is it hard to graduate from berkeley?

Viper247 · January 2, 2009, 6:23pm

Sakky, you have 10,000 posts.

It is reasonable to assume that you have spent more than 100,000 minutes of your life on this forum. All your posts, as smart as they may be, have resulted in no change.

Rather than wasting more time on this forum, why not get a job at Cal and have some of these ideas implemented? If that isn’t an option, why not write a detailed proposition and hand it to Berkeley?

By the way, please try to be more realistic. The university will not take you seriously if your first suggestion is to wipe out 2 years worth of grades. Start small and only then proceed to more influential change.

mathboy98 · January 2, 2009, 8:37pm

Viper - perhaps Sakky’s been doing stuff to make a difference outside of the forum, but I, with you, do marvel how he can continue to have the patience to argue with a Tax Bear, who addresses basically none of Sakky’s points besides going “A higher GPA is better. Life is an intelligence test. You probably failed it.”

Anyway, for what it’s worth, I think at least instilling the proper ideas in readers is a step, because the more people informed, hopefully the better decisions they’ll make for Cal’s future.

Tax_Bear · January 2, 2009, 9:38pm

Sad as this may sounds, it is truly how the game of life works. I used to respect Sakky from his posts in other subjects, but that’s gone away with this one.

Let’s put it this way Sakky, would you apply for the Rhodes scholarship if you had the minimum GPA requirement?

You of all people should understand the concept of risk. Sure people’s tolerance/aversion are all different. Higher risk equates to higher payoff and the opposite is true. All these young kids know is that EECS average starting salary is $65,000+ and that’s the main draw to EECS. I don’t feel bad for them one bit if they want to assume the risk and then failed.

My solution of the waiver is the easiest. Sign it and don’t cry if you fail.

newmassdad · January 4, 2009, 10:05pm

Sakky,

You are pretty clueless about the Rhodes Scholarship if you think some kids would win if they picked an easier major. In fact, most Rhodes winners (and no doubt Marshall too) excel across the board. In November 2007, one winner was an engineering major (gasp!) from MIT (gasp again!) who graduated with a 4.0 average (double gasp!!). I doubt an easier major would have made any difference for her.

So dream on Sakky, about how important slacker majors are. For Rhodes/Marshall, just does not matter. And I suspect the same is true much more broadly. It is certainly true that even formulaic med school admissions decisions, for example, accommodate a wide range of grading practices, both by major and by institution.

sunfish · January 5, 2009, 1:55pm

newmassdad,

You are either clueless or ultra sensitive about “slacker majors.”

Sakky thinks that high gpa is a NECESSARY condition for Rhodes/Marshall; we don’t know whether this is true or not but so far there is no evidence to disprove it.
1A. Your MIT example supports his assertion. Thank you.
1B. In case you still don’t get it: #1 is logically equivalent to its contrapositive, which is that if you don’t have high gpa, you don’t get Rhodes/Marshall.
Sakky has been b!tching about lack of fairness for science/engineering majors at Cal/MIT. In contrast, he is implying (and saying) that “slacker majors” are creampuff. Even though it’s largely true, he did not say that only slacker majors win Rhodes/Marshall.
2A. Rhodes/Marshall are based on both academic as well as personal achievements. Who has more time to pursue ECs, a biochem major or an xyz studies major?
Your assertion regarding med school admissions decisions is empirically false. They do not accomodate based on majors. If anything, they may slightly favor xyz studies majors in the name of diversity. They do not accomodate based on how tough the school is. They actually penalize tough schools like Cal and MIT(there may be other factors such as high concentration of certain ethnic group, who knows?).

Sidenote to Sakky: Rhodes are selected by region of residency, and so the lack of represenation from Cal is not just due to its tough academic environment. Inability to attract the best and brightest(say top 0.1%) could be as important a factor. But then if those top 0.1% actually enrolled at Cal, would they survive the drove of ruthless academic warriors roaming the campus? Like newmassdad, I don’t have a clue.

newmassdad · January 5, 2009, 4:44pm

sunfish,

You and sakky can continue in your wonderland of sophomoric argument. I’ll bow out of your juvenile logic debates.

Clearly, neither of you knows many Rhodes scholars well. I do. And they would find these distinctions you’re trying to make a waste of time.

Good day too both of you.

mathboy98 · January 6, 2009, 1:18am

OK I don’t know anything about Rhodes, but I think there’s plenty of valuable advice and info to people considering Berkeley and looking for its welfare here.

