OOS UCB, UCLA, or USC

kyledavid80 · January 26, 2007, 7:56pm

“what if UCLA slips to 30 or 40, still meaningless?”

I’d say it’s meaningless. If UCLA were in the top 5 of US News rankings, I’d say it’s meaningless. =)

“ucs is not afraid of measurements and performance, therefore they embrace measurements and tailor their business to improve on those measurements. Like any good business!”

Thing is, these “improvements” often aren’t improving the quality of the university. Or, if they are, they do so by very little, when the same effort could be applied to another area that would benefit the university more. By catoring to US News, universities are doing the public a genuine disservice. (In addition, I don’t see how manipulating the game can be considered “good business” – sneaky, common, and possibly effective, but not “good.”)

“How is the state of California through it’s public universities benefiting its students, its customers, by communicating that performance measurements are not important? does that me job performance is not important?”

Oh no, performance measurements are important. But a few things:

1) While the measurements themselves can be helpful, taking all the measurements and combining them for an ‘aggregate score’ is misleading, because the weightings of the measurements (how much a certain number will change the university’s score, and thus its ranking, and thus the minds of potential students and many others alike) are arbitrary.

2) US News measures areas that many find to be irrelevant: it uses statistical proxies to somehow “clue in” on the quality of education, and will strive to use the weakest of indicators that often have a half-assed correlation with quality (such as the “value added” measure). As such, US News does a poor job in ranking universities.

In the end, though, ranking can be pretty stupid. Would anyone honestly assert that Yale is better than Stanford? Or that Harvard is better than Yale? Or that the University of Virginia is better than Berkeley? Or (crossing grounds here) that Berkeley is better than Stanford, or vice versa?

It’s sorta like pH (I can’t think of another example, so bear with me). pH 3 is easily distinguishable from pH 8 by color – one’s orange, one’s blue. But when you compare, say, pH 8 and 9, it can be pretty difficult to tell them apart. Now pretend that the pH scale was out of 100 and see whether you could pick #97 from #98. It’s too difficult. That’s how universities work.

This makes one think that tiers are more acceptable, and I can agree with that. I would not assert that Cal State Fullerton is on par with Stanford. But the contention here arises from the question: how large should the tiers be? If I were to do tiers, they’d be rather larger than convention, perhaps 20.

At any rate, rankings misinform, as demonstrated by the ‘surprising’ news that Princeton is indeed better than Harvard – as demonstrated by US News’ most recent rankings.

eastcoastbound · January 28, 2007, 12:30am

academically speaking, cal > ucla >>> usc. but city of berkeley blows, westwood is pretty nice. so pay these schools a vist.

apps, you are such a furd. ucsd has great bio programs, but they r not in the same caliber as berkeley. the goal of pre-meds are getting into a good medical school, not going to a school with higher biomedical ranking. there is no way the ranking indicates how the school prepares you for med school application. plus your comment on smart kidds go to harvey mudd over berkeley is just ridiculous. i hate to say but berkeley’s engineering program is better than harvey mudd’s (and HM is a great LAC engineering school). choosing undergrad programs is more of a personal taste. each school has its own culture, and each applicants should find out where they can fit in the most, not some worthless ranking.

Kensir · January 28, 2007, 12:41am

You didn’t like the city of Berkeley?

I live in the ultimate suburbia, and I love what Berkeley has to offer. To me it’s like big city/small city all in one, with some homeless people yet really good food. Can’t say it isn’t a little scary by the I-80, but the campus area seemed really nice and commercialized.

eastcoastbound · January 28, 2007, 1:27am

well i lived in a southside apartment. the condition was pretty crappy, the road was terrible especially around piedmont and bancroft area, parkings are non-existent. i was harrassed by bunch of homeless and weirdos in the first couple of weeks then they left me alone. public services in the city are very bad. i had to pick up a book i ordered online because the mailperson doesnt feel like he/she can put the book in my spacious mailbox, so i had to wait for around an hour listening to an obesed, old African American individual *****ing about something not important to the receptionist. and naked old people on public television. the city is ran by disgusting hippies that dont allow us to build a stadium on our own land. but i have to agree though, there are some good food in berkeley.

rocketDA · January 28, 2007, 2:02am

“plus your comment on smart kidds go to harvey mudd over berkeley is just ridiculous. i hate to say but berkeley’s engineering program is better than harvey mudd’s (and HM is a great LAC engineering school)”

do you have any data to back this up? i think the data you’ll find will point to the fact that mudd grads go on to get phds at about 6x the rate of berkeley grads (per capita). also, mudd grads make much more money and have exposure to research (a requirement) before graduation.

berkeley has a great grad program but its undergrad engineering program is not on the same level as mudd’s. sorry.

