<p>Thanks for the insight Polite. I was curious about Berkeley even though I haven't gotten the decisions yet.</p>
<p>Woah...</p>
<p>Wait...</p>
<p>LiberalCensors/Polite/BerkeleySucksDude said that Berkeley had a redeeming quality? Wow.</p>
<p>Is that the sound of Hitler and Stalin playing in the snow?</p>
<p>Pigs flying would've been a more commonly understood reference and humours reference.</p>
<p>And I pointed out good things in my first post about berkeley, along with the bad.</p>
<p>Polit Antagonis,</p>
<p>Sometimes, "commonly understood" doesn't equate to "great imagery."</p>
<p>There are few things funnier than the thought of those two men having a snowball fight.</p>
<p>This is about physics and this is my last post.</p>
<p>Berkeley was better than Stanford, Princeton, Caltech, Harvard etc.
and again UCSB is impressive. (Next 2000-2010 survey, UCLA will be Top 10)</p>
<p>The Most-Cited Institutions in Physics,
1995-2005</p>
<p>Rank Institution Papers Citations Citations Per Paper </p>
<p>1 MAX PLANCK SOCIETY 15,964 201,420 12.62<br>
2 UNIV TOKYO 14,430 152,240 10.55<br>
3 IST NAZL FIS NUCL 13,009 139,169 10.70 </p>
<p>4 MIT 7,730 138,505 17.92 </p>
<p>5 RUSSIAN ACAD SCI 29,728 126,159 4.24 </p>
<p>6 UNIV CALIF BERKELEY 7,406 119,944 16.20 </p>
<p>7 CERN 6,852 113,679 16.59 </p>
<p>8 STANFORD UNIV 5,232 107,099 20.47 </p>
<p>9 UNIV CALIF SANTA BARBARA 4,602 97,020 21.08 </p>
<p>10 LOS ALAMOS NATL LAB 7,099 95,669 13.48<br>
11 UNIV CAMBRIDGE 7,303 95,278 13.05 </p>
<p>12 PRINCETON UNIV 4,875 92,532 18.98 </p>
<p>13 TOHOKU UNIV 10,092 91,429 9.06<br>
14 UNIV ILLINOIS 6,171 91,252 14.79<br>
15 ARGONNE NATL LAB 5,222 83,134 15.92 </p>
<p>16 CALTECH 4,722 76,259 16.15 </p>
<p>17 BROOKHAVEN NATL LAB 3,921 76,172 19.43 </p>
<p>18 HARVARD UNIV 3,669 75,670 20.62 </p>
<p>19 CNRS 9,919 75,544 7.62<br>
20 UNIV MARYLAND 5,364 74,150</p>
<p>
[quote]
I can prove it to you. I've asked you twice now to defend the freshman sophomore seminars which you claim to be overflowing but in reality are now and have always been half-full in many departments. I will get the detailed figures soon.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>So get me the details. I believe that they are filled more often than not. </p>
<p>
[quote]
How many times must I point out that most professors at Cal do not teach weeders, and consequently can't be classified along with the minority that does?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I don't recall you poiting this out.</p>
<p>And furthermore, I don't even see how it is relevant. Weeders are a GENERAL policy within the department. For example, ChemE 140 is a weeder every year, no matter who teaches it. CS150 is a weeder every year no matter who teaches it. Now, it is true that these classes can vary in harshness depending on who is teaching it, but even in the best of years, these are still going to be quite harsh classes.</p>
<p>That's a GENERAL policy of the department, decided upon by consensus within the department. Basically, all of the ChemE profs get together and decide what the curricula is going to be, and every year, the majority decide to maintain the weeders as they are. The same for every other department that weeds. Hence, it doesn't matter whether 'most' profs don't teach weeders. It matters how they vote in these departmental meetings. For example, if the department decides that they are no longer going to weed, then they can stop doing so immediately. The fact that departments maintain weeding means that the majority of the profs in the department want the weeding to continue, even if they personally aren't the ones to teach the weeders themselves. </p>
<p>
[quote]
Once again, you are guilty of math/science/engineering centerdness.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Look, a significant fraction, arguably the majority, of Berkeley students are in majors that weed. It is then a viable question as to why these profs have to weed if they are supposed to be so 'supportive' of the undergrads. </p>
<p>
[quote]
IF STUDENTS WALK INTO A LECTURE AND FULLY EXPECT THE PROFESSOR TO BE A HORRIBLE TEACHER (like so many others,) THE STUDENTS WILL NOT PROFIT FROM THE PROFESSOR, NO MATTER HOW GOOD S/HE IS. Even if the professor is good, students in that mindset will assume s/he is new and will soon turn evil like all the others. This, in my opinion, is what a lot of students in those subject areas think. And it has been proven to me, by my former roommate, that the professors in those subject areas cannot be classified as monsters by default. Of course, sakky ignored that in his reply. Just like I will ignore his comment on the Regents Scholar.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>You yourself have ignored several comments directed to you at others. So you're accusing me of ignoring some of your comments? Pot, meet kettle. </p>
<p>I 'ignore' your comment when I tacitly accept them. Just like you 'ignore' my comments when you tacitly accept them. You have nothing to say about the sad story of the guy I know who won the Chancellor's Scholarship who regrets the day he ever stepped foot in Berkeley. That's because it demonstrates the harshness of the Berkeley environment to some people. In fairness, I accept the validity of your anecdotes. </p>
