<p>Oh also, you can drop upper div courses and change around.</p>
<p>TAx BEar - you also can’t drop your technical courses!!! COE will force you to take two technical courses for your major every single semester. It is terribly annoying, actually. So the only way to tell if you like engineering is to take TWO ENGINEERING COURSES for your major, letter graded, first year!</p>
<p>Now I think about it, the P-NP option is the best, i.e. having that option to make your engineering classes not count, but still take their tests as if you’re in the class.</p>
<p>No they don’t. Slicmlic2001’s strategy demonstrates this point. He is actively protecting his GPA by simply not avoiding difficult classes in order to maximize his chances of getting into a top law school. </p>
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<p>Again, why? Like I’ve said, certain majors (and certain schools) are simply harder than others. It is easier to get a 3.7 in American Studies than it is in EECS. Does that mean that people in EECS are stupider than the people in American Studies? If not, then why shouldn’t more EECS people be eligible to compete for scholarships like the Marshall and Rhodes? </p>
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<p>Yeah, you might get external criticism. So what? Harvard has been criticized for grade inflation for decades, and it never seems to faze them. </p>
<p>Besides, Berkeley (like most schools) has already boosted its GPA over time. It is easier to get higher grades at Berkeley today than it was in the past. Hence, Berkeley can change its grading standards. </p>
<p>Let’s use the University of Virginia as the counterexample. UVa is widely credited as a top public school. Yet it is also easier than Berkeley. The grading scale is higher. A higher percentage of undergrads will graduate. If UVa can do that, Berkeley can do the same. </p>
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<p>You keep saying this - but this is not really true. The top students at Berkeley are not really competing against each other. Who they’re really competing against are the top students from the other schools. In other words, a top student from Berkeley usually isn’t competing for a top grad school placement or top job with somebody else from Berkeley. He is competing against somebody from Harvard, Yale or Stanford. </p>
<p>Case in point. The top law school in the country is Yale Law. Of the reported data, in the last few years, at most 2 (and usually 1) prelaws from Berkeley will get in each year. {Even if there are some unreported people who get in, the number is still going to be low). Come on, that’s pretty sparse. What that really means is that the Berkeley prelaws aren’t losing out to each other for a spot in Yale Law. They’re losing out to people from other schools. </p>
<p>Or take the Rhodes Scholarship. So far this decade, Berkeley has had 2. Rhodes 2007 winner Asya Passinsky is the first Berkeley winner since Anka Luthra of 2002. But come on, frankly, for a school like Berkeley, that’s pretty pathetic to have just 2 winners in this decade. Harvard had 2 undergrad winners just this year (plus a grad student winner). Heck, in just one recent year, Harvard had a whopping eight Rhodes winners. That’s right - eight. That’s as many Rhodes winners as Berkeley has had ** in the last 60 years**</p>
<p>So think about that. Schools like Harvard don’t worry about its own students supposedly competing against each other for top prizes and top placements. So why should Berkeley worry so much about that? </p>
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<p>First off, again, consider what you are encouraging. Let me give you the counterexample.</p>
<p>Take John, Joe’s twin brother. John is equivalently talented and hard-working as his brother is. John also goes to Berkeley. The major difference is that he happens to choose an easy major like American Studies. He doesn’t work very hard - certainly not as hard as his brother Joe who is getting slaughtered in EECS. But he doesn’t have to work very hard because American Studies doesn’t really require that much work. He finds that he can lolly-gag around, watch lots of movies, go out clubbing and bar-hopping many nights, hang out with girls, and generally enjoy life while still getting good grades because his classes are not highly demanding. So he graduates with a strong GPA that makes him eligible for many top jobs and graduate school slots, without ever really working very hard. </p>
<p>Then we have Joe and John’s younger sister Jane. She watches the examples of her older brothers at Berkeley. Upon finishing high school, she goes to Berkeley too. Jane, seeing John’s “success” and Joe’s lack thereof, decides to also choose an easy major. But she’s also strategic. She deliberately researches the easiest possible classes at Berkeley that have the easiest grading schemes and takes as many of those as she can. She deliberately chooses to take classes that teach things that she already knows. For example, she already speaks fluent French having previously lived in France. But she decides to take the introductory French classes anyway, just to rack up a string of easy A’s. She doesn’t learn anything in those classes, but she doesn’t care. All she cares about is getting a bunch of easy grades. She ends up graduating with a stellar GPA, winning some international scholarships, and also getting into the top law schools.</p>
