<p>I know it's #1 public, but how is it when looked at next to top LAC's or private universities?</p>
<p>(and yes, I know LAC's have a very different environment than universities)</p>
<p>This is very arguable. Most people agree that U.S. News tends to underrank public universities, Berkeley included. I would say it is comparable to lower Ivies and schools like Northwestern and Hopkins etc.</p>
<p>I never thought it was THAT highly ranked. Any other opinions?</p>
<p>For what purposes? What do you want to study? Are you talking specifically undergrad? Or are to just trying to do a "temperature taking" of its prestige? Are you interested in how it would be viewed if you applied to grad school?</p>
<p>It's prestige is lopsided because, in broad terms measured across departments and speaking very generally, as a graduate school it broadly ranks at a pre-eminent university with the likes of Harvard, Stanford, in engineering approaching MIT. However valid is a data point that was made in 1995 (and sorely needs to be updated), the US government's National Reseach Council rated Berkeley as having the largest number of best rated graduate programs in the nation. Coming out a Master's program, I saw top students gaining admission to the the top Ivies in Political Science (Harvard) and Political Economy (Princeton) and denied admission to Berkeley (as well as Stanford in these cases), so in terms of students at that level, that's where it is. At this level, though, things should be considered by department and an overall ranking is pretty useless, though it generally signifies level of raw resource (and teaching) talent.</p>
<p>On the other hand, as an undergraduate institution, Berkeley is larger and, while selective, is not as selective as the top Ivies. Others can come after me and give stats on where it ranks in terms of selectivity. The top students at Berkeley are among the tops in terms of academic performance, particularly in certain disciplines. The "tail", if you will, would rate lower than the tail of an Ivy League School for sure.</p>
<p>In terms of experience: big, intense, diverse, parts are very beautiful and green and other parts are in a small town with urban problems, challenging, impersonal, competitive, etc.</p>
<p>But again, the real question is: why do you ask?</p>
<p>Why do I ask?</p>
<p>I ask because, as a California resident, Berkeley is equivalent to Mount Olympus in most of the minds of my peers. However, on a recent interview to an ivy league school, my alumni interviewer said that many people back east do not even know of Berkeley. This seemed doubtful, but I only have Californians to ask, and since this is an international website, I thought I would get some more diverse opinons. </p>
<p>I am asking only for undergraduate purposes and to answer the question "Will a degree from Berkeley help me get into a back east graduate school/ good back east job?"</p>
<p>Um everyone has heard of Berkeley. Actually most people I know think it's OVERrated. Don't listen to that interviewer; either he's woefully ignorant or has an agenda.</p>
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Um everyone has heard of Berkeley. Actually most people I know think it's OVERrated.
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<p>Like I said: lopsided. This cuts both ways; I know a lot of people who think it's underrated.</p>
<p>He probably meant that Cal gets few applications from top E. Coast high schools which is true.</p>
<p>Suze, true, but I think that has more to do with OOS costs and campus vibe than academic prestige. A degree from Berkeley will still command respect.</p>
<p>for grad school, Cal has as many top-ranked programs as H and is extremely well-known around the world -- having itsname on the Periodic Table of Elements..... :D</p>
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Suze, true, but I think that has more to do with OOS costs and campus vibe than academic prestige. A degree from Berkeley will still command respect.
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<p>I think the OOS costs for sure and campus vibe perhaps are very likely factors. Another thing: friends who went to Stanford in the 90s would laugh about how some of their prep school-educated classmates from Back East had parents who thought it was almost a radical choice to attend "that alternative school on the West Coast." Though Stanford's reputation has undoubtedly continued to shift, let's face it there is a parochialism and lack of sense of adventure existent in most regions. People on the East Coast certainly choose the largely comparable Michigan undergrad much more readily than Berkeley undergrad, I imagine. </p>
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However, on a recent interview to an ivy league school, my alumni interviewer said that many people back east do not even know of Berkeley.
