Is what every says about Cal Berkeley true?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My DS is a math and humanities major. The math classes were brutally tough and like another person mentioned DS was shocked to get his first C+ but has now learned to do better. The choices in math classes are amazing. The history classes are also a lot of work but getting As is not as difficult. Overall, he has learned to adapt and hustle and has had great internships every summer through friend referrals. He even found a 5-week internship at a startup for winter break. He is a very adaptable kid and is fine with large settings so that may have helped. After freshman year, he found his own housing.

It sounds like your child is the type of self-starter who can do well there. Congrats, they should do well wherever they go. There are many very bright people there and the very self-reliant can learn alot. But, that is very different from receiving an 'elite' education. It is making the most of a fast-paced factory education.

Not PP. Pretty sure the history proseminars or taking econ classes with Bates Clark/Nobel winners aren’t a “factory education.”

The point is those opportunities don't really happen though people like to tell themselves otherwise.

A Nobel winning economist at UCB (or anywhere else) will rarely (read virtually never) teach an undergraduate course. It is a waste of their time which is a valuable resource.

I have a close friend who is a full professor at Stanford who very matter of factly states that he hasn't taught an undergraduate class in over 20 years and that it would be a waste of his time and Stanford's money for him to do so. The same factors come into play at any top research university. UCB is a great grad school but nothing special for undergraduate studies.

There's a lot of top faculty at all of these schools teaching undergraduate courses. Shankar is still teaching undergraduate physics, so is Susskind and Alex Fillipenko, Hitoshi Murayama, and Saul Perlmutter are consistently teaching undergraduate students at Berkeley. The idea that these people never touch undergrads is...well, wrong.

I took an intro astronomy class taught by Alex Filippenko in the late 90s - he was a great lecturer and very popular.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Go to a community college in California for a year. Get all As, and the door can be walked through---if you have strong high school stats in the background. While at it, get a CA driver's license, a job to pay state taxes, and register your car in CA and vote when you can.

Sort of....pretty straightforward to transfer into many majors but not into impacted majors. Same 2-3% admissions rate into CS coming from the CC system so no real advantage.

[Anonymous]

To establish California residency, a student would have to prove financial independence for the past year. Which would be pretty difficult considering the high COL.

Bay Area cheating culture (especially among Asians) is extreme and there is a lot of carry over at Berkeley, as there are tons of students from the Bay Area.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Go to a community college in California for a year. Get all As, and the door can be walked through---if you have strong high school stats in the background. While at it, get a CA driver's license, a job to pay state taxes, and register your car in CA and vote when you can.

You can’t do that direct as a non-resident- you must establish residency for one year first

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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

Harvey Mudd, MIT, Brown (yes, it's a top STEM school), Rice

Are these school comparable to Cal in respectability among grad school admissions officers and STEM employers? Obviously MIT is but how about the other 3 listed here?

Yes. But Berkeley does have a location advantage for CS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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?

Hi OP. I’ve only scanned the above so you may addressed. Are you in-state CA? If not do you even know if your kid can get in OOS to Cal? It’s a tough admit for OOS -that may make your next move on the decision tree much easier.

OP here, thanks for asking. Cal accepts 1-3 kids each year from DC’s school. It’s not a large class (about 100) and DC has stats higher than those who were accepted. Typically our top 10% kids don’t apply to Cal; they almost always apply SCEA/ED to T20 and many get in (schools gets 25% into T20). Of course we know it’s a long shot for everyone OOS but DC is top 5-8% of her class and is very interested in Cal as a science major (not engineering). DC is a junior and we’re in east coast so debating if we should book travel to tour Cal.

Thanks for responding. Sounds like a go, then. And you know it’s $83,000 a year? … plus you have to add for airfare going back and forth to set up and for graduation, vacations, etc. it does add up. Also, is your DC comfortable going to a school that large? Best of luck! Oh, yes, check into the housing problems mentioned above.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My DS is a math and humanities major. The math classes were brutally tough and like another person mentioned DS was shocked to get his first C+ but has now learned to do better. The choices in math classes are amazing. The history classes are also a lot of work but getting As is not as difficult. Overall, he has learned to adapt and hustle and has had great internships every summer through friend referrals. He even found a 5-week internship at a startup for winter break. He is a very adaptable kid and is fine with large settings so that may have helped. After freshman year, he found his own housing.

It sounds like your child is the type of self-starter who can do well there. Congrats, they should do well wherever they go. There are many very bright people there and the very self-reliant can learn alot. But, that is very different from receiving an 'elite' education. It is making the most of a fast-paced factory education.

Not PP. Pretty sure the history proseminars or taking econ classes with Bates Clark/Nobel winners aren’t a “factory education.”

The point is those opportunities don't really happen though people like to tell themselves otherwise.

A Nobel winning economist at UCB (or anywhere else) will rarely (read virtually never) teach an undergraduate course. It is a waste of their time which is a valuable resource.

I have a close friend who is a full professor at Stanford who very matter of factly states that he hasn't taught an undergraduate class in over 20 years and that it would be a waste of his time and Stanford's money for him to do so. The same factors come into play at any top research university. UCB is a great grad school but nothing special for undergraduate studies.

There's a lot of top faculty at all of these schools teaching undergraduate courses. Shankar is still teaching undergraduate physics, so is Susskind and Alex Fillipenko, Hitoshi Murayama, and Saul Perlmutter are consistently teaching undergraduate students at Berkeley. The idea that these people never touch undergrads is...well, wrong.

Shnkar does teach undergrads physics... at Yale. So I guess the moral of the story is to go to Yale.

[Anonymous]

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

[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

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

[Anonymous]

Cheating in HS in Silicon Valley is rampant. Lots of parents there will not tolerate a B from their HS student. Suicide rates among HS students are higher than many parts of the US as another consequence of parental pressure. It is tragic really.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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?

Hi OP. I’ve only scanned the above so you may addressed. Are you in-state CA? If not do you even know if your kid can get in OOS to Cal? It’s a tough admit for OOS -that may make your next move on the decision tree much easier.

OP here, thanks for asking. Cal accepts 1-3 kids each year from DC’s school. It’s not a large class (about 100) and DC has stats higher than those who were accepted. Typically our top 10% kids don’t apply to Cal; they almost always apply SCEA/ED to T20 and many get in (schools gets 25% into T20). Of course we know it’s a long shot for everyone OOS but DC is top 5-8% of her class and is very interested in Cal as a science major (not engineering). DC is a junior and we’re in east coast so debating if we should book travel to tour Cal.

Thanks for responding. Sounds like a go, then. And you know it’s $83,000 a year? … plus you have to add for airfare going back and forth to set up and for graduation, vacations, etc. it does add up. Also, is your DC comfortable going to a school that large? Best of luck! Oh, yes, check into the housing problems mentioned above.

If you can afford $83,000/ year, you can afford a few flights to SFO.