Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Don’t confuse being competitive due to a lot of in state residents wanting a tuition discount, with actually providing a good product. This school is getting the bargain shoppers.

+1 you get what you pay for

For most people, HYP is cheaper than UCB.

Anonymous wrote:Don’t confuse being competitive due to a lot of in state residents wanting a tuition discount, with actually providing a good product. This school is getting the bargain shoppers.

+1 you get what you pay for

I did my graduate work at Berkeley and an undergrad at Harvard.

Both schools have strong students and lots of Nobel laureates. Both schools are very attractive to top scholars, and by poaching established academics, you tend to get strong lecturers. Both use the teaching model of having professors lecture and grad students teach labs and discussion sections.

Berkeley OOS isn't that much cheaper than an Ivy. The main reason for this is the cost of housing. The difficulties with housing are a major reason to opt for HYP. If your kid has to cram into an off campus apartment, make all of their meals, and take a complicated transit route to school, it can be a major distraction. The difficulty in getting courses, or any other resources, can be substantial. The Nobel laureates at both places have office hours, but the ones at Berkeley have a line outside their offices.

However, Berkeley has the weather (which is a major draw for the top scholars). It also has the openness, lack of conformity, and motivation levels that create innovation. Boston and (pre-Trump) DC are also agglomerations of well educated people that make things happen. Berkeley, however, is probably the most "what the heck, let's give it a try" sort of place.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No, at least for STEM, Cal is far ahead.

False. Most classes there aren’t even taught by real professors. Average student quality is also much lower. And people would assume you were an ivy/MIT/Stanford reject.

This is completely wrong, "real professors" teach almost all the STEM classes, unlike at some schools where it is acceptable to have grad students do it. Discussion sections may be grad TAs.

Still, it is a state school and resources are more limited. HYP for sure is a better option unless you are going for the in-state price. It's a great value for California students.

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Anonymous wrote:I’d take any of the ivies over Berkeley

Like Dartmouth, Brown and Cornell over in state Berkeley for stem? Yeah, no way.

Definitely yes. Those ivy schools are miles ahead of Berkeley in prestige. And prestige exists for a (good) reason.

Do you always use the word prestige in every sentence?

Not true, a Berkeley stem degree caries more weight. Yale, Dartmouth and Cornell are in the middle of nowhere. Berkeley is close to Silicon Valley, can get research opportunities at Lawrence Berkeley up the hill etc. Sure the classes are large and harder to get in, less hand holding. If you can’t handle that Berkeley is not a good fit and look elsewhere.

The truth is Berkeley is full of lottery winners who are trash students. They’re definitely not a good fit for Berkeley but they got in regardless. The days when Berkeley cs students ride the Silicon Valley waves will be long gone.

Just because Berkeley is test optional it doesn’t mean it’s a lottery, they still select the top students because they’ll look at AP exams, dual enrollment, grades, extracurriculars, which are all correlated with SAT scores.

I am a CA resident and while it’s too early I’d definitely think carefully between Berkeley vs Ivy if my kid got in. I already have more than the ivy tuition covered in a 529 account, so it’s not only the cost but also top students here take dual enrollment classes worth one year of college credits, so that opens the opportunity to get a BS and master degree in four years. I’d pass Dartmouth, Brown, Cornell, and Yale in favor of Berkeley or UCLA any time. Nobody here cares about UVA.

Not sure if you can the difference between test optional and test blind.

Meant test blind, the point still stands.

Yeah, but that's a pretty big point. Berkeley won't even look at a 1600 or 36. At least with the test optional schools, there's an opportunity for smart kids to distinguish themselves by submitting scores. I think somewhere during Covid and BLM and all that noise, the UCs really embraced that colleges' primary purpose should be social mobility. And that changes things. There is a lot of mediocrity at Berkeley and admissions feels very random today. And the fact that you can use APs to graduate from Berkeley in a soft major in a couple of years further diminishes the experience and the brand. I don't think HYP are great either for undergrad, but for different reasons. Fortunately, there are more than four schools in America, and people can make their choices.

I agree test blind is wrong, but that doesn’t mean Berkeley is all of a sudden a lottery of undeserving students. I bet the students chosen in the test blind process have high standardized scores even if not considered.