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<p>Berkeley has much less profile on the East Coast than it does on the West Coast, esp. in relation to undergrad. This is why I, for one, say it's underrated generally, especially in comparison to its overall achievements and objective stature. As I see it parochialism comes into play, partly. [Anybody who continues in higher learning in a serious way knows Berkeley, but a lot of people don't do this.]</p>
<p>For instance, Berkeley was just granted $400 million by British Petroleum to establish a huge biofuels institute (the total grant of $500 million will have a portion given to partner UIUC) -- the largest corporate grant given to a university ever, according to what newspapers did write about it. This is a high profile, extremely ambitious effort and received little or no press attention in the national, or East Coast, press. There's no way the same thing at Harvard or MIT wouldn't have gotten coverage at least in the New York Times and likely the WSJ. It's mentioned in this article briefly, and by the way MIT did compete for it as did Cambridge in England:</p>
<p>A funnier example: the New York Times wrote up a big article about the pioneering effort of a sex columnist at Yale Daily News, as if it were the first. It certainly may not have been the first, but I recall hearing the Cal's student newspaper had one several years before this. Yes, the East Coast is the center of the world there. ; )</p>
<p>A BIG reason students from back east don't apply much to Cal is because the acceptance rate for OOS students is only around 10%- much like trying to get into HYPS. There are lots of other east coast colleges where students have a better chance of acceptance. Calif state law mandates that the UC's are obligated to accept qualified Calif. students first, so there are few spots available for qualified OOS students.</p>
<p>As the flagship state school in the country’s most populous state (by far), you would expect UC-Berkeley to be a very strong school with a great variety of academic offerings. It is and it also gets many of the very best students from the state. This great concentration of in-state students (91% of enrolled freshman are from CA) makes this a very difficult place to get in from out of state which may discourage some OOS applications. </p>
<p>Generally speaking, UCB has an average SAT of 1335 (25/75 is 1220-1450) meaning that probably 25-30% of its students are statistically competitive with the average of the lower Ivies (SAT avg for Brown, Dartmouth, Penn and Columbia is 1435 while Cornell is weaker at an average of 1385). </p>
<p>As for private comps with similar average SAT levels, the closest are Wake Forest (1335), Boston College (1335), U Rochester (1335), and Case Western (1340) and NYU (1330) which are all ranked by USNWR 10-15 spots behind UCB, mostly because UCB has such a strong Peer Assessment score (4.7 which places it 6th and tied with CalTech and U Chicago). The only Top 30 schools with lower average SATs are public also-U Michigan (1315), U Virginia (1325), and U NC (1300). </p>
<p>All of the private schools in the USNWR Top 50 are much smaller in size. The only private even close in size and student quality is USC (Avg SAT of 1355).</p>
<p>People at my high school, many of which could easily pay full price at any school, and 30 plus % of whom went to ivies avoided UC undergrad programs because of the crowds.</p>
<p>Mallomar - Gotta' disagree with you. Many, many people in the east have never heard of Berkeley or, believe it or not, Cal Tech. </p>
<p>We have a similar situation here in Pittsburgh with CMU. I visit the Bay Area every year and am surprised at how few people have heard of CMU. The US can be very provincial and certainly very "coastal". My son is applying to one of the Claremont colleges - virtually no one here knows Harvey Mudd, CMC or Pomona.</p>
<p>Premature Gray: A lot of people in California haven't heard of CalTech. In terms of that comparison, that is probably the most underrated (or underexposed) premier institution in the world. I've actually seen a thread complaining about that phenomenon. There is a Cal State system (as opposed to UC) school in Cali called Cal State Polytechnic and some people confound those two. But for a university that has given as much as Berkeley culturally (whatever you think of them: the Manhattan Project, the Civil Rights movement, Unix, etc.) in addition to academically, Berkeley certainly gets lost in the shuffle on the East Coast more than you'd expect. But as was said on the Cal Tech thread, the people that know better know about CalTech -- and about Carnegie Mellon, Berkeley, and the Claremont colleges.</p>