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Right now I feel like crying, mostly from frustration at the
fact that the admissions office at Cornell JUST told me i'm accepted
adn that I have 2 days to make a decision and that my brain
right now is complete mush.

I've already been to CALSO and I'll admit that
I had a good time. But something seemed out of place. The
main campus, not the surrounding area, didn't just well
capture me I guess. It isn't anything wonderful to look at. I also didn't feel like I fit there although I got along with pretty much everyone I met. I can honestly say though that I love
having a city thirty minutes away and a very, very active
campus.

But still something was missing. I didn't seem as excited as
everyone else. I really, honestly wasn't. When the band starting playing at the closing ceremony in the lecture hall and everyone was jumping and cheering, I just stood there. I also feel like too much of an outsider, coming from Florida when EVERYONE i met was from California.

So, then, today June 30, I got a call from Cornell and Guess
what? I'm off the waiting list. Accepted. And I'm happy a)
because its a great school b) because, er, not to brag but it
is quite an ego boost.

Yet so many people have complaints about Cornell and how
the winters are terribly depressing, the snow becomes
unbearable, and the area is dull adn that the main thing
everybody does is get trashed on weekends.

So here I am June 30 with no idea what to do. I think i'm
flying there tomorrow last minute because its the only thing i
can think of.

But, I don't know, maybe the reason why I don't feel so connected with Berkeley is because school hasn't started yet and i'm not really immersed in the campus as of now.

I'm really really lost. Please help. PLEASE.

By Kryptic (Kryptic) on Tuesday, June 29, 2004 - 05:28 pm: Edit

I'm sure you'll hear from a lot of the anti-Berkeley crowd here that you'd be a fool to not choose Cornell, but in the opinions you hear - realize that there is a huge bias on the part of every participant and that there are a ton of non-Berkeley people that visit this board that, quite frankly, are arrogant elitists.

With that said, my girlfriend (whom I've dated for years and live with) graduated from Cornell and I've heard all about it. The education quality between both schools is not hugely different, with Berkeley being far better for many majors, and Cornell getting the nod for some others. On average, Berkeley has a more rigorous and academically competitive undergraduate program. (I'm sure the peanut gallery will chime in otherwise, but they're not talking from experience, by and large.) Compared with other Ivy schools, Cornell (outside of engineering) does not as high a prestige value... and the reasons are very similar to what you hear people critique Berkeley for: Cornell is a fairly big school. My GF was stuck in numerous 500+ person classes, just like you'll find at Berkeley.

The weather *is* as bad as everyone lets on, and your entire four years there will center around living on the campus. They have a little shuttle that runs that allows you to get trashed in the "town" and get back to your dorm, but the town is mostly an extension of the campus. You are completely isolated, and she only was able to make it to NYC a couple times her entire time there. A lot of her friends did nothing but get stoned and trashed while there (but you'll find that at most colleges, it's just that at UCB there's more activities to chose from). The summers and springs are nice, though.

And if you didn't find the Berkeley campus absolutely breathtakingly beautiful (it's easily one of the most gorgeous I've ever seen, with the redwood groves, roman architecture, etc.) than you're likely to be unimpressed anywhere else. Either that, or you didn't really get to see the Berkeley campus. I certainly wouldn't choose a school based on the campus "pretty" factor, though.

Why would you choose Berkeley over Cornell? For some of the reasons you listed. It's very close and convenient to one of the coolest cities on the planet, it's near wine country, the sierra nevadas, lake tahoe, yosemite, the monterrey coast, and countless other amazing places. The academics are some of the toughest in the world, and you'll have a wider range of courses and majors to choose from than what any Ivy league school could possibly hope to offer. You'll be exposed to one of the most diverse student bodies around, both ethnically and politically. You'll be surrounded by the art and culture the likes of which you won't find outside of NYC. The weather is, by and large, fantastic. Californians are pretty laid back (although you won't find that the scholastics are laid back) and not at all cliquish. There's just a real positive vibe all around, none of the typical snottiness you associate with an Ivy league school (although Cornell, not being a part of the HYP "elite" is a bit better in this regards).

Why would you choose Cornell over Berkeley? The classes, on average, are probably a bit smaller for most majors. Although Cornell does some of the least amount of grade curving, like all Ivies, they do tend to have more grade inflation than Berkeley. You'll likely find people from a wider range of states, so you might not feel quite so much like an "outsider". If you like the East coast or New England, there's certainly a bias for EC and NE schools there. If you're White, and that's a factor for you, Cornell is a bit less diverse and you'll likely have more people like yourself there. Perhaps most importantly of all, maybe it'll just feel more "right" to you. It's certainly a great school, from everything I've heard from my GF and other friends I know that have gone there.

I wouldn't worry too much about getting a weird vibe from Berkeley during your CalSO, though. You're facing a lot of changes in your life, and certainly there will be a culture shock coming from Florida to California. Don't confuse being a bit uncomfortable on the first day out here with how you'll feel after a few weeks of making friends, going to classes, and getting involved in social activities. If you're not a "rah rah rah" cheerleader type, like I'm not, I'm sure you'll be able to find a more somber group of people to hang out with, as well.

Anyways, these are my opinions. I'm certainly biased, so take them with a grain of salt - like you should take everything you hear here with a grain of salt. Ultimately, you're in the lucky position of being faced with two really great decisions. You can't go wrong, no matter what you choose. You have a great four years ahead of you. Best of luck with your decision!

By Chunsah (Chunsah) on Tuesday, June 29, 2004 - 05:47 pm: Edit

hello
i may be of some assistant to u
i was in the same situation about 2 weeks ago
im a transfer student that got into berkeley and attended their calso not knowing if i was going to decide between berkeley and cornell

i ultimately picked cornell, which was a hard decision because i live about 45 min away from berkeley. like you, i was pretty set on going to berkeley until cornell came in last minute with an offer. because of that, i was very much looking forward to cal and what it has to offer. from their rising sports programs to their academic prestige and everything in between. another thing was that i have many friends attending the school so getting situated wouldve been no problem. the price of berkeley was half of that of cornell so that was tempting, but when it came down to it, i decided to travel 3000 miles away to ithaca.

i consider cornell and berkeley to be schools pretty much on equal footing. both are big schools, but even that, berkeley graduates twice as many students as cornell which does make a difference if you are trying to get a job or wanting to attend grad school. the student profile at berkeley is one thats very interesting. on one side of the spectrum, u have kids that could rival hypsmc in competence and intelligence..on the other hand, u have kids that could be going to may be a 2nd tier or late 1st tier institution (not that there is anything wrong with this)both are research institutions as well, with great grad programs. berkeley has a greater international rep because of these programs in the past century, but they are still tops in many of the fields today. cornell's rep is usually within the US in fields of politics, humanities, business, law rather than science even though there are many scientists that come out of the school. berkeley's nobel laureates did not attend berkeley for undergrad, they went somewhere else so dont get fooled with that. it is still pretty cool nonetheless to goto a school with some faculty winning such a great award.

if u want to do engineering/chemistry, i would say maybe u should go to cali because of its great programs not saying cornell is any worse because it too has a great program. berkeley's name and reputation comes from its eecs/chemistry departments because they are so god damn strong.

if u want to do business/law, id say u should go to cornell because of its better placement into jobs and law schools on the east coast. you have to face it that west coast business is nothing compared to wall street and big law on the east coast. haas is a great undergrad place to study at, but its job placement is weaker than its counterparts. especially with the tech bubble bursting, the venture capitalists in the region have really stopped investing as much. cornell law placement is great with many students going to harvard, the new york schools, etc.

if you are premed, id say cornell again because of its placement numbers. a lot of people go into berkeley wanting to be doctors, but many of my friends have shattered their dreams with bad grades in math 1b, chem 3a, 3b, and other weeder classes of that sort. cornell's premed classes are hard as hell too, but maybe the competition wont be as cut throat.

if you are a liberal arts major in humanities, social science, id say it could be a toss up, but id go with the ivy league institution in that.

if you are a hard science person, i might say berkeley because of its proximity to the livermore lab, but even with that, it will be hard for undergrads to do their own research. cornell is more open to that because it has the funds to support it.

either way, i say you cant go wrong. i think both schools are great! however, i hate it when people compare them to hypsmc, because even as someone being accepted to both these schools, i feel academics, student body, prestige, opportunities are greater at those schools for the most part.

By Itempest (Itempest) on Tuesday, June 29, 2004 - 05:54 pm: Edit

Seeing, especially, that you're an out of state applicant, I would think your acceptance to Berkeley more of an ego boost than your acceptance to Cornell. It really is something to be proud of.

Kryptic gives very good advice. That said, don't out Berkeley because you didn't "feel it." Just because you don't jump up screaming with joy when the band walks in during CALSO doesn't mean you're not Cal Bear material. There's more to being a Berkeley student than standing up and screaming when the band walks in; and part of that is just being there. Or something like that. Rest assured, I didn't yell, either. Instead, I stood up, slight smile on my face, happy to be there. You're probably not the yelling, super-enthusiastic kind anyway, am I right? Nothing to be ashamed about, neither am I. screaming when the band walks in is not what Berkeley is about.

And although I haven't attended college yet, I have moved around all my life, lived in 5 different cities, and trust me, you'll fit in. There's nothing to fit into at Berkeley.

And like Kryptic said, ultimately, you can't go wrong no matter what you choose. Both Cornell and Berkeley are wonderful schools; I myself chose the latter over the former (just in case you were curious).

Good luck.

By Fenix_Three (Fenix_Three) on Tuesday, June 29, 2004 - 09:09 pm: Edit

Yay, good job! I'd say go to Cal (cause I'm going there too). The weather's warmer. That being said, Cornell is supposed to be highly depressing in the winter, but it does have the best food in any US college. Up to you, good choice either way. (Oh yeah, I wasn't that excited at the end of CalSO either.)

By Itempest (Itempest) on Tuesday, June 29, 2004 - 10:03 pm: Edit

Yeah, I hear Cornell has food which is in stark contrast to Berkeley's food...oh well.

The restaurants around Berkeley are magnificent, though.

Can't have everything, I guess.

By Twojaw (Twojaw) on Tuesday, June 29, 2004 - 10:10 pm: Edit

Let see...heads berkeley tails cornell...no...no...that should be heads cornell tails berkeley...wait maybe two out of three should be...wait which one do I pick for heads and which one for tails?

Seriously, what did you think of Cornell when you visited it? Did Cornell send tingles down the spine? If you didn't visit it...are you seriously going to just pick on perceived prestige reputation? I think it would be a very tough call if you haven't set foot in Ithaca or tried to get to Ithaca(I understand it a bit of doing to get there). You have a tough decision in 24 hours.

By Xtheonex (Xtheonex) on Tuesday, June 29, 2004 - 10:31 pm: Edit

I'd say go to Cornell. I thought I was going to Cal as well until I got off the waitlist from Northwestern. It didn't take me more than a day to decide where to go (of course NU) even though the tuition at NU was more than twice of that of Cal since I was in-state. If you do some research, you will find out that Berkeley is a pretty damn competitive place... If you don't mind going to grad school or any kind of professional school, I guess Cal's fine. According to the Wall Street Journal, Cal only has 3% going to top professional schools. Reason?- very simple. Berkeley is part of the UC system, which means that they give A's to only 10% its students in EACH class. That wouldn't be as easy as you would think. Look at the US news college rankings and you will find that 99% of Berkeley's incoming students were in top 10% at their high schools. Many of them are valedictorians. Many of them just didn't have money, extra curricular activities, or high SAT's to get into places like HYPSMC. Look at Berkeley's graduation rate... Less than half graduate in 4 years. You can't even take the classes you want to or need to for graduation. Guess how hard it would be to get all A's there??? GPA is what you need for the grad school admission. Plus, you gotta compete hell lot of ppl for limited resources there, even worse nowadays with CA budget deficit. And... if you are a girl, NEVER go to Berkeley. they have shared bath room... do you really think that's safe? I've also heard of serial rapists at Cal. There's a guaranteed LIFE at elite privates, but Berkeley- no guarantee. If you succeed at Berkeley, that's great but the chance is low. One more thing- when employees see graduates of each college, they give credit to Cornell, an ivy, student no matter what. However, if you graduate from Berkeley, they see your GPA and then make an evaluation b/c, as Kryptic pointed out, not all (many) students at Cal are not as qualified as Cornell students. Food is way better at Cornell. Cornell's campus is beautiful. Cornell boasts its wide range of courses to choose, if you are interested. I should say Cornell is better at everything. Academic prestige of Berkeley means nothing... it's just their doctoral programs. professors? they spend most of their time writing research papers. you will most likely study your courses most of the time with your T/A's anyways. Many get into Berkeley, but a few to Ivy's. That's how people, even in CA, measure prestige. In conclusion- Berkeley is HELL.

p.s.: it's the only place in America where you can buy drugs on the street.

By Princess_Banana (Princess_Banana) on Wednesday, June 30, 2004 - 01:23 am: Edit

"p.s.: it's the only place in America where you can buy drugs on the street."

...soooo where do drugs get bought elsewhere?? in a store? or is Berkeley the only place where drugs are accessible?

don't you watch COPS??

By Calkidd (Calkidd) on Wednesday, June 30, 2004 - 01:39 am: Edit

Someone misinformed you if you are choosing to go to Cornell because you think it will be easy for you to get A's there.

You'd have just as easy a time buying drugs at any urban school. And the coed bathrooms are plenty safe and private (each shower has two doors, an outer door leading to a stall where you can change, then a curtain leading to the shower...not summer camp style)...about the most risque thing you'd witness there is one of your floormates spending the evening kneeling over a toilet after drinking too much at a frat party.

Hopefully you've visited Cornell at least once and can make a judgement call based on your visit there vs. your visit to Berkeley, and also on your prospective major (if you are pre-law, Cornell would probably be better; pre-med I'm not sure, Cornell has an edge but you won't get the grade inflation you get at most other Ivies). Good luck with your decision.

By Madelinemay11 (Madelinemay11) on Wednesday, June 30, 2004 - 03:16 am: Edit

You shouldn't automatically pick Cornell just because of the perceived prestige and Ivy title. Berkeley is a great public school, and has a lot to offer.

The best thing to do would be to fly out to Cornell to see it (it costed me $250 from Cali), and then compare it with Berkeley. The town of Ithaca is about the same as Berkeley, although the drive into Ithaca is kinda isolated. Cornell has a better campus, I'd say. Some people want an Ivy league education, and will do anything to get it...others don't mind going to a public school.

Cornell is the best Ivy for science/engineering, and it also tops in arts majors....Berkeley is also good all around....so you've got two great choices.

By Itempest (Itempest) on Wednesday, June 30, 2004 - 05:07 am: Edit

You put down a whole list of things bad about Berkeley; some of which, I believe are disputable, others not, I guess. But this one:

"Many get into Berkeley, but a few to Ivy's. That's how people, even in CA, measure prestige."

We're comparing an acceptance rate of 25% at Cal to 30% at Cornell. Tell me which is more competitive? Even judging by this most superficial indicator, I can't see how your Ivy (Cornell in this case) vs. Berkeley argument holds up.

Oh well.

By Jon (Jon) on Wednesday, June 30, 2004 - 06:05 am: Edit

"if you are a girl, NEVER go to Berkeley. they have shared bath room... do you really think that's safe? I've also heard of serial rapists at Cal."

DUDE, WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?

By Dmcwhiz123 (Dmcwhiz123) on Wednesday, June 30, 2004 - 12:10 pm: Edit

you sound like you were want to go to cornell all along and the only reason why you dont know what to do is because in your heart you've always wanted to go to cornell but you've already invested quite a bit of money into cal. if money isnt a factor, then just go to cornell, if money IS a factor, go to cornell anyways because apparently cornell screwed you over and you just dont wanna admit it

By Chunsah (Chunsah) on Wednesday, June 30, 2004 - 01:07 pm: Edit

berkeley's acceptance rate is actually higher
since they accept a couple hundred in the spring as well. it is easier to apply to berkeley since all you have to do is a check so i think all in all, the app process is very much the same

By Itempest (Itempest) on Wednesday, June 30, 2004 - 01:25 pm: Edit

Well, you still have to fill out a whole application. Just because the same application serves for a bunch of other schools doesn't necessarily make Berkeley only 1/8th or 1/9th of an application. If you wanted to go to Berkeley, you'd still have to finish the whole application process.