<p>But note, Joe, John, and Jane are all basically the same person. They all had the same talent. They had the same work ethic. They all went to Berkeley. The difference in their outcomes rests solely on which classes at Berkeley they took.</p>
<p>{Note, this is not an entirely artificial story. I actually know who Joe, John, and Jane in real life. Granted, they aren’t actually related to each other, and I changed some of the details to protect the innocent. But the general theme is true.} </p>
<p>So, TaxMan, that belies your stance. You say that Berkeley’s reputation stems from its rigor. Yet the fact is, some classes and majors at Berkeley are easier than others. Put another way, why is it OK for EECS to be so much more demanding and harshly graded than is American Studies? After all, they’re both majors at Berkeley. </p>
<p>The even more salient question is, why should Joe be judged any more harshly than John or Jane? Or, put another way, why should John and Jane be rewarded for choosing an easy major? After all, Joe is no less talented. The only difference is that he tried to do something difficult and failed. On the other hand, John and Jane didn’t even try something difficult at all. If they had, they probably would have failed too, but they didn’t even try.</p>
<p>Which gets down to the central point. If you’re going to punish failure the way that you punished Joe, then all you’re really doing is discouraging risk-taking. You are simply encouraging Berkeley students to be like Jane and search out the easiest possible classes that teach things that they already know. People will then just game the system. </p>
<p>Personally speaking, I would rather take somebody who tried something difficult and failed than somebody who didn’t even try at all. But you seem to be arguing the opposite: you would prefer the person who didn’t even try something hard at all. If that’s your opinion, that’s fine, but I would say that that’s sad.</p>
<p>“No they don’t. Slicmlic2001’s strategy demonstrates this point. He is actively protecting his GPA by simply not avoiding difficult classes in order to maximize his chances of getting into a top law school.”</p>
<p>YEah, I don’t see a way to refute this…quite a few people have whined to me that they really want to go to law school, but hate the fact that others are getting by in easier majors. ALL the worse if someone took a hard major that they utterly hated, and did poorly at for more reasons than just not being “up to it.”</p>
<p>And Sakky, I agree in every sense with the spirit of your point. I wonder, though, where softening Berkeley’s grading scheme comes into play - i.e., is it not a more direct approach to our problem to “wipe the first year’s grades out” along the lines of what you were saying before? I’m in support of this, because I feel the latter courses a student takes are more reflective of his program anyway, and this also encourages test runs in difficult majors.</p>
<p>I guess my philosophy with difficult majors is not to water down material, but at the same time to no longer make it competitive within the school. Have exams not to “screw students over,” but to test their understanding of what aren’t easy things in any sense. I know some classes are moving in this direction, others not so much.</p>
<p>Sakky, you are assuming Berkeley and Harvard have the same caliber of students. If Cal cuts it’s ~24,000 down to Harvard’s size of ~7000, then I will not be surprise if their grade distributions are similar. The fact that Harvard has eight Rhodes Scholars in one year compared to Cal’s two in a decade only supports my position. </p>
<p>Harvard’s brand is really in a league of its own. Their reputation is built on a solid track record (grade inflation or not) of success, awards and innovations. Your statement that graduating a higher percentage of students at Cal with higher GPA (let’s say an extra 20%) does not impact original 20% is silly. If I had a 3.8+ GPA and I had to compete with an additional 3.8+. You mentioned that Yale Law admits a few Berkeley students for each entering class. If I was applying to Yale Law, that’s an additional applicant I must compete against. It is even tougher for medical schools where the number of seats are ~114 per 151 osteopathic/medical schools. Every additional applicant to the ~17,000 accepted pool counts tremendously. </p>
<p>The arguments for grade inflation are a ridiculous one at that. What’s to stop every school from grade inflation? Absolutely nothing. In the long run, everything will normalize and we will be right back where we are or every student will graduate with a GPA north of 3.5 and honors. Your link regarding grade inflation through the years at public and privates only goes to prove my point.</p>
