I turned down Harvard, Princeton and Stanford for Berkeley's Physics programme

sakky
Mon, 26 Jun 2006 23:55:45 +0000

ure speculation. What prevents me from speculating likewise that MIT is simply a smaller campus, and that it is likely that students who apply to MIT and Berkeley may simply prefer a smaller campus (or colder weather, or don’t like the Berkeley area, or anything else that has nothing to do with the quality of education there). It’s about as justified as your reasons. And that does not make MIT “better” than Berkeley as a result, necessarily (I’m not saying that it is or isn’t, but that such a factor on its own cannot determine this).



I don’t see the relevance of this. I have always said that the preference could occur for any number of reasons. But at the end of the day, all that matters is what is preferred, REGARDLESS of the reason, because it means that Berkeley ought to do more to provide these top students with what they prefer. That is, if Berkeley is serious about trying to compete for these students.

Look, at the end of the day, college education is a consumer good, and should be treated as such. That means that colleges should give students (consumers) what they want. Your logic seems to indicate that Berkeley should deliberately NOT give consumers what they want, under the guise that they know better. That seems to run dangerously close to the attitude of many companies in history who chose not to provide what their customers wanted, and hence failed as ongoing businesses.



Even so, what IS the cross-admit rate of students that choose MIT? I would certainly not say it has to be 50-50 for Berkeley and MIT to be on the same level. It would have to be 50-50 for Berkeley and MIT to be equivalent, but nobody is saying that



The data was posted on CC a long time ago by somebody. It may also be available somewhere on the Web. If I have time, I will try to find it.



I agree. But too bad Berkeley could never have what MIT has because Berkeley is limited by being a public school. Public schools are naturally larger than private institutions (especially those at the top). The result is that public schools generally offer a less personable educational experience. Also, public schools must serve students from their state; this would mean lower admission requirements and a greater number of admits. The “easier” admissions would then bring down the prestige of elite public schools such as Berkeley. Thus, MIT would always be more prestigious than Berkeley even iif their academics are of similar quality because it is simply a LOT harder to get into MIT than it is to Berkeley. And, unfortunately but understandibly, most people worship prestige.



Public schools are NOT naturally larger than private schools. This is especially true on the graduate level. What’s the largest law school in the country (and probably the world)? Some public law school? No, it’s Harvard Law. Harvard Law has more than twice the students that Boalt does. What business school has the largest MBA program in the country? It’s not some public school, it’s actually Harvard Business School. The Haas School has actually one of the smallest MBA programs of any of the top B-schools in the country - far smaller than other private programs such as Wharton, Kellogg, or Chicago. Most people don’t realize that the graduate engineering programs at MIT and Stanford are FAR larger than the grad engineering programs at Berkeley. In fact, Stanford, which is thought of as a much smaller school than is Berkeley, actually has ALMOST DOUBLE the number of graduate engineering students compared to Berkeley.

Yet all of Berkeley’s graduate programs are ‘public’ programs in the sense that they are financed and subsidized by the state. California residents who study at Boalt or Haas or some other graduate program at Berkeley are getting state subsidized tuition.



Also, public schools must serve students from their state; this would mean lower admission requirements and a greater number of admits. The “easier” admissions would then bring down the prestige of elite public schools such as Berkeley. Thus, MIT would always be more prestigious than Berkeley even iif their academics are of similar quality because it is simply a LOT harder to get into MIT than it is to Berkeley.



The PhD programs at Berkeley certainly don’t really “serve” the state in the sense of running dual-tracks of admission, one for residents, one for non-residents. No PhD program at Berkeley feels compelled to admit less qualified state residents. In fact, there are years where some PhD programs don’t admit a single state resident.

Furthermore, residency preference does not automatically equate to less prestige and less selectivity. There are several factors involved. To give you an analogy. Oxford and Cambridge are public universities within the UK in the sense that British citizens get strong subsidization from London to study there, much of their funding comes from the government, and both schools prefer to admit British citizens as opposed to foreign nationals for their undergrad programs. Yet that hasn’t stopped Oxbridge from being extremely selective and prestigious. Cambridge graduates have won more Nobel Prizes than grads of any other university in history (and in fact, if just one of Cambridge’s constituent colleges, Trinity College, was its own country, it would rank 5th out of all of the countries in the world in production of Nobels). Oxford may be the one school in the world that has a more recognized worldwide brand-name than Harvard does, especially in (unsurprisingly) the Commonwealth nations.

But the point is, a public school can be forced to institute lower admissions requirements for residents of some political unit, yet still maintain excellent worldwide prestige.



And, unfortunately but understandibly, most people worship prestige.



I would just point out that there are lots of people who go to Berkeley just for the prestige. I happen to know plenty of people who applied to many of the UC’s and simply mechanistically chose the most prestigious one that admitted them. If they didn’t get into Berkeley, then they would hope for UCLA. If they can’t get that, they would hope to get into UCSD, etc.

So whether prestige-chasing is unfortunate or not, I think it’s important to understand that Berkeley also draws a lot of students who are chasing its prestige. Whatever else I may think of Berkeley, I have always agreed that it has a lot of prestige. It’s just that certain other schools have even *more * prestige. Live by the sword, die by the sword.