By Twojaw (Twojaw) on Wednesday, June 30, 2004 - 01:40 pm: Edit

At least I haven't heard of any female joggers being attacked at Cal like they were a few years back at Northwestern. Yale has co-ed bathrooms too so I guess Yale isn't too safe either. Guess we all better watch out for those serial rapists living on your dorm floor that are lurking in those co-ed bathroom stalls. Geez...I thought this was the 21st Century not the 19th.

By Twojaw (Twojaw) on Thursday, July 01, 2004 - 01:02 pm: Edit

Okay guy, so where did you pick?

By Theworldismine (Theworldismine) on Thursday, July 01, 2004 - 01:17 pm: Edit

Erm ... first i'm a girl.

Second, I'm stalling. I have a couple more hours and I can either say straight out yes or no OR I could do what my mom says and play the game. I could say yes, wait the ten days they'd give me for the deposit, see the school during that time, and then really decide yes or no. But i'm afraid that Cornell can find out where I'm really going and tell UCB that I'm not attending. Then I'd be screwed.

AND not to forget: It's completely immoral.

By Calkidd (Calkidd) on Thursday, July 01, 2004 - 02:17 pm: Edit

Theworldismine - I think you should tell them you want to come visit (obviously you will be paying for the trip) to make sure. Also, even if Cornell (a relatively large school) DID call Berkeley and tell them you had double deposited, someone in the Registrar's office at Berkeley would probably lose the message and the earliest anyone would know (at Cal) would be September. I know it's immoral - but it's also a little unfair for Cornell to expect you to make an important decision like this without first seeing the place.

By Twojaw (Twojaw) on Thursday, July 01, 2004 - 02:20 pm: Edit

Okay gal. But it is not any more immoral that how they presented it to you. (What, they gave you 48 hrs to "take it or leave it"?) They already know you have to be committed to somewhere and it doesn't bother them in the least that you would leave that school (for UCB that probably doesn't matter that much, but what if you were going to some small LAC that was counting on your tuition money?) I think you ought to be able to visit the school before you decide. What if you give them a conditional yes on the basis that you need to visit the school first? Schools do take all of this into account (why do you suppose Stanford has kept a waiting list open through July? I think the phenomenon is called summer melt). Or just play the game as your Mom advises...hey don't you think Cornell is "gaming" you too?

By Voodoochile (Voodoochile) on Thursday, July 01, 2004 - 02:26 pm: Edit

Think like this - anything that is not illegal is not immoral.

Hey, this college stuff is important. You're probably not going to *regret* picking either school, but you really should get as much info as possible before making a decision.

By Twojaw (Twojaw) on Thursday, July 01, 2004 - 02:37 pm: Edit

Oh hey...remember it is really not official that you said "yes" until you sends in your money (i.e. until they receive your deposit). So the street being both ways...if they don't get your deposit money they are not going to admit you even if they did say yes earlier. So hey...if you are still interested in those weasels at Cornell , you should play it like you Mom says.

By Tri_Fm (Tri_Fm) on Thursday, July 01, 2004 - 02:43 pm: Edit

Just remember this. Berkeley's undergrad student body is quite weak, comparatively. I believe Cornell's undergrad body is much stronger because it is more diverse geographically and ethnically (Cal--everyone's from California--sux), it's Ivy League, and Berkeley is on its way down due to budget cuts etc.

Thus, go with Cornell, chuck Berkeley.

By Auginator (Auginator) on Thursday, July 01, 2004 - 03:24 pm: Edit

I don't think the budget cuts are not going to affect Berkeley. They raised the tuition $1000 for each undergrad student and about $3000 for each grad student this year to compensate for the budget cuts. Therefor, it seems that Berkeley's academics will not be hurt. Even with the recent tuition raise, Cal is still a fraction of what Cornell costs. Don't worry that if you go to Berkeley you will notice the Budget cuts affecting you, I personally don't believe they will. Anyways, it's your choice, either way you're forced to go to a premier institution in the world, good luck!

By Twojaw (Twojaw) on Friday, July 02, 2004 - 01:19 pm: Edit

So? And?

By Ahorseisahorse (Ahorseisahorse) on Saturday, July 03, 2004 - 12:59 am: Edit

:D
I think you could have been in my Bear Territories group :D

"So? And?"

Well, Congratulations on both your acceptances :D

By Auginator (Auginator) on Saturday, July 03, 2004 - 03:04 am: Edit

oh wow, I can't believe how badly I mistyped my sentence. Ok here is how my post is supposed to read...

I don't think the budget cuts are going to affect Berkeley. They raised the tuition $1000 for each undergrad student and about $3000 for each grad student this year to compensate for the budget cuts. Therefor, it seems that Berkeley's academics will not be hurt. Even with the recent tuition raise, Cal is still a fraction of what Cornell costs. Don't worry that if you go to Berkeley you will NOT notice the Budget cuts affecting you, I personally don't believe they will. Anyways, it's your choice, either way you're forced to go to a premier institution in the world, good luck!

There, that's better.

By Twojaw (Twojaw) on Saturday, July 03, 2004 - 06:24 pm: Edit

Well?

(For those needing translation the question being posed is well... what did the original poster finally do after exhibiting much angst. The previous post of So? is translated into so what did you finally decide. And? is translated to and what did you finally do.)

By Theworldismine (Theworldismine) on Sunday, July 04, 2004 - 01:54 pm: Edit

Well ... Let's just say I got more time to decide and leave it there.

But right now i'm leaning toward Berkeley. Why? Because I can see myself having more fun there. Not to mention how Cornell would probably be a repeat of a not-so-great high school experience. I'm a shy person ... but at Berkeley I didn't feel that way. Both have great academic programs, especially for research. So I can't really base it on that.

Happy now Twojaw?

By Twojaw (Twojaw) on Sunday, July 04, 2004 - 06:44 pm: Edit

Theworldismine I am happy for you. The world is truly yours whereever you choose. I was just curious (hey you did start this thread right?) Remember that adage...the greatest school in the world is that one come this fall whose logo you wear, whose teams you cheer, whose halls you stride. Have a great freshman year where ever that will ultimately be. Don't be afraid to explore and meet new people and think new things. But always try to be true to yourself. And yes, I am happy now.

By Theworldismine (Theworldismine) on Thursday, August 05, 2004 - 04:47 pm: Edit

Oh Yes ... I thought I should mention to all of you that ...

I CHOSE BERKELEY!

Why some of you Ivy Hyped people may ask?

Answer: I went to Cornell and thought it was pretty. However, the expressions on the people there were most definitley not. Everybody looked like they wanted to kill each other. Now, Berkeley is different (yes I saw them both in the summer). People at Berkeley looked *gasp* Happy! Hmmm ... Besides ... Cornell for me would be an unhappy repeat of an unhappy high school experience.

By Stanfordman99 (Stanfordman99) on Thursday, August 05, 2004 - 04:57 pm: Edit

Good for you. Cornell has a really high suicide rate and California >>> New York.

I think you made the right choice. Berkeley's prestige on the west coast is better than Cornell's. You'll have a blast at Berkeley......that is until we crush you at the Big Game!

By Sh1rley (Sh1rley) on Thursday, August 05, 2004 - 05:49 pm: Edit

Congratulations Theworldismine, I think you will love Berkeley, there is an aliveness and vibrantcy that I did not feel at many other schools we visited. And I also noticed that the students at Berkeley seemed truly happy and involved, they LOVE being there. My son had some difficult choices to make, but once he visited the campus, he was hooked. Good choice, and welcome to California!!
P.S. to Stanfordman99, you seem like a very kind person, Stanford is lucky to have you.

By Esun (Esun) on Thursday, August 05, 2004 - 07:40 pm: Edit

Good choice. I only know one person that graduated from Cornell and he is weird (really introverted, dependent on his parents at the age of 24, as in he wouldn't get a cat because his parents didn't want him to, even though he lives alone).

By Stanfordman99 (Stanfordman99) on Thursday, August 05, 2004 - 07:59 pm: Edit

Aww thanks Sh1rley.

By Irock1ce (Irock1ce) on Friday, August 06, 2004 - 03:11 am: Edit

"Just remember this. Berkeley's undergrad student body is quite weak, comparatively. I believe Cornell's undergrad body is much stronger because it is more diverse geographically and ethnically (Cal--everyone's from California--sux), it's Ivy League, and Berkeley is on its way down due to budget cuts etc.

Thus, go with Cornell, chuck Berkeley"

Jesus... tri_fm has some problems with Berkeley eh? just dont forget this... berkeley would crush cornell in terms of graduate schools... berkeley is ranked top 3 easily, cornell not in sight. now if that waterfalls down a little into undergrad...... and in terms of prestige.. berkeley would crush cornell overall. In the world, berkeley is a top 5 U.S. university. Cornell is probably top 50.

get over urself tri_fm.

and congratulations theworldismine, welcome to Berkeley. = ]

p.s.: I am not a berkeley troll either. i go to the High School... and im taking math 53m/54m during the school year at cal... but berkeley is a truly amazing place. If i didnt live 5 minutes away from it, berk would be my 1st choice easily. and oh yeah, telegraph ave. rocks.

By Sakky (Sakky) on Friday, August 06, 2004 - 10:27 pm: Edit

I've never understood why people would make a decision about attending a school's undergraduate program based on the rankings of that school's graduate programs. Uh, come again? When you're talking about undergraduate, worry about undergraduate. Only when you're looking at graduate schools should you worry about graduate schools. Whatever Berkeley's PhD program rankings may be isn't exactly going to help you much as an undergraduate, so honestly, what does it matter? Who cares?

Case in point. Berkeley probably dominates Yale and Princeton in terms of graduate school. But in terms of the undergraduate programs, what does that matter? I think we would all agree that not too many high school seniors are going to turn down admission to Yale or Princeton for Berkeley unless money is an issue.

This is not an argument that the OP should pick Cornell over Berkeley. All I'm saying is that how strong the graduate programs might be is irrelevant if you're not applying to the graduate programs.

By Eliteconnect (Eliteconnect) on Friday, August 27, 2004 - 11:28 am: Edit

"I'd say go to Cornell. I thought I was going to Cal as well until I got off the waitlist from Northwestern. It didn't take me more than a day to decide where to go (of course NU) even though the tuition at NU was more than twice of that of Cal since I was in-state. If you do some research, you will find out that Berkeley is a pretty damn competitive place... If you don't mind going to grad school or any kind of professional school, I guess Cal's fine. According to the Wall Street Journal, Cal only has 3% going to top professional schools. Reason?- very simple. Berkeley is part of the UC system, which means that they give A's to only 10% its students in EACH class. That wouldn't be as easy as you would think. Look at the US news college rankings and you will find that 99% of Berkeley's incoming students were in top 10% at their high schools. Many of them are valedictorians. Many of them just didn't have money, extra curricular activities, or high SAT's to get into places like HYPSMC. Look at Berkeley's graduation rate... Less than half graduate in 4 years. You can't even take the classes you want to or need to for graduation. Guess how hard it would be to get all A's there??? GPA is what you need for the grad school admission. Plus, you gotta compete hell lot of ppl for limited resources there, even worse nowadays with CA budget deficit. And... if you are a girl, NEVER go to Berkeley. they have shared bath room... do you really think that's safe? I've also heard of serial rapists at Cal. There's a guaranteed LIFE at elite privates, but Berkeley- no guarantee. If you succeed at Berkeley, that's great but the chance is low. One more thing- when employees see graduates of each college, they give credit to Cornell, an ivy, student no matter what. However, if you graduate from Berkeley, they see your GPA and then make an evaluation b/c, as Kryptic pointed out, not all (many) students at Cal are not as qualified as Cornell students. Food is way better at Cornell. Cornell's campus is beautiful. Cornell boasts its wide range of courses to choose, if you are interested. I should say Cornell is better at everything. Academic prestige of Berkeley means nothing... it's just their doctoral programs. professors? they spend most of their time writing research papers. you will most likely study your courses most of the time with your T/A's anyways. Many get into Berkeley, but a few to Ivy's. That's how people, even in CA, measure prestige. In conclusion- Berkeley is HELL.

p.s.: it's the only place in America where you can buy drugs on the street."

This is by far..the MOST bizarre post I've ever read in these forums. Not only is the poster clearly bias, the comments they made are just downright false and absolutely ridiculous. First of all, PLENTY of top-tier institutions have coed bathrooms..and no, that does not mean that the coed dorms turn into rape central. Secondly, Berkeley's campus is VERY safe...the campus and the residential areas have extremely low crime rates. Oakland, on the other hand, is a different story...but Berkeley students do not live in Oakland...we mostly live in apartments, co-ops, and greek houses that surround the campus. As for the comment about purchasing drugs on the street...lol...absolutely ridiculous. I'm not even going to address that comment.

By Twojaw (Twojaw) on Friday, September 03, 2004 - 12:32 am: Edit

Well, the poster did have an agenda. Apparently University of Chicago was the the poster's first choice. Instead he/she got into Cal Berkeley as a Spring admit (Fall Extension) the poster did state that he/she was an in-state Californian. Then got into Northwestern off the waitlist. This might be the reason for the attitude. It was a very bizarre post...but it also points to the very bizarre and randomness of college admissions. No rhyme , no reason, no logic, just oddness and profanity.

By Fishbutt (Fishbutt) on Friday, September 03, 2004 - 01:55 am: Edit

even though it seems you've already made your decision, i thought i'd give a bit of my personal information...western NY weather sucks big time. it's very depressing. this summer, we've probably had only a handful of days in the 80s(not to mention that EVERY DAMN DAY is OVERCAST!) and the winter, lol, yeah it pretty much sucks. every day is just a boring gray day outside. plus, at cornell, you're in the middle of nowhere. granted the scenery is nice, but the only other place near you is ithaca college. i mean, they have their own currency for god's sake!(seriously, it's called "ithaca dollars") no joke. talk about bein in the sticks...

thus, given the whole weather situation here, i'm getting the hell out and going to sunny So Cal, at caltech

By Sakky (Sakky) on Saturday, September 04, 2004 - 02:39 pm: Edit

I have to agree with eliteconnect here. Berkeley does have its problems as I've stated numerous times, but even I have to say that xtheonex went overboard. I'm not afraid of calling a dog a dog, and xtheonex's post is a dog. To wit:

*Grading.

First of all, it is not just the top 10% of each course that will get an A. That's true for the weeders. But if you get to the upper division (which is not guaranteed, as weeders can and do flunk people out of Berkeley), grading does become substantially easier. I would say that once you hit the upper division, then about 1/3 of the grades are now A's.

* The WSJ "Feeder school" Rankings

Here, I believe that Berkeley suffers from anti-West Coast bias. The fact is, if you actually look carefully at how the WSJ calculates Feeder School Rankings to elite professional schools, those elite professional schools that are counted tend to be located in the East Coast, yet the fact is, Berkeley graduates tend to disproportionately attend schools on the West Coast. You can examine the methodology yourself.

http://www.wsjclassroomedition.com/college/feederschools.htm#rankings

Note that, doesn't mean that if the ranking system were improved that Berkeley would all of a sudden vault into the top 5 Feeder Schools. I don't believe that. But I do believe that Berkeley would become roughly competitive with Cornell as a feeder school.

*Academic rigor

Berkeley is indeed a tremendously rigorous place to study. But I don't know if that, by itself, means that you should choose Berkeley over Cornell. Cornell ain't exactly a walk in the park either.

Besides, MIT is even more rigorous than Berkeley or Cornell, yet I think it's safe to say that lots of Berkeley and Cornell students would rather be at MIT instead. Hence, rigor by itself is not a reason to stay away from a particular school.