<p>If I had two resumes in front of me and I all I had to go on was their GPA, I would pick the one that is higher. I don’t care if either one of them wanted to try out engineering and failed. The fact that s/he failed tells me that s/he cannot handle the material.</p>
<p>If you want to learn more about engineering, then there are ways to go about it without ruining your GPA. I would suggest auditing the class. The problem at Cal is that everyone thinks they can handle the material and this truly is not so. </p>
<p>You mentioned why can’t a 3.5 apply for a Rhodes Scholarship. Because it is a waste of time. Why doesn’t the homeless guy at People’s Park run for President? Because it’s a waste of time. Cal’s last 2 scholarships winners had a 3.9/4.0 and Ankur double majored in EECS/business. That’s right, he finished two simultaneous with a perfect 4.0 while running some nonprofit getting computers for poor school districts or something. Now ask yourself this if you were on the committee and a 3.5 profile was up for discussion. It won’t even be a discussion. The applicant will get laugh at. There are plenty of people who graduate with 3.8+ so I am not even sure why we are even talking about grade inflation. </p>
<p>As far as John, Joe, & Jane, you are assuming John and Jane will do well. I hate to break the news to many of the readers here, but with just an undergrad, American studies and most easy majors in general will not get you a high paying job. </p>
<p>The reason people are drawn to EECS is most likely the $67,000 average starting salary.</p>
<p>Your example is excellent in that it should be applied to real life. There are plenty of examples of people failing out of EECS. It’s not like it has never happened before. Students should pay close attention to the examples of those before them and thread carefully. </p>
<p>I really think this discussion is pointless for a few reasons. Cal will most likely never change it’s grading policy. We are debating public versus privates and we are comparing Cal to H/Y/S. We each have different views about “trying out a major.” And you will hire all the kids I won’t hire so I will send them over to you.</p>
<p>These two points are inherently endogenous. A major reason why students usually choose schools like HYPS over Berkeley is precisely because of Berkeley’s brand reputation for difficulty. Let’s face it. Students don’t want difficulty. They don’t want rigor. They want it easy, and for a highly rational reason: we live in a world that doesn’t really reward difficulty. Admissions figures bear out the fact that Berkeley students are not rewarded for the difficulty and hence have trouble in getting into the top professional schools. Take a gander at the GPA’s of Berkeley students who are admitted to the top law and med schools. Compare those figures to the selectivity figures in the USNews Graduate rankings for law and med schools and notice that Berkeley students are being given no breaks because of Berkeley’s reputation for difficulty. Berkeley students are being held to the same GPA standards as everybody else. </p>
<p>Hence, if students gain no advantage from Berkeley’s reputation for rigor, then why should students choose Berkeley if they can go to an easier school such as HYPS? </p>
<p>The fact is, grade inflation works. Maybe it shouldn’t work. But it does work. And as long as it does work, students will continue to rationally prefer the grade inflated schools, ceteris paribus. </p>
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<p>Slicmlic2001 said that he might have attempted a test run in EECS under my proposal, as if such a test run would be a bad thing. I would actually argue that that’s a good thing. After all, maybe he would have been the next great microchip designer or software genius. Maybe he would have invented the next great technology that would have revolutionized the world. But we’ll never know, because he wouldn’t even dare to try. Instead, he chose the sad - but highly rational - alternative of an easy and grade inflated major in order to protect his GPA. </p>
<p>When you punish people for attempting difficult things, you discourage them from even attempting difficult things in the first place. Instead, you encourage people to just do the easy and safe thing. How many engineers has the world ‘lost’, how many potential new inventions and new technology companies were never created, because students wouldn’t dare to even try engineering for fear of damaging their academic records? </p>
<p>Allow me to make a digression into macro-economics and specifically to economic localization - work for which Paul Krugman won the Nobel Prize this year. Take Silicon Valley, which is by far the most powerful economic dynamo for technology entrepreneurship and innovation in the entire world. Silicon Valley dominates in such a way that many people recommend that the first thing that any budding tech entrepreneur should do - even before they build a salable product - is to first move to Silicon Valley. Why is there only one Silicon Valley, and why is it located in the South Bay? Why not in Boston, which also has excellent technical universities and a large scientific and engineering workforce, and plenty of readily available capital? Why not in Europe or Asia? A city in Taiwan called Hsinchu may come closest of any place in the world outside the US - but even so, it pales in comparison to SV. </p>
