Which schools did you turn down for Berkeley?

[MechRocket]

<p>all the other UC’s, didn’t apply to privates</p>

[sakky]

<p>

Do you believe that there are other additional characteristics or combinations that are likely to be highly predictive (as opposed to very small changes, like 5% versus 7% non-graduation, meaning that even the “worse” group still has a 93% chance of graduation in this example)? If so, which ones are likely candidates? Or are you just speculating/assuming that there exists such a thing for the sake of argument, but leaving the determination of that to someone else (much like politicians claiming to want to balance the budget, but leaving the actual spending cuts and/or tax increases to someone else)?

</p>

<p>Actually, I’m leaving it to the data to decide. I don’t presume to know what the data says, but data speaks volume. Like I said, Berkeley is sitting on a dataset comprised of thousands upon thousands of observations of past students. </p>

<p>Put another way, would anybody like to make the argument that Berkeley should not even look at this data at all? If they have the data, why shouldn’t they use it, particularly given that they have one of the highest ranked statistics departments in the world who could surely analyze it to discover a host of interesting predictive variables? </p>

<p>

Can either Berkeley, or the students themselves, predict with any degree of certainty what GPA they will get?

</p>

<p>Again, that’s what the data is for. </p>

<p>Similarly, nobody knows exactly who is going to crash their car. But auto insurance firms calculate relative risk likelihoods every day in order to determine insurance premiums, or even whether to offer insurance to somebody at all. You have to make a statistical bet about who is likely to perform poorly and who isn’t. </p>

<p>For those who find that distasteful, I would remind you that Berkeley already does that now. They just do so crudely. Again, 75% of Berkeley applicants are rejected, and that’s regarding those who are even eligible to apply to UC at all. Hence, Berkeley is already barring the vast majority of Californians from attending the school anyway, largely based on high school GPA and SAT scores. But surely Berkeley can devise a far more predictive statistical model comprised of more than just the 2 main (and crude) variables of GPA and SAT’s. </p>

<p>

In addition, if some means of reliably removing the bottom third or fourth of the students (as in reliably predicting low GPAs at university) were found, then someone else would end up filling the bottom of the grading curves. But then if you advocate more grade inflation to eliminate low GPAs, that can be done without admissions changes.

</p>

<p>Obviously the policies would be linked. The main counterargument that the faculty invokes as to why grade curves are not raised is that many Berkeley students are underqualified and therefore deserve harsh grades. By removing those underqualified students, you take that counterargument off the table. </p>

<p>Besides, curves are really only a problem in the more technical majors. I suspect there are currently few if any curves in the creampuff ‘Studies’ majors, where you have to be truly unmotivated to get below a 2.5. Hence, another way to solve the grading problem is not necessarily to lift overall grading schemes across all of Berkeley, but rather to enforce grading parity: majors such as engineering should assign higher grades, whereas the creampuff majors should be forced to assign lower grades (and hence no longer be creampuff majors). But that’s a different topic for a different thread.</p>

[ucbalumnus]

<p>

@sakky

Put another way, would anybody like to make the argument that Berkeley should not even look at this data at all?

</p>

<p>You are assuming that they have not, or that they would have made all results of such studies public. Do you have evidence that they have not done the type of study that you are interested in?</p>

<p>

@sakky

Besides, curves are really only a problem in the more technical majors. I suspect there are currently few if any curves in the creampuff ‘Studies’ majors, where you have to be truly unmotivated to get below a 2.5.

</p>

<p>Do you have any data indicating the actual level of grade inflation or lack thereof across different majors at Berkeley? Nationally, humanities has the most grade inflation, while science has the least, with engineering and social studies in between, with the difference between humanities and science being about 0.3 ([see</a> here](<a href=“http://www.gradeinflation.com/tcr2010grading.pdf]see”>http://www.gradeinflation.com/tcr2010grading.pdf)). But that may not necessarily apply to Berkeley.</p>

[jengajenga117]

<p>This is for a friend of mine</p>

<p>Going to UC Berk Engineering over Stanford, Caltech, Harvey Mudd, USC, UCLA, UCSD</p>

[sakky]

<p>

You are assuming that they have not, or that they would have made all results of such studies public. Do you have evidence that they have not done the type of study that you are interested in?

