<p>all the info that can potentially screw you is on <a href="http://www.berkeley.edu%5B/url%5D">www.berkeley.edu</a></p>
<p>so if you can't take the crap you know you're going to get then maybe its better that you fail</p>
<p>delicatess,</p>
<p>Wow, overreacting much?</p>
<p>I promise you that a couple Bs or B+s aren't going to spell disaster. I'm applying to grad school right now, and let me tell you that despite my fair number of Bs, I'm in line with top programs nationwide.</p>
<p>I swear, kids these days...</p>
<p>Delicatess, what do you study?</p>
<p>You should see some of the graduate school section. In some areas, people have heard grad school admissions preferring certain B's (as opposed to A's) in some situations. Rarely if ever in your area of study, but if in a very different field, it could make you look less like a ruel monger . . .</p>
<p>
[quote]
UCLAri,</p>
<p>If your point is that the average admitted Princeton student is a more accomplished student than the average CAL admit, then you're right. If your point is that getting good grades in Princeton is harder than getting good grades at CAL, then you're wrong.</p>
<p>--Cheers,
[/quote]
</p>
<p>This is, I believe, a horrible copout answer. It's like me saying, "I'm right and you're wrong, so shove it."</p>
<p>The fact still remains that in a curved class, the largest source of competition is from the curve itself. If you are in a curved class with 10 brilliant students, 70 average ones, and 70 idiots, and you're one of the brilliant ones, you're likely to do well at the end even if you don't work your behind off. However, if you're in a class with 100 brilliant students, and maybe a few idiots, then your challenge is increased because of the weight toward the "smart" end of the bell curve.</p>
<p>It's not an issue of whether or not the material is hard, it's a matter of your competition. Now, I agree that at Princeton the curve is seriously skewed in the A/B direction, but I still think that a certain amount of competition is present at a school without the lower performing average that perhaps Berkeley and UCLA possess.</p>
<p>DRab,</p>
<p>I agree. There are times where having a few less than stellar grades might show that you have a wide variety of interests. My advisor at UCLA said that he had an application for the PhD program with stellar GREs, great letters, and fantastic experience. The only problem? Overall GPA was low. Major GPA was high, however.</p>
<p>What caused that GPA to dip was the student's habit of taking math for math majors, instead of a watered down math for social science dummies class. This earned her respect, and a place in the dept.</p>
<p>Delicatess, it can't possibly be just Berkeley's fault that you're getting B's and B-'s this semester. I mean, come on. You're not a first year, so it's safe to assume that you're taking classes that are at least a little bit harder than freshman courses. Or maybe you're in a bunch of weeder classes right now. That's why the amount of effort that you've been giving the past year/s doesn't quite cut it for this year. Have you considered that possibility?</p>
<p>I'm an economics and English double. I'm taking 2 upper div/intermediate Econ courses, and 2 English courses. Thus, I have no option but to do well in ALL of my courses if I want to go to graduate school, considering none of them are outside my major.</p>
<p>Even the essays I'm getting back are B/B+'s!! This is ****ing me off.