The point is this. Berkeley and Cornell are somewhat equivalent institutions. To me, it's not a clearcut choice as to which one really is better. It's not like choosing between Berkeley and, say, Harvard or MIT, where, unless you can't afford it, the choice is pretty clear. Both Berkeley and Cornell suffer from the same problems of harsh curves, large student bodies, problems with student selectivity, and cold bureaucracy, and the same advantages like strong physical facilities and eminent professors (if you can get access to them). But the choice is not clearcut. I would say that Cornell does hold en edge when it comes to better graduation rates and overall better student satisfaction and (perhaps) more success in feeding students to top professional schools. Berkeley does seem to offer a better location and possibly better physical facilities and a more prominent faculty. The choice is really up to you as to what you want.

By Twojaw (Twojaw) on Saturday, September 04, 2004 - 08:05 pm: Edit

The original poster choose Berkeley over Cornell. (see above)

By Mom102 (Mom102) on Sunday, September 05, 2004 - 02:03 pm: Edit

I can atleast give you another point of view from a biased east coaster who has a business.

When I have two people coming into our office for jobs (one from Cornell and one from Berkeley), we automatically ( perhaps wrongly) assume that the Cornell person is the more academically prepared. This would be true for any state university graduate. The reason is that you get both top students and some less than top who might have transferred to the state university from a community college. This is not generally true of Cornell.

We do ask for grades and if the Berkeley grad has much better grades and/or personality, we would then choose the Berkeley grad.

Honestly, in the East Coast, Berkeley undergraduate school doesn't carry the same fabulous marque that an ivy name would generate.

Perhaps in California, this would be different

By Eliteconnect (Eliteconnect) on Sunday, September 05, 2004 - 03:25 pm: Edit

"Perhaps in California, this would be different"

Yes, in California...it is different...VERY different. Silicon Valley firms are looking for graduates of 2 schools...Stanford and Berkeley. Stanford and Berkeley grads have founded many IT firms in silicon valley and I'm sure they would trust their own alma maters when hiring decisions are made. Granted, the Ivy League schools do have good names out here...but a Cornell grad would not automatically be put at an advantage as compared to a Berkeley grad when applying for jobs here. If the other applicant was from Harvard, Yale, or Princeton..it would probably be a different story. But for graduates of Cornell, Penn, and Brown...nope. Since Berkeley sends tons of its students to intern at Merrill Lynch in San Francisco, corporate law firms in the city and in San Jose, and many IT firms...I'm pretty sure they would just trust the school that feeds them interns and hire the Berkeley grad over the Cornell (or Penn or Brown) grad. I'm assuming all other factors are equal (grades, prior work experience, extracurricular activities, etc).

By Sakky (Sakky) on Monday, September 06, 2004 - 01:34 pm: Edit

I don't know that I can support the statement that Silicon Valley firms are looking for graduates of only Stanford and Berkeley. Just take the Silicon Valley venture capital industry, for instance, the "kingmakers" of the Silicon Valley tech industry. Stanford supposedly has a hammerlock on this industry but if you actually look at the backgrounds of the people in the industry, you will find roughly the same number of Harvard graduates as Stanford graduates, if not more, and Yale and Princeton are also extremely well represented. And if we're talking about Silicon Valley engineering or technical positions, you will find plenty of MIT alums.

The fact is, even in the SF Bay Area, Berkeley graduates are on, at best, an equal playing field to HYPM graduates. Even Stanford graduates will find that they have little advantage over HYPM grads as far as hiring goes. Let's face it. As far as non-tech employers are concerned, there is one top overall school - Harvard - with Yale and Princeton (along with Stanford) just a half-step behind. And as far as tech/engineering employers are concerned, the top school is MIT. It's hard to argue that a school like Berkeley has anything over HYPSM as far as employer desirability, no matter whether you're talking about California or not.

However, I agree with you that within the SF Bay Area and probably within all of California, Berkeley does outcompete the lesser Ivies.

However, I think a fairer way to assess things is to separate the various divisions within a school. Most employers aren't stupid and they know full well that schools consist of autonomous divisions that have little interaction with each other. Berkeley PhD's are fully competitive with PhD's from anywhere. The problem is with the Berkeley undergraduate program which, although still pretty good relatively speaking, has problems in competing with some of the other undergraduate programs. The Berkeley undergraduate program is still pretty good, but is clearly not as good as the Berkeley PhD programs.

As far as employers go, I think the problem with the Berkeley undergraduate program is simply that there are a lot of undergraduates. Look at it from the employer's standpoint. Let's say he's absolutely decided to hire a Berkeley undergrad for a job. You as a Berkeley undergrad don't garner much advantage, because that employer knows that he can easily hire somebody else, because there just are a lot of Berkeley undergrads available. If he doesn't like you, he can just find some other Berkeley undergraduate fairly easily. However, if we're talking about a Harvard or MIT undergrad, well, there just aren't that many of them to go around.

However, let me reiterate, that I do agree with what I said before that the choice between Berkeley and Cornell is not a clear one. I don't know that you can say clearly that one is better than the other.

By Kryptic (Kryptic) on Monday, September 06, 2004 - 01:56 pm: Edit

Once again, you're talking about something you have no exposure with, Sakky. You're certainly smart, and you're certainly well-read, but let's not try to fool anyone that these both add up to experience. Unfortunately, to those of us that DO have this experience, your deceit is obvious. As you like to say, I can't believe you fell into that trap.

I've been working in the Silicon Valley for about 12 years, starting out as a lowly engineer and working my way up to corporate management, product line management, marketing, and other roles. I've been responsible for hiring dozens of people across several companies, I've interfaced with the key decision makers in hundreds of companies, and I've worked with more than a few venture capital firms.

In this entire time, I think I've seen maybe a half dozen graduates from HYP -anywhere- in top management jobs. However, I've seen scores and scores of graduates from Berkeley and Stanford - the latter, admittedly, being far more represented than the former. Outside of engineering, I don't even see many MIT graduates. The Silicon Valley job environment is very provincial. At one company I worked out, they had a strict hiring policy for almost all of their jobs - Berkeley or Stanford only. (the company was Plumtree Software) They'd make an exception from time to time, but 80%+ of the company came from those two schools. They were the only places that the managers trusted.

At another job I had, the CEO was from Harvard. She was one of the only Ivy execs I've worked with. You know what our hiring policy was? Stanford and Berkeley. Unfortunately, even more so than many other executives, she was an east coast robber baron with absolutely no technical experience and just a trumped up MBA and a nice rolodex. That company was one of the first casualties of the dot bomb explosion. This, of course, illustrates one of the key reasons why HYP hiring is almost nonexistent out here - there's a wide spread belief, largely true but not exclusively true, that east coast people just don't understand the technology. It's not in their blood, like it is with people out here.

And, for the record, neither Berkeley nor Stanford grads (vis-a-vis silicon valley jobs)are so plentiful that employers feel they can just pass over a qualified candidate (assuming they have some post-college experience, too, but that assumption holds for any grad) They're the cream of the crop and, except for a period that started a few years ago and is now finally starting to abate, they have more job prospects than just about any set of schools on the planet out here. NO SCHOOL out competes S and B, and even now these people are still in demand.

I know it's tempting to do, but please try to avoid topics where you're clearly inexperienced and clearly out-of-the-know. You may have attended school out here, and you may even have majored in a technical field, but you've never been in management in Silicon Valley and I'd be really surprised if you've even worked down here in any significant way. I see you have some experience in IT, vis-a-vis your Cisco posts, but that doesn't garner you any insight into how corporations work and what hiring practices are.

By Deferreddude (Deferreddude) on Monday, September 06, 2004 - 01:56 pm: Edit

"Stanford supposedly has a hammerlock on this industry but if you actually look at the backgrounds of the people in the industry, you will find roughly the same number of Harvard graduates as Stanford graduates, if not more, and Yale and Princeton are also extremely well represented."

Umm....the last time I checked the founders and CEOs of Google, Yahoo, Sun Microsystems, Excite, etc are Stanford alums. Yale and Princeton are not represented here at all. Harvard is represented, but not to extent of Stanford.

By Kryptic (Kryptic) on Monday, September 06, 2004 - 02:01 pm: Edit

Also, before you jump in with "but I wasn't just talking about top jobs", with respect to my statement about how few HYP grads are in top management, my claim also holds true for line jobs. Certainly, I've seen more than a half dozen or so, but their presence is so dwarfed by Stanford and Berkeley grads that they become almost completely invisible and irrelevant as 'powerhouse' schools for Silicon Valley. I've seen more people from east coast LACs than the top Ivies. Ivy grads seem to largely stay in the east coast. I'd wager that if you were to find population dispersal statistics, the lion share of graduates would still be found on the eastern seaboard. Again, they are NOT highly present in Silicon Valley jobs.

By Sakky (Sakky) on Monday, September 06, 2004 - 03:22 pm: Edit

Kryptic, what is up with your constant personal attacks? Keep in mind, you don't know anything about me, so be careful what you say when you imply that I don't know anything about Silicon Valley, and in particular, that I don't have any experience in the Valley. If you're up to comparing biographies sometime, my email is always available.

If you don't believe that East Coast graduates hold a prominent place even in Silicon Valley, then let's go right to the source. Let's look at the backgrounds of the partners of the VC's.

The most prominent VC is probably Kleiner Perkins.

http://www.kpcb.com/team/

Stanford - Byers, Khosla, Lacob, Mackenzie (also went to Harvard), Vassallo, Murphy.

Harvard - Nazre, Siegelman (also went to MIT), Doerr (yes, THE John Doerr), Lee (also went to MIT), Mackenzie (also went to Stanford), Hearst,

So in Kleiner Perkins, I count 6 partners who hold degrees from Stanford, and 6 who went to Harvard. Tie. And this was a test most unfair to Harvard because KP is located on Sand Hill Road, which is just next door to Stanford but across the country from Harvard. But the fact is, Harvard grads still hold half the partner spots in KP.

In fact, go look at any VC firm and notice that while there are indeed quite a few Stanford graduates, it's darn hard to find a Berkeley graduate. In fact, I would contend that while you stand a good chance of finding many Stanford grads within Silicon valley VC partner listings, you would find that the number of East Coast grads are going to be roughly equal to the number of Berkeley graduates.

Here, let me do some of the legwork for you:

Sequoia Capital

http://www.sequoiacap.com/partner_matrix.asp

Berkeley - Kvamme
Harvard - Stephenson, Stevens
MIT - Leone

Garage Technology Ventures:

Stanford - lots
Berkeley - none
Harvard - Reichart
MIT - Jolly


But go ahead, name me some other prominent Silicon Valley VC's and tell me where Berkeley graduates are clearly highly highly overrepresented in the partner ranks relative to the East Coast schools. I'm all ears.

And why should we stop at VC's? Let's talk about general companies within Silicon Valley. Name me some prominent Silicon Valley companies where Berkeley graduates dominate the managerial rankings. I can think of several where Stanford graduates are predominant, but Berkeley graduates? I know I can't think of any off the top of my head.

Look, my point is that obviously Stanford and Berkeley graduates should have a strong numerical advantage simply because they're local. Lots of companies prefer to do their recruiting locally. By the same token, I'm sure you would agree with me that Berkeley grads carry little sway compared to Harvard and MIT graduates for jobs in Boston. I've never disputed that on the whole, there should be more Stanford and Berkeley graduates within the managerial ranks of Silicon Valley, simply because there are just so many more of them relative to HYPM graduates.

But that's not the point. The point is that on a per-capita basis, or a "pound for pound" basis, HYPM give up relatively little even within Silicon Valley, which is the home turf of Stanford and Berkeley. There just aren't that many HYPM graduates within the Valley to begin with. But the ones that are there are completely competitive for jobs relative to Stanford and Berkeley graduates. Sure, when a Valley job comes up, and one Harvard guy applies, and 10 Berkeley people apply, then the job is probably going to go to a Berkeley guy simply because a lot of Berkeley people applied. But the point is that, ceteris parabus, the Harvard graduate is just as competitive for that Valley job as each of the Berkeley graduates, if not more so.

I think the real problem is what are we choosing to define as a 'powerhouse'. It seems that your definition of a powerhouse is a school that simply sends lots and lots of graduates to a particular field or to a particular geographica location. If that's your definition, then it simply rewards a school for sheer size. If you just churn out massive massive quantities of students, then obviously you're going to be able to gets lots of people into a particular field or a particular location. In that sense, Ohio State University is a powerhouse in terms of employment in the state of Ohio.

If that's your definition of a powerhouse, then so be it. You are free to use your definition any way you want. But that's not my definition. My definition of a powerhouse is a school that confers a better percentage of success upon each of its graduates into a particular field or location. In other words, my definition is on a per-capita basis, and eliminates the effects of sheer size. In that sense, the East Coast elite schools are powerhouses in Silicon Valley because their graduates have a good percentage chance of achieving high positions within the Valley. Sure, there aren't a whole lot of them that come, but the ones that do come don't do too shabbily.

And besides, look at it this way. If you use your definition of a powerhouse, then what exactly does it mean to be a powerhouse school if your students would rather be somewhere else? For example, I don't know too many Berkeley undergrads who wouldn't bend over backwards for the chance to transfer to Harvard, even if they intend to come back and work in the Valley after graduation. Do you honestly think that most Berkeley undergrads would turn that down? Exactly. But why is that if Berkeley is indeed defined to be a powerhouse Valley school? In other words, why would those students who want to get Valley jobs want to transfer out of a "powerhouse" school and into a "non-powerhouse" school? Why? It simply calls into question what it really means to be a "powerhouse". I think if you look at it that way, you have to concede that Harvard is the real "powerhouse" within the Valley.

Which brings us full circle to what I'm talking about when I said that even if employers are looking for Berkeley graduates, that confers little advantage to any individual Berkeley student. The fact is, there are so many Berkeley students around that even if an employer restricts itself to only hiring from Berkeley, that still leaves tremendous competition from other Berkeley students for you to face. Hence, the advantage to you is minimal. It's obviously far better for you to go to, say, Harvard, and deal with those employers in the world who only want to hire Harvard people, simply because there are far fewer Harvard grads. The point is that sheer numbers plays an important role.

The other point I've been making is that I am not the first person to note the paucity of Berkeley bachelor's degree holders within upper management ranks in the Valley. Look around at the prominent Berkeley graduates around town, and you will note that they invariably have graduate degrees from Berkeley. But the undergrads are hard to find. That is really quite interesting when you note that most Berkeley graduates are bachelor's degree holders. Yet where are they? Look at the VC partners, and find the Berkeley people - they probably have Berkeley graduate degrees. Look at the top tech companies and find the Berkeley people - again, disproportionately graduate-degree holders. You'd think that Berkeley undergrads would be far far more dominant in the Valley, simply because there are so many of them. So where are they?

Now I would caution you, kryptic, that again, you don't know anything about me, so I would warn you for the last time to quit saying that you do. I have respected your posts and your positions, and I have never attacked you personally. I would demand the same from you.


Now to deferreddude, look carefully at what I said. Look carefully. I will repost it again:

"Stanford supposedly has a hammerlock on this industry but if you actually look at the backgrounds of the people in the industry, you will find roughly the same number of Harvard graduates as Stanford graduates, if not more, and Yale and Princeton are also extremely well represented."

So why are you talking about Google, Yahoo, Sun Microsystems, and Excite? I said "this" industry, when the word "this" referred to the VC industry. Last time I checked, Google, Yahoo, Sun Microsystems and Excite were not in the VC industry. Read my posts carefully before you respond to them.

By Stanfordman99 (Stanfordman99) on Monday, September 06, 2004 - 04:09 pm: Edit

A Berkeley degree is well-respected in Silicon Valley, so who cares if there are like 6 Harvard dudes on the board of some firm in Silicon Valley as opposed to one Berkeley grad. Like it even makes a difference.

There are 4 Stanford alums on the Supreme Court, but do I care? It's not like trivial stuff like that even matters....

