement and respect, and as long as institutional pressures dictate those fillips to be awarded for research rather than teaching, the rationally dominant strategy will always be to emphasize research over teaching. Nobody has ever won a Nobel Prize for stellar teaching.} </p>

<p>The upshot is that Berkeley undergrads benefit very little from the lion’s share of effort expended by the Berkeley faculty, and so ‘departmental ranking’ carries little relevance to what most undergrads actually desire, which is competent teaching. A better rationale may be that strong faculty research productivity may bolster Berkeley’s overall brand name, but that relationship is not only indirect, but heavily moderated by a number of other factors. Like I said before, Princeton is a clear example of a school that has historically been one of the most prestigious schools in the nation yet became a research powerhouse only relatively recently. Yale and Harvard too are schools that were highly prestigious centuries before they became research prolific.</p>

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<p>RML,
I think you commingle the brand power of UCB’s graduate school rep within academia with its undergraduate offering and inflate the implications of that for undergraduate students as it relates to post-graduate life. </p>

<p>UC Berkeley is a state school with close to 95% of its students coming from California and probably nearly as many of them staying in California post-graduation. Great for California and Californians, but the school is just not on the radar screens of a lot of prospective undergrads and employers east of Reno.</p>

<p>As you move around the USA, your claims on UC Berkeley’s superior brand power don’t meet with the reality of the marketplace. In the real world (sorry, but academia is not the real world), compare just to peer public schools. They regularly produce graduates of similar quality to those coming out of UCB and all of the following colleges and their alumni networks create a geographic advantage that would trump UCB in their placement power:</p>

<p>In the South: U Virginia, U North Carolina, W&M (more limited geographically)
In the Southwest: U Texas, Texas A&M (to a lesser degree)
In the Midwest: U Illinois, U Michigan, and U Wisconsin
In the Northeast: No strong publics, but UCB sends very few students there anyway</p>

<p>I’d add Penn State and U Florida and a few others to this list as well. </p>

<p>BTW, I think the reverse is true for graduates of all of these colleges coming to California and trying to compete with UCB there. For schools of somewhat similar stature, where the students hail from and where they have physically gone to college has a much stronger influence on their postgrad prospects than does the name of their school. </p>

<p>I don’t think any of this undergrad strength debate really matters as historically most Cal grads didn’t need to care much about the rest of the USA as there was so much dynamism in the California economy and their grads certainly play/played an important role in that. And UCB’s undergrads would certainly have a leg up in the job hunts in the state. </p>

<p>But your boosterism is both annoying and deaf to the reality on the ground in other parts of the USA where there are lots of good schools and good students. UCB is a nice place with nice students, but it is not a major factor in hiring patterns, and only slightly stronger in grad school placement, outside of the western USA.</p>

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<p>I agree with hawkette. UCB is just not on the radar screens of a lot of prospective undergrads and employers who are not in California / on the West Coast. In general, Californians tend to overstate the amount that the rest of the country pays attention to them and their institutions. Again – college reputations and prestige are all regional.</p>

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<p>lesdiablesbleus said to pizzagirl:</p>

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<p>lesdiablesbleus said to me:</p>

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1063467249-post20.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1063467249-post20.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>LOL @ the double-faced dookie!!!</p>

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<p>Premise #1:

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<p>Premise #2:

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<p>Conclusion=???</p>

<p>No wonder Duke grads are underrepresented at HYS law schools!</p>

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<p>Especially for “directional” schools like Nw…</p>

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Los Angeles is east of Reno. :eek:</p>

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<p>Haha. Good catch. You got me. :slight_smile: </p>

<p>Ok, east of SLC. Does that work?</p>

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Most people are looking for colleges with strongest academic reputation. Look at all the threads on this site asking: “What are the best schools for ____________?” These kids are not asking: “What colleges have the best teachers?”. This is because something so subjective cannot be measured. All colleges have good and bad teachers.</p>

<p>Do you really think kids are choosing to attend Caltech, MIT and Harvard because they offer “competent teaching”? Competent teaching is expected. But when the argument comes to Berkeley, people perpetuate stereotypes that the campus is full of foreign brainiacs who can’t speak any English, let alone teach an undergrad anything.</p>

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<p>Yes, that’s right, interestingguy. Northwestern does have a stronger reputation in the midwest than on the coasts. Is that supposed to be an insult or something? Shrug. The opinion of some high school kid or college freshman young enough to be my kid is not of any consequence to me.</p>

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I agree very strongly with this. There are very few universities with a truly national appeal.</p>

<p>Heck, Northstarmom admitted that even her [Harvard</a> degree](<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/2355660-post1.html]Harvard”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/2355660-post1.html) was a handicap in parts of the country.</p>

<p>(Pssst, sakky. Why haven’t you pulled out the anecdote of your Turkish friend going into politics yet? I like that one. :cool:)</p>

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<p>Do you always take the time and effort to post replies to opinions that are “not of any consequence” to you?</p>

<p>And why would I ever “insult” Northwestern? It’s a great school…for kids who cannot even get into a lower ivy.</p>

<p>Oh, by the way, here’s a book that you may find interesting:</p>

<p>[Amazon.com:</a> Do As I Say (Not As I Do): Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy (9780385513494): Peter Schweizer: Books](<a href=“http://www.amazon.com/Do-As-Say-Not-Hypocrisy/dp/0385513496]Amazon.com:”>http://www.amazon.com/Do-As-Say-Not-Hypocrisy/dp/0385513496)</p>

<p>This is you: You shouldn’t go into consulting although I am a consultant. (see posts #148, #151, #152 in this thread)</p>

<p>This is you again: You Northeasterners are so “provincial.” Only a Midwesterner like me can make fun of “inbred” (Texan) culture. (see post #4 in the following thread)</p>

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/821092-would-smu-dumb-choice.html?highlight=inbred+culture[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/821092-would-smu-dumb-choice.html?highlight=inbred+culture&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;