<p>The idea that startups would do better to move to Silicon Valley is not even a nationalistic one. [1] It’s the same thing I say to startups in the US. Y Combinator alternates between coasts every 6 months. Every other funding cycle is in Boston. And even though Boston is the second biggest startup hub in the US (and the world), we tell the startups from those cycles that their best bet is to move to Silicon Valley. If that’s true of Boston, it’s even more true of every other city.</p>
<p>Heck, why not even in the East Bay, around Berkeley? Why was SV built around the South Bay? After all, Berkeley is, frankly, a far more interesting place to live than in the South Bay, as, believe me, there is nothing to do in Palo Alto or Menlo Park. Nothing to do except, I guess, build companies. </p>
<p>The key cultural feature of SV that everybody who has studied the area agrees is paramount is SV’s culture of risk-taking, which includes the notion of not punishing failure. In Europe and Asia, if you start a company and it fails, your work record is considered to be badly blemished. This happens to some extent in Boston and even in the East Bay. Not so in SV. Having started a failed company is considered not to be shameful at all in SV - if anything, it is considered a badge of honor, for it shows that at least you had the gumption to try. That’s a major cultural reason why no other part of the world - not even the East Bay - has been able to replicate SV, even though many governments have tried. {What usually ends up happening is that governments will try to encourage the development of a tech cluster through tax incentives and subsidies, and they just end up with a bunch of big established tech firms who move in to take advantage of the subsidies, but little actual entrepreneurship that is the hallmark of SV.} </p>
<p>This all gets to what I’ve been saying throughout this thread. When you punish people for not succeeding at difficult tasks, you discourage them from even trying difficult tasks in the first place. I therefore think it is no coincidence that SV was fostered around Stanford and not around Berkeley. </p>
<p>So I ask again - if grades could be wiped ex post as I had proposed and then slicmlic2001 had indeed taken a test run in EECS to take advantage of my proposal, why exactly would that have been a bad thing? If his test run succeeded, he might have been the next great engineer. If his test run failed, oh well, he just switches to some other major. But at least he tried. </p>
<p>But now we’ll never know. The world may have just been deprived of a real-life Tony Stark. But we’ll never know that because the incentives deterred him from even trying.</p>
<p>Uh, how so? Actually, it supports my position, because we are not talking about per-capita figures. We are talking about absolute figures. </p>
<p>After all, you said it yourself. Berkeley has far more undergrads than Harvard does. Yet Harvard clearly beats the holy heck out of Harvard when it comes to Rhodes winners, on an absolute numbers basis. In other words, Harvard’s small student population can nevertheless win more Rhodes in just one year (2006) than Berkeley’s far larger student population can in ** 60 years**. Berkeley would still obviously be losing on a per-capita basis, but it should at least be able to match Harvard on an absolute basis. </p>
<p>So, no, it is clearly not true that Berkeley’s top students are equivalent to Harvard’s student body. Even Berkeley’s top 7000 students clearly have great matchup problems with Harvard, for otherwise, they would be winning the same number of Rhodes on an absolute basis. Yet Berkeley doesn’t come close to doing even that.</p>
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<p>Uh, no, your notion is quite silly. The top 20% of Berkeley students are already competing with the best students from all other schools. The notion that adding in another 20% of students from Berkeley into the pool changes the equation substantially is ludicrous. You’re adding a relatively small amount to what is already a quite large pool</p>
<p>Like I said, right now, the best students at Berkeley don’t compete against each other. They compete against the students from the other top schools, i.e. the Ivies, MIT, Stanford, Duke, Northwestern, Chicago, Caltech, UCLA, Michigan, Virginia, etc. So even if we expanded the definition of what is considered to be a “top” student at Berkeley, they would still be competing against a very large pool of students from other schools. </p>
<p>Put another way, if the Rhodes committee has enough room to grant scholarships to eight students from Harvard in one particular year, then surely it has room to accommodate more than just one Berkeley student every 5 years. </p>