By Kryptic (Kryptic) on Monday, September 06, 2004 - 04:31 pm: Edit

Unfortunately, I don't have the time to drag this out into the gory detail it could be dragged out into. You made a claim that Berkeley was not well represented in SV - last I checked, SV included more than just VC. I would define 'powerhouse' as being an institution that creates entreprenuers and inventors that change the industry and obtain dominant positions. I would also define a powerhouse as being a school where graduates are preferentially hired. Berkeley meets both criteria. No, this is not just a numbers game. I'd wager that the CSU system pumps out more business and CS majors than the UC system, and these graduates do not fit the criteria I define.

You try to restrict the scope to just UG graduates, but that's a false restriction. Most people in top positions DO have graduate degrees. How an bacehlors-only graduate fares between different schools is really not an interesting metric. As for B vs. S, I already claimed that Stanford yields more business-leaders than Berkeley. Is it the quality of the education or the affluence and connections of the students, though? I'd argue that the real difference tends to be the latter. Certainly, for some of the entreprenuerial minded students at Stanford, the proximity and 'old boys network' seen in the VC industry doesn't hurt. Are these advantages for Stanford? Sure, but I'm not arguing Stanford vs. Berkeley. I'm arguing that HYP graduates are poorly represented in top positions in the Bay Area relative to S & B graduates. It's more than just a 'locals only' game since, as I said, you don't see CSU Hayward graduates nearly as represented.

But if you want names of prominent graduates, here's a few from some random website. I don't have the time to go out to all the VC and business sites and correlate graduate profiles, so the information is neither expansive nor restricted to SV. It's unnecessary and uninteresting to me to do such collation, since their presence is so obvious and so predominant in the valley.

Haas
Scott Adams, MBA 86, Creator of Dilbert
Margo Alexander, BS 68, Executive Vice President, UBS Paine Webber
Bengt Baron, BS 85, MBA 88, President, Absolut Vodka
Richard Blum, BS 59, MBA 59, Founder, The Himalaya Foundation
Rick Cronk, BS 65, President, Dreyer's Grand Ice Cream
Stephanie DiMarco, BS 79, Chairman, Advent Software
Tom Fanoe, MBA 69, President, Joe Boxer
Donald Fisher, BS 50, Chairman & Founder, Gap Inc.
Michael R. Gallagher, BS 67, MBA 68, CEO, Playtex Products
John Garamendi, BS 66, Insurance Commissioner, State of California
Walter A. Haas, Sr., BS 10, President and Chairman, Levi Strauss & Co.
Walter A. Haas, Jr., BS 37, President, CEO, and Chairman, Levi Strauss & Co.
Michael Homer, BS 81, Chairman and CEO, Kontiki
Robert Lutz, BS 61, MBA 62, Chairman, North America, and Vice Chairman, Product Development, General Motors
Norman Mineta, BS 53, US Secretary of Transportation
Douglas Ose, BS 77, Congressman
Paul Otellini, MBA 74, President & COO, Intel
Rodrigo Rato, MBA 74, IMF Managing Director, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Economy, Spain
Rha Woong-Bae, PhD 68, former Finance and Economy Minister, Republic of Korea
Roger Siboni, BS 76, President and CEO, E.piphany
Ned Spieker, BS 66, Managing Partner, Spieker Partners (real estate)
Paul Stephens, BS 67, MBA 69, founder of Robertson Stephens
Pete Stark, MBA 60, Congressman
Hirotaka Takeuchi, MBA 71, PhD 77, Dean, Hitosubashi University Graduate School of International Corporate Strategy

Misc Other (Categorized Differently)
Business
Dean Witter, 1909 - partner in Morgan Stanley Dean Witter
Walter Haas, 1910 - Co-founder of Levi Strauss
Don Fischer, 1951 - Founder and Chair, The Gap
William Randolph Hearst, Jr., 1959 - newspaper publisher
John Schaeffer, 1971 - founder of ecologically-friendly Real Goods solar energy store and the Solar Living Center
Brian Maxwell, 1975 - founder of PowerBar
Steve Wozniak, 1976 - Co-founder of Apple Computer (graduated 1987)

Turing Award laureates
Douglas Engelbart, B. of Engineering 1952, Ph.D. 1955 - Inventor of the computer mouse. Recipient of the 1997 Turing Award.
Dana Scott (B.S. 1954) - computer scientist, recipient of the 1976 Turing Award, Associate Professor of Math
Ken Thompson, 1965 BSEE, 1966 MSEE - Co-creator of the Unix operating system and co-recipient of the 1983 Turing Award
James Gray, 1966 BSME, 1969 Ph.D. - Recipient of the 2001 Turing Award
Butler Lampson, Ph.D. 1967 - computer scientist, founding member of Xerox PARC, major contributor to the development of the personal computer, and recipient of the 1992 Turing Award
Niklaus Wirth, Ph.D. 1967 - computer scientist, creator of the Pascal programming language, recipient of the 1984 Turing Award
Leonard Adleman, 1968, Ph.D. 1976, the "A" in the RSA encryption algorithm for computer security. Co-recipient of the Turing Award in 2002.

Technology
Gordon E. Moore, 1950 - co-founder of Intel and the originator of Moore's Law
Jay Miner, 1958 - inventor of the Amiga personal computer
Andrew Grove, Ph.D., 1963 - 4th employee of Intel, and eventually its president, CEO, and chairman, and TIME magazine's Man of the Year in 1997
Allan Alcorn, 1971 - Atari employee #3, electronics designer behind Atari's seminal Pong video arcarde unit, and erstwhile boss of Steve Jobs at Atari
Andrew Tanenbaum, Ph.D. 197? - computer scientist and creator of Minix, the precursor to Linux
Charles Simonyi, 1972 - computer scientist. At Xerox PARC, he created the first WYSIWYG word processor, Bravo, then joined Microsoft to spread the WYSIWYG and computer mouse gospel. Originally from Hungary, he is the "Hungarian" in Hungarian notation, which he created.
Lee Felsenstein, 1972 - pioneer in the personal computer industry, founder of Community Memory, designer of the Osborne 1 computer, and influential leading mediator of the Homebrew Computer Club, from which would emerge 23 companies, including Apple Computer
Eugene Jarvis, 1976 - Creator of the classic Defender video arcade game

Now, from a few corporate sites...
HP:
Giles Bouchard/CIO, Berkeley
Bill Hewlett/Founder, Berkeley (honorary, granted)
David Packard/Founder, Berkeley (honorary JD)

SUN:
Bill Joy, founder, author of BSD. Yes, THE Bill Joy

So, we have the leaders of Intel, HP, Apple, and Sun as Berkeley graduates. Yet, Berkeley isn't well represented in SV. Hmm. Add in the Stanford graduates, and the S & B combination make up a disproportionate share of the executive positions in these companies. Oddly, you'll find that even Ohio State is more well represented than Harvard, as well. Guess Ohio State isn't so bad, after all?

By Sakky (Sakky) on Monday, September 06, 2004 - 06:49 pm: Edit

Kryptic, you completely missed the point of my last post. So here goes again:

*My main point.

What I said is not that you won't be able to find lots and lots of Stanford and Berkeley people around in the Valley who are successful. Of course you will. My point is that relative to the number of HYPM graduates who are in the Valley, those graduates are also doing very well for themselves. True, there just aren't that many of them around, because I agree with you, they tend to stay back East. But on a per-capita basis, they are doing quite well in the Valley. That's the point.

Keep in mind - it's the ratio of people that I'm talking about. I give very little credit to simple sheer numbers, because you can achieve sheer numbers just by being very very big. No, it's the "average success" per student that matters. In other words, it's the ratio. RATIO RATIO RATIO. If Harvard graduates are only 1% of the pool of available employees in a given area, but 2% of the upper management, then I consider Harvard to be a power broker. If another school is 50% of the available employees, but only 25% of the upper management, then that school is not a power broker. It's just big.


*And again, we have to separate the Berkeley graduate programs from the Berkeley undergraduate program.

Your list of successful Berkeley graduates largely serves to prove one of my subpoints - that on a per-capita basis, graduates of the Berkeley undergraduate program aren't doing all that well. Yes, of course, again, there are many such people who have done well. But then again, there are many many such graduates, so you would expect there to be lots of successful people when you just have lots of people period. However, a disproportionate number of the successful people from Berkeley come from Berkeley's graduate program, not from the undergraduate program.

So let's talk about some of the people that you named:

Bill Joy - master's degree Berkeley. So where did he go to undergrad? University of Michigan. Yes, THE Bill Joy, and THE University of Michigan. Oh, I see.

Andrew Grove - PhD Berkeley. Undergrad? CCNY.

Andrew Tanenbaum - PhD Berkeley. Undergrad? MIT

Scott Adams - MBA Berkeley. Undergrad? Hartwick College.

Paul Otellini - MBA Berkeley. Undergrad? University of San Francisco.

And I could go on and on, but I think you see my point. Here we're talking specifically about the importance of the Berkeley undergraduate program. Well, since there are a lot of undergraduates, there should be lots of eminent people who came from that program, right? Not really.

I'll put it to you this way. Consider the top VC's, the top entrepreneurs, basically the top management within the Valley. Notice the paucity of those people who did their undergrad at Berkeley, relative to the total number of people in the VAlley who did their undergrad at Berkeley. Yes, a lot of these guys have MBA's, law degrees, PhD's, and quite a few of them got those graduate degrees from Berkeley. But what I'm saying is that if you look carefully at their undergrad degrees, you will not find the name "Berkeley" as often as you should. You will find lots of undergrad degrees at Stanford, and a smattering of the East Coast schools. But Berkeley should be showing up a lot more times than it does, given its huge size - Berkeley's undergrad program is almost 4 times the size of that of Stanford's and of that of the East Coast schools - and the fact that the Valley is local. But it's not like that. You just don't see all that many top people in the Valley with Berkeley undergrad degrees. Berkeley graduate degrees - yes. But undergrad? Not really.

To illustrate the point even further, if a guy got his undergrad degree at Berkeley, then got his MBA from, say, Stanford, and is now a partner at a major VC, or is a bigtime manager at a major Bay Area company, he counts as a guy with a Berkeley undergrad degree who achieved great success. People with Berkeley undergrad degrees should be absolutely dominant in the Bay Area in terms of top positions simply because the size of the Berkeley undergraduate program is huge. But is that really the case? Are they really dominant? They don't even dominate people with Stanford undergraduate degrees - and Stanford is a school that doesn't even 1/3 as many undergrads.


So what's the point of this? Why separate UG from G? Simple - to show that the Berkeley graduate programs are on a different playing field than the Berkeley undergraduate progran. Berkeley graduate programs produce successful people on a much higher per-capita percentage than the undergraduate program does. Again, remember what we're talking about. If a guy gets his bachelor's from Berkeley, then gets a PhD from, say, Harvard and then later wins the Nobel, that person counts as a successful offspring of the Berkeley undergraduate program. My point is that the ratio of successful offspring of the Berkeley undergraduate program relative to the size of the program is not very good, and needs to be higher.

Now you might ask, well, what's the point of all that? What's the point of looking at undergrad? Simple - it goes to illustrate which undergrad programs tend to produce lots of power brokers, relative to the number of total students it has. The Harvard undergraduate program does. The Stanford undergraduate program does. The MIT undergraduate program does. I am saying that the Berkeley undergraduate program cannot boast of a strong ratio of power-brokers to total students. While I agree with you that a strong graduate degree may matter more for success in the long run, if nothing else, this study shows that the Berkeley undergraduate program is, relative to its size, not as successful in gettings its students into top graduate programs, when compared to the undergraduate programs of HYPSM.


* So let's take the argument full circle.

Here, I will lay down the argument, and you are free to attack it, but not to miscontrue it. Berkeley is not well represented in the SV power circles relative to the number of Berkeley graduates in SV. The ratio is low. Berkeley is disproportioinately underrepresented in the power-halls of SV relative to the size of Berkeley. And in particular, the Berkeley undergraduate program is really not well represented in SV power circles relative to the size of the program. On the other hand, compared to Berkeley, Stanford is far better represented relative to the number of Stanford graduates in SV. And so are HYPM. Yes, there aren't a lot of HYPM people in SV, but the ones that are there, I would argue, are on average, doing better than the average Berkeley graduate there. How about them apples?


*So why am I harping about ratios. Why not straight absolute numbers?

The answer to that is elementary. People do and should prefer to attend the program that will maximize their chances of success. Berkeley does produce lots of highly successful people, I agree. But Berkeley also produces lots and lots of people who are less successful. Simply put, Berkeley churns out lots of people period, some of which will be extremely successful, others not so much, such that the average success rate is not as high as it ought to be. On the other hand, if a school churns out only a handful of people, but those people on average, achieve a high rate of success, then that's a good school to go to.


Kryptic, I think you're falling victim to the allure of absolute numbers. But absolute numbers are not what's important. It's per-capita ratios and averages that matter, not absolute numbers. Again, I agree with you that HYPM may be poorly represented in the Valley simply because there are so few HYPM graduates in the Valley in the first place. That's like saying that former Rhodes Scholars, Marshall Scholars, Truman Scholars, and Fulbright Scholars are poorly represented not just in SV, but anywhere else in the world, simply because there are just so few of them in the first place. But if you happen to be a former Rhodes Scholar winner or a former Fulbright Scholar winner in SV, you're probably doing quite well for yourself. By the same token, while there are clearly not a lot of HYPM grads in the Valley, I would argue that the ones that are there are not doing too shabbily, and are most likely, on average, doing better than the average Berkeley graduate in SV.

By Sakky (Sakky) on Monday, September 06, 2004 - 07:20 pm: Edit

To Stanfordman99, I think you should care about these things, for one simple reason. The quality of a school ultimately rests in the hands of its graduates. If its graduates go on to achieve great things, then the reputation of that school will be burnished. If its graduates are mediocre, then the school's reputation will be mediocre.

In particular, people are going to be watching you, Stanfordman99, and if you really screw things up, that's going to make not just you like bad, but will also make Stanford look bad. Now obviously one guy will not make or break the reputation of a school. But if thousands of people consistly achieve success or don't achieve success, then the reputation of that school will follow accordingly.

Case in point. Take school X. If a guy hires a bunch of people from school X and they all turn out to be lazy, incompetent idiots, then that guy is simply going to conclude that school X is worthless. Then get a bunch of employers who all hire people from school X and if all those hirees turn out to be bad, then all of those employers are going to badmouth school X. If this happens enough times, then eventually, school X is going to get a bad reputation, and nobody will want to hire its graduates. In other words, the desirability of a school's alumni is ultimately determined by the quality of the school's past alumni.

One of the most damaging things a school can do is to consistently and constantly confer degrees upon students of mediocre quality. That will mar the school's reputations with both employers and with graduate-schools. If you want your school reputation to rise, you have to produce graduates who are going to succeed. By conferring degrees upon people who will not succeed, you are sullying the brand-name of the school.

Hence, the fact that Stanford has managed to put a lot of people onto the current Supreme Court is something you should care about. That means that Stanford continues to burnish its image and is an even more impressive achievement when you consider Stanford's small size. On the other hand, it's a problem that Berkeley can't put anybody in the Supreme Court, and relatively few high officials in government, especially when you consider Berkeley's large size, which means that Berkeley ought to boast of lots and lots of politicos. But it can't.

And that's another issue that I've been talking about. If Berkeley ever wants to beat Stanford, the way it used to do about 50 years ago, then Berkeley will ultimately have to produce, on average, higher quality alums. The fact is, too many Berkeley graduates work for too many Stanford graduates, and not enough vice versa. I believe that, to be blunt, the quality of the average Berkeley graduate is simply not high enough. It needs to be higher.