</p>

<p>Nice: so you’re asking me to prove a negative? </p>

<p>

Do you have any data indicating the actual level of grade inflation or lack thereof across different majors at Berkeley? Nationally, humanities has the most grade inflation, while science has the least, with engineering and social studies in between, with the difference between humanities and science being about 0.3 (see here). But that may not necessarily apply to Berkeley.

</p>

<p>How’s this:</p>

<p>*“The physical sciences and engineering had rigorous grading standards roughly in line with the recommendations from 1976,” stated Rine, “while the humanities and social sciences in many classes had all but given up on grades below a B, and in many courses below an A-, and the biological sciences had no consistent pattern.” *</p>

<p>[Undergraduate</a> Education Colloquium, The College of Letters and Science, UC Berkeley](<a href=“http://ls.berkeley.edu/undergrad/colloquia/04-11.html]Undergraduate”>http://ls.berkeley.edu/undergrad/colloquia/04-11.html)</p>

[ucbalumnus]

<p>

@sakky

Nice: so you’re asking me to prove a negative?

</p>

<p>You are asking others to argue based on your speculative assumptions.</p>

<p>

@sakky

“The physical sciences and engineering had rigorous grading standards roughly in line with the recommendations from 1976,” stated Rine, “while the humanities and social sciences in many classes had all but given up on grades below a B, and in many courses below an A-, and the biological sciences had no consistent pattern.”

</p>

<p>By “many classes”, what was the overall distribution of grades in the humanities and social studies? As far as engineering grades go, the 1999 EE and CS grade distributions show significantly higher grades than the 1976 policy. What would be more interesting than the teaser of a statement here is what the actual grade distributions or GPAs of various courses and departments are.</p>

[ucbalumnus]

<p>Putting “grade distribution” in the search box of [University</a> of California, Berkeley](<a href=“http://www.berkeley.edu%5DUniversity”>http://www.berkeley.edu) gives a lot of physics and math grade distributions.</p>

<p>A [Physics</a> 8A](<a href=“http://moller.physics.berkeley.edu/~phys8a/grades.html]Physics”>Physics 8A: Grade Distributions) distribution shows 31% A, 42% B, 21% C, 6% D/F. A [Math</a> 54](<a href=“http://math.berkeley.edu/~ogus/Math_54-07/Exams/histogram1.pdf]Math”>http://math.berkeley.edu/~ogus/Math_54-07/Exams/histogram1.pdf) distribution shows 29% A, 28% B, 26% C, 16% D, 1% F. A different [Math</a> 54](<a href=“http://www.math.berkeley.edu/~lott/math54syllabus.html]Math”>http://www.math.berkeley.edu/~lott/math54syllabus.html) course refers to a curve of 25% A, 35% B, 25% C, 15% D/F. An [EE</a> 40](<a href=“http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~ee40/fa03/]EE”>UC Berkeley EECS40 Home Page) grade distribution had 58% A, 32% B, 8% C, 1% D/F.</p>

<p>Buried in them are a sheet for [Sociology</a> 142](<a href=“http://sociology.berkeley.edu/documents/syllabi/s11/Soc142-lueck.pdf]Sociology”>http://sociology.berkeley.edu/documents/syllabi/s11/Soc142-lueck.pdf) that describes the curve that may be used (30% A, 40% B, 25% C). Also, a [UGBA</a> policy](<a href=“http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/mopp/Teaching/FAQ.pdf]UGBA”>http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/mopp/Teaching/FAQ.pdf) which shows a distribution of 32.7% A, 56.4% B, 10.9% C/D/F. And the final grade distribution of [EEP</a> 151](<a href=“http://are.berkeley.edu/courses/EEP151/fall2008/2007_FinalGradeDistribution.pdf]EEP”>http://are.berkeley.edu/courses/EEP151/fall2008/2007_FinalGradeDistribution.pdf) with 40.9% A, 36.5% B, 18.2% C, and 4.4% D/F.</p>

[sakky]

<p>

You are asking others to argue based on your speculative assumptions.

