<p>The reason people compare Cal to privates is that Cal is clearly, as an overall institution, on par with privates. And remember, the term “private” isn’t an automatic win. There are plenty of private universities that don’t begin to compare to Cal.</p>
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<p>You talk about objectivity, yet you end with comments like “duke owns.” I don’t find that terribly objective on your part. </p>
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<p>Why stop at chem? Berkeley’s poli sci dept. is top 10. Econ is top 10. History is top 10. Engineering is top 10. And so on and so forth.</p>
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<p>Yes, but you won’t hear too many Nevada locals arguing that UNLV is on par with Harvard.</p>
<p>It’s funny that you named the two top public universities in the nation, and act like it surprising that locals are proud of them. Why shouldn’t they be? Michigan and Berkeley are clearly two public universities that stand toe-to-toe with any private university in anything.</p>
<p>Chemistry is actually not an impacted major.</p>
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<p>I don’t agree with this if we are talking about the top private universities, at an undergrad level. For example, Berkeley clearly pales compared to Harvard if we’re talking about graduation rates, med/law school placement, advising, and so on.</p>
<p>Perhaps, but even then it’s not like Berkeley’s top students aren’t competitive. Cut off the murky bottom 25th percentile, and you get an interesting picture.</p>
<p>Not that it’s fair, of course. But I do think that the reason why so many people get so rah-rah about top publics is how amazing some of them are.</p>
<p>“wow i do hope those people are not like you…but obviously even the op admitted that he knew duke was the right choice…”</p>
<p>Right choice for him, you mean.</p>
<p>“i think we are talking about the top 25 schools…if you want to include all the way down to top 100 then my comment no longer applies…”</p>
<p>You didn’t specify that. At any rate, I would put UCLA up with Berkeley, and UCLA has more applicants and acceptances than Berkeley.</p>
<p>“oMGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG…ok seriously…those who find ucb at par are those ignorant california residents”</p>
<p>I find that to be a direct insult. Do you know how that sort of thing is handled at CC? =)</p>
<p>“unless we are talking about majoring in chem, etc a impacted major which is a different story =D…”</p>
<p>You really know very little about Berkeley, which is an ideal school for many, many majors (considering it offers roughly 300 – and impacted majors make up a small percentage of that 300).</p>
<p>“kyle, a most probable future ucb student, please remain objective when commenting on threads”</p>
<p>First of all, you don’t know where I’m planning on going, so don’t guess (you seem to love to do that). You think you’re completely objective and that I’m being subjective? Perhaps that’s what I’m thinking right now about you, too. All opinion, see?</p>
<p>“that may ridiculously impact future yield rate”</p>
<p>Ridiculously impact future yield rate? Er, right.</p>
<p>“based on undergrad rankings as an overall duke has efficiently shown that it is better than ucb”</p>
<p>And that’s where you show how little you know. Very few here think that rankings are effective in ranking undergrad – even US News says to take their rankings with a grain of salt.</p>
<p>“I do agree that duke’s spot in the top 10 is a bit overrated but it’s still good =D duke owns =D”</p>
<p>Just curious, but are you a Cal reject or something? I’ve seen you disparaging Cal in other threads, too.</p>
<p>“-wow i wish someone will just either delete this thread or lock it…i think many of us are wasting sooo much time posting here…=D”</p>
<p>Don’t post anymore, then. You didn’t start the thread, so you don’t really need to …</p>
<p>“bye…what a waste of time gl! to whoever continues to deliberate this…”</p>
<p>Berkeley used to be ranked in the top 5 a couple of decades ago and has steadily slipped to the low 20s in favor of second-rate private schools like Notre Dame or WUSTL. Ironically, the quality of the undergraduate education at Berkeley has actually imrpoved in that period of time. What has changed is the fact that the pure academic measurements (peer assessment) have been diluted to the point where they now are one quarter of the score.</p>
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Faculty resources are mostly important inasmuch as they help improve the quality of the faculty. They are more of a tool than an end. And in the end, there is no dout that the quality of the faculty at Berkeley is better than Duke’s, practically across the board.</p>
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You can’t cherrypick a couple of Nobels who haven’t taught undergrads recently and generalize. I had two classes with Nobel profs as an undergrad. Beyond Nobels, you get a sense of incredible priviege from knowing that you are taught by people who are world leaders in their fields. As brilliant as they were, I certainly can’t say that Debreu or Harsanyi really were more brilliant than many of my other profs. I also have found from my experience that many of the leaders in their fields were also great teachers. Part of it was the passion that they had for their subjects was clearly conveyed in their class.</p>
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I couldn’t disagree more! One of the best profs at Cal was my Math 1B prof, I thoroughly enjoyed the class and the interactions I’ve had with him during his office hours.</p>
<p>I think you also display the kind of ignorance about maths that many engineers or non-scientists have. Part of this ignorance is cultural, mathematics being more elevated in countries like France or Russia while the subject is viewed as too impractical in the States. Pure maths is a system of thought more than a set of tools, it a system that is a powerful basis to expand your mind and view concepts with more rigor but also more imagination.</p>
<p>ok one last comment lol hehe…my rsp to all those criticisms =( wow sooo many lol…can be found on my previous posts on this thread…and you will find data supporting my opinion and no i am not a ucb reject…i withdrew my app there and seriously…w/e just go to ucb then hehe…if that is what you want…and even as a non ucb applicant even i know chem bs is an impacted major…
i want to end w/ my final statement which can be proved if you look at all the data i posted on this thread already…
ucb is a reallly gooooodddd grad school but it’s undergrad is not comparable w/ duke, northwestern, georgetown, cornell, etc…unless you are planning to major in an impacted major. now hf! and enjoy if anyone wants me to support any of my specific claims just pm me and i’ll be glad to show you the data in which i have arrived my conclusions at gl! and remember to hf!
