<p>The question is not about things necessarily being ‘easy’. It is really about being doable. For some people, Berkeley (or, at least, the engineering majors at Berkeley) is simply too hard. The best thing to do is to simply not admit these people, at least not into engineering. The second best thing to do is, what we agree on, to allow those people to switch to something else with a clean slate. That, sadly, does not happen today. You fail your initial engineering courses, and those bad grades will stain your academic record forever. </p>
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<p>The grad school adcoms may well know that all GPA’s are not equal. But they don’t always care. That is to say, they may well take somebody with a higher GPA over somebody else with a lower GPA, even if they know the second guy is actually better.</p>
<p>As for why that is the case, one major reason is that the grad school adcoms are themselves beholden to outside pressure, particularly from the graduate rankings from organizations such as USNews, Businessweek, etc. Those rankings attempt to measure “selectivity” of the graduate programs, yet those measures of selectivity are generally based only on test scores and GPA, without any correction for how ‘difficult’ the admitees’ GPA is. The upshot is that grad schools don’t want to appear to be less selective and hence perhaps lose ranking points, and hence are incentivized to admit those people with the highest GPA (and test scores), regardless of how easy their coursework is.</p>
<p>Hah! Engineering isn’t terribly difficult or abstruse, you say?</p>
<p>Let me put it to you this way. To this day, after all these years, I still do not understand what the Maxwell Relations, or the related Bridgman’s Equations, actually mean. By that I mean that while I can certainly do the math, I don’t actually understand what the math really means in any intuitive or practical sense. Nor was I the only one: I have yet to find a single engineer in industry who actually knows what they really mean. Heck, I know quite a few people who have gotten PhD’s who freely admit that they don’t know what those equations really mean. </p>
<p>Let’s just take the first Maxwell Relation. The partial derivative of Temperature with respect to Volume, at constant Entropy, is equal to the negative of the partial derivative of Pressure with respect to Entropy, at constant Volume, and both are equal to the double partial derivative of Internal Energy with respect to Entropy and Volume? What in God’s name does that actually mean, in plain English? Or take the last of the Bridgman’s Equations. I defy anybody here to actually explain what that actually means, in practical terms that a practicing engineer in industry can actually use. Again, I am not talking about the ability to do the math. I can do that. I am simply talking about what those equations actually mean. I still have yet to meet anybody who can actually explain what they mean. </p>
<p>See, that’s what I’m talking about. To be an engineering student, especially during the weeders, is to enter this weird mystical world where you often times don’t really understand what is going on. You simply don’t have time to properly digest the information. All you can do is simply survive. You just have to learn how to manipulate certain equations because that’s what you need to know to avoid failing the exams. You don’t know what the equations really mean, and you don’t have time to find out. You’re just trying to hang on for dear life.</p>
<p>One flaw that I’ve found in your argument, Sakky, is the importance you place on graduate school admissions when determining which school to go to.</p>
<p>It is undoubtedly true that if you want to go to law school, a 3.5 from Cal-State Long Beach is better than a 3.0 from Berkeley, BUTTT, if looking to get a job, a 3.0 from Berkeley is more desirable than a 3.5 from CSLB.</p>
<p>For starters, a lot of the firms that recruit at Berkeley don’t recruit at CSLB, no matter what your GPA. I doubt that many CSLB student, even with 3.8+ GPAs can get an interview with ANY investment bank, much less a good one. But I know plenty of Berkeley students with mediocre grades who have scored top jobs and internships. </p>
<p>Now, this disparity might be explained in many different ways. The majority of Berkeley students (whom I personally know) who have mediocre grades but still manage to get good jobs are either well connected or URMs. So yea, I concede this point. BUTT, even IF you are an URM at a Cal State with a higher GPA, you’re still not going to land that good job. It’s MUCH more difficult. ANNDDD, even if you’re personally not that well connected, you have a higher likelihood of BECOMING connected at Cal than CSLB. You’re roommate at Berkeley might be the son of x, y, and z…or your best friend might land a job at Goldman Sachs and be willing to lend a hand somewhere down the line. But this is SIGNIFICANTLY less likely at CSLB. </p>
<p>Furthermore, although grades are important in the recruiting process, so is work experience. As a Berkeley student with a 3.0 GPA, chances are you can still land some sort of internship in SF during your summers. Parlay 2-3 summers worth of increasingly prestigious internships, and you have a better than average shot at landing an “okay” job. I doubt there are many firms in big cities that are as likely to hand out internships to CSLB students as they are to Berkeley students…no matter WHAT your grades are.</p>