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<p>Actually, it’s people like you who will stop it. Every school has people like you who complain (short-sightedly) about grade inflation and prevent it from happening. Meanwhile, those schools who ignore the detractors and opt for grade inflation anyway (like Stanford and Harvard) reap the benefits, because they know those other schools foolishly won’t match them. </p>
<p>Now, don’t get me wrong. I agree with you that perhaps someday in the future, every school may indeed be grade inflated and hence no advantage will be had from grading, and the competition will move to some other metric. But we are far from that point. And as long as we are, there are great benefits to be had from any individual school in opting for grade inflation. To deny that these benefits exist is itself ridiculous.</p>
<p>Let me put it to you this way. We’re in an arms race. Schools like Stanford and Harvard are out there using every weapon they have. But schools like Berkeley are fighting with a self-imposed arm behind the back. That’s why Berkeley is destined to lose. That’s also why students will continue to rationally prefer Stanford or Harvard to Berkeley. Why make things more difficult for yourself if you don’t have to? </p>
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<p>You have now proven my basic point! Your have demonstrated that grade inflation works! You said it yourself - you don’t care why somebody has worse grades than somebody else. All you care about is that somebody has better grades. In other words, grade inflation works. </p>
<p>In other words, you have freely conceded that students would indeed be better off in going to a more grade inflated school. Or choosing grade inflated majors or courses. Exactly. Allright then, so I see that we are on the same page. </p>
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<p>Because grade inflation is inherent in the discussion. </p>
<p>Take the 2007 winner: Asya Passinksy. She doubled in PEIS and Russian. Don’t get me wrong, I greatly respect her accomplishments. But let’s be perfectly honest here. Those aren’t exactly the most difficult majors at Berkeley. In fact, I suspect the Russian major would have been especially easy for her, considering that she was born to Russian immigrant parents and hence probably spoke Russian at home. </p>
<p>So, you ask why isn’t a 3.5 GPA in the discussion? Again, because some majors are more difficult than others. For example, somebody with a 3.5 GPA in EECS or chemical engineering may have studied just as hard as Passinsky did, simply because those are very difficult majors with far harsher curves than her majors were. </p>
<p>But, Tax Bear, you don’t care about that, right? You don’t care that some majors are more difficult than others. You don’t care that some majors have harsher curves. To you, somebody with higher grades is automatically better, right? So that means that my example of Jane - who gamed her way through Berkeley by always taking the easiest possible classes she could find that involved the least possible work - is a top student to you, right? </p>
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<p>Oh, I don’t know. Seems to me that, if we applied your standards, Jane should win a Rhodes or Marshall Scholarship. Or get admitted to a top law school. Or get a job at McKinsey or Goldman. After all - you said it yourself - she has a top GPA, and that’s all you care about, right? You don’t care how she got that GPA, all you care about is that she got it. </p>
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<p>Indeed. I will hire all of the people who actually had the gumption to take risks in life. You will end up with all of the Jane’s who have done nothing but play it safe and game the system.</p>
<p>In fact, we have a real-life natural experiment we can look at. Consider the economic history of the risk-loving culture of Silicon Valley vs. the safer culture in the East Bay. Tell me - who has done better economically? Exactly.</p>
<p>I was a one of the top high school students at my HS (~4 percentile) and I had stats around the average engineering admit at Cal. After my first semester here in the College of Engineeering, it is true (at least for me, not sure about the majority) that your grades take a huge dip. I’m only around a 3 average which is not used to what I’m seeing. And I think this is a huge disadvantage for people who think that Engineering is not right for them, because you need a “competitive” gpa to switch majors (well at least the impacted ones, which seem to be almost every major here now). Now you may be smarter than your average Joe and get a high GPA here, but I really think that higher GPAs are much tougher to come by here. No one really holds your hand.</p>
<p>Yet Berkeley did change its grading policies. Or, more precisely certain parts of Berkeley changed policies. What I mean is that some majors - notably the humanities and social science majors - at Berkeley became easier over time. But other majors such as physical sciences and engineering did not.</p>
