<p>What are some of the things that you like and dislike about berkeley?</p>
<p>Likes:</p>
<p>1)Location is excellent. Berkeley is a very interesting city all by itself, and is located near clearly one of the nicest cities (SF) in the country, and arguably the nicest. Berkeley furthermore has numerous transportation links that make it very easy to get around the Bay Area, in stark contrast to a certain school in Palo Alto. Thus, it is relatively easy to find part-time jobs, cultural activities, etc. Granted, it’s not comparable to, say, going to Columbia, which would put you right in the middle of the largest and most cultural city in the country, but it’s still quite nice.</p>
<p>2) Resources are certainly vast and available to those strong enough to grab them (but see below in the list of dislikes).</p>
<p>3) Strong brand name recognition - clearly the strongest brand name of all US public universities, and arguably stronger than even some of the top private schools. </p>
<p>Dislikes:</p>
<p>1) Impacted majors. Unlike, say, a certain school in Palo Alto, you can’t just switch to whatever major you want, particularly to and from the engineering majors. Some students try to switch majors and are denied and are thus forced to major in something they don’t want (or else leave Berkeley entirely). Other students don’t even try to switch because they know they won’t get it, and hence are also forced to major in something they don’t want. </p>
<p>2) Weeder courses. A far cleaner (if probably politically unfeasible) alternative to weeders is to simply not admit in the first place those students who aren’t going to pass the weeders anyway, rather than forcing everybody through the wringer. That school in Palo Alto is living proof that you don’t need to use weeders to produce graduates that are highly valued by the market. </p>
<p>What particularly galls me about weeders is that they will weed you out for things that, frankly, you don’t really need to know for the job. To give you an example, hardly any practicing chemical engineer in industry will ever analytically calculate fugacity coefficients or chemical potentials by hand. In fact, most of them don’t even remember precisely what these terms even mean. Whatever chemical thermodynamic information they need to know for their jobs, they can just look up in Perry’s or some other reference manual - they don’t have to calculate anything. Nevertheless, the Berkeley chemical engineering program will weed you out if you can’t perform these hand calculations, despite the fact that you don’t need to know that for almost all industry jobs. I can perhaps understand weeding somebody out he if doesn’t know something that he will clearly need to know for the job. But why weed somebody out because he can’t complete a task that industry won’t ask him to do anyway?</p>
<p>3) While the resources are vast, they are also rather unavailable to those who aren’t aggressive enough to grab them. Granted, if you do have that aggressive personality, then you will have access to the resources. But not everybody is like that. There are a lot of shy students at Berkeley. They probably would have been better off going to another, more nurturing school.</p>
<p>sorry, what are weeder courses?</p>
<p>ilovestan19 - Weeder courses are very difficult courses that are used to “weed” out the academically weaker students in a large group of students. They are typically employed at schools/in majors that are very popular and have too many students enrolled. So, they “weed” out the weaker ones with these courses, and usually what results is a smaller bunch of the stronger students continuing on to take the next set of classes and actually get the degree.</p>
<p>weeder courses are usually for lower division courses right?</p>
<p>Sakky, what resources are you talking about that you have to be so “aggresive” to get?</p>
<p>I’m guessing he is talking about research opportunities with professors, leadership roles within Berkeley, and co-op/internship/study abroad programs through Berkeley. Stuff like that.</p>
<p>^Berkeley’s study abroad program (run by the university of california) is supposed to be one of the best in the country</p>
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<p>To be more specific, * good * research opportunities are not easy to get and tend to require aggressiveness. I agree that it’s not that hard to get crappy research opportunities where you basically just end up cleaning test tubes or some other monkey work. But that sort of work is, frankly, not going to help your career. You want to get onto a project in which you have real input and can perform tasks that actually impact the project’s outcome. Yet those opportunities are not easy to get if you don’t fight for them. </p>
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<p>Things like that, and more. For example, to GoldenBear10, since you asked, one topic that I’ve been specifically thinking about is the Rhodes Scholarship and other major international scholarship competitions. Why don’t more Berkeley students win more of these awards? After all, Berkeley is supposed to be (and arguably is) the best public school in the country . With 23,000 undergrads - which is several times that of the top private schools - I have to believe that you can find a decent number of them who would make for strong candidates. Yet, sadly, Berkeley doesn’t win that many Rhodes relative to the students at the top private schools. </p>
<p>I think I know why too - and it’s the same sentiment expressed by the last Berkeley winner, Ankur Luthra, who won in 2002-2003. </p>
<p>"according to Luthra, is that Berkeley faculty aren’t doing as much as they could to encourage qualified students to apply…</p>
<p>The level of faculty awareness about the scholarship itself is tremendous, obviously,” Luthra says, “but it’s at the next level — where a faculty member decides to actually nominate a student or two, or to approach qualified students and tell them about the scholarship — that the steps aren’t being taken. They have a huge role to play, probably the biggest role in the process — since so many students will never hear about the Rhodes in the first place if a faculty member doesn’t tell them about it and encourage them to apply.”</p>