The real question is, does Berkeley just want to be 'pretty good', or does it want to be great? Apparently a lot of Berkeley students and alum, and certainly the Berkeley administration, seems quite satisfied with just being 'pretty good'. I'm not. I want Berkeley to be great. And I know it's never going to happen if things continue as they are. There was a time not that long ago (only maybe 30-40 years ago) when Berkeley was considered to be a better school than Stanford. Not anymore. And what really disturbs me is the complacency that that drew. Berkeley had been superior to Stanford for the better part of a century previous. Then Stanford outpaced Berkeley and nobody at Berkeley seemed to care. Whenever I propose that Berkeley get better, all I get is pushback and whining and excuse-mongering about why Berkeley can't do it. The Stanford administration didn't make any excuses, they just did what they had to do to get better.

By Kryptic (Kryptic) on Monday, September 06, 2004 - 10:00 pm: Edit

Let's be clear about what you mean when you say "you want to make Berkeley great" - you want to cut transfer admissions and reduce the number of students allowed into Berkeley. At least, that's what you continue to say in all of your previous arguments. Although it's somewhat baiting, to me it sounds just like the person that says "crime in this country would go down if we just shipped all the blacks to Canada" - it may be true, if you buy into the claim that that Blacks commit a higher-than-average rate of crimes, but that doesn't make the advocation any less racist.

Given that I'm slammed with studies, I don't have time to debate your claim about ratios and representation, yadda, yadda, yadda - I disagree, but it's irrelevant. Let's assume you're right. Now, let's assume Berkeley implements your policy. What do you have? You have a school with an incoming class size of 1000 students instead of 10,000. The average SAT score is 1550 instead of 1350. What's -really- changed? Nothing. Will these students accomplish more than the current crop of Berkeley students? Sure, probably they will. But since you like ratios, let's talk about ratios. The incoming Berkeley student body -ALREADY- contains an elite group of incoming students, probably measuring about 1/5th the total incoming class. We ALREADY have probably 1000+ plus students in every class that achieved an SAT > 1500. What are they accomplishing now? Well, in your eyes, next to nothing. So although the ratio of successful students might increase with a smaller school size, the total quantity won't. And yes, total quantity does matter. If you're not actually producing a larger number of better students, you're just unnecessarily restricting education from a larger group of near-elite students. If you're going to produce, say, 100 world-changing students every year regardless - you might as well still try to produce 8000 students that are employable, well-trained, and serve an important role within the economy. You see, that's the job of a public school - to serve the citizens of the state and, arguably, the country.

But, back again to your idea of restricting admissions. I'm still not convinced that, even with that effort, the composition and results of Berkeley graduates will change dramatically. Why? Because Berkeley largely appeals to a different socio-economic class than Stanford and the Ivies. This is something that you just keep missing. If you're a rich student, you're not going to go to a public school - regardless of how selective it is. You will, invariably, go to where your parents went, where your 'old buddies' are, and where you can stay entrenched in your elite power circle. I dare you to look up the average family income of an Ivy school relative to Berkeley. Given the resources these students brought INTO their school, is it really any wonder that they are successful when they leave the school? Who is going to get seed money, or even know what the process is, some graduate from a public school whose contacts are more likely to come from a blue collar family - or someone whose dad knows the principal partner over at Sequoia, or plays golf with Carly Fiorina, or has connections into the political machine? Duh! It's not that the schools are better, it's that the students have more resources at their disposal - resources that have NOTHING to do with the school, short of the fact that these places facillitate the sort of networking and business contacts that allow this to happen. Aside from making Berkeley a private school, kicking out all the minorities, and begging Republicans to start sending their kids there - making it the WASP haven that most Ivy schools have been for the past several hundred years - there's NOTHING you can do to make the culture at Berkeley the same as at an Ivy. Restricting admissions won't improve graduate success rates, it'll just curtail opportunity and a quality education from thousands of students.

I have no ill feelings towards Stanford, or even many of the Ivies - they're certainly great schools. So is Berkeley. Would I love to be part of the Old Boy's Network, to have access to influential alumni and a wider entreprenurial network? Sure, in the same sense that I think it'd be great to own a yacht and a mansion in Paris. However, my key focus is on the QUALITY of the education I'm getting - and I believe Berkeley is completely adequate in this respect, and certainly on par with any school in the world you can compare it against. Yes, even at the Undergraduate level. I don't believe Berkeley is doing a disservice to its students, and I don't believe that changing its admissions profile will make ANY difference to the vectors that anyone should be concerned about. Differential success rates after-school are more related to differential opportunity before school.

So keep trying to find statistics about how Stanford graduates are more successful per capita than Berkeley students, fine, I've never denied that. But don't fool yourself, or try to fool others, that this has anything to do with the quality of the education these institutions are providing. It's like saying that poor black people are incapable of running corporations, or that there's a problem with being poor and black, just because these people are underrepresented in executive management relative to WASPs. Maybe, just maybe, there are other factors at play...

By Twojaw (Twojaw) on Tuesday, September 07, 2004 - 12:21 pm: Edit

Bravo, Krptic, Bravo. Here, Here.

By Stanfordman99 (Stanfordman99) on Tuesday, September 07, 2004 - 12:29 pm: Edit

You do realize that almost 75 percent of Stanford students are on financial aid. I got in by academic merit, and my family is far from rich.

By Eliteconnect (Eliteconnect) on Tuesday, September 07, 2004 - 03:36 pm: Edit

I'm a Berkeley student and even I will concede that Stanford 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

Note: This was one of my posts in another forum. I think just copied it here because it pertains to the debate concerning Berkeley's main strengths lying in its GRADUATE departments and not in its undergraduate departments. I will definitely agree with Sakky here because it's clear that the graduates of the Ivy League schools+Stanford perform better and get hired to top executive positions at higher rates than Berkeley students. I've always said this and Sakky just drove it home in this thread. You must evaluate performance based on PERCENTAGES, not based on raw numbers. Berkeley likes to brag that it has the 2nd highest amount of National Merit Finalists in the country. Harvard has the highest amount of national merit finalists in the nation. However, what is important here is the # of national merit finalists/student population. We should not be looking at the raw number of national mertit finalists. If we adjust for student populalation, schools like Stanford, CalTech, MIT, Swarthmore, Princeton, and Yale easily beat out Berkeley. This is because Berkeley has 23,000 undergraduates so one would HOPE that it would have more national merit finalists than a tiny school like Swarthmore. However, when comparing schools, we must adjust for differing student population sizes and the way we do that is by using percentages. Stanford has a higher PERCENTAGE of national merit finalists than Berkeley, and that is what matters. So Berkeley's claim about having the 2nd highest amount of national merit finalists in the country is definitely an hollow claim.

The same applies when examining the performance of Berkeley grads in the job market. We must adjust for different student populations by using percentages, not raw numbers. Percentagewise, Berkeley has FAR fewer of its graduates holding top executive positions in investment banking firms, information technology firms, and corporate law firms. The schools that would perform the best on this metric would be Harvard, Stanford, University of Pennsylvania-Wharton, Columbia, MIT, Princeton, and CalTech. In Wall Street, one would expect graduates of Penn-Wharton, Harvard, and Columbia to dominate simply because it's in the northeast and we would expect the majority of graduates from these schools to say in the northeast. On a percentagewise basis, these graduates do outcompete graduates of Berkeley in their backyard. However, we would expect that Berkeley graduates would outcompete graduates of Harvard, Penn, Columbia, and Princeton in OUR backyard (Silicon Valley). Unfortunately, this is simply not the case. On a PERCENTAGEWISE basis, graduates of Harvard and MIT far outcompete Berkeley grads in terms of obtaining the top executive positions in Silicon Valley.

To Kryptic: Please stop assuming that Stanford graduates and Ivy League graduates got to where they are today simply because of using mom and dad's connections. Even I am offended by this because it simply TRIVIALIZES all the work that these students had to do in order to gain acceptance to these elite schools. The VAST majority of Stanford and Ivy grads earned their spots at their schools. Over half of Harvard's freshman class graduated from America's public high schools. You just assume that every single Stanford student graduates from Phillips Andover Academy (George W. Bush's alma mater) and had a trust fund handed to them before matriculating into Stanford. The percentage of legacy admits into the Ivies and into Stanford represents a small MINORITY of the student population. In addition, how do you know whether these legacy admits would not have received admission had they not had the legacy boost? Do we know the average GPA and SAT scores of just the legacy pool? I plan on applying to an Ivy for graduate school and I would be very aggravated if people just trivialized all the work I had to do to get into the school by saying, "Eh, he probably just had connections or his parents just bought him an admission."

By Twojaw (Twojaw) on Wednesday, September 08, 2004 - 02:22 am: Edit

"The VAST majority of Stanford and Ivy grads earned their spots at their schools."

And the vast majority of those rejected by the Ivys didn't earn it right? Balderdash. Explain how come one of the validectorians at our school (4.0 unweighted...perfect A's in IB curriculum, 1600 on the SAT) was accepted at Harvard, UCLA's bioengineering program but was rejected by Stanford, Yale, MIT. She just didn't earn that spot at Stanford right? And all those poor Berkeleyites who were rejected by Stanford...oh they didn't earn it either? Tell me how selling the Guiness Record of girlscout cookies (reference "Getting In" by Paul) earns you a spot at Princeton? Oh...that's earning it right? Balerdash! Elitist Claptrap! Explain how come a nonminority student I know got into Duke with a 1390 and another minority (nonURM) validectorian student with a 1480 didn't even get a waitlist at Duke. Explain to me exactly how these spots are "earned". Tell me exactly how these students are any more hardworking or dedicated than those students who were rejected. And as to legacies...Harvard flatly states that the differential in admissions for whites and Asians is due to legacy admits. Private schools can admit anyone they want to. Selectivity depends upon what you select for. And selectivity can vary upon race, gender, region of the country, or odd and profane ec's. And if you saw Atlantic Monthly's article on college selectivity (which evaluated selectivity upon average GPA, class standing, and average SAT) Cal Berkeley was in the top 10.

By Twojaw (Twojaw) on Wednesday, September 08, 2004 - 01:21 pm: Edit

for those who are counting...from the latest edition October 2004 Atlantic Monthly from the article titled "Who Needs Harvard" by gregg Easterbook...

"Admissions mania focuses most intensely on what might be called the Gotta-Get-Ins, the colleges with maximum allure. The twenty-five gotta-Get-Ins of the momemt according to admissions officers are the Ivies (Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Penn, Princeton, and Yale), plus Amherst, Berkeley, Caltech, Chicago, Duke, Georgetown, Johns Hopkins, MIT, Northwestern, Pomona, Smith, Stanford, Swathmore, Vassar, Washington University in St. Louis, Wellesley, and Williams. ...Each year more and more bright, qualified high school seniors don't receive the coveted thick envelope from a Gotta-Get-In."

"the Gotta-Get-Ins can no longer claim to be the more or less exclusive gatekeepers to graduate school. Once, it was assumed that an elite-college undergraduate degree was required for admission to a top law or medical program. No moreA: 61 percent of new students at harvard law School last year had received their bachelor's degree outside the Ivy League. 'Every year I have someone who went to Harvard College but can't get into harvard Law, plus someone who went to the University of Maryland and does get into Harvard Law,' Shirley Levin says."

so eliteconnect there is hope for you.

By Eliteconnect (Eliteconnect) on Wednesday, September 08, 2004 - 02:42 pm: Edit

"so eliteconnect there is hope for you."

I have no intention of going to Harvard law school and I already knew that Berkeley grads enjoyed a higher graduate school admission rate to the Ivies.

Secondly, my points weren't "balderdash" simply because they were lost on you and because you fail to comprehend basic tenets of argumentation theory. First, anecdotal evidence means absolutely nothing. I really do not care about that URM valedictorian at your school that was dinged by Duke. Using your own anecdotal evidence, which canont be verified by anyone on these boards, does not help your case at all. It does nothing to strengthen your arguments and it detracts from your credibility. If I do have to address the point about why your "minority valedictorian" was rejected with a higher SAT as compared to the non-minority who was accepted, I would say that college admissions has become revolved around the WHOLE PACKAGE and not just SATs. You just mentioned their SAT scores because you expected the student with the higher SAT score to be admitted and the student with the lower SAT score to be rejected. However, those who actually know about the admission process, know that admissions committees have stressed the importance of being a well-rounded individual and presenting yourself as such on the college application. Have you ever seen the 25th-75th percentile of SAT I scores at some of the Ivies? Brown, for instance, had 25% of their freshman class scoring BELOW a 1300 on the SAT I.

Were there students rejected from Brown with SAT I scores HIGHER than 1300? OF COURSE there were. Then how did 1/4th of the freshman class gain admission to the school? The answer is pretty simple. Those students were simply able to distinguish themselves from the LEGIONS of other well-qualified applicants to Brown. They differentiated themselves from the applicant pool using their extra-curricular activities, admissions essays, and letters of recommendation. Again, admissions committees evaluate the WHOLE package, not just the SAT I scores. Would you prefer a system more closer to the way college admissions are conducted in foreign countries where admissions is SOLELY dependent on performance on a standardized test?

Honestly, I really could not care less about the valedictorians at your school that were rejected from schools X, Y, and Z. This anecdotal evidence really does nothing for me. If I do have to address this point, I could easily deconstruct this argument simply based on statistics. You mentioned that one of your "valedictorians" was rejected by Stanford and MIT despite her 4.0 gpa and 1600 SAT I score. Do you know how many OTHER applicants to Stanford and MIT also had perfect or near perfect gpas and SAT I scores in the 99th percentile? Did you know that 25% of the Harvard freshman class scored at or above a 1590 on the SAT I? Do you realize that at the top schools in the country, it is virtually IMPOSSIBLE to distinguish yourself in the applicant pool using numbers alone? MANY students with perfect 1600 SAT I scores are rejected by Stanford, Harvard, and Princeton every single application season. However, the REASON they were rejected has nothing to do with numbers and I'm sure the admissions committee agreed that they were very well-qualified candidates for admission.

The reason tons of applicants with high stats receive rejection letters every year is because admissions committees are looking for students that are a good "fit" for the school. That's WHY Harvard and Princeton make an effort to schedule interviews with local alumni for as many of the applicants as they can. The alumni interviewer than submits a supplementary recommendation letter so the admissions committee can gain further insight into the applicant's personality, academic and extra-curricular interests, accomplishments made after the submission of the application, etc.

Let me know if you have any problems digesting the arguments made above. Good luck.

By Twojaw (Twojaw) on Wednesday, September 08, 2004 - 07:28 pm: Edit

What YOU fail to understand is that college admissions is totally capricious. It is a total buzz word to say they evaluate an applicant TOTALLY. It is completely nebulous...wholly opaque...and not open to scrutiny. Show me where anyone has published any admission data for any of the private schools where EVERYTHING is revealled...GPA, EC's, SATs for each catagory...racial groups, gender groups, state of origin. There is only anecdotal evidence. Unless you have data. For example...please tell me the total number of Asian American applicants to say Harvard. What was their average GPA and SAT and what types of EC score(many schools will create a 1 to 9 scale) did they have? What was the 75 and 25 percentile GPA, SAT, class standing of the accepted cohort of Asian Americans? How did this compare to the accepted cohort of Whites? Was the bottom percentile of accepted Asian Americans stats comparable to the bottom percentile of the accepted whites? And how did that compare to the top 75 percentile of the rejected applicants in both catagories? These questions can also apply to any other catagory...applicants from Texas compared to applicants from California...atheletes compared to violinists...men compared to women etc. If you have any HARD DATA for any school anywhere (especially the private elites) I would LOVE to see it. I am not talking about generalities (like the average SAT score for the class of such and such was such and such)...I am talking about data from all applicants...accepted and rejected and in specifics. If you have that then you can denigrate anecdotal evidence. If not then don't throw this "we evaluate the total student and see if they fit our niche" crapola at me.

Thanks for the good luck...much success in your studies too and hope you are well.

By Twojaw (Twojaw) on Wednesday, September 08, 2004 - 07:44 pm: Edit

Oh I got sidetracked...explain to me how then an ivy admit has EARNED that admission...if you say they are distinguished by subjective criteria not objective criteria. How is that EARNED and not a capricous whim of an AdCom? My essential point is that college admissions is nonquantifiable and a subjective process. Like Olympic gymnastic judging. You try to quantify it but it boils down to a subjective judgement call. So Paul Hamm won his gold medal...it doesn't necessarily mean that he earned it. Aww...and I promised not to speak about admissions anymore...so I won't.

