Berkeley tougher than Stanford?

rooster08
Thu, 04 Aug 2005 15:29:52 +0000

“And it also varies by which major you apply. I don’t think there’s even a question that EECS out-of-state is more difficult to get into than most majors at Stanfurd, period.”

First off, let me dispel the myths about applying to Stanford within a certain major. In all of the HYPSMC schools, you are not admitted based on what major you choose. Applying as an art major is just as hard as applying as an electrical engineering or computer science major. Once you are admitted, you can choose from whichever major you like…whether it’s EE or CS or Chem or English.

“I have a friend who got a good scholarship at Stanford and was rejected by Berkeley for out-of-state.”

Stanford does not hand out merit scholarships. Period.

“Communist, the argument based upon percentages doesn’t hold up. If you’ve ever taken a course in statistics (or applied even the most common of sense), you would realize that the single parameter of percent admitted bears no significance on the relative difficulty of admission. You are making the broad assumption that the applicant pools for Stanford and Berkeley OOS are exactly the same. Do you have any basis for this?”

The applicant pools for Stanford and Berkeley OOS are not exactly the same. In fact, the applicant pool for Stanford is probably higher. That makes the higher percentage of Berkeley OOS admits all the more reason for us to believe that Stanford is harder to get into than Berkeley OOS. The only way you can convince people that Berkeley OOS is harder than Stanford is if you prove that the Berkeley pool is more academically qualified. However, I highly doubt the Berkeley OOS pool is more academically qualified than the Stanford pool. My reasons being that if they are qualified enough to get into HYPSMC, why would they want to go to Berkeley and pay much higher tuition than 90% of the student body? If Berkeley purposely makes policies to limit the enrollment of out-of-staters, why would the best of them want to go to Berkeley as opposed to schools that embrace out-of-staters? Is there some sort of masochistic quality to college admissions?