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I think UCLA is a better school than Brown personally.

UCSD is getting to be a pretty dam good school too.

UCI is definitely up and coming. I think engineering students at UCI have similar math skills as students at Brown if not slightly higher.

Anyways... yea.

By Mintbee (Mintbee) on Saturday, May 01, 2004 - 06:29 am: Edit

?

By Rayray222 (Rayray222) on Saturday, May 01, 2004 - 06:41 am: Edit

"Don't think; feel. It's like a finger pointing away to the moon. Don't concentrate on the finger, or you will miss all the heavenly glory."

Bruce Lee

Great quote don't u think? LOL!

By Itempest (Itempest) on Saturday, May 01, 2004 - 12:02 pm: Edit

Depends...

By Rayray222 (Rayray222) on Sunday, May 02, 2004 - 03:38 am: Edit

on?

By Foreignboy (Foreignboy) on Sunday, May 02, 2004 - 03:56 am: Edit

UC students seem to have a compulsion for putting down ivy league schools. If it's not 'UCX is better than Brown', it's 'UCX is better than UPenn' or 'UCX is better than Cornell.' Come on guys, grow up. I don't like buying into the inferiority complex theory but all these posts are making it seem more and more true.

By Rayray222 (Rayray222) on Sunday, May 02, 2004 - 04:04 am: Edit

Umm... inferiority complex theory? Explain.

I did not go to UCLA. I was merely stating a fact. Are u saying that there is a conspiracy among UC students? or ivy league students? Or small liberal art schools?

What exactly are you implying here?

By Techieguy (Techieguy) on Sunday, May 02, 2004 - 05:00 pm: Edit

Foreignboy, I don't think its a matter of UC's vs Ivies, I think it is more of a matter of West Coast education versus East Coast education.

I'm happy that both are defending the institutions they go to. Why the hell wouldn't you?

By Rayray222 (Rayray222) on Sunday, May 02, 2004 - 05:18 pm: Edit

No it has nothing to do with West Coast education vs. East coast.

Because my opinion is based on what people in Europe and Asia think. They would have no bias to east or west. It is an objective viewpoint.

By Boxosox (Boxosox) on Sunday, May 02, 2004 - 05:20 pm: Edit

Thus all those schools are really great and it comes down to personal preference, for some, brown lacks what UCLA has to offer, for others, UPenn is waay better than UC Berkeley.

By Rayray222 (Rayray222) on Sunday, May 02, 2004 - 05:29 pm: Edit

Well Wharton is a better school than Haas, but the rest of UPenn SUCKS HARD compared to Berkeley Engineering, Liberal Arts, Humanities, Computer Science, Natural sciences...etc.

As well as location, atmosphere...

But Wharton is good for sure...

So in my biased opinion as a Californian, Berkeley beats UPEnn by a long shot. Overall.

For the European and Asian international student... Berkeley overall prestige wins hands down as well.

By Pho_Sho (Pho_Sho) on Sunday, May 02, 2004 - 08:07 pm: Edit

berkeley's alumni giving rate is only 14 percent... maybe cal's grad don't make as much money as others? or is it that they just don't give a ••••???

haha, jk. in all seriousness, i deliberated a long time trying to decide between penn and cal, but ended up choosing Penn's BME over Cal's EECS.

Why? Location (frisco gets boring - im from norcal), ivy league (not that it means much), prospect of dualing with Wharton, more diversity, more successful grads, preprofessional education, smaller class sizes, better dorms, too many ppl from my school goin to cal (even stupid ones, sorry, not a bashing), finally BETTER PARTIES & HOTTER GIRLS

Why Cal? Most departments ranked in top 15 (take it as you may), $$$, better recognized in asia and europe, easy to find jobs in silicon valley (if engineering)

By Rayray222 (Rayray222) on Sunday, May 02, 2004 - 09:37 pm: Edit

Well, i saw the girls from UPenn, and the girls at Cal are hotter.

but if you're from Norcal i understand your sentiments somewhat. you must have gone to Lowell. I know people that graduated HS with me in 1995 in so cal that chose Berkeley over UPenn, or simply only decided that Harvard and Yale were the only schools worth going out of state for. If they had engineering ambitions, they would have much rather gone to stanford, cal, cal tech for engineering than MIT.

