<p>i have heard that if you graduate early from berkeley or any other school you are not eligible for academic honors such as valedictorian and other things like that?</p>
<p>is it true?</p>
<p>you can still be eligible for the university medal (same thing) but the real disadvantage is that you’d be missing out on a whole year of fun and awesome-ness at the greatest multi-versity in the world. plus, the extra year of easy classes 'll prolly boost your GPA and help you get internships and get co-curriculars for grad school and what not.</p>
<p>Sorry for going a bit off-topic, but I think having a “university-wide” valedictorian (such as Cal’s University Medal) is stupid. There is no fair way to compare students across different majors, since grading standards differ so widely. There are some very outstanding students in the engineering and science disciplines who can’t qualify because they fail to meet the 3.96 GPA cutoff. Also, the part of the decision that is based on extracurriculars is rather subjective.</p>
<p>Sorry for being harsh, but I think you’re criticism is stupid. Many departments do have some sort of valedictorianship. It’s commonly refered to as “Departmental Citation.”</p>
<p><a href=“http://students.berkeley.edu/fao/prizes/prev-winners/cit03-04.html[/url]”>http://students.berkeley.edu/fao/prizes/prev-winners/cit03-04.html</a></p>
<p>The PoliSci department openly equates departmental citation with valedictorianship.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.polisci.berkeley.edu/commencement/2007/valedictorian.html[/url]”>http://www.polisci.berkeley.edu/commencement/2007/valedictorian.html</a></p>
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<p>You could say the same thing about the admissions process.</p>
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<p>So what? It’s not like there aren’t “some very outstanding students” in the humanities and social sciences “who can’t qualify because they fail to meet the 3.96 GPA cutoff.” The Medal should go to students who have obviously learned/mastered/understood a great deal in their chosen field. It should make no difference whether that field is Linguistics or EECS or whatever.</p>
<p>Last I heard, the admissions process is by department, at least for the CoE.</p>
<p>I know about the Dept Citations, and have no problem with them.</p>
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<p>Actually, I think I have to agree with Student on this one. Dobby, you said it yourself - the departmental citation is openly equated with a valedictorian-ship. So then why do you need a University Medal then? Berkeley should just stick with the departmental citation. By having a University Medal, you are basically propogating the notion that one particular student at Berkeley is actually better than all of the other ones, yet as Student said, because of the wildly differing grading standards, there is no way to really know who that is. </p>
<p>Besides, you said it yourself - that the University Medal should go to the person who has learned the most in his discipline, regardless of what that discipline is. So then, why do you need a 3.96 GPA cutoff? After all, somebody in EECS or Chemical Engineering might have learned the most in his discipline, but still didn’t get a 3.96 (because of the rough grading standards in those fields), and thus is now ineligible for the University Medal.</p>
<p>At the very least, I think you have to agree that the GPA cutoff for the Medal is unnecessary. </p>
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<p>Yeah, but I don’t consider this to be a valid objection. Just because one thing is unfair doesn’t mean that everything should be unfair.</p>
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<p>Personally, I think those disadvantages are pretty minor. After all, you can graduate and still hang around campus. I know people who have done that. Once you’ve graduated, you can now pursue an actual job, like a research associate position, that will help you get into graduate school.</p>
<p>how about people who graduate a semester early instead of a whole year early? does it matter in this case?</p>
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<p>I would argue that, if anything, graduating a semester early is actually optimal to graduating in “normal time” to anybody who has the ability to do it. After all, think about it. For many people, the final semester of the final year is basically a “blowoff” semester anyway - because many people have already gotten the job offer they wanted, or have already applied to the grad schools they wanted and are just waiting to see where they got in - as most grad school applications are due sometime in the fall semester (i.e. usually in December), and then admissions are announced in March or April. Hence, that final semester is, for those people, just a matter of marking time. If you’re just going to be marking time waiting to see which grad school you were admitted to, you might as well do that on a beach somewhere. Or if you are going to get a job, you might as well go on a 6 month vacation before starting - after all, once you start your career, you’ll never be able to take those kinds of vacations again.</p>
<p>Graduating early has its obvious benefits and obvious disadvantages as well. If you can get out early, you have to pay less for school and can get working earlier. However, you will miss out on some set of classes you may have wanted to take and another semester/year of hanging out with your buddies. Although it has been cited you could hang out with your buddies even after graduating, it is likely you will be employed in a distant city making this infeasible.</p>
<p>I personally thought about graduating early, but decided I’d rather not, since there are enough classes I still want to take to make staying worthwhile. If you are done with all the classes you find interesting, though, then I’d say graduate. It’s not worth sticking around taking classes you aren’t interested in for another semester/year when you could be doing something you enjoy or something making you money (or both) instead.</p>
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<p>Oh, I don’t know about that. I believe the vast majority of Berkeley grads end up working in the Bay Area, at least for their first job (granted, they may move later in their lives). Look at the career reports and you will see that most of the employers are local companies.</p>
<p>Besides, you don’t HAVE to start your job immediately. You can request to start later. Many people do that, and just take a 6 month vacation. And besides, you don’t even have to take a job at all, but rather just use that entire semester camp out at the career office to try to get the job that you really want. Recent alumni are allowed full run of the office. You might have to pay a fee, but that fee is almost certainly less than the tuition you would pay to be a student. With no classes to deal with, you can go to all of the interviews and all of the career fair activities you want, without having to worry about showing up for some lecture or completing some assignment. </p>
<p>And of course, if you are going to grad school, then you don’t have to worry about any of this. If you are going to grad school, and you graduate a semester early, then you basically get a giant block of time off.</p>