Is what every says about Cal Berkeley true?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:OP do you know of top STEM schools that are happy collaborative places with hand holding? Cal is great but you have to be self motivated in your studies. DH thought it was a fun place too. Made enduring friendships

I'm OP so thought I would respond. DC is not looking for handholding, but would prefer a strong STEM college without a toxic, cutthroat culture. We constantly hear that kids should look for fit; is there not a college well-fitted for strong STEM kids yet is also collaborative? or is enduring mental health issues and the Hunger game a requirement to pursue STEM?
MIT fits your bill

It does, but their child isn't likely to get into MIT because nobody is likely to get into MIT except for a few award winners and recruited athletes (who have the same academic stats as everyone else at MIT).

Rice and Carnegie Mellon are reportedly rigorous and collaborative.

I heard CMU was cut throat.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I don’t know why but Cal really embraces undergraduate kids who are willing to do anything to succeed. Cheating and sabotage have risen to a level of sophistication and pervasiveness across some largely represented groups that it isn’t the same place it used to be. Stress and depression is common with kids who don’t cheat and simply can’t compete by breaking the rules. If Cal removed the unethical students but kept the same level of rigor, students would bond more over failing together. Instead, they become isolated.

It’s sad because you grow and learn more by being challenged to failure. However, you can’t do that anymore.

huh?

They are talking about rampant cheating by Asian students. Pretty well known.

Asiana make up 40% of Harvard and other elite institutions so is this cheating only at Cal or also at other top schools as well. Somehow the biggest scammers like Trump, SBF and Holmes seem to not be Asians.

I have no idea whether Harvard turns a blind eye to cheating and sabotage the way Cal does. At Cal it is particularly bad because you have a much larger population of international Asian students and Asian American students whose families are still connected to their home countries. Cheating is not seen as immoral or unethical in several of these countries. If you can’t earn a A you are expected to cheat to get a A. Kids across cultures will be tempted to cheat but the Asian cultures support it at the family level. Large industries exist in their home countries to enable the cheating. The faculty do not like this at all but what can they do? Classes are large, the cheating methods are sophisticated, they can’t kick out a third of the class, and TAs are spread too thin to deal with this.

Years ago it used to really just be pre meds sabotaging each other’s labs but it happens pretty frequently in engineering too. The deflationary curve, coupled with cheating, makes kids desperate. Cal doesn’t really do anything about it either. The attitude is more you should never take your eyes off your lab or walk away from your screen.

When DCUM becomes Stormfront . . . . Take your racist jackassery elsewhere, my dude.

A few years ago UCLA publicly broke up a Chinese cheating ring. The LSAT is suspending giving the exam on mainland China due to many students with perfect LSAT scores arriving at top schools with very low English skills.

If you have any connection to current faculty or students at Cal, you’d know it is a reality.

Do you have a link to a reputable site for that story?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I advise students and had a client hire me to transfer out of Berkeley; they found it too intense, not fun, did not find their people, and wanted a more traditional college experience.

Fernando Mendoza??

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Depends on the major.

As an engineering major? Yes. It was brutal. I have never heard of anyone's tests getting curved down before because the competition was so fierce. My freshman calculus class, 10% of the class got 100 on the first exam, so a 99% was a B due to the curve. My C+ became an F. It was insanely hard.

This was 20 years ago, but math classes were so overenrolled, if you didn't get to class 20 minutes early, there wasn't a seat in the 500 person lecture hall and you had to watch the video of the lecture from a satellite location. It was not fun.

My elective classes weren't bad though. Anything humanities was fun.

Berkeley removed from my list. ~35000 undergraduate students!!!!! It’s a joke

As are most public flagships. Maryland, Michigan, Arizona, Virginia, Penn State, Ohio State.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Depends on the major.

As an engineering major? Yes. It was brutal. I have never heard of anyone's tests getting curved down before because the competition was so fierce. My freshman calculus class, 10% of the class got 100 on the first exam, so a 99% was a B due to the curve. My C+ became an F. It was insanely hard.

This was 20 years ago, but math classes were so overenrolled, if you didn't get to class 20 minutes early, there wasn't a seat in the 500 person lecture hall and you had to watch the video of the lecture from a satellite location. It was not fun.

My elective classes weren't bad though. Anything humanities was fun.

Berkeley removed from my list. ~35000 undergraduate students!!!!! It’s a joke

It sounds like public universities are not for you (or your child?). Great. Move along.

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I advise students and had a client hire me to transfer out of Berkeley; they found it too intense, not fun, did not find their people, and wanted a more traditional college experience.

Fernando Mendoza??

Mendoza never had any issues completing his degree in three years from Berkeley before transferring to Indiana. He thanked the school and coaches for encouraging him finish his degree.

[Anonymous]

OP, are you OOS? You know it’s virtually impossible to get in from OOS at less than 10%

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Depends on the major.

As an engineering major? Yes. It was brutal. I have never heard of anyone's tests getting curved down before because the competition was so fierce. My freshman calculus class, 10% of the class got 100 on the first exam, so a 99% was a B due to the curve. My C+ became an F. It was insanely hard.

This was 20 years ago, but math classes were so overenrolled, if you didn't get to class 20 minutes early, there wasn't a seat in the 500 person lecture hall and you had to watch the video of the lecture from a satellite location. It was not fun.

My elective classes weren't bad though. Anything humanities was fun.

Berkeley removed from my list. ~35000 undergraduate students!!!!! It’s a joke

As are most public flagships. Maryland, Michigan, Arizona, Virginia, Penn State, Ohio State.

Actually, UVA is about half that size—18,000.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, are you OOS? You know it’s virtually impossible to get in from OOS at less than 10%

That’s the same admit rate as in-state

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Outside of STEM, it’s way more collaborative.

Yes, they collaborate on protesting against all sorts of things.

[Anonymous]

Read a few more comments that were posted in the SF forum re: UCs
https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/1140686.page

[Anonymous]

Here is one comparing HYP to Berkeley
https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/1282894.page

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I advise students and had a client hire me to transfer out of Berkeley; they found it too intense, not fun, did not find their people, and wanted a more traditional college experience.

Fernando Mendoza??

Mendoza never had any issues completing his degree in three years from Berkeley before transferring to Indiana. He thanked the school and coaches for encouraging him finish his degree.

He didn't really transfer, he graduated Berkeley and when to Indiana for his MBA

[Anonymous]

I went to Cal a while back. Even before the test blind era, they admitted a heap of very unprepared kids, either as transfers from community colleges or as freshmen from sub-standard high schools. For these kids, Cal could be cut-throat and you had to work hard to make up for your inadequate background, as it didn’t dump down the weeder classes! But if you’re prepared, college at Cal or HYP (where I also had experience) should be fairly easy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I went to Cal a while back. Even before the test blind era, they admitted a heap of very unprepared kids, either as transfers from community colleges or as freshmen from sub-standard high schools. For these kids, Cal could be cut-throat and you had to work hard to make up for your inadequate background, as it didn’t dump down the weeder classes! But if you’re prepared, college at Cal or HYP (where I also had experience) should be fairly easy.

I was chatting with a professor who moved from HYP to Cal then. He thought some of the kids at Cal were so behind that they shouldn’t have been admitted in the first place. Surprisingly, he thought the average student at Cal was a bit better than the average at the HYP where he used to be a faculty, due to those admitted purely with $$$ at that HYP. Go figure!