<p>*Rine noted the variance between policy and practice in citing a 1976 Berkeley Academic Senate recommendation that the average grade awarded by the instructor in a course be recorded on the student’s transcript along with the class size and the grade he or she has earned. The Academic Senate also stated at that time that “it seems to us that we should attempt to return to the traditional distribution where grades A and B recognize honor work in undergraduate courses and should be awarded to fewer than half the students on average.”</p>
<p>Rine described the shock he felt during his three years on the Committee on Teaching from roughly 1998 to 2000 when he reviewed teaching records for large undergraduate classes, with more than 100 students, in which no one got less than an A-, year after year. At the time, Rine asked Associate Registrar Walter Wong to assemble some data looking at upper division and lower division grading in the physical sciences, biological sciences, social sciences, humanities and engineering, so that he could distinguish trends from anecdotal exceptions. The results were clear. “The physical sciences and engineering had rigorous grading standards roughly in line with the recommendations from 1976,” stated Rine, “while the humanities and social sciences in many classes had all but given up on grades below a B, and in many courses below an A-, and the biological sciences had no consistent pattern.”*</p>
<p>But, Tax Bear, you don’t care about that, right? You don’t care that some majors are graded easier than others. According to you, the only thing that matters are the final letter grades, and you don’t care where they come from, right? So if you have one person who got a 3.8 in American Studies, and somebody else with a 3.5 in Physics, the former guy is automatically better. In fact, the former guy may be a candidate for the Rhodes or Marshall, or for getting into a top law school, whereas, according to you, the notion that the latter guy might want to apply for the Rhodes, according to you, would be ‘not worthy of discussion’, ‘get laughed at’, and ‘a waste of time’. (Your words, not mine). The fact that one major is grade inflated and the other is not - well, that just doesn’t matter, right? The only thing that is important is that one guy has a 3.8, the other has a 3.5, and so the first guy is automatically better. Is that how it is?</p>
<p>Right there is what I consider to be the fundamental problem: some majors at Berkeley are graded much harder than others. This wouldn’t be a problem if people corrected for this disparity in grading. But instead, you have people like Tax Bear who either don’t know or don’t care about the disparity. </p>
<p>I would also pose the following questions. Why exactly is it OK for the humanities and social science majors at Berkeley to have inflated their grading standards over time, but not OK for the science and engineering majors to do the same? A related question would be: why are certain majors graded easier than others? Why is it OK to slaughter the engineering students with a gauntlet of weeders, but not OK to do the same to the X Studies students?</p>
<p>Taking it back to the OP’s questions above, the answer is that it’s quite easy - in fact, trivially so - to graduate from Berkeley…if you’re in certain majors. For example, if you major in American Studies, then frankly, you can graduate without putting in much effort at all. Heck, you barely even have to show up to class. </p>
<p>On the other hand, if you want to major in something like EECS, chemical engineering, or physics, then you may have great difficulty in graduating. I know people in those majors who worked like dogs… and still flunked out.</p>
<p>Man, I’m quite amazed. I’ve read lots of Sakky’s posts on this grade inflation business, and used to viscerally hate in any way adopting any softening measures, but I realized sometime after getting to Berkeley and actually watching what happens to premeds and prelaw-ers the danger, and do think something has to be done. </p>
<p>I used to think that easy majors couldn’t get anywhere - it’s not true! Raw GPA is a huge deal in some disciplines, even if only major GPA and major depth are in my own. The only way an easy major isn’t going to get anywhere is if they just stick down their path, don’t go to grad school, don’t go to professional school, and just sit around expecting a job.</p>
<p>Plus, I actually find that a difficult curriculum with motivated students WITHOUT undue in-school competition is the best idea. In the end, making it that much harder to achieve good grades doesn’t help students learn better - in fact, it makes them purely grade centric. Making it challenging to get an A, but giving decent grades out to everyone making a good effort is a perfectly good option, especially given it’s the school which’d lose out if its students are snuffed by other schools, and at the same time, every student can do with some encouragement!</p>
<p>Sakky, it’s sounds like you had a difficult time with your first or only major. Sakky will you honestly admit here that you would try applying for a Rhodes Scholarship with a 3.5? I didn’t think so.</p>
<p>Grades socialism boils down to an intelligence test. If you were too stupid to walk into a major that ruined your GPA then you failed the intelligent test miserably.</p>
