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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]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. [/quote]

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. [/quote]

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

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.[/quote]
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.[/quote]

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

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