<p>Please correct me if I’m missing something…</p>
<p>And so I shall. I think you misunderstood my arguments, for everything you have said actually supports what I have said: that students will tend to prefer Berkeley over CSULB even though Berkeley is harder. In other words, what you have found is not a flaw in my argument, but rather, a flaw in Tax Man’s argument. Remember, he is the one who is proposing that people should logically prefer CSULB over Berkeley, not me. In fact, I am disputing that point with him. </p>
<p>Furthermore, the reason why I am discussing grad school, and only grad school, is because that’s what Tax Man brought up. Tax Man has asserted that those who care about grad school should prefer CSULB over Berkeley. My point is, even on those grounds only, many people will still prefer Berkeley over CSULB. And then of course if we add in your points (which I could have also made, but decided were not germane to the topic of grad schools), then the case is even more convincing. </p>
<p>But, in summary, please be sure to note who exactly is arguing what. I think I was quite clear, in my very first sentence in post #40, that I was stating that people will prefer Berkeley over CSULB, just like what you are saying now.</p>
<p>Finally, an interesting thread in the Berkeley Forum!</p>
<p>I do have some comments:</p>
<p>First of all, there seems to be this… weird consensus… that Berkeley is “so much harder” than Stanford and/or Harvard. Who’s making this call, exactly? Is there really any legitimate way of gauging this? I mean, what are the Stanford and Harvard guys thinking when they read a thread like this? I bet… I bet they think it reeks of envy.</p>
<p>Just for fun, let’s say Berkeley is harder. Brown University was mentioned earlier in this thread, so let’s just say Brown, compared to Berkeley, is cakewalk. (After all, Brown- as far as I am aware- has no graduation requirements beyond majoring, so this seems like a fair assessment.) </p>
<p>Brown, like Stanford and Harvard, is a private school, and it relies on private funding to operate. For this reason, Brown isn’t going to flunk its students. I mean, who’s going to donate money to a school that flunked them? It’s aforementioned lack of graduation requirements- that is to say, it’s declining standards- only lends credence to this idea. Right?</p>
<p>Berkeley, on the other hand, is a public school. Most of us pay fractions of what it would cost to go to Brown. For this reason alone, Berkeley receives far more applications than Brown ever does, especially amongst those who cannot afford the latter.</p>
<p>Thus, Berkeley can flunk its students for three reasons: 1.) There’s always a demand for cheap education, 2.) highly subsidized tuition amounts to no huge immediate loss, and 3.) most of its students aren’t worth exploiting as alumni, especially those who couldn’t afford private school.</p>
<p>Now, as to “why” Berkeley upholds such high standards, I… eh… is this a question even worth answering?</p>
<p>Okay. Second Thing. Who on earth came up with this backwards notion that college students are entitled to graduate? I mean, don’t you think they would’ve sent a degree in the mail with your acceptance letter? It would sure save everybody a lot of time and money.</p>
<p>Well, I don’t think they need this thread to understand the envy. I think we can all agree that the vast majority of UG cross-admits to Berkeley and X (where X is Stanford or Harvard) are going to choose X. </p>
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<p>Well, let me put it to you this way. According to the IPEDS, the University of Virginia has a clearly superior graduation rate than does Berkeley. Yet Virginia is a public school. Virginia is dirt cheap for state residents: heck it’s significantly cheaper than Berkeley is, as the cost of living is far lower there, which is even more shocking when you realize that median household incomes in the states of California and Virginia are basically the same (with Virginia being only $400 a year behind). Hence, relative to their incomes, Virginia residents are clearly getting a better financial deal from their flagship school than California residents are. </p>
<p>Hence, that begs the question, why can’t Berkeley match Virginia. I think we can all agree that Virginia is a top-ranked undergrad school. They don’t seem to be losing quality by having a high graduation rate. Heck, if anything, I would argue that they gain quality through their high graduation rate. For example, since you mentioned alumni donations, perhaps it’s not a coincidence that Virginia’s endowment is significantly larger than Berkeley’s. </p>
<p>Actually, this speaks to one of the points I’ve been making in this thread. Berkeley has high standards for certain majors. Not all majors. In particular, it’s pretty darn easy to graduate from a certain subset of majors at Berkeley: the fluff majors. {As Tax Man pointed out, one reason these majors may exist is to help the Cal football players maintain eligibility. You rarely see a football player majoring in engineering. } </p>