edit: I will post your pm message here and I will support it w/ data thank you and hf!
edit: regarding objectivity, if I am truly subjective i would be hailing ucb not duke whose lacross team is dying =D
edit: also lets keep into perspective that those individual major rankings are actually grad rankings
edit: i am also not completely against ucb’s undergrad…if you graduate there you can easily find a job due to name recognition in california. However, if you plan on going to grad/med/law/business school then private is better because ucb has limited to no advising…and this impacts heavily on percent admits and etc…</p>
<p>The opportunity to interact with students from more privileged backgrounds at Berkeley is there, they make up about a quarter of the student body vs the majority at a school like Duke. Berkeley is actually #3 in the ranking from Washington Mounthly, which measures success by “how well a school is an engine of social mobility, drives economic growth through research, and demonstrates a commitment to national service”.</p>
<p>I wasn’t saying that students from less-privileged backgrounds are less likely to succeed at Cal, just that they are less likely to attain their professional goals than students from professional backgrounds, and that Berkeley has about three times the % of students from lower socio-economic backgrounds, which might account for a large part of the gap in grad school acceptance rates.</p>
<p>This doens’t necessarily mean that a student from a lower socio-economic background is more likely to succeed at a top private school, s/he might actually feel alienated by his/her new environment.</p>
<p>furthermore, your response shows the limitations of focus on professional goals and social mobility at the expense of broader goals of a more diverse educational experience. A future doctor or lawyer from a privileged background can greatly benefit from interacting with a more socially diverse student body.</p>
<p>This isn’t even a remotely good response to what sakky was arguing. All sakky said was that the super famous professor isn’t exactly the best person to be teaching a basic calculus course. Instead of responding to that point, you chose to launch into some silly ad hominem questioning sakky’s academic credentials.</p>
<p>Stop. </p>
<p>Now answer this: is the famous professor always the best teacher? Why do grad schools admit disproportionately high numbers of grads from LACs, whose faculties are usually not full of famous profs, over research university grads?</p>
<p>Yeah, but the undergraduate education at just about every single school on that list has improved in that period of time. I don’t think Berkeley should be ranked at #21 as it is now (in fact one of my biggest beef with US News is that schools like Emory, Vandy, and Notre Dame are ahead of Berkeley, UVa, U Mich) but #5 for undergrad? I think that’s a little too high. To say Berkeley is #5 would mean it’s better than either Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT, or Stanford. I don’t think at the undergrad level we can make a good argument for any of those five.</p>
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<p>He named quite a few, and there are only a few handful of Nobels at Berkeley in the first place. You were lucky; the vast majority of undergrads don’t get taught by Nobels.</p>
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<p>Again, Berkeley has good professors and bad professors. You happened to get a good one. I’ve seen many students who didn’t. But you don’t have to take my word for it. Just go to ratemyprofessors.com, look up Berkeley, look up all the professors under “engineering” and see how many non-happy faces there are. I would say roughly half.</p>
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<p>Chemistry BS is not an impacted major. It is a major in the College of Chemistry which is as easy or even easier to get into that the College of Letters and Sciences. The impacted majors are Economics, Psychology, Computer Science, ORMS, Mass Com, Public Health, Social Welfare, and Business Administration. I suppose Engineering could be seen as impacted majors because you have to apply and based on GPA, you can be rejected. Getting into the College of Chemistry is a different story. First, it’s not as difficult to get in as a freshman, and second, if it’s the first semester of your freshman year you can apply to transfer to the College of Chemistry and automatically get it approved. So no, Chemistry is not considered an impacted major.</p>
<p>I agree with this and I’ll give a simple counterexample to CalX’s Math 1B professor. There is a professor who teaches Physics 7A here at Berkeley named Robert Lin. Not the most interesting guy in the world, he took 10 minutes to explain why acceleration has the units “m/s^2.” Look him up on ratemyprofessors.com. It’s not a smiley face next to his name. One day a substitute (clearly not a full-fledged professor) came in and explained that Professor Lin will not be in class that day because he was at NASA. Apparently NASA held a competition for designs for the next space shuttle to Mars, with 20 institutions submitting designs, and he was one of the two finalists. Needless to say the class was impressed. As the class went on the substitute proved to be a superior lecturer to Professor Lin, engaging the class that normally went to sleep and receiving a round of applause at the end of the lecture. And this isn’t uncommon either. I would say I have seen more professors resembling Professor Lin than not.</p>