Also, a test score is just a data point, not the absolute best method to select students. It didn’t change dramatically the student profile.

They absolutely do, the SCOIR data at our school shows a very high correlation between SAT score and UCB admission.

UCB is now openly using AP scores in admissions. They’re only SAT/ACT blind. And (no surprise) AP scores are correlated with SAT scores.

The 2024 UC undergrad experience survey for Berkeley had 88 percent reporting being satisfied with the overall academic experience, 82 percent being satisfied with the overall social experience, and 90 percent agreeing that the university had a strong commitment to undergraduate education. But definitely continue to listen to the infinite bullshit being spewed here instead.

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’d take any of the ivies over Berkeley

Like Dartmouth, Brown and Cornell over in state Berkeley for stem? Yeah, no way.

Definitely yes. Those ivy schools are miles ahead of Berkeley in prestige. And prestige exists for a (good) reason.

Do you always use the word prestige in every sentence?

Not true, a Berkeley stem degree caries more weight. Yale, Dartmouth and Cornell are in the middle of nowhere. Berkeley is close to Silicon Valley, can get research opportunities at Lawrence Berkeley up the hill etc. Sure the classes are large and harder to get in, less hand holding. If you can’t handle that Berkeley is not a good fit and look elsewhere.

The truth is Berkeley is full of lottery winners who are trash students. They’re definitely not a good fit for Berkeley but they got in regardless. The days when Berkeley cs students ride the Silicon Valley waves will be long gone.

Just because Berkeley is test optional it doesn’t mean it’s a lottery, they still select the top students because they’ll look at AP exams, dual enrollment, grades, extracurriculars, which are all correlated with SAT scores.

I am a CA resident and while it’s too early I’d definitely think carefully between Berkeley vs Ivy if my kid got in. I already have more than the ivy tuition covered in a 529 account, so it’s not only the cost but also top students here take dual enrollment classes worth one year of college credits, so that opens the opportunity to get a BS and master degree in four years. I’d pass Dartmouth, Brown, Cornell, and Yale in favor of Berkeley or UCLA any time. Nobody here cares about UVA.

Not sure if you can the difference between test optional and test blind.

Meant test blind, the point still stands.

Yeah, but that's a pretty big point. Berkeley won't even look at a 1600 or 36. At least with the test optional schools, there's an opportunity for smart kids to distinguish themselves by submitting scores. I think somewhere during Covid and BLM and all that noise, the UCs really embraced that colleges' primary purpose should be social mobility. And that changes things. There is a lot of mediocrity at Berkeley and admissions feels very random today. And the fact that you can use APs to graduate from Berkeley in a soft major in a couple of years further diminishes the experience and the brand. I don't think HYP are great either for undergrad, but for different reasons. Fortunately, there are more than four schools in America, and people can make their choices.

You can use APs to graduate early at almost every university in America. You can count the universities that don’t give credit for AP on two hands.

Don’t confuse being competitive due to a lot of in state residents wanting a tuition discount, with actually providing a good product. This school is getting the bargain shoppers.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:On the east coast, Berkeley is viewed the same as Michigan or Virginia. Decent enough but not worth opening a bottle of champagne.

+1 the undergrad at Virginia is probably much better since it isn’t so over-enrolled

+2 UVA is miles ahead of Berkeley for undergrad

I would consider it delusional to compare undergrad at Berkeley to HYP. Comparing it to Michigan and Virginia is more reasonable, and even then Berkeley loses for the reasons listed by others here.

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Anonymous wrote:I’d take any of the ivies over Berkeley

Like Dartmouth, Brown and Cornell over in state Berkeley for stem? Yeah, no way.

Definitely yes. Those ivy schools are miles ahead of Berkeley in prestige. And prestige exists for a (good) reason.

Do you always use the word prestige in every sentence?

Not true, a Berkeley stem degree caries more weight. Yale, Dartmouth and Cornell are in the middle of nowhere. Berkeley is close to Silicon Valley, can get research opportunities at Lawrence Berkeley up the hill etc. Sure the classes are large and harder to get in, less hand holding. If you can’t handle that Berkeley is not a good fit and look elsewhere.

The truth is Berkeley is full of lottery winners who are trash students. They’re definitely not a good fit for Berkeley but they got in regardless. The days when Berkeley cs students ride the Silicon Valley waves will be long gone.