<p>Furthermore, I am no longer talking just about bad teaching, but rather about your larger point where you claimed that Berkeley profs are supposedly nice and taking on the responsibility to bring Berkeley students up to HYPS standards. If that's true, then why weed? Weeding isn't nice. Expelling people from school isn't nice. How does flunking somebody out and kicking them out of Berkeley bring them up to HYPS standards? Do you have an answer for this? </p>
<p>
[quote]
This is so wrong. I know you are at least a former Cal student. Since that is so, I am guessing you are familiar at least to some degree as to how the student body votes. They have giantic referendums in which the implications of the yes/no vote are universally advertised. Increased personal attention would mean increased fees. Cal students would know that the second they heard the proposal.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>No, I think it would bring up the legitimate question as to why certain students at Berkeley, i.e. the undergrads at Haas, can get more personal attention than other undergrads? Both are paying the same fees. So why are the Haas kids entitled to personal attention, but not, say, the CS kids? See next post.</p>
<p>
[quote]
It's painfully simple. First, Haas has a culture. The other departments don't. Or at least not an organized culture. A small program like Haas needs a culture of its own which fosters close interaction between faculty and students. How do you get this culture? Competitive admissions (Harvard Nation, Yale Nation, Princeton Nation, etc.) I anticipate you will point out that EECS has a culture and arguably little personal attention. Yes, I agree. EECS has a culture. But I would say it is more of a student culture than a student-faculty culture. Why? Well, unlike Haas students, it's very difficult for EECS students to talk to their professors on a more personal level since Haas teaches students to deal with people whereas EECS teaches students to deal with....I'll just say it. Things. Haas deals with people. EECS deals with things.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>But it doesn't have to be this way. I agree with you that each major has a particular culture. But the culture is itself shaped by the profs and the administrators. I believe that the Berkeley EECS department could have shaped itself to be more personal. It didn't. That was a conscious choice. I believe much of it has to do with the harsh weeding. The EECS departments enacts a bunch of tough early weeders and forces its undergrads to survive them. This inevitably breeds a culture of mistrust and antagonism and builds a gulf between the students and the faculty, where the students feel that it is their job to "beat" other students and "beat" the faculty. </p>
<p>The result is, you end up with a bunch of EECS upper-division students who just barely squeezed by their weeders who are traumatized and intimidated by their lower-division experience. They don't want anything to do with the faculty. Be honest with yourself - how many of us would want to go hang out and try to have a good time with a prof who gave us a C-, or worse? </p>
<p>The point is, culture doesn't just happen sui generis. The department faculty has a strong hand in determining how it is shaped. If the faculty wants a highly personal culture, the faculty can serve to create that. If the faculty wants a vicious and antagonistic culture, the faculty can create that too.</p>
<p>So that gets back to what you said. You say that Haas, because it is small, needs a tight culture. Well, first off, you are assuming that Haas has to be small. I strongly suspect that the Haas undergrad program could expand greatly if it wanted to. I think it has remained small because it WANTS to remain small. The Haas MBA program already has expanded tremendously with its evening/weekend MBA program. But Haas refuses to expand its undergrad or daytime MBA program out of choice. Haas easily could have - for example, Haas could have simply taken the resources that it used to expand the evening/weekend MBA program and used them to instead expand the undergrad program. Obviously the trade wouldn't be one-to-one, but some sort of trade could have happened. </p>
<p>Furthermore, the Haas culture is deliberately fostered by its faculty. Haas has an exceptional reputation for strong interaction amongst faculty and students even for a small MBA program. For example, while I can't prove this, anecdotally speaking, I believe that the Haas MBA program features tighter integration and culture than, say, the MBA program at Carnegie Mellon or Cornell, 2 MBA programs of comparable size to Haas. I believe it has to do with deliberate departmental choice about what Haas faculty and leadership wants to do.</p>
<p>The point is, if Haas can shape its cultures, so can other departments. So if a Berkeley department has a reputation for harshness and antagonism, it's probably because the department WANTS it to be that way. </p>
<p>
[quote]