I just feel utterly frustrated because I really want to go to the East Coast for graduate school, and well, let's face it: I am not getting in if I continue at this rate.</p>
<p>It's not even that it's harder per-se, but if you screw up on half a problem in Economics for example, your grade is basically a letter grade lower (ie) 3 problems on the entire exam with 4 parts each).</p>
<p>Do you guys have any advice for me at all? Honestly this is really frustrating me.</p>
<p>Even though I am doing better than the median of my classes, that does not offer me comfort in the slightest.</p>
<p>Delicatess,</p>
<p>I got my share of Bs and B+s, and I'm probably going to Columbia, NYU, or UCSD for political science. Those are all top 10-15 programs.</p>
<p>STOP WORRYING YOURSELF TO DEATH.</p>
<p>
[quote]
sakky, do you honestly believe that the level of coursework isn't at least nominally harder at Princeton? I'd say that a 3.7 at Princeton, while inflated, is probably pretty equivalent to a 3.8 at Cal. I don't think that it's really a case of med schools being unfair to publics, but the fact that med schools are aware of the fact that there are just on average (again, the median) better students at Princeton.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>This is an empirical question. I don't know. It would be very interesting to find out. I have a personal suspicions that it is a wash - that while Princeton's average student is better, that fact is cancelled by Princeton's grade inflation.</p>
<p>But in any case, it doesn't really address my main point which is, what do you want to do about those Berkeley students who are doing badly? I believe that something can and should be done for them. I would say that the least controversial proposal I have is that Berkeley ought to help those students transfer to a lesser school, like a CalState. I agree that the worst student at Berkeley probably doesn't deserve a Berkeley degree, nor do I propose gving him one. But I still think he deserves a shot at a college degree at some lesser school. Let's face it. The worst Berkeley student is still better than many of the students at the CalStates. </p>
<p>
[quote]
Due to Princeton's smaller class sizes, there is less cutthroat competition
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I'm not sure it's quite that mechanistic. CalTech has even smaller class sizes than Princeton, and the quality of Caltech students may actually be higher than Princeton's, yet I think even Princeton students would concede that Caltech is a more difficult school. </p>
<p>What matters more than anything is the culture of a school. You can have a school that is extremely small yet extremely difficult (Caltech). In theory, you can have a school that is both large yet highly relaxed. </p>
<p>
[quote]
Sakky, I was just making sure that your system would be helpful for people in all the disciplines. Sure, I would like people to do well and graduate, but here is a question. How do you think a system like yours would affect grade inflation? Could you talk about a system like yours and the concept grade inflation?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>First off, let me just say that my 'perfect' (albeit unattainable) solution would be for those bad students who aren't going to graduate anyway to not get admitted in the first place. I know that sounds harsh, in that I am advocating that some students get rejected, but hey, it's better than coming to Berkeley and flunking out. Like that guy I referred to in a previous post. He concedes that he would have been better off if he had never been admitted to Berkeley in the first place, which would have made him go to a lesser UC, from which he probably would have graduated by now. </p>
<p>However I realize that that is politically impossible. So my next-favorite proposal is to help those failing students transfer to a lesser school, like a CalState. I believe Berkeley can strike a deal with CalState EastBay or SFState or SJSU such that any failing student can get a no-questions-asked transfer to one of those schools. If he goes to that CalState and flunks out there, Ok, then this guy is clearly a lost cause. But at least let him use a CalState as an escape hatch. </p>
<p>Can anybody come up with a reason why Berkeley should not allow this? </p>
<p>
[quote]
What about med school and law school (in particular), who care a lot about GPA and ability. Wouldn't they want to see these courses? Do they not have at least something to do with ability?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I don't think so, and I'll tell you why. These weeder courses are notoriously difficult courses in that their purpose is to eliminate people from the major. Hence, the grading scale of these courses is significantly different from a 'normal' course. </p>
<p>Hence, if you get weeded from a particular major, then the weeders have done their duty. That's why they're called weeders. Since you've been weeded, why should you get hassled by that course further? You're out of the major, so the weeder has done its job. </p>
<p>Consider this analogy. You're in a bar, you're causing trouble, so the bouncer tosses you out. Ok, the bouncer has done his job. But the bouncer doesn't then need to follow you into an alleyway and kick your butt. You've already been tossed out of the bar, so the bouncer has done his job. In the same way, I think weeders should exist just to weed, but not to permanently tag weeded students with bad grades forever. </p>