<p>What that means is that there is an opportunity for optimization here. Many of the flunked engineering students probably could have indeed graduated, if they had instead been in one of those fluff majors. Hence, why not let them just switch over to those majors with a clean slate? Note, I am not asking Berkeley to create some fluff majors. Those majors already exist. I am simply saying that students should be free to drop classes of a major in which they are no longer in anyway, and switch to a fluff major. After all, if you’re not going to major in engineering anyway, who cares what your engineering grades are? Let the guy expunge his record and switch over to American Studies. </p>
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<p>The problem is that we live in a world where you basically need a degree in order to get a decent job. Sure, there are a few fields such as entrepreneurship, computers, or entertainment where you don’t need a degree, but by and large, in this world, you need a degree. Even many jobs that don’t even really need a degree will still require that you have one to even get an interview. It doesn’t matter very much what you majored in, or even which school you went to, what really matters is that you have a degree. For example, I used to work at a company where even the (low-paying) receptionist position was required to have a degree. I think the company even ended up hiring somebody who actually had a master’s degree. </p>
<p>Hence, like it or not, if you don’t have a degree at all, you are going to be judged and found wanting. Companies aren’t going to care why you don’t have a degree. All they will see is that you don’t have a degree. It makes you look uncompetitive to all of the other applicants out there who do have degrees, even from no-name schools. I wish this wasn’t true, but it is true. </p>
<p>Combine that with the fact that Berkeley students were good students, at least in high school. Sure, if we were talking about guys who barely graduated from high school, and then flunk out of college, that’s no surprise. But we’re talking about Berkeley students. They obviously did quite well in high school in order to even be admitted to Berkeley in the first place. Hence, they could have successfully graduated from almost any other school in the country. But if they come to Berkeley and flunk out, employers will just tag them as flunkees. They’re still probably better than the vast majority of college graduates out there who went to no-name schools. But employers won’t see that. All they will see is that you don’t have a degree. That’s sad.</p>
<p>Look, Kultur Wolf, like I’ve always said, my favorite solution by far is for Berkeley to simply not admit those students in the first place. Why admit people who are just going to flunk out anyway? Let those people go to some other school that fits their abilities. </p>
<p>But, I am well aware of the political situation in California, and that it is difficult to deny admission to people. Fine. So then my next best solution is to offer these people generous options. Let them switch to an easy major with a clean slate. Let them transfer to a different school, i.e. Merced or a CalState, with a clean slate. Whatever. The point is to figure out a way for these people to get that all-important degree. Like I said, in this day and age, you basically need a degree. What you don’t do is simply cast these people out and let them fend for themselves. You admitted these people, so you should take some responsibility for helping them succeed.</p>
Look, they made their beds, they should sleep in it. You can’t ask for a tabula rasa just because you can’t work through Maxwell’s equations. Berkeley isn’t eternal sunshine for the spotless mind.<br>
Do you know how hard it is to get admitted? Can you profile those students who failed out of engineering? Even Caltech has 80% graduation rate. I believe those who are admitted have amazing stats to begin with.</p>
<p>First off, it’s the Maxwell Relations, not the Maxwell Equations. These are 2 entirely different concepts. To this day, I don’t know a single practicing engineer who can actually explain what the Maxwell Relations actually mean, in a real-world sense. </p>
<p>But secondly, and far more importantly, why shouldn’t people get a second chance? Let’s be honest: how many high school seniors actually knew what engineering was before they picked it as a college major? I don’t know about you, but my high school didn’t offer any engineering courses. I am quite certainly that most high schools do not. People don’t really know what they’re getting into. </p>
<p>But fine, middsmith, let’s have it your way. Let’s say that it’s really true that these students made their bed, so they should lie in it. Then, to extend the analogy, OK fine, then I don’t want to make my bed. In other words, if the problem is that if I go to Berkeley engineering then I run the risk of getting poor grades that will mar my transcript forever, then my response is that I would simply rather go to some other school then. Why don’t I choose some other school that doesn’t fail its students? Why take the risk if I don’t have to? </p>
<p>All of this is in answer to Webhappy’s question of why somebody might choose Brown over Berkeley. My answer is that those who are risk-averse will rationally choose Brown. Why put my GPA in jeopardy if I don’t have to? </p>