<p>The problem with a lot of the most fervent pro-Cal arguments is that Nobel prizes or other similar apex awards are equated with great teaching.</p>
<p>One of the best professors I had in undergrad was an assistant prof. who hadn’t even gotten tenure yet. He wasn’t famous in any sense of the word.</p>
<p>One of the worst professors I had in undergrad was a full prof. who couldn’t teach his way out of a paper bag. Yet he was considered a true pioneer in his field.</p>
<p>Now, can we say, based on my evidence, that famous profs are bad teachers? Nope. But we also can’t say with a few token Nobelists who can teach that Nobelists are automatically good teachers.</p>
<p>I really love Cal. It was the only other college that I really considered other than UCLA and some East Coast schools. But I do find that a lot of the rah-rah Cal camp uses the wrong arguments in favor of Cal.</p>
<p>well i would say DUKE!!
but i<code>m kind</code>ve biased because Duke basketball is amazing ++ i<code>d be wicked sad without it.
but they</code>re both really good schools
: )</p>
<p>Those who understand facts and want the OP to go to the best undergrad school possible (Duke) and those who are Cal alumni (or plan on going to Cal, or got rejected from Duke)</p>
<p>Duke is an absolutely fantastic university. So is Cal. But they are going to offer different experiences, and it’s useful to hash that out.</p>
<p>It’s not simple to just say that Duke will offer a better education. It MAY offer a better education. It really depends on the individual and what that individual’s needs are.</p>
<p>I tend to think Cal students focus way too much on academic ranks, when at the undergrad level things like strong recruiting, a smaller size, a large endowment per student (for undergrad grants), selectivity (its nice to be around the best and brightest), and access to professors are the most important aspects to consider. Academic ranks matter, but they are far from everything.</p>
<p>See, there it is again. Specifically, which year was that? I would really like to see the data. </p>
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<p>While I don’t have USNews in front of me right now, what would happen if faculty resources was no longer considered as a category? What would the rankings of Berkeley be now? </p>
<p>The value of having ‘brilliant’ profs teach you becomes apparent if you are actually going to become an academic yourself. Yet the fact is, the vast majority of undergrads at Berkeley (or at Duke) are not going to become future academics. </p>
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<p>So you say that I can’t cherry-pick, and then you do the same? </p>
<p>What I can tell you is that I had a grand total of zero Nobel Prize winners teach my classes. Granted, I wasn’t in a major that was a Nobel category, but the fact remains that of those that I know who did engage in such majors, the vast majority of them never got taught by a Nobel prize winner.</p>
<p>And besides, like I said, as an undergrad, you jprobably don’t want to be taught by a Nobel prize winner anyway, or any ‘brilliant’ researcher for that matter. When I’m sitting in my basic calculus class, all I want is somebody who can clearly explain how to do the mechanics of the problems in front of me. Having a ‘brilliant’ mathematician isn’t really going to help to do that. What I really want is somebody who knows how to communicate the concepts clearly. That’s why I found myself many times wishing that it was my high school math teacher who was teaching these courses. Sure, he wasn’t a brilliant researcher. But who cares? At least he knew how to explain things clearly and make math seem fun, something that these ‘brilliant’ Berkeley math profs certainly did not do. </p>
<p>Which gets to the notion of ‘passion’. While obviously great researchers are passionate about their research, there is a big difference between that and being passionate about teaching undergraduates, especially teaching a basic-level course to undergrads. Many profs are extremely annoyed at having to do this, and it shows. Makes sense too. Think about it. If you’re a brilliant physicist, do you really want to be teaching the physics 7 or 8 series? Do you really want to be spending your time explaining what a vector is? Do you really want to be talking about the basic equation F=ma? I think not - you probably want to be back in your lab trying to discover the esoteric secrets of the universe. That’s why many ‘brilliant’ profs feel frustrated about teaching undergrads, especially basic undergrad courses, because they feel constrained in having to explain ‘dumbed-down’ concepts. </p>
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<p>And many students report, as can be seen on ratemyprofessors.com, how much they hated their Math 1B prof. Absolutely HATED him. Don’t take my word for it. See for yourself. </p>