Second, Haas deals with a very small number of academically successful students. Most of the other departments (that hold the majority of the undergrads) have to deal with thousands of kids who have no clue what they're doing at Berkeley. If Polite Antagonis had his way, these students would be kicked out. Thanks to European socialist ideals which are enjoying growing popularity in America, that will never.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I don't know about that. I don't see these socialist ideas forcing Haas to open the floodgates and accept a lot of mediocre students. I'm sure that a lot of people have requested Haas to do that, but Haas has shown the strength to stand firm. </p>
<p>If Haas can do it, other departments can do it too. For example, I have always maintained that a far more humane policy is for all those departments to weed to simply stop weeding and just accept fewer students in the first place, and in particular, don't accept those students who were going to be weeded out. Obviously you can't know that with perfection, but you can make quite reasonable deductions that certain people are not going to survive the weeders, so simply don't admit these people in the major in the first place. </p>
<p>Now, you're probably going to say that all of these proposals involve large changes to Berkeley, and there is a lot of inertia that will weigh Berkeley down. That is true. Clearly reforms (if they ever happen) will be slow in coming. I also agree with you that I wouldn't hold my breath in waiting for reforms to happen, as they may not happen at all. There are indeed strong reactionary political pressures that may prevent any reforms from happening.</p>
<p>But that's not the issue at hand. All I am saying is that the present culture of Berkeley exists because of choices made long ago. Haas administrators of the old days made choices to give Haas the culture that it has now. For example, the Berkeley EECS department could have chosen in past decades to make itself highly selective and highly personal, just like Haas is now. It chose not to do that. The same could be said for every other Berkeley department. </p>
<p>And in particular, I think the Haas example demonstrates the weakness of these socialist pressures. They aren't as strong as you seem to imply they are. It's not just Haas that is standing firm. All of the departments that are 'impacted' are standing firm by refusing to automatically admit anybody who wants to declare their major. And in particular, all of the graduate departments at Berkeley have clearly been able to stand firm. Nobody goes around trying to lecture the Berkeley doctoral programs that they ought to be lowering their admissions standards and admitting more Californians under some socialist pretext.</p>
<p>Where do you read this stuff Sakky? I'd like to be this informed when I make a grad school choice.</p>
<p>I'm pretty sure Berkeley's EECS department isn't the only EE/CS department that has a cold, cutthroat, unpersonable culture. I've attended three different colleges/universities as a CS major (under & grad student) and found each and every one of them to be extremely unfriendly, the professors cold, aloof, and robotlike, and the competition (both amongst fellow students and students vs profs) to be cutthroat. Also, interest in outside subjects (especially "soft" subjects, including humanities, foreign languages, etc) was frowned upon (considered irrelevant, even detrimental). I graduated from my undergraduate program as one of the top three, but I'm now starting to realize that I have other interests, and I'm not really interested spending the rest of my life talking to computers (which are really, really dumb by the way) and grappling with extremely abstract math.</p>
<p>I heard from a few students at MIT that the EECS department is hard, but a bit more friendly and accepting of irrelevant interests and interdisciplinary research (MIT Media Lab, anyone?).</p>
<p>Maybe I'm just not the right person for EECS. But I definitely have gotten bad vibes from every EE/CS department I've been a part of.</p>
<p>I agree that EECS departments (or ECE or separated EE and CS departmeents whatever is the structure at various schools) is often times quite unfriendly, and that it is an embedded feature within the culture of EECS academics. Hence, I am not singling out Berkeley. </p>
<p>But I would say that this is not a uniform and inevitable feature of EECS. EECS does not have to be unfriendly. Anecdotally speaking, I hear that Stanford EE and CS tend to be notably friendlier than Berkeley EECS, and for that matter, the entire Stanford engineering culture is significantly less harsh and less cutthroat than what one might expect from an elite engineering school. While certainly Stanford engineering is no picnic, the department isn't going to go out of its way to put you through the gauntlet, the way that departments at other schools might. </p>