</p>

<p>As are you. </p>

<p>Besides, I think it’s a fair question to ask the Berkeley administration exactly what are they doing to minimize the number of incoming students who fail. As other posters have asked how would we know which students are likely to fail, I merely demonstrated that a statistical model built upon data that Berkeley has readily available should be highly feasible. Now that I have laid that out, I think we can now speak with one voice to ask the administration whether they are doing this, or even want to. {I suspect that the administration is not running such a model - or even bothering to look at the data - for the very political reasons that had been discussed before.} </p>

<p>

By “many classes”, what was the overall distribution of grades in the humanities and social studies? As far as engineering grades go, the 1999 EE and CS grade distributions show significantly higher grades than the 1976 policy. What would be more interesting than the teaser of a statement here is what the actual grade distributions or GPAs of various courses and departments are.

</p>

<p>Hey, I don’t work for the administration. You think I just have the entire registrar dataset at my fingertips? Who do you think I am? </p>

<p>I gave you a source (Rine). That source had clearly studied the grading trends at Berkeley and reported some highly provocative findings. If you want that data, I suggest that you contact Rine or the other members of that colloquium.</p>

[RML]

<p>Brown - 2
BU - 1
Caltech - 2
Cal Poly SLO - 1
CMU - 2
Case Western - 1
Chicago -1
Cornell - 6
Duke - 2
Emory - 1
Georgetown - 1
Harvey Mudd - 2
Johns Hopkins - 1
MIT - 1
Michigan - 5
Michigan (Honors) - 1
NYU - 6
NYU Stern - 2
Northwestern - 2
Princeton - 2
RISD - 1
Rochester - 1
SFSU - 1
SJSU - 1
Stanford - 5
SUNY Binghamton - 1
Tulane (Honors) - 1</p>

<p>UCon - 1
UIUC - 3
University of Minnesotta-twin cities - 1
USC - 12
UT-Austin - 2
UTexas (honors) - 1
UW-Seattle - 2
U Wisconsin - 1
Vanderbilt - 2
Villanova - 1
Washington USL - 1
Wisconsin - 1
Yale - 1</p>

<p>UC Davis - 9
UC Davis (Regents) - 4
UCI - 4
UCI (Regents) - 1
UCLA - 21
UCLA (Regents) - 2
UCSB - 7
UCSB (Regents) - 2
UCSD - 17
UCSD (Regents) - 4</p>

<p>Tally ended at jengajenga117</p>

[manydreams]

<p>UCLA(Full Ride) and all other UCs</p>

[DisneyFreak777]

<p>Cmon, there’s gotta be someone who rejected Harvard!</p>

<p>Just kidding, but I rejected Cal Poly, Carnegie Mellon, Cornell, Johns Hopkins, Northwestern, Pepperdine, Rensselaer, UCI, UCLA, UCSD, UNR, USC, and WashU, and I’m very happy with my decision as an OOSer. Even the out of state tuition at Berkeley is cheaper than some of the normal tuitions at the Ivys and such.</p>

[123BLASB]

<p>I rejected UCLA, UCSB (reagents), UCSD, Cal Poly, Cal State Long Beach, San Diego State, and SF State</p>

[mikaela1117]

<p>UCLA (toughest to reject), UCSB, UOP, SFSU, SJSU, and SSU</p>

[melanie1ca2010]

<p>I rejected WashU, USC, Cornell, Emory, UCSB Honors, GW Honors, and Tulane Honors, as well as a few others. Couldn’t be happier with my decision! Go bears!!</p>

[iluvberkeley]

<p>I rejected :
Michigan (toughest to decide, I think I am still regretting lol)
UCLA
UCSD
Davis
SF State
UNC - Chapel Hill
William and Mary
USC
NYU
HKU (University of Hong Kong, I am an international students…so yeh…)</p>

[rattlehead]

<p>I turned down UCSD, UCSB, UC Davis, and Cal Poly SLO for Berkeley.</p>

<p>Berkeley was my #1 choice all along, but Cal Poly was a close second. I visited the campus and really liked it there, it had a really cool vibe. I was honestly a little disappointed about turning down Cal Poly, but not as disappointed as I would have been if I had turned down Berkeley. Aside from Berkeley and Cal Poly SLO, the other 3 schools were backups.</p>