Good luck to you.

By Kryptic (Kryptic) on Wednesday, September 08, 2004 - 09:15 pm: Edit

This isn't to discredit anyone that got accepted to an Ivy (or Stanford) for that matter - yes, they DID work for it, and they're among some of the best students in the world. HOWEVER, this audience STILL LARGELY COMES FROM THE WHITE UPPER and MIDDLE CLASSES. There are certainly exceptions, especially for the extremely gifted, but as Twojaw has pointed out - most private schools place just as much emphasis on ECs as they do on academics. Sure, your academics have to be strong, but you also need to be first chair violinist in your youth symphony, you need to be student body president, you need to be starting quarterback, or you need to otherwise distinguish yourself.

There's nothing wrong with these people, but the only group of people that tends to have the resources to distinguish themselves in these ways are, yes you guessed it, WHITE MIDDLE AND UPPER CLASS students. Obviously, over the past number of years, this audience has expanded to the children of upper and middle class Asians, as well, but the history has clearly been WASPy. Blue collar families just don't have the same access to extracurriculars as other families - and being 'popular' at school (enough to become student body president or otherwise make a name for yourself) usually doesn't happen when you're poor. At the most basic level, many students from poorer families are forced to work, help raise siblings, and perform a multitude of other 'chores' instead of 'play'.

By restricting admissions to such soft values as being 'well rounded', the people that are admitted to these private schools are naturally culled from the 'elite' group in our society. I hate to single out StanfordMan, for example, since he's been a pillar of rational-mindedness and decency - but he made a claim that he defined middle class as being a household income of 100,000-150,000 for a family of four. Sure, maybe in Palo Alto, that's "middle class" - but get REAL! The median household income in San Francisco - one of the most expensive parts of the country, to say the least - is only $60k. THIS is the reality that most people are facing, and that sure doesn't allow for a lot of flexibility. Of course, half the households make less than that too.

Do these schools have the right to do this? Of course, inarguably. Do they graduate a more entreprenurial group of students - students more likeley to become successful later on? Almost certainly - look at the outside resources they brought in with them and that they get to network. Did all these students get in just because they 'worked hard on their academics'? No, not at all. They got in, with few exceptions, because they worked hard and they were lucky enough to be born into the right family.

So back to the relevance to Berkeley - would lowering the admit rate at Berkeley turn the campus into another Harvard? No! Berkeley does not appeal to the same socio-economic strata that the Ivies do, nor should it. It has a responsibility to serve the people of this state, and that responsibility is best served by educating every brilliant mind that it can - not just those who will go on to be the next CEO of Ford or Wells Fargo. And, once again, you cannot look at admit rates, average SATs, or post-graduation success rates and say that these other schools are providing a better education. You're comparing apples to oranges. You may be able to argue that these students are in a better environment to achieve success, but the claims that keep getting made that Berkeley is doing a poor service to its students in the way of education is sorely mistaken and shortsighted.

P.S. Just to make sure - everyone's seen the recent study by the 9 campus UC system that showed that high SATs correlated more with higher family incomes,right? That they were a poor predictor of college success? Is it any wonder that people at Harvard have a higher SAT, when they have a higher median income? It's a lot easier to take those SAT prep courses, to dedicate time to studying for the SATs, etc, when your family isn't struggling to make ends meet.

By Shyboy13 (Shyboy13) on Thursday, September 09, 2004 - 02:38 pm: Edit

Kryptic's right! I dont have to get into this conversation because he's doing all the work for me. Thanks!

By Eliteconnect (Eliteconnect) on Thursday, September 09, 2004 - 02:49 pm: Edit

"This isn't to discredit anyone that got accepted to an Ivy (or Stanford) for that matter - yes, they DID work for it, and they're among some of the best students in the world. HOWEVER, this audience STILL LARGELY COMES FROM THE WHITE UPPER and MIDDLE CLASSES. There are certainly exceptions, especially for the extremely gifted, but as Twojaw has pointed out - most private schools place just as much emphasis on ECs as they do on academics. Sure, your academics have to be strong, but you also need to be first chair violinist in your youth symphony, you need to be student body president, you need to be starting quarterback, or you need to otherwise distinguish yourself."

What does the student's race have to do with it? Why does it matter that these students are white? Why are you bringing the student's race into the discussion?

I can completely understand the socioeconomic argument and why the socioeconomic class origin of the applicant would matter in admissions. In response to your study, I could just as easily cite psychologists that swear that the SAT I is excellent in predicting 1st year college performance, irrespective of the socioeconomic class that the test taker is from. In fact, one of these psychologists teaches here at Berkeley (lol). His name is Arthur Jensen and he specializes in educational pscyhology and aptitude testing.

By Candi1657 (Candi1657) on Saturday, September 11, 2004 - 02:07 pm: Edit

I saw someone say here that Yale has co-ed bathrooms (which is perceived as unsafe). That is not true! Bathrooms and floors are single-sex.

By Sakky (Sakky) on Sunday, September 12, 2004 - 02:16 am: Edit

Kryptic, you exposed yourself to attack.

I believe I can summarize your arguments in the following way. You believe that public schools are obligated to "serve the public" and that's why you seem not to support my proposal that Berkeley tighten its admissions policy. Berkeley, as a public school, must cater to a different socioeconomic class of people in your eyes and will therefore always be inferior to Stanford in that regard. Is that a fair summary of your beliefs?

Well, let's explore that idea. In particular, let's (once again), look at graduate schools. Let's look at UC graduate schools in particular. Take UCSF Medical School. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, is UCSF Med "easy" to get into? I'd say almost certainly not. In fact, UCSF Med is probably harder to get into than Stanford Med even if you're a California state resident. And if you look at who's actually admitted into UCSF Medical, I'm sure you'd agree that those students come from backgrounds that are, on average, just as privileged and rich as those who get into private medical schools like Stanford Med.


Nor is UCSF Med an isolated example. Take any UC Medical School. All of them are extremely selective and the students who are there also tend to come from privileged backgrounds. Or take a gander at Berkeley's Business School or Law School, and look at their selectivity and their students' socioeconomic backgrounds. It's harder to get into Berkeley's MBA program than it is to get into most private MBA schools. And Haas's MBA students tend to come from rich backgrounds. Haas MBA students give up very little in terms of socioeconomic backgrounds than MBA students at most private MBA schools.

What that goes to show you, again, is that there is no necessary correlation between a school being public and the school being selective and/or drawing its student body from higher socioeconomic backgrounds. UCSF Med is public and yet extremely selective, and the students tend to be rich. The same thing is true of the Haas and UCLA MBA programs and the Berkeley and UCLA law schools.

Now some of you might object that those are graduate schools that I'm talking about and so they "don't count". But why don't they count? In other words, why is it "OK" for public graduate schools to be selective, but public undergraduate schools to not be selective? I thought the rule was that a public school was supposed to cater to the public, meaning the residents of the state. Well, either UCSF Medical is either catering to the residents of California, or it isn't. Which one is it?

Bottom line, kryptic, you have one of two choices. You either have to concede that there is no necessary connection between a school being public and a school being less selective, or you have to condemn the UC professional programs of being wrong. If you truly believe that the UC's must be less selective and must draw from a lower socioeconomic pool of people vis-a-vis Stanford because of the UC's public status, then you have to believe that the UC professional programs like UCSF Medical are wrong for being highly selective. And not just them - you have to condemn all the UC professional and graduate programs for being as selective as they are, because by doing so, they are clearly not behaving the way that public schools should, because they're not "serving the public". And I want you to stand up and loudly condemn all the UC graduate programs for not fulfilling their "public mission". Are you prepared to do that? What's it going to be, kryptic?

At the end of the day, I have never heard of a good reason for why public graduate schools are allowed to be extremely selective, yet public undergraduate schools don't have to be. Why is that? Why is it that the UC undergraduate program is not allowed to be as selective as private schools like Stanford, yet the UC graduate schools are allowed to be as selective, if not more so, than the private schools? Why is the Berkeley undergraduate program not allowed to be as selective as stanford's undergraduate program, but UCSF Medical is allowed to be more selective than Stanford Medical? Why?

By Kryptic (Kryptic) on Sunday, September 12, 2004 - 02:38 am: Edit

Again, very limited time to respond. Swamped with homework. But yes, I *do* have a problem with the UC graduate department being so selective. I'm able to forgive it a bit, however, because the economies of scale are far greater for undergraduate education than they are for graduate education. You can sit 1000 students in a UG math class, and they'll get about as good an education as if there were only 30 in the room. The material is largely boilerplate, no new insights are being developed, and it's largely just a generic 'learning' process. (my first few years of college were at smaller schools, with smaller classes, and I haven't really noticed any drawback to large lecture hall classes at Berkeley - especially when you factor in discussion sections. so, i still disagree with the claim that large classes necessitate inferior education.)

Graduate school, however, focuses on discovery and research. These are things where individual attention is absolutely key. You can't scale graduate seminars to hundreds of people and have them be effective, because you'll miss out on the extrapolative brain storming that occurs when working in more of a research and 1:1 capacity with faculty. Once again, you're comparing apples to oranges. But yes, in general, I find it surprising and disappointing that the graduate departments at UCB are as small as they are.

By Sakky (Sakky) on Sunday, September 12, 2004 - 03:16 am: Edit

But do all graduate schools really focus on discovery and research? For example, are law students, MBA students, or medical students really focused on discovering anything new, or engaging in much research at all? You must agree that for the most part, no. Let's face it. All MBA students, whether they are at a public or a private school, take pretty much the same classes. The same could be said for all law students or medical students. The class on Microeconomics in an MBA program is largely boilerplate and generic. The class on Contracts in a law school is largely boilerplate and generic. The class on Basic Physiology in a medical school is largely boilerplate and generic. So, no, I disagree that I'm comparing apples and oranges.

But I will say this. I will give you credit for being consistent - you should loudly and widely condemn all UC professional schools whenever you can. Yet I'm sure you've noticed that the UC professional schools are held in much higher regard than the UC undergraduate programs, so you'd be condemning some of the true 'crown jewels' of the UC system. The fact is, the UC undergraduate program is trading off the prestige of the UC graduate programs, and not vice versa. So you'd be condemning what are widely considered to be the true strengths of UC. But hey, again, I give you points for being consistent. You believe that the UC graduate programs are behaving incorrectly, despite the fact that their rankings are so high.

And let's not stop there. Let's look at the undergraduate programs at Berkeley vs. the other UC's. You say that it is the job of public schools to cater towards the lower socioeconomic rungs and to be less selective, all in the name of catering towards the public. OK, let's explore that. The Berkeley undergraduate program is far and away the most selective public undergraduate program in the entire state of California - only 24% of all applicants are accepted, and so 76% of all applicants are rejected. In other words, the ratio of rejected applicants to admitted applicants to the Berkeley undergraduate program is more than 3:1. Furthermore, if you look at the socioeconomic status of the average Berkeley undergraduate, you will almost certainly note that it is higher than the socioeconomic status of the average resident of California. So if you truly believe that it is the mission of a public school like Berkeley to offer wide access to education and to cater to the lower socioeconomic ranks, then you have to agree that even the Berkeley undergraduate program is behaving wrongly. Perhaps not as wrongly as the Berkeley graduate programs, but still wrongly. After all, if the Berkeley undergrad program is rejecting the vast majority of students who apply, most of which are residents of California, and if the bulk of Berkeley undergrads come from fairly privileged backgrounds, then you have to concede that the Berkeley undergraduate program is behaving wrongly. Are you prepared to concede that?

If so, then I would appreciate if you loudly and at every opportunity denounce the Berkeley undergraduate program for not fulfilling its public mission. Hey, if that's what you truly believe, then why hide your true face? Don't be shy. Don't be coy. Please tell us what you truly believe. Tell us that you think even the Berkeley undergrad program is wrong.

By Kryptic (Kryptic) on Sunday, September 12, 2004 - 05:05 am: Edit

I never specifically said that the job of a public school is to cater to lower socio-economic strata, all I said was that it should not implement policies that severely preclude access to these audiences. Requiring little Susie or Johnny to be class president, to have volunteered at a corporation, to be a concert pianist, etc. are all policies that tend to exclude people that are not part of the 'elite'.

I believe Berkeley's policy of looking more at academics than ECs enables this wider access. Although not every student may be able to afford cello lessons with Yo Yo Ma, diligent students of all levels have at least a fighting chance when it comes to their grades. With that said, though, I don't believe the process as it stands is perfect. Higher grades and higher SATs tend to still go towards members of the 'elite', and certainly it's hard to argue that the inner city schools are anything but a mockery compared with their suburban counterparts. An inner city child from a poor family can still succeed, if they try and are passionate, but it's certainly a more difficult process. This is why you do see a higher-than-average socio-economic background for Berkeley students.

The distinction in my reasoning, however, is that it's POSSIBLE for anyone to achieve the Berkeley goals. You could argue the same is true for Harvard applicants, but for reasons I believe I've enumerated, you still don't see as wide a representation of socio-economic classes on their campuses as you do at Berkeley. It is arbitrarily more difficult for someone from a lower strata to make it to Harvard, despite their efforts to excel at their academics. So yes, I commend Berkeley for serving the public as best they can, by setting achievable goals that are within reach of most intelligent and driven students. I also commend Berkeley for its outreach programs that seek to improve the quality of education in areas that are in dire need of attention. This is where the problems need to be fixed, to allow an even wider and more egalitarian representation at Berkeley.

What you're expecting me to say, however, is that the philosophies I've stated above should be extrapolated even further to say "well, why not let in anyone? Wouldn't Berkeley then be doing the best service by the most students?" I believe that the UC and CSU system has in place a framework that can embrace every student, regardless of ability. Within this spectrum, I fully support different schools having different target audiences. It's a matter of gradients, for me. We share that in our beliefs, it's just how we draw the lines where we differ. Berkeley is a top-tier school, a school which does not compromise its academics or the rigorousness of its preparation. Not every student can handle that and, as you've pointed out in the past, it doesn't do much service to anyone to admit students that are bound to fail. The difference in our ideologies, however, is that I believe in giving a wider-audience the benefit of the doubt. Set and communicate academic goals that, if they reach them, should allow them a spot to prove themselves at Berkeley. (as they've done, with the 'top 12.5%' rankings) With the current policy, the vast majority of students that are admitted to Berkeley end up graduating from Berkeley... so, obviously, they're able to cut it. A 15%-25% failure rate/drop-out rate is acceptable to me, because it means the school is giving a chance to people that are borderline. (My understanding is also that the students that DO fail out of Berkeley are not necessarily the ones that came into Berkeley with lower scores, or transferred in from a CC. The admissions office has clearly said that there no perceptible difference in rate of graduation or GPA for the latter, certainly. What I would change, however, is to make 'transferring out with dignity' from Berkeley a more viable path - so that these students could be sent to another UC or CSU that is less rigorous and still have a viable chance at succeeding in college. Implement watchdog policies, as they have with academic probation, that makes sure students are less likely to irreparably damage their standings.)

The state and public are well served, when as many people in the state have had a top-tier education as possible. This is what makes our country and our region competitive. The primary reason that the whole SV explosion happened here WAS the quality of our students and the education of our populace. If you look at where knowledge industries expand, it's almost always to regions with the most potential for finding a skilled workforce. If all we had in the area were schools like Stanford, turning out around 500 graduates a year, the region would never have been able to keep up with the demand for workers and it would effectively have limited any expansion that might have occurred here. The school has a responsibility to do whatever it can to increase the economic viability of the state. (in which, I could digress on the amount of money wasted on truly worthless programs that DON'T serve the state - but that's another thread.)