<p>Just because you write more does not make everything you say right ;)</p>
<p>Tax Bear, I think you’re very short-sighted in your assessment of people “being too stupid to walk into a major that ruined their GPA/life.”</p>
<p>First and foremost, as Sakky correctly brings up, 17 and 18 year olds, especially when dealing with subject matter that they’ve never been exposed to, are not capable of making educated, informed decisions. It’s not that they were “stupid,” they just didn’t have the life experience(s) or just plain raw information that would help them make a “smart” decision.</p>
<p>How is a 17/18-year old supposed to know whether or not they’ll be good at chemical engineering…or bioengineering…or mechanical engineering. What’s more, how is a 17/18-year old from a minority or poor background (and sometimes BOTH) supposed to know anything about the level of difficulty experienced in these disciplines? Does the fact that they made an uninformed decision make them automatically dumber than myself? I’m a Caucasian male from a well to do family whose had siblings/parents/family members/friends who have attended higher education institutions in the United States…I’m automatically at an informational advantage. </p>
<p>I KNEW that if I wanted to go to a good law school, I would have to GPA-protect. I knew that coming in. But does that automatically make me “smarter?” I highly doubt it. I don’t think I work as hard as my 2.7 GPA counterparts in the chemical engineering department. Nor do I think that I myself could sustain such a GPA in that major. However, I have a 3.8 in Political Science. </p>
<p>Am I smarter than the chemical engineering students? No, not by a long shot…I just had more information to work with. I have no doubts in my mind that had those same chemical engineers with low GPAs been given the same information as I had, then a few of them might have joined me on my path to a high(er) GPA. Does that mean that they are automatically MORE intelligent for doing so? No, not necessarily…It might mean that they’re more shrewd, or more practical…but more intelligent? I doubt it.</p>
<p>FURTHERMORE, just because you lack the discipline to read sakky’s long posts, does not mean that they are without merit. I think that people who advocate the merits of banging ones head against a brick wall WHEN THEY DON’T HAVE TO are the TRUE ones who have failed the “intelligence test miserably.”</p>
<p>Why the need to put Berkeley students at an automatic disadvantage when we don’t have to be? Sakky is merely pointing out that the arcane grading policies that Berkeley has in place are not the norm across the board…Berkeley is intentionally hindering the success of it’s students by grading them harder than other institutions. </p>
<p>Does anyone think any less of Brown, even though they have rampant grade inflation? No, they don’t. A 3.9 GPA at Brown is just as prestigious (if not more so) than a 3.9 at Berkeley. So why should it be more difficult for a student at Berkeley to attain that GPA than at Brown? That’s sakky’s point.</p>
<p>And if someone is not able to understand, after all of the reasons previously discussed, that Berkeley’s grading policies are holding back it’s students-- then I think THAT person has “failed the intelligence test miserably.”</p>
<p>I must say that this thread is kinda dead - Tax Bear definitely hasn’t read anything I proposed, and this is getting down to useless mudslinging. I am interested if Tax Bear has specific responses to the following concerns, else I think it’ll be a matter of iterating points.
(Sakky, I’m condensing my understanding of your posts here a bit)</p>
<p>-People should be encouraged, rather than discouraged, to try difficult things. If they aren’t, realistically, students at other schools WILL try difficult things, and reap the rewards of their grade inflated schools. A proposal I had which AVOIDS grade inflation is to make the first year a test run, for some reasons I stated above. Variation of MIT, Harvey Mudd, and similar plans (all really tough schools, not inflated ones).</p>
<p>-Professional schools often admit students based on GPA only. So, unlike what is claimed, an easy major isn’t necessarily going to lead to a less lucrative career at all than engineering. </p>
<p>Now, if Tax Bear believes it’s best to make things intrinsically hard as possible for the student, and has some personal ideology saying this’ll build character, then whatever, there is really no more to argue, and that I just don’t believe this is the most practical way to run a school. Because it really sounds that you think this art of picking the right major and magically knowing how everything should work out is intrinsically an “intelligence test.” I can’t even imagine why someone would think this, but I won’t bother debating that point.</p>
<p>After reading the posts here I absolutely have no idea what major I should choose in Berkeley in the future. Sure,my number one priority is to protect my GPA for med school, but I really don’t want to major in something just because I’ll get a good GPA in it. Everybody’s posts here were really informative, so thanks!
