<p>Yay, I finally made Sakky say something good about Berkeley. Not even California1600 could do that. </p>
<p>High five anyone? </p>
<p>P.S. Sakky is probably right about Berkeley's PhD programs being better than Stanford's. But you have to admit that in general PhD programs are a lot less sexy than law, medical, and business schools which Stanford excels at.</p>
<p>At the graduate level, the reputation of department means much more than the reputation of the school. For undergrad, the opposite is true. BUT, and this is where sakky may disagree, but grad schools look at the strength of the undergraduate program. For example, a Wisconsin, Chicago, Berkeley, UCLA, UCSD, etc econ grad is likeley to be looked at favorably because of the strength of the department they graduated from. Then again, those are alos top notch schools as well. But from what I've gathered, graduates from schools with reputable departments are looked at favorably in grad school admissions.</p>
<p>Rooster, You like Cal1600. You guys are funny. Maybe Cal1600 will be your
best buddy in the future.</p>
<p>Rooster, Cal1600, Stanford vs Berkeley rivalry/friendship lies on people like you guys :)</p>
<p>I don't think it is unusual at all for me to say good things about Berkeley, so don't treat that as such a rare event. I have always maintained that the Berkeley graduate programs, particularly the PhD programs, are top-notch. Berkeley is indeed a tremendous place to get your PhD, and I have always said as much.</p>
<p>The issue that I have with Berkeley is specifically with the undergraduate program, which although pretty good, is not anywhere close to being as good as its PhD programs. And that's always led me to the same question - if Berkeley can make its PhD programs so good, why can't it do the same for its undergraduate program? </p>
<p>What's even more galling is when anybody starts complaining about the problems of the undergrad program to the administrartion, the Berkeley administration's favorite response is to tout its grad-school rankings. Yes, we know the graduate-schools are strong. That's not the point. The point is, why can't they make the undergraduate program as good as the graduate-programs? </p>
<p>Now, to rooster08's comments that professional schools are sexier than graduate-programs, I think it comes down to what you want. But clearly you can take this logic too far. For example, UCDavis has a law school, a business school, and a medical school. Princeton has none. So does that mean that UCDavis is a 'sexier' or 'better' school than Princeton? I think you'd find very few people, even calfornia1600 who would be willing to say that. But if you really believe that professional programs are sexier than PhD programs, then because Davis has professional programs and Princeton doesn't, the logical conclusion is that Davis must be a sexier school, right? Similarly, MIT only has a business school, and no law school and medical school. So Davis must be sexier than MIT too, right? And clearly Davis is sexier than Caltech, which also has no professional programs. Heck, UCRiverside at least has a business school. I think you'd find very few people indeed who would seriously argue that UCRiverside is sexier than Princeton or Caltech.</p>
<p>Hahaha what is it about sexier colleges? The sexiest college should be the college with the most number of hot chicks ... :)</p>