Just because Berkeley is test optional it doesn’t mean it’s a lottery, they still select the top students because they’ll look at AP exams, dual enrollment, grades, extracurriculars, which are all correlated with SAT scores.

I am a CA resident and while it’s too early I’d definitely think carefully between Berkeley vs Ivy if my kid got in. I already have more than the ivy tuition covered in a 529 account, so it’s not only the cost but also top students here take dual enrollment classes worth one year of college credits, so that opens the opportunity to get a BS and master degree in four years. I’d pass Dartmouth, Brown, Cornell, and Yale in favor of Berkeley or UCLA any time. Nobody here cares about UVA.

Not sure if you can the difference between test optional and test blind.

Meant test blind, the point still stands.

Yeah, but that's a pretty big point. Berkeley won't even look at a 1600 or 36. At least with the test optional schools, there's an opportunity for smart kids to distinguish themselves by submitting scores. I think somewhere during Covid and BLM and all that noise, the UCs really embraced that colleges' primary purpose should be social mobility. And that changes things. There is a lot of mediocrity at Berkeley and admissions feels very random today. And the fact that you can use APs to graduate from Berkeley in a soft major in a couple of years further diminishes the experience and the brand. I don't think HYP are great either for undergrad, but for different reasons. Fortunately, there are more than four schools in America, and people can make their choices.

I agree test blind is wrong, but that doesn’t mean Berkeley is all of a sudden a lottery of undeserving students. I bet the students chosen in the test blind process have high standardized scores even if not considered.

Also, a test score is just a data point, not the absolute best method to select students. It didn’t change dramatically the student profile.

They absolutely do, the SCOIR data at our school shows a very high correlation between SAT score and UCB admission.

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Anonymous wrote:I’d take any of the ivies over Berkeley

Like Dartmouth, Brown and Cornell over in state Berkeley for stem? Yeah, no way.

Definitely yes. Those ivy schools are miles ahead of Berkeley in prestige. And prestige exists for a (good) reason.

Do you always use the word prestige in every sentence?

Not true, a Berkeley stem degree caries more weight. Yale, Dartmouth and Cornell are in the middle of nowhere. Berkeley is close to Silicon Valley, can get research opportunities at Lawrence Berkeley up the hill etc. Sure the classes are large and harder to get in, less hand holding. If you can’t handle that Berkeley is not a good fit and look elsewhere.

The truth is Berkeley is full of lottery winners who are trash students. They’re definitely not a good fit for Berkeley but they got in regardless. The days when Berkeley cs students ride the Silicon Valley waves will be long gone.

Just because Berkeley is test optional it doesn’t mean it’s a lottery, they still select the top students because they’ll look at AP exams, dual enrollment, grades, extracurriculars, which are all correlated with SAT scores.

I am a CA resident and while it’s too early I’d definitely think carefully between Berkeley vs Ivy if my kid got in. I already have more than the ivy tuition covered in a 529 account, so it’s not only the cost but also top students here take dual enrollment classes worth one year of college credits, so that opens the opportunity to get a BS and master degree in four years. I’d pass Dartmouth, Brown, Cornell, and Yale in favor of Berkeley or UCLA any time. Nobody here cares about UVA.

I'm in the bay area and got my Masters at UCB. If you made that choice you'd be making the wrong choice, undergrad life at UCB isn't a great choice if you have better options. And, there are alot of better options including many outside of the Ivies.

Do you have a specific advice or criticism or you’re just here to say Berkeley sucks?

Great grad school but we are talking about undergrad here. Most of the key points have been mentioned; huge intro classes, hard to get classes, hard to change certain majors, poor housing, not lot of support, heavy reliance on TA’s, etc. Lots of smart kids, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise but there are much better options for real smart kids looking at undergrad schools.

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Anonymous wrote:I’d take any of the ivies over Berkeley

Like Dartmouth, Brown and Cornell over in state Berkeley for stem? Yeah, no way.

Definitely yes. Those ivy schools are miles ahead of Berkeley in prestige. And prestige exists for a (good) reason.

Do you always use the word prestige in every sentence?