%phd in the sciences…
1 California Institute of Technology 34%
2 Harvey Mudd College 24%
3 Massachusetts Institute of Technology 16%
4 Reed College 10%
5 Rice University 9%
6 Swarthmore College 8%
.
.
.
.
34 University of California-Berkeley 4%

Average salary:
HMC- For ONLY engineering students, Average salary upon graduation in 2005 was $58,000.
Cal- For ONLY engineering students, Average salary upon graduation in 2001 was $48,533

58k>48k. duh.
<a href=“http://www.eng.hmc.edu/EngWebsite/index.php?page=AftYouGrad.php[/url]”>http://www.eng.hmc.edu/EngWebsite/index.php?page=AftYouGrad.php</a>
<a href=“http://www.coe.berkeley.edu/EPA/EngNews/02S/EN1S/salaries.html[/url]”>http://www.coe.berkeley.edu/EPA/EngNews/02S/EN1S/salaries.html</a>

I can argue this from any angle you would like me to. Mudd grads, in pretty much every dimension have an aggregate advantage over Cal grads. Where does this deviance come from? Mudd exists solely for the 720 undergrads. The profs are there to teach… and they get tenure ONLY by being good teachers. Berkeley, on the other hand, has 33,600 students, nearly 47x the number at mudd.

vicissitudes · January 28, 2007, 2:59am

I wouldn’t say that. For example, I think UCSD’s bioengineering program, ranked #2 in the nation, is better than UC Berkeley’s bioengineering program, which isn’t ABET-accredited.

I would like to see a link for this data.

Nice try, but your numbers are a little outdated. Why don’t we compare 2005 numbers with 2005 numbers?

Berkeley engineering majors average salary for 2005:

BioE: $72,120
CivE: $51,759
EECS: $62,461
Engineering Science: $55,250
IEOR: $62,700
Materials Engineering: $53,940
Mech E: $55,677

Add them up and divide by 7 yields…$59,129.57, and $59,129 > $58,000, but I’m sure all the smart Harvey Mudd students can figure that one out.

<a href=“http://career.berkeley.edu/Major/Major.stm[/url]”>http://career.berkeley.edu/Major/Major.stm</a>

Or let’s ask US News what it thinks about the engineering programs:

Berkeley (PA score): 4.7
Harvey Mudd (PA Score): 4.4

<a href=“http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/college/rankings/brief/topprogs_withphd_brief.php[/url]”>http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/college/rankings/brief/topprogs_withphd_brief.php</a>
<a href=“http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/college/rankings/brief/topprogs_nophd_brief.php[/url]”>http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/college/rankings/brief/topprogs_nophd_brief.php</a>

Not to mention all the intangibles such as having great athletics, diverse student population, enormous number of student clubs/organizations, and top ranked departments across the board. If you are in engineering and decide later you don’t want to, you can often switch to another major, such as a social science or even humanities major. If you’re at Harvey Mudd and decide you won’t want to do engineering anymore…well you’re kinda stuck.

Now I’m not trying to tout Berkeley’s engineering program as the best thing to come since someone engineered sliced bread. I actually think it could be run much better than it is now (a large problem is impaction). And indeed, Harvey Mudd do many things better like smaller classrooms and required research, which you mentioned (although I have to think, with so many engineers getting a job right out of undergrad, is research experience that important?). But saying that its undergrad engineering program isn’t even on the same level as Harvey Mudd’s? I think that’s stretching it.

kyledavid80 · January 28, 2007, 3:25am

lol the comparison of 2001 numbers for Berkeley and 2005 numbers for HM made me laugh.

UCLAri · January 28, 2007, 3:30am

I’m confused here.

How did this come to be about Harvey Mudd?

:confused:

I <3 the Internet. Always on topic. :D

eastcoastbound · January 28, 2007, 4:02am

vic: im ok with UCSD has a better bioE than berkeley. in fact, i almost went there for bioE. but i decided being an engineer is not for me. but the overall bio programs at berkeley are better than ucsd (excluding salk and scripps) from genetics to structural biology, berkeley’s research is better.

rocket: comparing berkeley to HMC is like comparing apples to oranges. HMC is a tiny LAC that specialize in engineering whereas berkeley is a multidisciplinary university. you can simply use %science PhD as a criteria because lots of folks in berkeley r going to get science PhD. take my home department (MCB) for example, only 4% of graduates in 06 are going to grad schools because majority is pre-med. but to say HMC has a better biology program than Berkeley MCB is purely ludicrous.

also, the research level at HMC and berkeley is different. LAC grads arent simply equiped to do big time research unless they receive additional training. a few grad students from LAC rotated in my lab before and they alll need additional guidance than people from, say MIT.