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<p>First off, trust me, I know exactly how hard it is to get admitted to Berkeley.</p>
<p>Caltech is a prime example of what I’m talking about: they take arguably the most highly qualified student body in the country, and can produce only an 89% 6-year graduation rate. That’s clearly suboptimal when you consider that MIT - which is Caltech’s closest peer school - can produce a 93% rate. Furthermore, the difference is consistent: MIT has produced a higher graduation rate than does Caltech for many years in a row now. </p>
<p>But, to answer your question, I absolutely believe you can definitely profile those who will flunk out of engineering. Berkeley already has the data. Simply take the admissions data of all of the engineering students who have entered in the last, say, 25 years. Then just run a time-effects probit model, and look for the statistically significant coefficients. It’s not that hard to do, once you have the data. Heck, Berkeley has one of the best statistics departments in the country: surely one of the statistics grad students would be very happy to build an elaborate and rigorous statistical model, using multiple tests, just for the chance to complete a project and publish a paper (after obfuscating the data for privacy reasons of course). </p>
<p>But the point is, it’s not that hard. Clearly Berkeley has the resources. It just has to want to do this.</p>
<p>MIT is essentially a superset of Caltech. (Caltech + fluff majors).
major by major, they probably have very similar graduation rate. </p>
<p>If you go by statistics, be prepared to deal with Al Sharpton and the likes. Plus, someone who’s lazy isn’t going to cut it. You can’t predict/profile laziness.</p>
<p>Uh, wrong. Totally 100% wrong. Read below. Notice how the Maxwell Relations are totally different from the Maxwell Equations. **Please be more careful next time. ** </p>
<p>What’s embarrassing is that not only did I talk about the Maxwell Relations in the context of thermodynamics, which should have clued you in that I was not talking about the Maxwell Equations (which have nothing to do with thermo), I even included the wikipedia link in post #42, so if you didn’t know what the Maxwell Relations were, you could have read about them. You didn’t even bother to do that, hence clearly showing that you don’t even know the difference between the two. </p>
<p>Dude, let me give you a piece of friendly advice: if you don’t know what you’re talking about, then don’t pretend that you do, lest somebody call your bluff. Trust me, I know what I’m talking about, because I’ve had the displeasure of deriving both of these Maxwell equation sets. The difference is that while I actually do intuitively understand the Maxwell equations mean, * to this day, I still don’t understand what the Maxwell Relations actually mean in any intuitive, real-world sense.*</p>
<p>But anyway, please, in the future, if you see a concept that you don’t understand, do yourself a favor and look it up. I gave you the link in a previous post. I then warned you again that the Maxwell equations and Maxwell relations are unrelated concepts in post #51. You still didn’t believe me. Come on, instead of shooting from the hip, sit back, read, learn all about the Maxwell equations and Maxwell relations, then come back and talk to me. I can help to walk you through these concepts if you need me. Cool? </p>
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<p>88% is far different from 93%. Put another way, 12% of Caltech students won’t graduate (in 6 years), as opposed to 7% at MIT. That’s almost double. </p>
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<p>Berkeley doesn’t need to deal with Al Sharpton ever since Prop 209 passed. </p>
<p>Secondly, I think you can predict laziness. Look at high school science/math grades. Look at high schools: maybe certain high school are likely to produce students who are unusually likely to fail. The answer then is to admit fewer people from those high schools.</p>
<p>Wow, Sakky got riled up! I always just took Maxwell’s Relations as a natural result of continuity of partial deriv. => can switch operator orders. Thermo is a notoriously hard subject to understand conceptually since it’s hard to visualize most of the concepts. Anyways, if Middsmith skipped post #42 like I did, then he’s probably surprised how vehement Sakky is.</p>
<p>I strongly disagree with Sakky about his last paragraph. He makes it seem like a trivial task to predict who will flame out from laziness or lack of motivation/discipline. His only example is to look at high schools, but how much data can you get even treating high school as a variable to use? One math teacher who was at a school for 5 years may be enough to make this variable irrelevant (ie, the students taught by this teacher are unusually motivated but graduates from that high school normally don’t work hard in college). As I understand, UC-B doesn’t usually use letters of rec, but even these don’t seem very reliable seeing how Caltech’s a small private school that uses letters of rec. I think letters of rec are the most realistic way of gauging how likely someone is to keep up good work ethics in college. Since even letters don’t really work, I think it’s next to impossible to predict an 18-year-old’s work ethics.</p>