<p>This has profound implications with med/law-school admissions. You say that GPA is an indication of talent. Well, not really. People know that med/law adcoms are highly GPA-dependent, so what a lot of people do is start gaming the system by deliberately cherry-picking the easiest classes they can find. I know people who were fluent in a foreign language, but deliberately took all the intro classes of those classes just to get a string of easy A's. There are people who really want to get into med/law school who will deliberately avoid classes just because they're hard. You can ask people like Calkidd or ariesathena about it. </p>
<p>Is this the kind of behavior that we want to encourage? People going around cherry-picking easy classes just to get easy A's? The sad truth is that for med/law school, it's better to get a do-nothing A than a hard-fought B. </p>
<p>So consider this. A guy takes ChemE140 and fails. So he then ends up majoring in, say, Psychology and gets top grades there. What does it matter that he got that F in ChE140? I think many Psych majors would get F's in ChE 140 if they had to take it. It's just that they didn't. So this guy just wanted to try it out, and now he's going to be punished with that big red F forever? What that will mean is that it will simply discourage people from trying out other majors. Is that a good outcome?</p>
<p>
[quote]
This is an empirical question. I don't know. It would be very interesting to find out. I have a personal suspicions that it is a wash - that while Princeton's average student is better, that fact is cancelled by Princeton's grade inflation.</p>
<p>But in any case, it doesn't really address my main point which is, what do you want to do about those Berkeley students who are doing badly? I believe that something can and should be done for them. I would say that the least controversial proposal I have is that Berkeley ought to help those students transfer to a lesser school, like a CalState. I agree that the worst student at Berkeley probably doesn't deserve a Berkeley degree, nor do I propose gving him one. But I still think he deserves a shot at a college degree at some lesser school. Let's face it. The worst Berkeley student is still better than many of the students at the CalStates.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I think that the problem Cal will always have with its undergraduate population is its public nature. It can't drop students like that, because it's supposed to be a state service.</p>
<p>In either case, I believe (honestly) that top students at Cal can do just as well as their Ivy counterparts when it comes to grad school. It might be a little tougher, but the fact is that you can get as good an education at Cal as you can at Princeton.</p>
<p>I still think that Princeton's grading is tougher, despite grade inflation. I can't really back this up, but when I get to Kennedy or SIPA, I'll try to take an undergrad course and see how they compare. ;)</p>
<p>
[quote]
I think that the problem Cal will always have with its undergraduate population is its public nature. It can't drop students like that, because it's supposed to be a state service.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Yeah, but see, I've always found it interesting that Cal can't drop undergraduates like that supposedly because of its public nature, but the same does not apply to UC's graduate programs. Shouldn't it apply in both cases? Those graduate programs are 'public' too. They're funded from public money too. Yet the state doesn't force any of the Berkeley PhD programs to admit a bunch of weaker students. You don't have a dichotomy of strong out-of-state Berkeley PhD students and not-so-strong in-state Berkeley PhD students. All the PhD students are strong.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I still think that Princeton's grading is tougher, despite grade inflation. I can't really back this up, but when I get to Kennedy or SIPA, I'll try to take an undergrad course and see how they compare.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>One problem is that Princeton has recently changed its grading policy to make it tougher. </p>
<p>
[quote]
In either case, I believe (honestly) that top students at Cal can do just as well as their Ivy counterparts when it comes to grad school. It might be a little tougher, but the fact is that you can get as good an education at Cal as you can at Princeton.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>The issue to me is not about the top students. I've never worried about the top Cal students, because they do very well for themselves. The issue to me is what should be done about those Cal students who are not top, and in particular, those who are at the bottom?</p>
<p>Sakky, Princeton has recently changed its grading policy.</p>
<p>Does Berkeley impede students from going to a community college after dropping out or being kicked out of here?</p>