Not true, a Berkeley stem degree caries more weight. Yale, Dartmouth and Cornell are in the middle of nowhere. Berkeley is close to Silicon Valley, can get research opportunities at Lawrence Berkeley up the hill etc. Sure the classes are large and harder to get in, less hand holding. If you can’t handle that Berkeley is not a good fit and look elsewhere.

The truth is Berkeley is full of lottery winners who are trash students. They’re definitely not a good fit for Berkeley but they got in regardless. The days when Berkeley cs students ride the Silicon Valley waves will be long gone.

Just because Berkeley is test optional it doesn’t mean it’s a lottery, they still select the top students because they’ll look at AP exams, dual enrollment, grades, extracurriculars, which are all correlated with SAT scores.

I am a CA resident and while it’s too early I’d definitely think carefully between Berkeley vs Ivy if my kid got in. I already have more than the ivy tuition covered in a 529 account, so it’s not only the cost but also top students here take dual enrollment classes worth one year of college credits, so that opens the opportunity to get a BS and master degree in four years. I’d pass Dartmouth, Brown, Cornell, and Yale in favor of Berkeley or UCLA any time. Nobody here cares about UVA.

Not sure if you can the difference between test optional and test blind.

Meant test blind, the point still stands.

Yeah, but that's a pretty big point. Berkeley won't even look at a 1600 or 36. At least with the test optional schools, there's an opportunity for smart kids to distinguish themselves by submitting scores. I think somewhere during Covid and BLM and all that noise, the UCs really embraced that colleges' primary purpose should be social mobility. And that changes things. There is a lot of mediocrity at Berkeley and admissions feels very random today. And the fact that you can use APs to graduate from Berkeley in a soft major in a couple of years further diminishes the experience and the brand. I don't think HYP are great either for undergrad, but for different reasons. Fortunately, there are more than four schools in America, and people can make their choices.

I agree test blind is wrong, but that doesn’t mean Berkeley is all of a sudden a lottery of undeserving students. I bet the students chosen in the test blind process have high standardized scores even if not considered.

Also, a test score is just a data point, not the absolute best method to select students. It didn’t change dramatically the student profile.

A very important data point without which the admissions process will get very close to randomness.

Some schools have been operating without taking sat scores for decades. You’re way overselling it.

That’s why they aren’t considered top schools

True Bowdoin is absolutely trashy and no-one has ever heard of it...
anyway: https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/bowdoin-college-2038.

None of these schools, other than maybe Yale and Princeton are comparable to Amherst, which did require test scores! We need to be more honest as a community.

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Anonymous wrote:I’d take any of the ivies over Berkeley

Like Dartmouth, Brown and Cornell over in state Berkeley for stem? Yeah, no way.

Definitely yes. Those ivy schools are miles ahead of Berkeley in prestige. And prestige exists for a (good) reason.

Do you always use the word prestige in every sentence?

Not true, a Berkeley stem degree caries more weight. Yale, Dartmouth and Cornell are in the middle of nowhere. Berkeley is close to Silicon Valley, can get research opportunities at Lawrence Berkeley up the hill etc. Sure the classes are large and harder to get in, less hand holding. If you can’t handle that Berkeley is not a good fit and look elsewhere.

The truth is Berkeley is full of lottery winners who are trash students. They’re definitely not a good fit for Berkeley but they got in regardless. The days when Berkeley cs students ride the Silicon Valley waves will be long gone.

Just because Berkeley is test optional it doesn’t mean it’s a lottery, they still select the top students because they’ll look at AP exams, dual enrollment, grades, extracurriculars, which are all correlated with SAT scores.

I am a CA resident and while it’s too early I’d definitely think carefully between Berkeley vs Ivy if my kid got in. I already have more than the ivy tuition covered in a 529 account, so it’s not only the cost but also top students here take dual enrollment classes worth one year of college credits, so that opens the opportunity to get a BS and master degree in four years. I’d pass Dartmouth, Brown, Cornell, and Yale in favor of Berkeley or UCLA any time. Nobody here cares about UVA.

Not sure if you can the difference between test optional and test blind.

Meant test blind, the point still stands.