Lastly, living in silicon valley, i have the opportunity to meet a bunch of engineers. and from the word of mouths, berkeley grads are more highly regarded than mudd grads because they all had good trainings and very easy to work with. plus a lot of berkeley professors have very good connections with industry, so a lot of berkeley grads are trained to do industry work.

i have no mean to bash HMC. i think it is a very good school and can offer a completely different experience than what berkeley would offer. but still i dont buy in your claim that HMC is way better than berkeley.

tiyusufaly · January 28, 2007, 4:26am

I do not deny that Berkeley has a great engineering program, but I am skeptical of the salary counts for 2005 for the simple reason that the average salaries for each discipline were computed using only a fraction of the graduates: those who responded to the survey and who reported their salary. The small fraction of those that replied makes me wonder if the true average starting salaries are a bit lower. They could be a bit higher for all I know, but I anticipate that the graduates that choose not to report are those whose salaries are not particularly impressive. Either way, there are too many unreported graduates for me to accept that average salary.

As for the US News thing, the peer assessment comparison is not meaningful to me because Berkeley is a large research university and Harvey Mudd is a liberal arts college. If you go to <a href=“http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/college/rankings/about/weight_brief.php#spend[/url]”>http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/college/rankings/about/weight_brief.php#spend</a> you will find that peer assessment scores are determined by surveys and evaluation of provosts, presidents, and deans of admissions of a school’s peer institutions. Berkeley and Harvey Mudd are so different that their peer institutions are undoubtedly different, at least if this example is any indication: <a href=“http://uaps.ucf.edu/peer_institutions_old2.html[/url]”>http://uaps.ucf.edu/peer_institutions_old2.html</a>. As such the peer assessment scores are not standardized.

Of course, Berkeley is still a great engineering school, and I would not agree with RocketDA that its undergrad program is not even in Harvey Mudd’s league. I think both are great schools that are different in their approach to learning.

atomicfusion · January 28, 2007, 5:48am

Just to throw this out there… most kids I know at Mudd turned down Berkeley to be here.

appstressin · January 28, 2007, 1:38pm

ari: love this “How did this come to be about Harvey Mudd?”

LOL

I’m saying to myself “what are we talking about”

And I think I made the original reference to HM over Cal in IQ. Although I’m glad to see some HM defenders weigh in!

My main point is that Cal is not the end-all answer to all “bests” as many Bear backers argue on CC. Within the state of California there are student bodies that test higher (HM, Pomona, Claremont, Cal Tech, Stanford are higher with Scripps and USC equal to Cal), colleges that have better programs (UCSD in Biomed, USC in Entrepreneurship, Stanford in Engineering Science, Stanford in Engineering Physics, USC in Accounting, Stanford in Aerospace, ), ethnically more diverse student bodies (USC and Stanford), better neighborhoods (UCLA and Stanford), better sports (UCLA basketball, USC everything else with exception of Rugby).

Cal backers should be more responsible to the fact that a lot of HS juniors read these boards and deserve accurate information from alumni or current students and stop their ranting about being the best.

If you are really smart and like only being around other really smart people you may be happier at Caltech, not Cal
If you want to learn how to start businesses and create jobs and wealth you may be happier at USC, not Cal (although Cal grads make great middle mangers and finance mangers once you start hiring)
If you want to live in a fun and relatively safe neighborhood you may be happier at UCLA, not Cal
If you want to go on to med-school or study biomed you may be happier at UCSD, not Cal
If you want to be around smart people with very small classes and lots of access to professors you may be happier at Claremont/Mudd/Scripps, not Cal (no research facilities at small liberal arts colleges but how much “research” does a Cal undergraduates really do?)
If you want a close-knit student body, incredibly strong school spirit, national championship level sports teams and academic teams (such as mock-trial), and a top research university where undergraduates are encouraged to participate in lab research with professors you may be happier at UCS, not Cal

atomicfusion · January 28, 2007, 2:45pm

Oh vicissitudes, you manipulator of data.