<p>Even if your policy were inacted, people would still take the 16 series over the 1 series in math, or the 8 series over the 7 in physics. It wouldn't change a lot of things. Most people would likely still take classes below their ability if they were going to anyway.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Yeah, but see, I've always found it interesting that Cal can't drop undergraduates like that supposedly because of its public nature, but the same does not apply to UC's graduate programs. Shouldn't it apply in both cases? Those graduate programs are 'public' too. They're funded from public money too. Yet the state doesn't force any of the Berkeley PhD programs to admit a bunch of weaker students. You don't have a dichotomy of strong out-of-state Berkeley PhD students and not-so-strong in-state Berkeley PhD students. All the PhD students are strong.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Well, it's not like they don't let students fail. But it's not like any college lets students fail these days anyway. What is it, like two or three semesters of AP before a student is kicked out?</p>
<p>How the hell do you get two semesters of AP in a row? Drugs?</p>
<p>And the PhD programs are allowed to be more discerning because good grad students draw good faculty which in turn improves the quality of the university. Let's face it: Most big research schools couldn't give a hoot about undergrads. </p>
<p>
[quote]
One problem is that Princeton has recently changed its grading policy to make it tougher
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Eh, I wouldn't know. I don't follow them because they offer little in the way of what I want. I'll take your word for it. Even if they did, however, I doubt they'll see a huge change. So the students will probably just work harder and do well anyway. I have faith in their students. </p>
<p>The thing is, the only way Princeton could really beat grade inflation completely would be to grade on a curve in every class, and have a normal distribution. Other than that, some not-so-deserving students will get good grades. </p>
<p>
[quote]
The issue to me is not about the top students. I've never worried about the top Cal students, because they do very well for themselves. The issue to me is what should be done about those Cal students who are not top, and in particular, those who are at the bottom?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Hey, a B-, C+ student at Cal is still doing enough to graduate. I don't think there's a huge concern there.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Well, it's not like they don't let students fail. But it's not like any college lets students fail these days anyway. What is it, like two or three semesters of AP before a student is kicked out?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Oh no. It's 1 semester of AP, and then you're out. Believe me, I've seen people go through it. Believe me, Berkeley will absolutely not hesitate for a minute to throw you out. Not at all. </p>
<p>
[quote]
How the hell do you get two semesters of AP in a row? Drugs?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Actually, it's quite easy. I'll give you a theoretical case. Let's say a guy completely screws up his first semester, and gets 4 F's. So he has a 0.0 GPA. He lands on probation. The way to get yourself out of AP is to have a 2.0 cumulative GPA. That's right, cumulative. And like I said above, you have 1 semester to get you out of AP before you can get expelled. </p>
<p>So think about that. The guy has a 0.0 GPA. He has one semester to raise his cumulative GPA to a 2.0. What that means is that, if he takes 4 classes, he has to get straight A's in his next semester. That's right, straight A's. If he even gets one A-, his cumulative GPA will still be below a 2.0, which means that Berkeley can (and probably will) kick him out. </p>
<p>Now I don't know anybody who was so extreme as to get a 0.0 in their first semester. But I do know people who got 0.5's and 1.0's in their first semester, and were unable to raise their cum GPA to above a 2.0 in their next semester, and so were tossed. </p>
<p>
[quote]
Hey, a B-, C+ student at Cal is still doing enough to graduate. I don't think there's a huge concern there.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>See above. Believe me, when you're navigating the weeders at Berkeley, especially in engineering, it is VERY EASY to end up with a GPA below a 2.0, which will land you on probation.</p>
<p>The worst part about it is that the weeders don't just come in one shot. There's often times a series of weeders. Not only that, but some of them are only taught once a year (not every semester), so if you don't take them on time, you gotta wait for another year to come around before you can get back on sequence. </p>
<p>So think about that. You take the weeders and get mightily banged up such that you have a 2.0 cum GPa and thus land on probation. Yet there are more weeders to come. So your choice is to retreat from the weeder sequence to take a bunch of easy classes to get out of probation, but then graduate a year later because you're not progressing through the weeder sequence. Or continue through the sequence and run the substantialy risk that your cum GPA will still be below a 2.0 after another semester of weeders, which means you can be expelled. </p>
<p>Again, I've seen it happen to people. </p>
<p>Speaking specifically about a B- or a C+, believe me, there are a LOT of extremely hard working engineering students at Berkeley and UCLA who would LOVE to have a B- or C+ average. </p>
<p>Let me post your something I found on a UCLA blog:</p>
<p>"Weeder?? What's That?