Yeah, but that's a pretty big point. Berkeley won't even look at a 1600 or 36. At least with the test optional schools, there's an opportunity for smart kids to distinguish themselves by submitting scores. I think somewhere during Covid and BLM and all that noise, the UCs really embraced that colleges' primary purpose should be social mobility. And that changes things. There is a lot of mediocrity at Berkeley and admissions feels very random today. And the fact that you can use APs to graduate from Berkeley in a soft major in a couple of years further diminishes the experience and the brand. I don't think HYP are great either for undergrad, but for different reasons. Fortunately, there are more than four schools in America, and people can make their choices.

I agree test blind is wrong, but that doesn’t mean Berkeley is all of a sudden a lottery of undeserving students. I bet the students chosen in the test blind process have high standardized scores even if not considered.

Also, a test score is just a data point, not the absolute best method to select students. It didn’t change dramatically the student profile.

A very important data point without which the admissions process will get very close to randomness.

Some schools have been operating without taking sat scores for decades. You’re way overselling it.

That’s why they aren’t considered top schools

True Bowdoin is absolutely trashy and no-one has ever heard of it...
anyway: https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/bowdoin-college-2038.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:On the east coast, Berkeley is viewed the same as Michigan or Virginia. Decent enough but not worth opening a bottle of champagne.

+1 the undergrad at Virginia is probably much better since it isn’t so over-enrolled

+2 UVA is miles ahead of Berkeley for undergrad

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Anonymous wrote:I’d take any of the ivies over Berkeley

AP is a substitute for SAT, iu
Like Dartmouth, Brown and Cornell over in state Berkeley for stem? Yeah, no way.

Definitely yes. Those ivy schools are miles ahead of Berkeley in prestige. And prestige exists for a (good) reason.

Do you always use the word prestige in every sentence?

Not true, a Berkeley stem degree caries more weight. Yale, Dartmouth and Cornell are in the middle of nowhere. Berkeley is close to Silicon Valley, can get research opportunities at Lawrence Berkeley up the hill etc. Sure the classes are large and harder to get in, less hand holding. If you can’t handle that Berkeley is not a good fit and look elsewhere.

The truth is Berkeley is full of lottery winners who are trash students. They’re definitely not a good fit for Berkeley but they got in regardless. The days when Berkeley cs students ride the Silicon Valley waves will be long gone.

Just because Berkeley is test optional it doesn’t mean it’s a lottery, they still select the top students because they’ll look at AP exams, dual enrollment, grades, extracurriculars, which are all correlated with SAT scores.

I am a CA resident and while it’s too early I’d definitely think carefully between Berkeley vs Ivy if my kid got in. I already have more than the ivy tuition covered in a 529 account, so it’s not only the cost but also top students here take dual enrollment classes worth one year of college credits, so that opens the opportunity to get a BS and master degree in four years. I’d pass Dartmouth, Brown, Cornell, and Yale in favor of Berkeley or UCLA any time. Nobody here cares about UVA.

Not sure if you can the difference between test optional and test blind.

Meant test blind, the point still stands.

Yeah, but that's a pretty big point. Berkeley won't even look at a 1600 or 36. At least with the test optional schools, there's an opportunity for smart kids to distinguish themselves by submitting scores. I think somewhere during Covid and BLM and all that noise, the UCs really embraced that colleges' primary purpose should be social mobility. And that changes things. There is a lot of mediocrity at Berkeley and admissions feels very random today. And the fact that you can use APs to graduate from Berkeley in a soft major in a couple of years further diminishes the experience and the brand. I don't think HYP are great either for undergrad, but for different reasons. Fortunately, there are more than four schools in America, and people can make their choices.

I agree test blind is wrong, but that doesn’t mean Berkeley is all of a sudden a lottery of undeserving students. I bet the students chosen in the test blind process have high standardized scores even if not considered.

Also, a test score is just a data point, not the absolute best method to select students. It didn’t change dramatically the student profile.

A very important data point without which the admissions process will get very close to randomness.

Some schools have been operating without taking sat scores for decades. You’re way overselling it.

That’s why they aren’t considered top schools

AP is a substitute for SAT, it washes out in the end. Standardized testing would be helpful in predicting student outcomes, but it’s not the only metric, they’ll still select and enroll bright kids.

Who decides what’s considered a top school? I’d read through the US news ranking methodology before commenting, SAT scores have a small weight of 5% or 0% for test blind.