<p>I would also note that even MIT has changed radically from the way it was in the old days. MIT back in the old days was infamous for impersonality, harshness, and masochism. The administration has changed things to make the atmosphere far less harsh. While it's still extremely difficult to get top grades, and the workload is still legendarily intense, you no longer have to walk around in constant fear of flunking out the way that you did in the old days. I believe this goes a long way towards explaining why MIT has a higher graduation rate than Berkeley does, despite being a more difficult school. MIT has vastly expanded its course offerings to include notable 'softer' subjects, many of which, like Economics, Linguistics, and the Sloan School of Management, are recognized as elite, and others like Poli Sci and Brain and Cognitive Sciences (which is a fancy name for Psychology) which are also highly regarded and steadily gaining in repute. MIT has also enacted an extensive cross-reg program with Harvard so that students who want to study humanities can spend much of their time 'up-the-river'. MIT had a lot of conflict with old-timer profs who wanted to continue doing things the old ways. The worst were those profs who had themselves studied at MIT and figured that since they had gone through hell themselves as students, they would force other MIT students to go through the same hell. The administration won that battle by basically kicking many of these profs into retirement (i.e. taking on emeritus status) or just by having them no longer teach classes, especially not required undergrad classes. MIT also greatly expanded the ability to take classes P/D/F or even "exploratory", which I think is a brilliant idea. "Exploratory" means that you, as an MIT sophomore, can elect to take one class on as so-called exploratory basis which means that effectively allows you to take the class to completion, including the final exam, and see your final grade, and if you don't like it, you can just convert that class to "Listener" status, which means that you basically drop the class after you've seen your final grade. This is absolutely brilliant. I think that not only should MIT vastly liberalize the rules surrounding 'exploratory' status, but other difficult schools should immediately adopt this idea. </p>
<p>However, my real point is to demonstrate that schools have it within their power to change the culture. Culture is not a purely exogenous phenomenom. It can be shaped. If a school department is known for being predatory and cold, it's partly because the department WANTS to be known as predatory and cold. </p>
<p>Which all gets back to this notion of people not showing up to office hours. I would submit that when a department insists of using harsh weeders, and almost seems to delight in giving people grades that will threaten their very standing within Berkeley (i.e. grades lower than the 2.0 minimum cutoff you need to maintain minimal academic progress) that displays a certain callousness towards the student body. There are far more humane ways of dealing with your student body, like giving students lots of early exams and homeworks before the drop deadline and making it crystal-clear to all students where exactly they stand in the class from a grading standpoint, so that those students who are doing poorly will know to drop the class.</p>
<p>So in other words, you want things I consider to be impossible. </p>
<p>I'm sorry but personal attention, close relationships, and a nurturing atmosphere for every single student in the what are now weeders would come at a price. A BIG ONE. Either decreased enrollment or increased fees. Neither will ever come true unless Berkeley becomes a private univeristy. And I don't see that happening. Ever. </p>
<p>I want to ask you, how is grading in Berkeley's top science grad programs? Somebody told me that it was equally hard and unfair as the undergrad. How true is that?</p>
<p>It's not impossible, though Berkeley's bad management style does hamper all reform.</p>
<p>Berkeley does have this democratic type school governance which makes change very difficult. Its worked terribly on the undergraduate side. It works terribly for the administration of this school.</p>
<p>So greatestyen has a point. California stagnation is likely here to stay.</p>
<p>We may not get everything Sakky and I want but we could have some. We could have less weeder classes, less enrollment (shave 10-15% off at least), etc. These are small incremental changes but half a loaf of bread is better than no loaf at all.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I'm sorry but personal attention, close relationships, and a nurturing atmosphere for every single student in the what are now weeders would come at a price. A BIG ONE. Either decreased enrollment or increased fees. Neither will ever come true unless Berkeley becomes a private univeristy. And I don't see that happening. Ever.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>It doesn't have to be for every student. At least not in the beginning. I agree with you that not every student is out for personal attention (although we continue to disagree about just how many are in this category). So, to start off, I think efforts can be made to provide more personal attention to those that might actually want it and would benefit from it. I would once again invoke my old idea of Berkeley startng an honors college or calkidd's idea of splitting Berkeley undergrad into 2 programs - one for those premed/prelaw/pre-X kids who see the degree merely as a credential to move on to bigger and better things, and one for those students who really actually care about education. Then simply shift the personal attention that is being offered to those students who don't care about it anyway, to those students who do care about it. This can be revenue neutral. Hence, no additional fees required. </p>