I think the Rhodes thing was just brought up as a sort of small point of consideration, so I’d ignore if if it doesn’t interest you!

sakky · January 10, 2009, 3:37pm

Well, first off, I don’t know that you should be so worried about how I manage my time anyway. It’s my time, I can do with it as I like. Plenty of other people choose to use their time on endeavors that others may not find to be productive. For example, Vicissitudes once told a story of a Berkeley student he knows who plays World of Warcraft day and night, even peeing into a cup so that he doesn’t have to actually get up and use the bathroom. I happen to know a bunch of guys who are obsessed with watching, analyzing, cross-referencing, and blogging about every single episode of Star Trek, including all of the spinoff series (i.e. Star Trek: NG, Star Trek Voyager, etc.) Hey, if that’s what they want to do with their time, fine. It’s their life.

Besides, I would argue that my work here has been productive. People here have read my posts and have been inspired to demand change from Berkeley. Maybe that change won’t happen. But at least there’s a chance. That’s better than no chance at all.

Besides, I am not necessarily always asking for change anyway. An equally important objective of mine is to educate people about what to expect if they choose to go to Berkeley (assuming Berkeley doesn’t change). That may mean that some people may have chosen not to attend who would have been bad fits anyway. Others who do go to Berkeley will do so with better preparation. Either way, I would argue that that’s a positive outcome. That’s better than having those people choose Berkeley and then running into problems because they didn’t know certain things before coming.

Well, like I said, these posts are not supposed to be ‘realistic’ in any political sense. I’m not a politician, nor am I an education administrator. That’s not my job. I’m an activist. I state what I think should happen and why, and I leave it to others to actually figure out how to make those things happen. Obviously if I was trying to be a politician, then I would state things quite differently. But again, that’s not the role I’m trying to play here.

And I used to respect your posts and now that’s gone.

Sure, I agree with you that this may be the way life works. But I question whether it has to be that way, and whether things can change.

After all, policies change all the time. To give you an example from another school, consider MIT’s policy of sophomore exploratory grading, which effectively is a retroactive drop of a 2nd-year class after you’ve already seen your grade. That policy didn’t exist even a decade ago. That’s completely new. MIT sophomores can “explore” a class, which means to take a class all the way to completion, see their final grade, and then decide whether they want to convert their course grade to Listener (which effectively means to drop the class).

[MIT</a> - Academic Guide: 8. PROGRESSING THROUGH MIT](<a href=“Advising resources | MIT Registrar”>Advising resources | MIT Registrar)

Uh, that’s not the issue on the table, and never has been.

The issue is that some majors grade harder than others, which makes it more difficult for you to compete for GPA-centric competitions such as the Rhodes. I am simply asking why. For example, the guy with a 3.5 GPA in EECS may indeed be far more brilliant and harder-working than the guy with a 3.8 in American Studies. But the latter guy has higher grades because his coursework is easier. How fair is that when talking about competitions like the Rhodes?

But you don’t seem to care about that.

Naturally I understand the concept of risk. But what you don’t seem to want to understand is that risk profiles can be managed. That is, the schools themselves can decide that certain majors are more difficult than others.

Consider Stanford EE/CS vs. Berkeley EECS. I think we can all agree that that latter is riskier, even after controlling for selectivity. For example, you take only those people who were admitted to both Stanford and to Berkeley EECS, and I think we can agree that those people are more likely to get lower grades and otherwise perform poorly at Berkeley EECS. Hence, Berkeley is riskier. But how exactly does that correlate with risk vs. reward? After all, Berkeley EECS grads don’t make more than Stanford EE/CS grads. In fact, I suspect they actually make less. Think about that: Berkeley EECS offers both higher risk and lower reward.

I’ll give you another example. Compare Stanford EE/CS vs. MIT EECS. These schools are of basically the same level of selectivity. Yet, again, we can agree that MIT EECS is riskier. Yet I don’t think MIT EECS students make more than Stanford EE/CS students do. I think it’s about the same. Hence, MIT offers a higher risk for no extra reward.

The point is that Stanford actively reduces the risk for its students. Stanford’s engineering grading philosophy is simple: they are going to offer a relatively laid-back, but still elite engineering education, with relaxed grading standards. That is an active choice made by Stanford.

Berkeley could do the same. After all, if Stanford engineers can enjoy lower risk and higher reward, why can’t Berkeley engineers? I see no reason why that couldn’t happen. Now, might that mean that Berkeley engineering might become even more selective: i.e., to the level of Stanford selectivity? Perhaps. So what? Why would that be a bad thing?

The point is that risk profiles can be actively managed. You don’t have to take risk profiles as given. You can change them. Stanford did, and look at them.

Or don’t even go to Berkeley at all, which is precisely what many of the best students in California (and everywhere else) choose to do, instead preferring a school that offers a superior risk-reward profile.

And if people like you continue to hold sway, then schools like Stanford will always continue to be strongly preferred over Berkeley.

Newmassdad, you are pretty clueless when it comes to basic reading comprehension. Please read more carefully next time.

First off, I never said that the very best engineering students can never win the Rhodes. Obviously those rare few with very top GPA’s do so.