To basically summarize, I believe in a shotgun approach to admissions and education. Provide a fixed, top-level quality of education - never compromise the rigorousness of the material to accommodate lower-functioning students - and educate as many people as possible that can handle the pace. Don't select for people that are 'well rounded' or on any criteria other than 'is there at least a 75% chance that they'll succeed academically'. Provide a graceful exit for those students that DON'T succeed, so that they are not stigmatized or demoralized for life, and can go on to be viable members of society. These beliefs, which I feel Berkeley has done a decent job of mirroring (excepting the last bit), serve both the state and the students. Because of this, admission to Berkeley is an achievable goal, regardless of class, and I think that's one of the aspects of our institution that makes it so special.

By Sakky (Sakky) on Sunday, September 12, 2004 - 01:46 pm: Edit

Again, kryptic, I'm a fair guy, and I give you points for being consistent. So at least you are on record as disagreeing with the way that UC graduate-school admissions are being run. Most critics of UC take my stance - laud the graduate schools, criticize the undergraduate programs. You take the opposite stance - laud the undergraduate program, criticize the graduate schools. This despite the fact that in survey after survey, ranking after ranking, the UC graduate schools tend to outrank the undergraduate schools in almost every way. I would think that you'd want to emulate the winners and criticize the losers, not the other way around. But again, I give you points for being consistent, even if I emphatically disagree.

Yet I would still submit the following points:

*Berkeley still does not give everybody "a chance".

The fact is, again, Berkeley rejects far more applicants than it rejects, and in particular, it is still rather difficult for a person of low socioeconomic status to accumulate the academic record necessary to get admitted into Berkeley. You said it yourself - SAT scores, whether we're talking about SAT I's or SAT II's, tend to be skewed towards the rich, and so fewer of the poorer students are going to be able to get a high enough SAT score to win admission into Berkeley "by formula" (the Eligibility Index). Poor students might be able to get admission into the UC system purely by formula by scoring in the top 4% of their class, but certainly not into Berkeley specifically. And if you don't get into Berkeley strictly by formula, then you can get in through a comprehensive review of your application - but then that gets into things like being able to afford cello lessons with YoYo Ma or being class prez and all those kinds of things that are the province of the well-off.

Hence, let's not kid ourselves. Berkeley also looks deeply at EC's, SAT scores, and other things that are predominantly skewed towards the rich. True, Berkeley doesn't weight them as much as do the elite privates, but Berkeley weights them far far more heavily than the vast majority of private schools do. The Berkeley undergraduate program is therefore playing the same admissions game that all the private schools are doing, the difference is only in how much.

To say that "we serve the public because although we also cater towards the rich (through EC's and SAT scores), we just don't do it as much as Harvard does" is a rather weak argument to me. You're either catering towards the rich, or you're not. To say that you still do it, but you do it less than the other guy is like saying, that some guy murdered 10 people, and I'm only murdering 9, so I'm better than him. That's not exactly compelling logic.

So again, I ask - is the Berkeley undergraduate program really serving the public, the way you've defined it?

*Old Berkeley history.

For something like the first half of its existence, Berkeley practiced open admissions. That's right - if you wanted to go to Berkeley, you just showed up. Not only that, but I believe that tuition was either free or was nominal. Again, if you wanted to study to Berkeley, you just went, and you didn't worry very much about whether you could pay for it. Back then, Berkeley could truly be said to be serving the public.

Now we have the situation we have today where Berkeley is in fact a difficult school to get into and not exactly free of cost. And Berkeley will probably continue to become more difficult to get into and will probably cost more and more. Hence, my interpretation of these events is that Berkeley is truly "serving the public" less and less every year (using your definition of "serving the public". Is that a fair statement?


*Financial aid, the joker in the deck.

As I'm sure you know, FA plays a gigantic role in who gets to go to college and who doesn't. Depending on the income levels of the candidates, a private school might cost a lot, or cost nothing at all. I know quite a few people personally who told me that in the final analysis, it was far cheaper for them to go to Stanford than to go to Berkeley, even though all of them were California state residents. And in fact some of them told me that they really couldn't have afforded to attend Berkeley or any UC at all, so if it wasn't for Stanford, they would have had to go to community college or some other cheapo option.

The fact is, the private schools have far far more well-endowed FA offices and can afford to give lavish FA packages to those people who have no money. Depending on your socioeconomic status, these packages can range from discounts on your tuition to having a full ride of tuition, living costs, airfare back home, books, a computer, etc. etc., and the bulk of the aid skewed towards grants or work-study (but fewer loans, and sometimes no loans necessary). One girl I know actually said that by going to Stanford, she probably actually made money (!) because of the lavish FA package they gave her. And I'm sure you've heard of the new initiative of Harvard to guarantee full aid to anybody who comes from a family making less than 60k and full aid in the form of grants of anybody making less than 40k. California HS seniors of the future may well say that they really want to go to Berkeley, but they're just too poor and can't afford it, so they have to go to Harvard instead.

So when you look at it that way, who's really serving the underserved poor? Even if you're dirt-poor, Berkeley and the other UC's can and will stick you with bills than the privates often times do not. Don't you find it interesting that a poor Californian may find it cheaper to go to HYPSMC than to go to UC? That
doesn't exactly support your assertion that UC is really trying to expand the availability of education, now does it?

*The geo-economic "drivers" of higher education.

I have heard the arguments before that higher education provides a beneficial multiplier effect on the local economy. You spend money on higher education, and you get a whole bunch of educated people who will help your local economy. Graduates of a strong local public university tend to stay in the area and improve the economic vibrancy of the area. I've heard this argument used as a rationale for ever-increasing spending by states on public universities.

The problem is that it presumes that public schools are the only schools that contribute to the local economy, and private schools don't. Berkeley probably does contribute to the economy of the SF Bay Area by raising educational standards in that area. But doesn't Stanford do that also? After all, Stanford graduates tend to stay in the SF Bay Area too, and therefore tend to contribute to the local economy. In particular, the bulk of the evidence seems to indicate that Stanford has been at least as instrumental, and probably far more instrumental, than Berkeley has been in the creation of SV. Consider these quotes.

"Many people have attributed the success of the Valley primarily to the influence of nearby institutions of higher education, particularly Stanford University."

http://www.netvalley.com/archives/mirrors/sv&128.html

"The beginnings of the HP Way -- and of Silicon Valley -- can be traced to the years before World War II and directly to Stanford engineering professor Frederick Terman. It was the brilliant, driven, horn-rimmed Terman who envisioned not just a Western electronics industry, but a knowledge-based region centered around the University much the way earlier industrial regions had been built around coalfields or ports."

http://www.netvalley.com/archives/mirrors/stanford-magazine-founding_fathers.shtml


"In fact the basis of Silicon Valley started at Stanford University"

http://www.netvalley.com/archives/mirrors/london_svhistory.htm

"Much of what defines the electronics and computer industry at the beginning of the 21st century has been born in [Stanford] facilities: reduced instruction set computing, local-area networking and the beginnings of the Internet and World Wide Web, among others...From Stanford have come many of the engineers, computer scientists and executives who work at the tech com- panies that now dot land once dominated by farms, orange groves and wineries."

http://www.eetimes.com/special/special_issues/millennium/companies/stanford.html

"[Stanford head Frederick] Terman created an industrial park on 660 acres of Stanford's land where the land was leased to electronics and other high technology companies on long-term leases. Hewlett-Parkard and Varian Brothers were among the first tenants. This provided income to Stanford and created an agglomeration in high tech industry. At first industry came to Palo Alto to have access to the expertise at Stanford. Later the level of technical expertise in industry in the area exceeded the academic expertise of Stanford. At that point the electronic industry expanded to cities near to Palo Alto, first Mountain View and later Sunnyvale. "

http://www2.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/sivalley.htm

"Just before World War II, Terman decided to dedicate some of the unused land on the Stanford campus in Palo Alto to an industrial park, the first university-owned industrial park in the world. He encouraged two of his graduate students, William Hewlett and David Packard, to form a company and house it on campus. (Hewlett-Packard's first customer was Walt Disney, who needed electronic equipment to record the sound for the film Fantasia.) Other companies moved nearby and by the end of the war, the Stanford Industrial Park was thriving...Many of his gifted students went on to play key roles in the development of Silicon Valley. His industrial park is still the biggest and most successful in the world, in many ways the womb of Silicon Valley. "

http://www.pbs.org/transistor/album1/addlbios/terman.html

"Terman, a professor at Stanford University, decided that a vast area of unused Stanford land was perfect for real-estate development, and set up a program to encourage students to stay in the area by finding them venture capital. One of the major success stories of the program was that it convinced two students to stay in the area, William Hewlett and David Packard. Hewlett-Packard would go on to be one of the first "high tech" firms in the area that were not directly related to NASA or the US Navy.

In 1951 the program was again expanded with the creation of the Stanford Industrial Park, a series of small industrial buildings that were rented out at very low costs to technical companies. In 1954, the Honors Cooperative Program, today known as the co-op, was established to allow full-time employees of the companies to pursue graduate degrees from the University on a part-time basis. The initial companies signed five-year agreements in which they would pay double the tuition for each student in order to cover the costs. By the mid-1950s the infrastructure for what would later allow the creation of "the valley" was in a nascent stage due to Terman's efforts."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Valley


The point of all that was not to laud Stanford but to point out that Berkeley clearly cannot take all of even most of the credit for creating SV. I personally find it not a coincidence in the least that SV sprouted up in the South Bay, where Stanford is, and not in the East Bay, where Berkeley is. At the very minimum, half of the credit for creating SV has to go to Stanford, and in my opinion, the vast majority of the credit has to go to Stanford. But I think even the biggest Berkeley booster has to concede that at least half of the credit has to go to Stanford and that it would be most inappropriate indeed for Berkeley to claim all the credit.

Couple that with the fact that, you said it yourself in this very thread, of the top engineers and managers in SV, more of them tend to come from Stanford than from Berkeley. This despite the fact that Berkeley graduates far more students. I think we can all agree that Stanford has been at least as instrumental in creating SV as Berkeley has been, and almost certainly more so.

But that of course leads to a tremendous logical difficulty. If the purpose of funding public higher education is to improve the economy of the local area, then shouldn't the state of California be funding Stanford? After all, Stanford did play a huge role, and still does play a huge role, in building SV, which is the economic engine of Northern California. If you want to talk about the linkage between higher education and the local economy, I don't think you can find a more clear example of linkage than Stanford and SV. So if the purpose of public funding of higher education is to improve the local economy, then why should the state of California subsidize only those California state residents who go to Berkeley, and not those California state residents who go to Stanford? Why? After all, Stanford grads have been just as instrumental in building the local economy as Berkeley grads have, if not more so. It seems to me that this calls for a pure voucher system - if you're a California HS senior, then the state should give you a voucher to attend any school in the state that you want, whether it's a public school like Berkeley or a private school like Stanford.

Do you support this voucher idea? If not, then please tell me why you think that state spending on public schools like Berkeley is good because it improves the local economy, but state spending on private schools like Stanford is not good. Why?

In particular, I've heard your arguments before that California residents pay taxes into the public higher education system and therefore deserve cheap tuition at a public school. That's all fine and dandy. But tell me this. A family lives in California and pays California state taxes for many years, some of which goes towards supporting public higher education. Then the son matriculates at Stanford. Why should that family lose out on all those taxes that the family paid to support state higher education just because the son has decided to go to Stanford? Why? It seems to me that if the family paid into the system for the purposes of higher education, then the family should be allowed to get those payments back for the purposes of higher education. I thought the whole goal was to improve the local economy by improving the educational level of the population. Well, the guy is going to Stanford, so clearly he's going to contribute to the overall level of education. So why shouldn't he get something out of all those taxes his family paid? Why not? I'd really like to hear the answer.

By Kryptic (Kryptic) on Sunday, September 12, 2004 - 02:55 pm: Edit

I never claimed that I thought Berkeley was solely responsible for the SV boom - clearly, Stanford was the initial driving force. (In fact, I've never said anything bad about Stanford or disparaged their contribution in any way - my disagreement with them is just over their elitist admissions policy) However, as the valley expanded, the need for these incubators to hire non-founder talent also rose. Although Stanford graduates may have made up many of the initial workers, graduates from other schools in region (e.g. Berkeley) clearly contributed to the availability of local resources. Without Berkeley, I don't think the initial flash of SV would ever have made it to the boom that it ended up being. Having worked at Intel for a number of years, their expansion policy clearly favors locating in areas with a high educational index - one of their first areas of expansion, outside of SV, was to Portland, OR. The reason for that was multifold, with it being a) affordable, b) a short jet flight away, and c) one of the most educated areas in the region that satisfied A and B. There's a reason you don't see 10,000 Intel employees in Redding - they lack the educational infrastructure to support the job demand.

As for public funding for private institutions, you're asking the wrong person. I'm a socialist at heart, and I'd love nothing more than for the government to take over these institutions. =) But yes, Stanford does benefit the economy. The state reaps the benefit from this 'free rider' situation and, just like you can't get away with paying for park maintence through "park maintenance" utility bills, the state doesn't really need to subsidize Stanford for its contributions. That would be a waste of money, clearly not in the public's interest.

With respect to the voucher idea, I don't necessarily support it, but my opposition to it isn't strong, either. The point of disagreement is more economical than philosophical. The UC system has a higher percentage of students that come from, and stay in, the state than places like Stanford. The money that goes INTO Berkeley tends to STAY in the region, and recontribute to the economy. Voucher money that goes with a student at Stanford is likely to be spent on infrastructure that benefits all students, of which a lower % of them will serve the economic interests of California later on. Thus, the net gain for a voucher sent to UC benefits the economy more than a voucher sent to Stanford. Were Stanford to focus primarily on CA residents, were they to have a policy such that 'profits' didn't leave the state, I wouldn't necessarily disagree with a voucher. I still think there are economic arguments against it (as enumerated below), but I could be convinced. As you said, it ultimately doesn't matter where someone is educated - if they receive a top education and stay in the state, that serves the public's interests. However, that is much more an explicit goal at UC than it is at Stanford.

As for your last argument, you have to look at where we are today (and not the criteria outlined above) - people aren't paying taxes necessarily to fund their children's education, they're paying for a service that supports the economy and social welfare. People that never have kids still pay taxes for education and, aside from a few extremists, most people understand why and don't complain. If a family chooses to send their child to Stanford, then they get a lower return on their tax investment. Sorry, their decision to forgoe these benefits, and I have no sympathy for them. Their taxes go into a system that helps insure that CA stays a viable market for new jobs, helps increase the quality of life, helps make discoveries that might benefit humanity, and so on. Indirectly, it also helps lower crime and lessen poverty (quality of life issues) - when more people have a higher education, both vectors drop. Whether you have kids or not, whether they go to a public school or not, you are directly and indirectly reaping gains by having a top quality public institution in your region and state. Stanford has no moral compass that tells them to be concerned over issues like these, no moral compass that tells them they should open a campus in a far region of the state to serve those students, no moral compass that they need to give anything back to our social environment. Sure, they MAY work on these issues, because they have decent people there, but it's not necessarily part of a charter for a private school. They can do whatever they want. Sorry, but your taxes aren't a form of 401k for your child's education.

By Sakky (Sakky) on Sunday, September 12, 2004 - 09:28 pm: Edit

That still leaves open several points of contention, which I will spell out.

*Elitism of Stanford vs. Berkeley

I still find it tremendously interesting that you would accuse Stanford or Harvard of running elitist admissions policies, when the fact is, Berkeley also runs an admission policy that could easily be described as elitist, even for its undergrad program. Sure, maybe it's not as elitist as that of Stanford's or Harvard's, but we're really talking about different shades of black, now aren't we? Maybe Stanford is more 'elitist' (the way you have defined that word) than Berkeley, but then again I could turn around and say that Berkeley is more elitist than the vast majority of other schools out there. Berkeley is clearly far far more elitist in its admissions than, say, Mills College is or the University of San Francisco is.

So we have a Berkeley alum calling Stanford elitist. Pot, meet kettle. Sure, maybe the kettle is blacker than the pot, but they're still both black. Either you're elitist, or you're not. To say that you're elitist, but not as elitist as the other guy, is not exactly the world's most compelling argument.