You made your decisions in a time period that had different decision criteria than mine. The only thing I disagree with is if you say that your decision criteria is forever etched in stone. because one day someone will be telling you that you were stupid for not attending Brown 20 years later... does this make sense?

Anyways... have fun at UPenn...

By Perfectsat (Perfectsat) on Tuesday, May 04, 2004 - 02:51 am: Edit

Yea, brown barely made top 50 on those rankings that are floating around...

By Theman002 (Theman002) on Tuesday, May 04, 2004 - 03:13 am: Edit

cal girls and parties > upenn girls and parties

By Eliteconnect (Eliteconnect) on Sunday, September 05, 2004 - 06:01 pm: Edit

I'm a Berkeley student and even I will concede that Upenn is better than Berkeley for UNDERGRADUATE education. What people don't realize about these departmental rankings (like the National Research Council rankings) is that they're designed to rank GRADUATE departments. Yes, Berkeley does have an absolutely outstanding faculty. Yes, many of Berkeley's departments are ranked in the top 5 or top 10. But, these rankings do NOT heavily influence UNDERGRADUATE education because these rankings are based on RESEARCH. Does anyone know the criteria used by NRC when they made their departmental rankings? They used the # of times faculty members from the school being evaluated were cited in academic journals/scholarly publications.

Obviously, they had to adjust for different sizes among faculties between schools. They also used the amount of research dollars/faculty member as a criterion because schools can't produce top research unless they're getting boatloads of funding from corporate sponsors, the military, national science foundation, etc. How does this impact UNDERGRADUATE education? The answer: VERY little. The graduate rankings only influence undergraduate education in so far as they allude to the quality of the faculty in terms of research. If you want really good TEACHERS (not researchers), go to a liberal arts school like Oberlin, Swarthmore, Amherst, Williams, Bowdoin, etc. If you want really good RESEARCHERS, go to Berkeley, Harvard, Stanford, MIT, etc.

Given the various research institutes he's affiliated with and his research responsbilities to the political science department here, I seriously doubt that Steven Weber really cares about whether you (the undergraduate student) truly understand the concept of neorealism in international relations. In fact, Dr. Weber RARELY teaches undergraduate political science courses and when he does pop in, he'll teach PS120A (International Relations). That class is usually taught by Amy Gurowitz, a lecturer who received her PhD from Cornell in 1999. I'm sure that Dr. Weber is more concerned about the graduate students that are doing research under him and about publishing his next article in Foreign Affairs or the Foreign Policy Review.

Honestly, I think Brown, Penn, and **insert any Ivy League school here except for Cornell** can provide you with a better UNDERGRADUATE education than Berkeley. For graduate school, Berkeley can easily trounce Brown, Cornell, and Penn (excluding business). The only schools that can really put up a fight in terms of graduate school strength are Stanford, Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, and MIT.

What people seem to forget is that class sizes are CRITICAL to undergraduate education and personal attention is just missing from an undergrad education at Berkeley, UMich, UT-Austin, UCLA, UIUC, etc. In addition, many of these large, public universities are undergoing budget cuts and the budget cuts at Berkeley have been devastating. To compensate, both in-state and out-of-state fees have been increased substantially and graduate student fees (including med and law student fees) have been increased by a significant percentage. The graduate fellowships that lure the top grad students to Berkeley (and away from Harvard, Stanford, MIT, etc) are at risk here because a top PhD student will not want to come to Berkeley if he only receives a partial fellowship when Harvard will be glad to give him a FULL fellowship through their PhD program.

To view the NRC rankings:
http://stat.tamu.edu/~jnewton/nrc_rankings/nrc41indiv.html