However, the vast majority of engineering students won’t get top GPA’s. But many would have if they had simply chosen easier majors, and hence would have been more competitive for the Rhodes and Marshall.

After all, consider the Marshall, which has a hard 3.7 GPA cutoff. If you’re an engineering student with a 3.65 GPA, you can’t even apply. But if you had instead majored in something easier, maybe you would have gotten a 3.8. That doesn’t mean that you’ll win, of course. But at least you’re still in the game. You still have a chance. But as an engineer, you’ve already been eliminated before the game even started.

I also encourage you to visit the premed section of CC where the importance of grades (and easy courses) has been discussed at length, and the basic conclusion is that you are wrong. Med-school adcoms don’t really seem to care about the difficulty of your coursework.

sakky · January 10, 2009, 3:39pm

The Marshall Scholarship link (which I had posted previously) specifically states that only those with a 3.7+ GPA can even apply. There is no exception for those who take difficult majors or difficult schools. For example, if you choose to major in physics at Caltech and end up with a 3.6 GPA, they don’t care. All that matters to them is that you didn’t reach the 3.7 cutoff.

dill_scout · January 11, 2009, 2:21am

I feel like something that’s not being taken into consideration is the value of an engineering or any of the more difficult science majors that make it worth the risk. I feel that majoring in math or science is like saying that you learned a valuable skill that you can fall back upon time and time again. The more qualitative nature of the humanities means that when you major in a humanity you can’t necessarily guarentee that you have a “skill” in say American Studies. Suppose the engineer and the American Studies major both apply to law school (or any other professional school) and they both fail. The engineer still has his/her skill as an engineer to offer and has a wider job selection and more opportunities compared to the American Studies major. Plus, he/she will probably get more pay. That was my consideration at least when I picked my engineering major.

Tax_Bear · January 11, 2009, 4:21am

Sunfish,

I am sure that he knows a high GPA is necessary to apply for those scholarships, he was just being smart when he kept asking why is it necessary like the idiot that he is.

I suspect that people who gripe about grades are most likely the ones occupying the lower rungs of the GPA scale. These kids cannot cope with the intense competition Cal and have to resort to crying about their mediocre GPA while demanding a socialistic distribution.

Per your description, I can picture an adcom officer reviewing a 4.0 GPA applicant from CSU Hayward and a 4.0 GPA applicant from Cal and s/he admitting the kid from Hayward to medical school for the sake of diversity. Don’t everyone rush to apply to Hayward now that the secret is out!

Tax_Bear · January 11, 2009, 4:35am

Mathboy, I don’t have to read everything that’s in a thread to get a gist of an argument and recognized what the faults that are inherent in it. My point is that the creme will naturally rise to the top in a “natural selection” order. It does not matter what major/classes/professors you choose, if you possess the aptitude, then you will succeed in it. Why do you think “weeder” classes exist? To weed out the weak or stupid. Even “easy” majors are not that easy if a curve is apply to it. Take BA 10, which is a relatively “easy” class, throw a unforgiving curve in there amongst the sharks that are in that class and I doubt few will say that an A grade is still easy. This is what I mean, the smart students find a way to succeed without making excuses or worry about what their peers are doing over at HYPSM.

sunfish · January 11, 2009, 5:55pm

What did I say that led you infer that a 4.0 from CSU Hayward is more likely to be accepted to a med school than a 4.0 from Cal? You lack basic comprehension skill.

sunfish · January 11, 2009, 6:34pm

Despite all these posts, you still don’t understand, or refuse to understand the premise, which is about relative fairness.
In the context of Cal, this means science/engineering grads are in a disadvantage with regards to professional school and scholarship opportunities compared to students in creampuff majors. Dill scout did make a cogent argument that the “real skills” acquired by science/engineering grads might serve as a form of deferred fairness.
In the context of comparable colleges, this means Cal science/engineering grads are in a disadvantage, period.

You have not made a logical argument against the premise so far:
Sakky’s proposition: A is valid becasue of X, Y, and Z
Tax Bear: Those who think A is valid are mostly whining losers.

Batman17 · January 12, 2009, 4:43am

A waiver would work nicely…if you want to scare off the kids and graduate a bunch of creampuff majors.

mathboy98 · January 12, 2009, 4:46am

Tax Bear, I agree you don’t have to read everything to find flaws necessarily. It’s just Sakky tends to make lots of points, a lot of which seemed reasonable to me. One main one being that I think Cal engineering is just WAY harder to get good grades in than a ton of other majors, for instance in the humanities. I wouldn’t agree that a smart person will necessarily succeed in engineering. You really have to be an engineer or top caliber math/physics type to succeed in these courses with good grades, I think. At least that’s how it is in math. And the EECS major is supposedly more competition-intensive.

mathboy98 · January 12, 2009, 4:51am

I certainly, out of experience, am entitled to claim that one cannot succeed as a math major without a certain something. I’m not suggesting an extreme measure like wiping grades clean even. Honestly, I think someone should get to try engineering as a test run. Look, MIT does that, and surviving MIT is no cakewalk.

dill_scout · January 12, 2009, 10:49pm

I’d like to contribute three points:

Medical school and most health related professional schools require a certain amount of chemistry (2 years worth), math, and physics. So if you want to go to med school you’re going to have weather through at least two years worth of science/math classes. I feel that most other professional schools have some sort of math requirement or something except for law schools though I’m not sure.