Again, for those of you who really feel that the Berkeley undergraduate admissions process is not elitist, tell that to the 75% of all applicants who got rejected.

*Your "free-rider scenario"

It is true that the state of California could be said to be benefitting as a free-rider from Stanford's excellance, and the state clearly doesn't have to pay for those benefits. But that's not the point. My point is that it is entirely possible that California could be even stronger and more economically advanced had it helped Stanford financially. For example, if the state had contributed money to Stanford during the beginning of SV, maybe SV would be even more powerful than it is today.

The point is this. You and I have heard the arguments that the public ought to, through taxation, fund public higher education because higher education benefits the economy by increasing the education of the people. I have heard many Chancellors and Presidents of public universities use that as an appeal for more funding. The problem with that argument is that the benefits of higher education are not specific only to public universities. Where is it written that only public universities contribute to the local economy? Clearly private universities also contribute to the local economy - look at what Stanford has done with the South Bay. So if you truly and honestly believe that higher education ought to be funded with taxes because of the economic benefits that accrue to the region, then fine, you should then support funding of all local universities, both public and private.


*"Free-rider" part 2

Your analysis of the free-rider scenario also leads to another problematic issue. You and I both said it - if a person gets educated anywhere and then returns to the state, then that helps the state. I also don't see why it's important for that person to have been raised in the state (except for the purposes of taxes paid into the system by that person) - if a person is raised in New York, goes to college in California and then stays in California to work, I think we would both agree that that contributes to California.

Looked at that way, I think you should then support the voucher idea for Stanford, for the following reason. It is true that Stanford draws from a nationwide applicant pool far more greatly than UC does. On the other hand, Stanford graduates tend to work in california much more so than do graduates of HYPM do. Hence, Stanford is one of the key draws in pulling the best minds in the nation, and also the world, to California. Without Stanford, California would have far more difficulty in pulling those top-notch people into the state. Hence, vouchers should be then given to Stanford students if those students agree to stay in California to work, which most will do. Maybe not as many Stanford graduates will stay in the state relative to UC graduates, but clearly far more than the other top privates.

Again, let me put it to you this way. Some brilliant new hotshot academic superstar who was raised in the East Coast is looking at colleges, and unbeknownst to anybody, in 20 years, this guy is going to found the next great superstar tech company. This guy is good enough to get into Harvard, Yale, MIT, and all the other top East Coast schools. Do you want him to stay on the East Coast for school, or would you like to try to entice him into California? I think we would agree that it would be good to try to entice him into California, and admission to Stanford would be the way to do it. Berkeley is clearly not good enough. He's going to look at Berkeley, and ask why exactly should he turn down Harvard for Berkeley (and I think we'd agree very few people are going to turn down Harvard College for the Berkeley undergraduate program). But Stanford might make him think twice. In fact, Stanford is probably the only chance to get that guy into California.

So consider this situation - if you go to Stanford or any California school but then upon graduation stay in California to work for X number of years, then the state of California will pay for all your tuition. By doing that, you would clearly be making California more desirable as a place to study and work, which would benefit the state economy. How about them apples?

*Finally, your holistic way of looking at the connection between education and the economy is really not that simple.

You keep repeating the mantra that public schools are funded to help the economy. Yet we both know that when it comes to the UC system, and Berkeley in particular, lots and lots of activities happen that don't have much to do with the economy. For example, I think we'd both agree that there are quite a few degree programs in subjects that are, quite frankly, bullshi*. And there are thousands upon thousands of UC students studying subjects that are of at best marginal economic value. So if you believe that the purpose of higher education is to help the economy, then public universities should only be running academic programs that provide a high economic rate of return. Again, I'm not going to name exactly which academic programs I'm talking about, but we all know which ones they are. So you would have to agree with me that those programs should be shut down at once.

Your connection between education and crime is also quite complicated. Not that I want to bring geopolitics into the equation, but the fact is, most political upheaval and political violence is actually created by educated people -people who have an education but are frustrated by their of opportunities to apply their education. I would proffer the 9/11 hijackers, most of whom were quite well educated.

To me, it's actually unclear whether education decreases violence, crime, and other negative behavior. In certain situations, I would actually argue that education actually creates violence and crime, again, look at the 9/11 hijackers. I would also point to the spectacle of highly educated young people in Europe whose rate of unemployment is higher than that of uneducated young people in Europe. These educated young Europeans complain there are no jobs and yet those countries continue to import people from the Middle East to work at jobs that supposedly don't exist. So we have a situation where education is actually a "social bad", not a social good, because educating those people causes those people to consider a wider range of jobs to be beneath them.

It depends on the type of education you're talking about. When the education clearly has use within the economy, then one could say that that education is a social good. But when the education has little or no worth in the economy, but merely contributes only to a person not wanting to take certain jobs, then it's a social bad.

I think back to a guy I know who had no problem working all kinds of low-end jobs - pizza delivery, waiting tables, etc. etc. - to put himself through college, but now that he's graduated, he now thinks he's "too good" for those kinds of jobs, and so now he's moved back with his parents and hasn't worked in months. It's not that there are no jobs, because clearly he could go back to delivering pizzas which is what he had been doing not that long ago. The problem is that his education was in one of those not-so-useful subjects and so his value in the market has not been enhanced very much, yet his personal attitudes towards work have changed greatly upon graduation.

But that only goes to demonstrate that public universities should not be running those kinds of not-so-useful academic programs, right? Again, if the point of funding public higher education is to improve the economy, and to reduce crime or other nihilistic behavior, then only those academic programs that really do help the economy at a high rate of return and really do decrease nihilistic behavior should be funded, right? Those other programs that contribute little to the economy and/or actually encourage nihilism should be left to wither on the vine, right?

By Kryptic (Kryptic) on Sunday, September 12, 2004 - 11:14 pm: Edit

Again, our differences over the distinction between the elitism of Stanford and the elitism of Berkeley lies at the heart of our disagreement. You postulate that any form of rejection is elitist, whereas I postulate that rejection is fine - if it's not for lacking traits that overwhelmingly favor an elite class. I have no problem turning away 76% of students, if they're being turned away because they do not have the academic preparation necessary for Berkeley. Although such preparation is admittedly harder for those at a lower socio-economic stratum, it's still achievable. It's the difference, to me, between a job candidate being turned down because they were black or being turned down because they didn't have a college degree. One is an ascribed status, one is an earned status. You can enact programs to help people in K-12 to become better prepared academically, you can't do much to help them shift their class.

As for the continued claim that I should support financing private institutions, I believe I addressed that sufficiently in the previous message. It's a matter of intended goals and relative percentages. I would not necessarily oppose your plan of having binding contracts for out-of-state 'top' transplants where some percentage of tuition could be compensated for. Perhaps allow them in-state rates at UC if they agree to stay in the state for 5 years after graduation, whatever. It's patently illegal, I suspect, but not a bad idea. Unfortunately, the earning potential of graduates tends to be significantly lower post-graduation than further down their career. You would only implement such a policy with the hopes that "if they have to stay for five years, maybe they'll be more likely to stay longer". The overall economic costs and benefits would have to be charted in greater detail. The difference between this and a voucher program, however, is that with a voucher program there is no commitment and those students at private schools are probably less likely to stay in CA than those that go to a UC school.

The link between crime and education I think is much more obvious than you're insinuating. Sure, massive scale crimes tend to be committed by educated individuals - but the vast majority of crime (in terms of # of incidents and perceived influence on quality of life) is still committed mostly by poorly educated individuals. We can bring in white collar crime, which tends to have a higher total societal cost - and, god knows, I think the lack of enforcement here is a travesty - but most people would agree that living next to Ken Lay is a decidedly different situation than living next to the Blood's headquarters down in West Oakland.

I would agree that some of the creampuff majors that the UC and CSU systems offer are categorically a waste of state resources. Although I might be more liberal in accepting borderline cases, our list of such majors is probably not too dissimilar. I think the school should immediately stop offering some of these programs. Not only would it help the state economically - realistically, it'd also help the students. Take a look at the 'what can I do with this major', where they have salary surveys based on major, and it's really sad to see that so many people chose majors where their annual salary is unlikely to exceed ~$25k/yr (dollar adjusted). People graduating from Berkeley should be able to manage, at least on average, something greater than the poverty level. Offer these programs at the private schools, where endowments and student tuition pay them - but don't waste our resources at public schools. The money they put into "Art History", for example, could go towards upgrading equipment in the CoE. So if you're looking for one area that I can vociferously decry as a weakness of Berkeley's undergraduate education, this is one of those areas. Unfortunately, it's a weakness shared by every school in the nation. A weakness that, also unfortunately, whenever the school has tried to rectify, massive student protests and NIMBYism cripple the school's efforts. God knows, if they tried to curtail the Peace and Conflict Studies program, there would be candle light vigils and hunger strikes...

By Sakky (Sakky) on Saturday, September 18, 2004 - 03:47 pm: Edit

Once again, let me say that while we disagree on quite a few issues, I respect you tremendously for being consistent in your arguments, which is far more than I can say for a lot of my detractors.

Not to beat a dead horse, but to revisit the notion of elitism, surely you must grant me that Berkeley does indeed reject quite a few people for reasons that have nothing to do with pure academics. Again, the comprehensive admissions policies means that people are getting into Berkeley because they have lots of EC's or all that stuff that you despise as elitism. The fact is, Berkeley is indeed rejecting boatloads of students for qualifications that are highly disproportinate among the upper-class. For example, standardized test scores like the SAT-1, SAT-2's, and ACT's tend to be dominated by the upper-class, yet those scores are part and parcel of the UC formula. Furthermore, being first-violin in orchestra or taking architecture classes under I.M. Pei are things that can tip your admissions into Berkeley, but yet again, these are attributes that are disproportionately held by the rich.

Hence, the point is that Berkeley is no "saint" when it comes to admissions. Berkeley's admission many times hinge on attributes that you must concede are not academic (the way you define "academic"). Sure, maybe Berkeley's admissions don't hinge upon those factors as much as Stanford's do, but they still hinge on them. So, again, for a Berkeley graduate to say that Stanford admissions are elitist is a case of the pot and the kettle. "I'm elitist, but I'm just not as elitist as you are". That's not exactly the most compelling argument in the world.

The only way for Berkeley to divest itself of 'eliteness' would be to enact an admissions policy that dealt only with purely academic criteria. So EC's wouldn't matter. Standardized tests wouldn't matter. And Berkeley would simply skim from the top - take the top X people with the best academic criteria. In essence, you wouldn't even need an admissions committee - all admisssions could be done by a computer. But we both know that Berkeley doesn't do that, and never will. Hence, Berkeley's admissions are elitist because they do take into account those factors that you despise and has and will reject candidates who don't have those factors. Hence, Berkeley is elitist. Maybe not quite as elitist as Stanford, but more elitist than the vast majority of other schools out there.

The point that I was making about nihilistic behavior was not about crime per se, but about all antisocial and negative behavior, particularly laziness and sloth. I agree with you that education does play a role in reducing crime, although I question exactly how much of a role, and in particular, I question how much does higher education contribute to lowering crime (I suspect that education up to the high school level does reduce crime substantially, but beyond the high school level, I believe the gains are minor). But my point is that while higher education may reduce crime, albiet slightly, my point is that higher education, particularly certain kinds of not-so-useful higher education, actually serves to increase unemployment and downright laziness by encouraging people to believe that a wider range of jobs are now beneath them. Again, I point to the example of the guy who had no problem taking on a wide range of mundane jobs to put himself through school, but now that he's graduated, won't take those jobs any more because he's "too good for them".

Lest you think that this is a one-off situation, take a look at the unemployment rates of young, college-educated people in Europe. The unemployment rate for them is substantially higher than for the young, uneducated people in the same country. How is that possible, if education is supposed to improve one's value in the marketplace? An educated worker is supposed to be more valuable than an uneducated worker, right? The answer is that while higher education itself may make you a better worker, what makes you less valuable is the personal attitudes and behaviors that the higher education creates in a person. Simply put, college-educated people don't want to do certain jobs, and many of them would rather take no job than take a job that is an affront to their perceived dignity, whereas uneducated workers are not encumbered by notions of pride and will therefore take those "prideless" jobs. For reasons of pride, hence, educated workers become less valuable in the marketplace. Whether the benefits of higher education outweigh the drawbacks is, as Sowell would say, an empirical question.

As a sidebar, I think that calls for an interesting social-science study. We've all heard of the positive aspects of education, in particular towards making oneself more marketable for jobs. In short, we've all heard the mantra that more education = more earning potential. However, I am not aware of anybody who has seriously studied the negative aspects of education, in particular, the change of personal attitudes that higher education engenders, which cause people who are educated to consider certain jobs to now be beneath them. We all know it exists - for example, we all know a college educated person who would rather take no job and simply live off of handouts from parents and friends, or even go on the dole, rather than go out and get a job that is below his dignity - yet I don't know anybody who's seriously studying this phenomenom.

However, on your last paragraph, I'm sure you'd anticipate that there is no daylight between you and I. We completely agree on this issue. Berkeley, and the other public schools, should not be teaching certain subjects. They are a ridiculous waste of resources. It is ludicrous that at a time when UC is undergoing a budget crisis, UC still pours money into these kinds of programs.

I would add this, however. I don't advocate totally cutting these programs off. Even I recognize that these programs can sometimes be useful. There really are some people who are truly interested in those subjects and I don't necessarily object to those people being allowed to study them. The real problem is that, let's be perfectly honest, a lot of people who are in those majors aren't in them because they are truly interested in the major. Let's face facts. They're there because, quite frankly, they simply couldn't handle one of the tougher majors. They're not smart enough, they don't want to work hard, whatever. That's what I find to be egregious. These are guys who are in the major just because it's easy. You must agree with me that California is wasting a tremendous amount of money in providing spaces for these guys who are in those majors not because they really want to learn the material, but just because those majors are easy. In effect, California is subsidizing laziness and sloth. That's egregious. If you want to get into a major just because it's easy, where you don't really have to do very much, so that you have time to screw around and party and watch TV all day long, that's fine, but why should taxpayer money go towards paying for it?

I think the guys who get the worst deal in it all are those guys who really truly are interested in those majors because they love the material. Everybody thinks that they're in the major because they're lazy and they couldn't handle a tougher major, and the reason why everybody thinks that is because there really are a lot of guys in the major who truly are there because they're lazy. So those guys who truly want to study the major get screwed over because of the guilt-by-association. In short, those lazy guys make everybody in the major look bad.

And I think that goes a long way towards explaining why those majors don't make a lot of money, on average. The fact is, those majors are filled with lots of guys who don't really want to work hard, don't really want to study, who don't really want to learn anything. In short, a lot of guys there have poor attitudes and work habits. Is it any wonder that these guys aren't able to secure high-paying jobs? Is it any wonder that these guys pull down the average salaries on graduates in those majors?

Case in point - consider the physics major. Physics undergrad majors make pretty good money, on average. But why? There aren't exactly a huge number of obvious jobs for people with bachelor's degrees in physics. Most real physicist jobs require a PhD. Same is true of undergrad math majors - not a whole lot of obvious jobs for them, yet they make good money on average. Again, why? Simple. Physics and math undergrads are known to work hard, and therefore tend to be snapped up by high-paying investment banks and consulting companies, despite the fact that these kinds of jobs have little to do with physics or math (in my opinion, banking and consulting have far far more to do with psychology and sociology than math, and certainly more than physics). Yet graduates of those creampuff majors are not exactly known to be hard-working, so Ibanks and consulting companies don't really come calling. Yes, some of those guys end up working for banks and consulting, but not a lot. To get in the door, they have to fight the perception that they chose those majors because they weren't good enough to study anything else. And the reason that that perception exists in the first place is because there really are a lot of guys who are in those majors because they really aren't good enough to major in anything else. To repeat, those guys ruin it for everybody else.

But the bottom line is this. The state should not be subsidizing people who want to study a major just because it's easy. If you want to do that, you should do it on your own dime. Sadly, campus politics would never let us change anything.