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<p>Be that as it may, that just seems to be another reason why American students should not want to prefer Berkeley. If Berkeley teaches something in a manner that Americans dislike, then that only seems to be a reason for Americans to not want to go to Berkeley and instead prefer a school that will give them what they want. </p>
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<p>Uh huh, and according to that same ranking, UCLA is actually ranked #2. So does that mean that people should turn down Berkeley for UCLA?</p>
<p>And besides, consider the methodology behind the Washington Monthly ranking. It includes things like the percentage of students who enroll in ROTC, the percentage who enter the Peace Corps, and the percentage of federal work-study that go to community service. It also includes interesting categories like the total amount of research dollars spent (not the per-capita dollars spent, but the total number), and the total number of PhD’s granted in science and engineering. It’s hard for me to see what exactly that has to do with undergraduate education. You criticize USNews for offering ‘irrelevant’ categories, but the Washington Monthly ranking is far worse in that some of the categories are REALLY irrelevant. </p>
<p>But that is going to have to happen anyway. Look, if you’re poor and you want to move up, you will inevitably have to interact with people who are richer than you at some time in your life. Whether you do it in college, or in graduate school, or in your job, or whatever, at some point, you will eventually have to interact with rich people if you want to become rich yourself. If you never want to be alienated, then that basically means that you will always stay with your peers, which means staying exactly where you are forever. </p>
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<p>Hey, don’t shoot the messenger. It’s not me telling Berkeley students to focus on professional goals and social mobility. It is the students who have decided to do that all by themselves. Surely you have encountered the phenomenom where a giant chunk of incoming freshmen are seriously considering doing premed or prelaw. That’s why MCB and political science are by far the 2 largest majors on campus. I think we can all agree that most people in those majors aren’t “really” interested in MCB or poli-sci. Those majors are packed because they are full of premeds and prelaws. </p>
<p>Or how about when the consulting and banking firms come to recruit, and the line to talk to them stretches all the way across the room, and sometimes to the outside hallway? Or when those firms come to interview at the career office, their interview slots are always heavily oversubscribed? Why is it that professional programs like engineering and Haas always have far more interested students than space available for them? </p>
<p>The point is, it’s not me that’s focused on professional goals and careerism. Don’t shoot the messenger. Don’t blame me. It’s Berkeley students themselves who are focused on professional goals and careerism. I am just telling you what they want. It’s not my fault that that’s what they want. I didn’t create the situation. I am just telling you what the situation is. If you don’t like it, take it up with the students. Convince them that they should be less focused on career goals. Be my guest. </p>
<p>However, given that students are highly focused on career goals, it is a legitimate question to ask what school should they prefer in order to fulfill those goals?</p>
<p>Not to mention that the ones he named (Debreu and Harsanyi) are dead. </p>
<p>Heck, let’s do a data search. Berkeley has 7 Nobel Prize winners currently - Glaser, Townes, Chu, Smoot, McFadden, Akerlof, and Lee. Of these 7, how many are teaching undergrads in the 2006-2007 academic year? A grand total of one (Smoot taught Physics 7B in fall 2006). That’s right, 1 out of 7. The others teach graduate-level courses, or in the case of Yuan Lee, nothing at all. But in any cases, I think we can agree that the vast majority of Nobel laureates at Berkeley do not teach undergrads. </p>
<p>Actually, I would like to be able to compare the admissions stats of L&S and the CoC. I know those stats were posted here at one time, but I can’t find them now.</p>
<p>This I agree with. I have never said that everybody should choose Duke over Berkeley. In fact, I actually said early on in this thread that, if I were a California resident and wasn’t getting any substantial financial aid, I would probably choose Berkeley. </p>
<p>Furthermore, there are indeed certain fields that come to mind in which Berkeley is better than Duke. Engineering immediately comes to mind. If you’re sure that you want to be an engineer (meaning not just getting an engineering degree, but also WORK as an engineer), then, sure, Berkeley is probably better preparation. And of course if you want to play football and make it to the NFL, Cal is clearly a better choice. (But of course if you want to make it to the NBA, then Duke is the better choice).</p>
<p>But the point is, both schools have strengths and weaknesses and everybody needs to assess which school is right for them. This is not a case of, say, Berkeley vs. San Francisco State, where the odds clearly favor Berkeley. Or Duke vs. East Carolina University. Berkeley and Duke is not a lopsided match in either direction.</p>