First of all, let’s take a look at the BioE salary data. You say it is $72,120, right? Well here’s the data:

Year Reported 75th Percentile Average 25th Percentile Median 
2002 7 $48,500 $40,857 $31,500 $41,000 
2003 12 $52,350 $41,571 $29,500 $39,000 
2004 12 $47,750 $37,698 $30,354 $35,950 
2005 11 $45,500 $72,120 $30,660 $39,000 
Total 42 $49,100 $48,346 $30,250 $38,500

It’s quite obvious that the average salary for 2005 is completely skewed. Any person who has taken a high school statistics course can see this. Why don’t you look at the MEDIAN and not the average for 2005. First of all there were only 11 submissions that year. One graduate probably hit it big and earned a ridiculously huge salary. Or even just flat out lied. You can even look at the 75th percentile and see how it’s only $45,000!!! Then look at the previous years and see how they are way below 2005. Obviously it was ONE data point that brought the entire average up. And yes, even a mudder can do this math, but apparently you can’t.

So I’ll just fix that one for you. Berkeley median BioE salary: $39,000. Not too impressive, eh?

As for engineering sciences:
Year Reported 75th Percentile Average 25th Percentile Median 
2002 2 – – – – 
2003 5 $50,000 $40,600 $38,000 $45,000 
2004 2 – – – – 
2005 4 $57,250 $55,250 $53,000 $55,000 
Total 13 $54,000 $47,946 $45,000 $50,000

Compare 2003 to 2005. The data isn’t even reliable. Do you really think it increase by 10k in 2 years? I might as well drop this data, but I figure we can still use it. Let’s just add in 2003 to 2005 and use that as the data so we can get more data points. Mudd’s average starting salary is consistantly 58-60k, by the way. So engineering sciences comes out to 50k, if you even still want to consider it.

IEOR:
Year Reported 75th Percentile Average 25th Percentile Median 
2002 14 $56,125 $52,886 $47,750 $52,750 
2003 14 $55,450 $52,689 $49,400 $54,525 
2004 15 $60,000 $57,447 $52,000 $58,000 
2005 20 $60,250 $62,700 $55,000 $57,500 
Total 63 $60,000 $57,044 $52,250 $55,000

I’m not going to say much again. I figure I can just say we are going to use the median this time and not have to justify it all over again. So IEOR’s salary for 2005 is 57.5k.

So let’s find the new “average”, even though you didn’t even do that right. You should have obviously taken a weighted average, but I’ll just do the average your way to show how much of a difference there was if you didn’t use skewed data.

Guess what it comes out to? $52,905.

atomicfusion · January 28, 2007, 2:52pm

Weighted average of Engineering salaries (found by using the median salaries from 2002-2005):
$55,396

UCLAri · January 28, 2007, 2:59pm

You guys are arguing over a subjective sample.

Just saying is all.

atomicfusion · January 28, 2007, 3:01pm

Also I thought I’d mention this too. Berkeley has ~11% out of state students. Harvey Mudd has ~55% out of state students. This means that the average Berkeley student is more likely to stay in California after they graduate. The California engineering average salary is far above national average. I’d say more Mudd students go to other states, where the engineering salary is less because the cost of living is far lower than here. So if you compare Berkeley vs. Mudd, Berkeley is given an advantage this way.

UCLAri · January 28, 2007, 3:03pm

You can’t say that without having the data to back it up. Just like the Berkeley kids can’t say that Berkeley’s average salary is high based on self-reported data.

whoamg · January 28, 2007, 3:38pm

I think that HMC has better output because it’s a harder school to get into. To go even further, do you think that a Harvard education is really so much better than a Berkeley one? People complain at both places! The reason why Harvard graduates tend to be ‘better’ than Berkeley ones is because they were able to make the Harvard cutoff, which is a lot higher than Berkeley’s. People aren’t successful because they went to Harvard; rather, they were accepted by Harvard because of their potential success. Studies have shown that those who got into HYP but chose to go elsewhere do equally as well as those who attend HYP.

That said, I believe that HMC’s admissions gate is a very fine filter, which only lets the top students through, whereas Berkeley’s filter is a bit coarser. Look at the percentage of National Merit Scholars, differences in SAT scores, and just the whole student profile. HMC students are just of a higher caliber, on average. Of course, the schools’ environments will have an impact on students, but to what degree? I doubt that four years of HMC will make someone considerably more successful than four years at Berkeley. Rather, the average HMC student has more potential than the average Berkeley student, just because it’s harder to get into HMC. That’s it. No secret.