I don’t think you need to fear that incoming freshman will avoid trying engineering because of its reputation for difficulty. Freshman are all pretty confidant about their intelligence and abilities after graduating high school at the top of their repsective classes so they all think they’ll succeed in engineering. Freshman hubris will, however, mean that after one semester or two these freshman will wish they had picked a fluffier major or could rescue their GPAs. I think the main concern would then be how do you clean up after an engineering experimentation.

Raising the GPA of engineering/science/math majors is rather difficult to do without changing the rigor of the course. Science/math courses tend to be more objective whereas humanities courses tend to be more subjective so there can be more leeway in grading. I can only think of three ways off the top of my head to raise the GPA of science/engineering/math majors: 1) dumb down the material, 2) make the exams easier, or 3) raise the curves for the exams/class so more students get As. The first two are bad for the schools reputation and for education. The third is something set by professors who will probably protest that it undermines academic integrity or something like that. I think the chancellor would have to force professors to do that to raise GPAs. I imagine that’s what the chancellors of the Ivies do along with promises of higher endowments.

Sorry for the long post.

heerapatel · January 12, 2009, 11:47pm

Is Berkeley considered to be harder than UCLA? I heard UCLA is really difficult because everything is graded on a curve.

What exactly does “grade inflation” mean, anyway? Does it mean the student body is so intelligent that everybody just gets good grades, or does it mean that the professors easily give out As?

mathboy98 · January 13, 2009, 12:59am

“What exactly does “grade inflation” mean, anyway?”

Grade inflation is generally the practice of lessening the risk of getting a poor grade in a course. It could mean that instead of “C is average” “F is failure” and “A is excellent” , we say “C is failure” “B is average” and “A is excellent.”

I think A’s will still be not cakewalks to get in a typical grade inflated scheme, but more students will be nearer to the A grades. Perhaps.

It is possible that schools use the quality of their student bodies to support grade inflation, i.e. “they all deserve that good grade because they’re stars!” In reality, I think the reason they do this is that no good student wants to come to a good school and then get slaughtered and lose his/her future completely. They want a good school to carry them to great places, though not necessarily dumbing down material. Hence, I think many schools may lower the risk of failure but still present good material.

“I think the main concern would then be how do you clean up after an engineering experimentation.”

Well yes, though I think if there’s enough slaughter going around, people will start hearing of it =] but interesting point.

"Raising the GPA of engineering/science/math majors is rather difficult to do without changing the rigor of the course. Science/math courses tend to be more objective whereas humanities courses tend to be more subjective so there can be more leeway in grading. I can only think of three ways off the top of my head to raise the GPA of science/engineering/math majors: 1) dumb down the material, 2) make the exams easier, or 3) raise the curves for the exams/class so more students get As. "

I think of these options, the only one to be considered is the third. The first two just destroy the very math or whatever other program we’re talking about. So I don’t think anyone will suggest this for a top school with a good math faculty.

However, I don’t think it’s such a bad idea to make it more feasible to get a good grade. Realize that in EECS, often times the exams will be hard just because they’re hard. I think a lot of times, you could give a hard exam and be more lenient on the students than they’re being now, and still get them to study hard and not fret. Competition doesn’t in my experience work better than collaboration in promoting intellectual activity. I am right now trying to aim for math grad school, and the thought of getting a poor grade in a stressful course is actually often times NOT conducive to learning it better. See, a course is just a course. It probably does some things well, and other things the mature student should do independent reading on to fill in. I think courses should cover lots of deep material, expect the students to keep up, but not destroy students who’re attempting all these things and actually able to keep up with the level of the material (i.e., fewer of the back-breaking exams and curves).

I’m pretty sure this would be Sakky’s point about risk management. Several schools with lower risk end up producing as good graduates. Note - I come from Berkeley, so I’m not just defending a different school!

Actually, I think the best way to get the flakier students to drop out is not making it harder to get a good grade, but making the level of the material very high. So I think we can compromise the ruthlessness of grading and still achieve the same output in scholarly performance, if we take a mature view on what a course is – just a place to be introduced to some material.

is it hard to graduate from berkeley?

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