Grading Scale at Berkeley

[Student]

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Calkidd and Sakky have it right. On average, Stanford and Harvard students are way more qualified than Berkeley students. However, if you look at a major like EECS at Berkeley, your average Harvard student would get creamed in the most severest way possible, even if he was good at math and science in high school. Brilliant students exist at all the schools. It’s pretty clear Berkeley has some majors that are very hard. So does Stanford – engineering there ain’t a joke, but as Sakky says, it seems Berkeley’s is an order of magnitude harsher. Because the average Stanford student is more qualified than a Berkeley engineer <em>academically</em>? Not really. On this count, it seems Stanford just doesn’t see it necessary to make it harder to get good grades, and frankly I agree with that philosophy – it’s HARD to get an A in tough engineering classes there, but I don’t think splitting hairs and making it harder is better.

You oversimplify the situation by assuming that the difficulty of the engineering curriculum implies that CoE students can thrive in other departments or universities. While some engineering students are well-rounded, you’d be surprised to see the number of engineers, raised in English-speaking countries, who can crunch numbers like crazy but can’t manage to write a coherent paragraph. I know for a fact that Stanford and Harvard’s undergraduate requirements include more humanities courses than Berkeley’s, and this would be a disadvantage to them.</p>

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With that being said, it was mentioned that Phd programs adjust for GPA depending on the school you went to, but what about MBA, Law and Med schools? Do they care anything about where you went or solely on GPA?

No top-tier graduate or professional program adjusts for Berkeley’s grade deflation. Therefore, it is to your advantage to get the highest grades possible, no matter how you do it. Attend a grade-inflation university; sign up for an easy major; take easy classes; use Pick-A-Prof and CampusBuddy to find the instructors who award the most A’s; et cetera. If your ultimate goal is grad/prof school, you might as well learn nothing as an undergrad and get the 4.0, knowing that your postgraduate education is far more important, than challenge yourself at a rigorous institution and mess up your grades, limiting your future possibilities. Many people believe that the latter would never happen to them, but it does–and there’s absolutely nothing that can be done except pity them.</p>