<p>There’s more to faculty involvement in Rhodes candidacies than that, of course — including the writing of letters of recommendation , which to be effective must show a more detailed familiarity with a student’s academic skills than is acquired at the podium in a 600-seat lecture hall. But it’s a vitalpart of the process, and one that, according to Alicia Hayes, program coordinator of the Scholarship Connection Office, contributes more than Luthra acknowledges to the reluctance of Berkeley students to follow through on their impulse to apply for a Rhodes or other prestigious scholarship. </p>
<p>“I don’t think that our students here at Berkeley believe there’s a bias against public universities,” she says. “Their fears stem instead from the requirement of getting recommendation letters from faculty members. I see that frequently; I think it’s the most challenging aspect of applying for these kinds of scholarships at a big campus like this.”</p>
<p>One faculty member with extensive experience in the Rhodes application process agrees with Hayes. Steven Botterill, associate professor of Italian Studies, chaired the Rhodes/Mitchell/Marshall subcommittee this past year. “At Ivy League colleges, with their smaller student bodies and more intimate faculty/student ratios,” he observes, “the process of grooming potential Rhodes Scholars begins early on in a student’s undergraduate career. By the time students at Berkeley make closer contact with faculty, it’s often their junior year – and that’s a bit late to be building the kind of close intellectual relationship with a faculty member that supports the recommendation the Rhodes committees want to see. We’ve seen it year after year here: With the best will in the world, Berkeley faculty don’t get to know students as individuals when they’re teaching large lower-division courses with 700 or 800 students.”'</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.berkeley.edu/news/berkeleyan/2003/02/19_rhode.shtml[/url]”>http://www.berkeley.edu/news/berkeleyan/2003/02/19_rhode.shtml</a></p>
<p>And that’s what I’m talking about. Surely nobody is saying that the top private schools are perfect. But the fact is, at Berkeley, you are getting to have to fight harder to get noticed if you want to become eligible for one of the major scholarships, compared to students at the top private schools. Many Berkeley students just don’t have that spunk. In contrast, at the top private schools, you don’t need to fight that hard to get noticed and nominated.</p>
<p>I’ll put it to you this way. Consider the 2007 Berkeley University Medalists. All of them had superstar careers. Yet none of them won Rhodes or Marshall, etc. Now, of course, it’s probably true that some of them just weren’t interested in those awards but that also means that the others were interested and just didn’t win. In contrast, Harvard this year alone won TEN Rhodes (7 Americans and 3 international students). That’s right - 10. </p>
<p><a href=“http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2007/05/04_umedal-finalist.shtml[/url]”>http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2007/05/04_umedal-finalist.shtml</a>
<a href=“http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2007/05/02_medalist.shtml[/url]”>http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2007/05/02_medalist.shtml</a></p>
<p>Note, don’t get me wrong. I don’t blame those students. All of Berkeley’s University medalists are all amazing students who’ve accomplished amazing things. So why don’t more of them win the Rhodes? They’re clearly very strong candidates, such that I would argue that at least 1 of them should be able to win every year. To that point, I’m with Ankur Luthra - I blame the system. They’re probably not winning because they’re not getting proper support. I can understand getting shut out from the Rhodes in 1 year, maybe 2. But come on, it’s been 4 years now since Luthra won the last Berkeley Rhodes. More to the point, Berkeley has won only 4 in over 40 years (!). </p>
<p><a href=“http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2002/12/09_rhodes_winners.html[/url]”>http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2002/12/09_rhodes_winners.html</a></p>
<p>Now, I know what some of you are thinking. Some of you are going to come back with 1 or 2 points. #1 - perhaps I have just too high of expectations for Berkeley. After all, it is certainly true that Berkeley has won more Rhodes than the vast majority of other schools out there, and is 4th in terms of the total Rhodes winners among the US public schools (after West Point, Virginia and Michigan). So relatively speaking compared to most schools out there, Berkeley is doing well. I agree, but I also find that irrelevant. After all, the Detroit Pistons did relatively well this year too, making the conference finals. Sure, if you’re, say, the Atlanta Hawks, then making the conference finals would be a great accomplishment. Heck, just making the playoffs would be an accomplishment. But if you’re the Detroit Pistons, you’re supposed to be good - such that nothing less than a championship will suffice. Similarly, Berkeley is supposed to be a good school, such that I don’t think it’s expecting that much to think that Berkeley can produce at least 1 Rhodes winner a year, especially given Berkeley’s size.</p>
<p>Secondly, some of you will wonder why I am keying on the Rhodes. Yes, of course it is true that the Rhodes is not the end-all, be-all of everything. I’m just using the Rhodes as an * example *. We could talk about the Marshall, the Gates-Cambridge, any of the other major awards. Certainly Berkeley does win some, but I think Berkeley should be * dominating * these awards from sheer size alone. I don’t think I’m asking for the world here.</p>
<p>I actually think sakky has a point in the above post. I’m shocked.</p>
<p>I agree with everything Sakky said above. I’m not a Berkeley student YET, but I do come from a similar 4 year university in terms of size. Around decision time, I thought, “Just in case I don’t get in, what if I need letter of recommendation? Who would I ask?” I couldn’t think of ONE professor who I would be entirely comfortable asking for a letter of rec from. To me, all my professors are acquaintances, where at private schools, I wouldn’t doubt that a lot of students have professors who they think of as friends.</p>