At UCLA there is something called a "weeder" class. "Impacted" courses (courses that have strict guidlines about adding or dropping them due to their high demand) are often "weeders." Most majors have at least one weeder course. Many have more than one (called "weeder series"). A weeder is a course that is designed to flunk out kids who aren't good enough for the major, thus "weeding" them out. FEAR THEM. You're at a school with the best and the brightest... and these courses are designed to flunk a big chunk of them out, of course not on an official level. Most of the time you won't know your class is a weeder until you go to UCLA for a while and you hear the rumor. I will do my best to inform you of what classes you may take as an incoming freshman that may be weeders. UCLA is a pre-med school... remember that. Anything here that is pre-med is *<strong><em>ING HARD. All of the chem courses are considered weeders. Computer science and engineering in general is considered one giant weeder. No, they do not get easier as you move up; in fact, they get really *</em></strong>ing hard. To illustrate, I have a friend who is a graduating senior, Electrical Engineer, I quote him saying, "A's? What is an A? I thought it went from F to C-." It's his last quarter here and yet at least once a week he won't come back from studying until four or five in the morning... and yet it's not midterm or finals season.</p>
<p>I once took a weeder course in North campus (largely considered the "easier" side of campus). It is the weeder for the communications major (Comm 10). However, because this is an introductory weeder (anybody can take it), it is considered by many as North campus' hardest class. I didn't know this and I took it as an incoming frosh. I was quite scared. The material is ****ing common sense; you get a ton of it. I had 13 pages of single space, font 10 notes covering only HALF of the course (this is back when I was a good student and took notes). I was supposed to memorize the entire list including all the categories and how the list was arranged by them. And I did. Fearing it yet? My friend told me about his chem midterm... the average grade was a 16%.. No, they didn't fail the whole class; I'm sure they curved it so only half the kids failed. My freshman year, I met this friend of mine who was crying because she got an 76% on her math midterm. I told her that she should be glad she passed, she told me, "the average grade was 93%, the curve fails me." Weeders can have curves, as these three examples show... but only to make sure some people pass... and some fail. Famous weeders are courses like: Communications 10, Life Scienes 1 (and 2 & 3), Chemistry 14a (and all the subsequent ones get only harder), English 10a (OMG that class was hard), CS33, etc. Oh, and if you're wondering, my friend ended up getting a C- in her math class after studying her butt off. Lucky her!!!"</p>
<p>am i the only one who thinks sakky's arguments/system makes complete sense?</p>
<p>Oh, I think sakky's arguments are quite cogent.</p>
<p>I just don't think that there are as many problems as he does.</p>
<p>By the way, sakky, Mooch is a terrible example (I know him.) He's too smart for his own britches. I know some engineering students who got Cs in a history class I took, 'cause the professor was so demanding. But, yeah, true.</p>
<p>I'm not saying that there are a massive number of problems. Indeed, the majority of Cal students do just fine. Only a minority get into so much trouble that they flunk out. </p>
<p>But that only highlights why I think Berkeley should try to help them out. Since there's really not all that many of them, it should be easy to help them. I'm not talking about helping all 23,000 undergrads. I'm just talking about helping that 10-15% of students who never graduate. Like I said, I think that Berkeley ought to set up a no-questions-asked transfer to a CalState to anybody who's doing badly. If a guy isn't good enough to get a Berkeley degree, then fine , don't give him one, but at least give him a shot at getting a degree elsewhere.</p>
<p>Do community colleges not allow people to get degrees elsewhere? Is transfering from a cc to another school not an option?</p>
<p>Drab, what do you mean?</p>
<p>Does Berkeley prevent its students from going to community colleges after failing out of here? If so, perhaps something needs to be changed, but if not, there are some options for people who flunk out here. Can someone not get an associates degree and later transfer to a four year university, even after flunking out of Cal? There GPA might be hurt a bit, but would the school ask for information about their time here? would they be obligated to report it? If they did well at cc, then that would probably let them into some four year school. Does this not happen?</p>