<p>In the end, I agree w/ Sakky that UC-B should let students flaming out of engineering to switch out w/ a clean slate (maybe to a lower tier UC). Caltech/MIT let their freshman get a term or two of pass/fail grading so that ppl who realize they’re in the wrong school can transfer out w/ minimal damage to their GPA.</p>
<p>Before you start this tirade, please refer back to all of my posts. I said students can’t get a clean slate if they couldn’t figure out Maxwell’s equations, which are the 4 PDEs that assuming anyone who’s doing engineering must take a set of physics class that touch upon this subject. It has nothing to do with you. Just because you got it doesn’t mean someone else does. Good grief.</p>
<p>You seriously propose masking out certain highschool? This is ridiculous.</p>
<p>Dude, I think it’s pretty clear that you confused the Maxwell Equations with the Maxwell Relations. Just own up to it. It’s not a big deal. I know lots of people who confuse the Maxwell Relations with the Equations. Heck, I know plenty of people who have insisted to me that they are the same thing, which they are clearly not. </p>
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<p>I never said that certain high schools will be masked out completely. It would just be worth a ‘minus’ factor, just like certain other high schools are ‘plus’ factors. The minus factor would be that you could still get admitted from that high school, as long as the rest of your application was strong. But, in a borderline case, you would not be admitted.</p>
<p>Why not? After all, this happens already. Colleges already give preference to people who graduate from certain high schools that are known to produce strong students. For example, the best and toughest high schools in New England, and one of the best in the country, is Boston Latin. Out of a total of 371 students in the senior class of 371, a whopping 28 of them were admitted to Harvard, and another 7 on the wait list Just think about that: what other high school can boast of 9.5% of the entire senior class getting admitted to or on the wait list for Harvard? I think it clearly shows some very strong admissions preference by those colleges for Boston Latin students. In other words, even somebody who is ranked barely within the top 10% of his high school class still has a good shot at Harvard. </p>
<p>And, oh, by the way, in case anybody is wondering, Boston Latin is a public school.</p>
<p>Yeah, exactly. That’s the problem. Nobody really knows what it means. I have yet to meet a single engineer in industry who actually knows what it all really means on a practical level. I mean, really, what exactly does it actually mean to make a reversible (and hence isentropic) change to a system? </p>
<p>The reason I bring this up is simply to illustrate that engineering majors force you to learn concepts that, frankly, you don’t really need to understand in order to actually work as an engineer. I know numerous highly successful chemical engineers who freely admit that they don’t really understand the Maxwell Relations. Yet schools force you to survive these courses by placing you in a situation where all you’re doing is manipulating equations. You don’t really understand what’s happening, you don’t know why. You don’t even know what the concepts actually truly mean. All you know is that you need to pass this course in order to complete the major. Hence, all you hope to do is survive. You just hope you pass the exams. Heck, even the best students from my thermo class - those who went on to get engineering PhD’s from top programs - freely admit that to this day, they still don’t really understand thermo. </p>
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<p>Dude, that’s what they’re doing right now. After all, college admissions right now are determined by your high school performance. Right now, your high school GPA and class rank are large predictors for determining whether you will get admitted to college (along with test scores, EC’s, essays, rec’s, etc.) You say that one math teacher might screw things up, but that can happen right now, under the current admissions process.</p>
<p>Since we’re already using high school performance to determine admissions, I am simply proposing that we do so far more carefully. For example, don’t just take the cumulative high school GPA. Also take individual grades in individual courses into consideration, especially math and science (if we’re talking about engineering admissions). Don’t just take the entire SAT score, but also look very carefully at the SAT-Math section. Carefully look at the SAT Subject tests in the technical subjects.</p>
<p>The point is not that I am going to come up with a perfect system. It doesn’t need to be. All we need is a system that is better than the current one. The current system already uses high school performance. It just does so in a highly crude (that is to say, not statistically rigorous) manner.</p>
I have not heard of the Maxwell Relations. I have attempted working through the Maxwell’s equations and that’s why I used it. I’ll own up to it if I was confused. Of course it’s not that big a deal to me.</p>