I guess I’m going to give MCB a second thought, and look for something else, but definitely something with NO ‘studies’ in it. Any advice??</p>
<p>Hmmm. Moon_star - I hate to say this, but I think MCB, chemistry or something like that really does seem the best bet. Part of our discussion in this forum is that students should be able to take the majors which really teach them about the tough things, WITHOUT having to pay royally in terms of grades as compared to other schools, so they remain competitive applicants. </p>
<p>Maybe a mixture of MCB and IB courses?? The point is, I would want to train myself as best as I could. </p>
<p>OK…I’m a pure math major, and my attitude is probably very different from more professionally inclined students, and perhaps not best suited to guide you; that is, I am always for learning stuff deeply as possible. But there is a point to be made, which is that I wonder if all those guys would really be in MCB if there were a very good other way to do it. My instinct says no, even if people follow each other like sheep at times :)</p>
<p>The point is - I think you’d feel a lot more lonely if you weren’t in the main premed majors, and later may find that others know more than you do about the stuff they need to.</p>
<p>Sure, in theory it all begins in med school, but a certain degree of proficiency is necessary.</p>
<p>One option is always to major in something you wouldn’t mind, which isn’t too hard on GPA, and just take some salient MCB and chem courses, so as not to kill your GPA too badly, but gain some familiarity. Now, I’m possibly completely ignorant on all this, and this may not be possible (med school may have requirements I’m not aware of) but this seems a logical path to me.</p>
<p>Of course I wouldn’t, as the system wouldn’t allow me to be a serious candidate with a 3.5. But that’s the point. The system is unfairly slanted against people who took difficult courses and/or difficult majors. </p>
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<p>So in other words, the supposedly “smart” people are the ones who specifically choose the easiest possible majors and the easiest possible classes, right? So in other words, if the average GPA in American Studies is higher than that in EECS (which wouldn’t surprise me in the least), then that simply means that, on average, the EECS students are dumber than the American Studies students, right? That is to say, if somebody gets an A in an American Studies course and somebody else gets an A- in an EECS course, the first guy is automatically smarter, is that true? </p>
<p>What you either don’t see, or don’t want to see is something that nobody at Berkeley seriously disputes: some majors are harder than others. This is as obvious as the sky is blue, and the fact that you refuse to acknowledge even such a basic point as this is something that I think the readers ought to take into account when assessing the worthiness of your opinions. </p>
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<p>And just because you keep replying doesn’t mean that any of your replies are right. In fact, you just keep digging yourself deeper and deeper, by still refusing to acknowledge the difference in grading standards between the various majors.</p>
<p>If this question you are asking is directed to me personally, then trust me, you don’t have to worry about me. I’ve done rather well for myself, if I don’t say so myself. I’m sure that people like slicmlic2001 would agree. </p>
<p>But I know I’m one of the lucky ones. A lot of my former colleagues weren’t so lucky. A lot of them could have gone on to top professional schools, or been competitive for top scholarships such as the Rhodes or Marshall if they had simply chosen easier majors. For example, if they had majored in American Studies, they probably would have gotten a GPA that exceeded mine, and studied very little. </p>
<p>But of course, Tax Bear, you don’t care about that. You don’t care that some majors are easier than others. That’s not important to you. All that matters to you are the grades, and you don’t care how people get them. In other words, you think people should always take the easiest possible classes they can find and avoid difficult classes like the plague.</p>
<p>I do have one question for you, though. How does that square with your notion that Berkeley’s brand reputation is based on rigor? The notion that people should be rewarded for taking easy classes does not seem to connote rigor.</p>
<p>But since you asked me about my personal circumstances, I think it’s fair for me to do the same to you. Perhaps you coasted your way through one of the creampuff majors and you’re tired of people snickering at it as “the major filled with lazy students”, even though you know in your heart that it’s true? Hey, well, if that’s the case, I don’t know what to tell you. Sometimes the truth hurts.</p>