Therefore, even if I get into all my schools, I’m still going with the school with the best financial offer (within reason - I’m adding virtual cost to UCLA because it’s too hot! same for Princeton because it’s too cold and it’s in NJ!). After all I’m still going to be the same person.

UCLAri · January 28, 2007, 3:59pm

whoamg,

UCLA is hot? Since when? Last I checked, the median temperature in Westwood was around 78-82 or so.

That’s pretty nice, if you ask me.

[url=<a href=“National and Local Weather Radar, Daily Forecast, Hurricane and information from The Weather Channel and weather.com”>National and Local Weather Radar, Daily Forecast, Hurricane and information from The Weather Channel and weather.com]Source[/url</a>]

vicissitudes · January 28, 2007, 4:53pm

Why don’t I look at the median? Because in your first post you said:

I saw that you wanted to compare average salary, so I gave you stats of average salary. Hey, since you presented the AVERAGE salary of Harvey Mudd students and not the MEDIAN, I thought it’s only fair to compare apples to apples, right? But wait, when the numbers don’t go in your favor, you want to compare one category to another category? Now who’s the manipulator of data?

Yeah, maybe one graduate hit it big and earned a ridiculously huge salary, but you don’t know that. Maybe a few engineers at Harvey Mudd hit it big, and that’s why Harvey Mudd’s number are so high! How do we know this isn’t true? Or, maybe Harvey Mudd didn’t even include Bioengineers, who are now getting paid substantially lower than other engineers. In fact, I find it a little suspicious that Harvey Mudd only posted the average salary for all engineers. If HM has nothing to hide, why not post all the data like Berkeley does? Hmm?

And besides, so what if one graduate made a ton of money? Isn’t the lesson to be made here that you can come to Berkeley, and have a chance to strike it rich? Unless now you want to argue that since this guy made a lot more money than his peers, that he shouldn’t be considered a Berkeley graduate anymore?

See? There you go again. So what’s next? Are you going to remove all the EECS majors from your calculations, since they make more money than the other Berkeley engineers, and must therefore be invalid somehow right? Look, I think it’s starting to get pathetic when you try to mix median salaries with average salaries, take out a few abnormalities, and then compare it to the averages of another school. Are you really trying to be objective and compare the data that is given, or are you just out to take whatever Berkeley numbers you “feel is valid” so that Harvey Mudd comes out on top?

Oh really, Mudd’s average starting salary is consistently 58-60k, huh? What’s this article I see, citing Harvey Mudd’s graduates in 2003 having an average salary of $53,900? It’s under the last section “HMC Alumni”, second bullet point.

<a href=“http://www.hmc.edu/highlights/[/url]”>http://www.hmc.edu/highlights/</a>

It’s bad enough when you try to manipulate data, but you’re not going to start outright lying now, are you? There are prospective students reading these boards and it’s our job to give them accurate information to make informed decisions, not just ra-ra our own school and dismiss all others.

I still haven’t gotten a justification to why you first used the average salary for both schools, then decided to use the average for one school and the median for the other when suddenly, using average salaries for both schools doesn’t favor your side anymore. I don’t see the skewed data point argument as valid for two reasons. One, however skewed it may be, it’s just as valid as any other data point, and two, for all we know Harvey Mudd may have even more skewed data points (that they hide for some reason).

Hey, do you think Harvey Mudd got its numbers from every single student who graduated there? Of course the data offered is incomplete, but this kind of data from any school will be incomplete, for the simple reason that there will always be some people who do not want to respond. What makes me even MORE skeptical is that we don’t even know anything about Harvey Mudd’s supposed “average.” It could be a survey of 5 students, for all we know. Harvey Mudd doesn’t even let us know that much. At least Berkeley tells you how many of their graduates responded.

Hey, I don’t know why I’m getting all this opposition. I mentioned that Berkeley’s engineering program has certain flaws (impaction, larger classes) and cited Harvey Mudd’s strengths (smaller classes, research opportunities, more focus). I’m trying to give a fair picture of both schools, but it seems like all the posters in this thread want to do is pick everything they see going for Harvey Mudd, ignore the stats the disfavor it, and then state something ridiculous like “Mudd grads, in pretty much every dimension have an aggregate advantage over Cal grads.” Look, do you have some kind of vendetta against other engineering schools or something? Is it your mission to bad mouth other competing engineering schools and praise your own? Because if it is, just come right out and say it.

OOS UCB, UCLA, or USC

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