How hard is it to get into UCSF med school from Berkeley?

DlOGENES
Sun, 04 Jun 2006 03:57:44 +0000

A bit off topic eh?

As a related aside, I talked to a friend of mine who is currently a grad student here. He said that the reason Berkeley tends to foster such great research is that the university has policies to require professors to give free consulting to other professors at the university. In general, this creates a lot of synergy since Berkeley has so many top programs. For example, an eecs professor can easily consult with many of the top people in the biosciences field if they are researching biomedical devices. This is something that is not easily found at other institutions. Since all of Berkeley’s grad departments are the among the top 3-5 in the nation, this is something unique to Berkeley since not even Harvard is as well rounded (its engineering school is a joke).

That being said, this is generally an element of Berkeley exclusive to the graduate departments, and doesn’t affect the lives of the undergraduates there.

Though it is true, that Berkeley professors do have more nobels than many Ivy League schools, such as Yale, and though some nobel-winners do teach undergrads, in general not many do. And even though a few of the graduate students here may eventually win nobel prizes, I have found many of the TA’s and GSI’s to be a mixed bag in terms of quality. Some are great. Some are not so great. And it is difficult to switch out from the bad TA’s who determine your grade since so many classes at Berkeley are impacted. And classes are, in general, large so you may not notice much of a difference between a good TA and a bad one anyways.

Berkeley undergrad has ok PR. Berkeley still has some of the legacy of 25 years ago when it was a top 5 undergrad program, but I’m afraid budget cuts and further financial pressures will force the school to specialize more and pour more resources, in relative amounts, to maintain the quality of its graduate program at the expense of its undergraduate program.