<p>Is it going to be tough politically? Sure. But hey, like Confucius said, the journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step. Nobody ever succeeded at anything by giving up. As the chess grandmaster Tartakower once said: "Nobody ever won a game by resigning."</p>
<p>
[quote]
I want to ask you, how is grading in Berkeley's top science grad programs? Somebody told me that it was equally hard and unfair as the undergrad. How true is that?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Grad school grading at Berkeley (as at all schools) tends to be easier than undergrad. But far more importantly, grad school grading matters a lot less. After all, if you're talking about science, then you're mostly talking about doctoral programs. Most of Berkeley's science programs don't even offer terminal master's programs. And the truth is, if you're a doctoral student, your grades hardly matter. In fact, I think that grading for doctoral students should be on a strictly P/NP basis. The fact is, neither the profs of the grad classes nor the doctoral students themselves care very much about grades. Why should they? Newly-minted PhD's are going to be judged first and foremost on the quality of their research papers, especially their doctoral thesis, and secondly (especially if they're going for a job in academia) on the recommendations of their thesis advisors. You can pull straight A's as a doctoral student, but if your research papers have been discredited and your advisors give you poor rec's, you're going to have great trouble in getting a decent job. On the other hand, you could pull the bare minimum grades possible, but if your research papers are brilliant and widely cited, and your advisors give you top rec's, you will be able to land the best academic or corporate research jobs.</p>
<p>Hey Sakky, do you think Cal should institute an honors program like UCLA's, one for only Letters and Sciences, excluding the other colleges (notably engineering, that you sometimes paint as essentially an honors college already), or something different than that?</p>
<p>I actually think it would be preferable that the honors college sit 'above' all formal colleges that exist currently, for one simple reason. I would like to have one of the privileges of belonging to such an honors college be the right to change majors to anything you want, without having to worry about impactness. </p>
<p>One of the saddest aspects of the College of Engineering is that if you are doing poorly, as many engineering students are, you may not be able to transfer to some other college that is more to your tastes. So, basically, because you're doing poorly in engineering, you're forced to stay in engineering, which is a Kafka-esque punishment. We need to get rid of these restrictions immediately, and I see an honors college as one way to do it.</p>
<p>sakky,</p>
<p>Wait... engineering majors at Cal can't necessarily transfer out?</p>
<p>That blows.</p>
<p>It's not about transferring out, it's about finding another Berkeley college that will allow you to transfer in. If you can't transfer in to another college, then that's the same thing as not being allowed to transfer out of engineering. And the fact is, the other Berkeley colleges have implemented policies to restrict transferees who don't have decent grades. And it is quite easy for engineering students to get quite 'indecent' grades.</p>
<p>sakky,</p>
<p>I mean out from the college of engineering to L&S, natch.</p>
<p>haha, natch. </p>
<p>I'm fine with engineers getting out of engineering. I'm not a fan of how I imagine engineering at schools like MIT, Caltech, and Cal operate. I also am sick and tired of engineering/science superiority complexes, and L & S being viewed as dumping ground for engineers who couldn't cut it.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I mean out from the college of engineering to L&S, natch
[/quote]
</p>
<p>That's exactly what I'm talking about. Switching into L&S requires that L&S take you, which means that you have to have decent grades. It is very easy to get 'indecent' grades as an engineering student such that L&S won't take you. Hence, you get bad grades, and you're still stuck in engineering. </p>
<p>
[quote]
I'm not a fan of how I imagine engineering at schools like MIT, Caltech, and Cal operate
[/quote]
</p>
<p>At least at MIT and Caltech, you are free to change your major whenever and however you want, without restriction, which is a significant difference from the way that Cal engineering operates. Like I said, if you're a Cal engineer who is doing badly and you want to switch to, say, American Studies, you have to switch into L&S, which may not be possible depending on your grades. </p>
<p>
[quote]
I also am sick and tired of engineering/science superiority complexes, and L & S being viewed as dumping ground for engineers who couldn't cut it.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I don't think that they have superiority complexes, but rather that they have a legitimate beef that engineering majors tend to be more difficult than other majors. It's a legitimate question to ask why that should be the case. That is why I also advocate reforms in the libarts, especially in the humanities, to make them more difficult. Certain humanities courses, and in fact, entire humanities majors, ought to be assigning more work and giving out fewer easy A's.</p>