sakky--What is your relationship with UC Berkeley?

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<p>Unfortunately, themegestud, this is not true. I wish it were true, but it is not true. Not exactly. Preparing students for upper division work is only part of the purpose of those lower division courses. The other purpose, the “hidden” purpose, is to weed people out. Like it or not, that’s the reality of the situation.</p>

<p>Again, I reprint from Moochworld. It’s about UCLA, but what he describes is eerily similar to Berkeley.</p>

<p>"Weeder?? What’s That?
At UCLA there is something called a “weeder” class. “Impacted” courses (courses that have strict guidlines about adding or dropping them due to their high demand) are often “weeders.” Most majors have at least one weeder course. Many have more than one (called “weeder series”). A weeder is a course that is designed to flunk out kids who aren’t good enough for the major, thus “weeding” them out. FEAR THEM. You’re at a school with the best and the brightest… and these courses are designed to flunk a big chunk of them out, of course not on an official level. Most of the time you won’t know your class is a weeder until you go to UCLA for a while and you hear the rumor. I will do my best to inform you of what classes you may take as an incoming freshman that may be weeders. UCLA is a pre-med school… remember that. Anything here that is pre-med is *<strong><em>ING HARD. All of the chem courses are considered weeders. Computer science and engineering in general is considered one giant weeder. No, they do not get easier as you move up; in fact, they get really *</em></strong>ing hard. To illustrate, I have a friend who is a graduating senior, Electrical Engineer, I quote him saying, “A’s? What is an A? I thought it went from F to C-.” It’s his last quarter here and yet at least once a week he won’t come back from studying until four or five in the morning… and yet it’s not midterm or finals season
Why Do You Keep Talking About “Harder As You Move Up?”
Amazingly, many majors get EASIER as you move up. This is because once you get through the weeder, they give you a break and the workload is only as hard as an “average” class. Certain majors aren’t so lucky.</p>

<p>Back to Weeders…
I once took a weeder course in North campus (largely considered the “easier” side of campus). It is the weeder for the communications major (Comm 10). However, because this is an introductory weeder (anybody can take it), it is considered by many as North campus’ hardest class. I didn’t know this and I took it as an incoming frosh. I was quite scared. The material is ****ing common sense; you get a ton of it. I had 13 pages of single space, font 10 notes covering only HALF of the course (this is back when I was a good student and took notes). I was supposed to memorize the entire list including all the categories and how the list was arranged by them. And I did. Fearing it yet? My friend told me about his chem midterm… the average grade was a 16%… No, they didn’t fail the whole class; I’m sure they curved it so only half the kids failed. My freshman year, I met this friend of mine who was crying because she got an 76% on her math midterm. I told her that she should be glad she passed, she told me, “the average grade was 93%, the curve fails me.” Weeders can have curves, as these three examples show… but only to make sure some people pass… and some fail. Famous weeders are courses like: Communications 10, Life Scienes 1 (and 2 & 3), Chemistry 14a (and all the subsequent ones get only harder), English 10a (OMG that class was hard), CS33, etc. Oh, and if you’re wondering, my friend ended up getting a C- in her math class after studying her butt off. Lucky her!!!"</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.moochworld.com/scribbles/ucla/16.html[/url]”>http://www.moochworld.com/scribbles/ucla/16.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>The real question is, if it’s fair to subject Berkeley freshman-admits to the weeders, then why isn’t it fair to subject transfer students to weeders also? What’s fair is fair. If you say that transfer students shouldn’t have to undergo weeders, then fair enough, then neither should the Berkeley freshman admits.</p>

<p>Why does this concern you so much?! So what? If the students are doing as well in the long run, what difference does it make?</p>

<p>“In fact, I would argue that transfer students should want to implement this policy, because it will help them to prove that they really are just as good as the freshman admits. If transfer students don’t want to take the final exams of the weeders, then it just looks as if they have something to hide.”</p>

<p>Newsflash sakky, transfers don’t have an inferiority complex, nor should they. The admissions process is the weeder and the fact that they survived that proves they’re every bit as good as freshman admits. Berkeley happens to think so too; they don’t feel the need to publish the statis you call for because it would be pointless. Furthermore, you accuse Berkeley of conspiring to hide the supposed fact that transfers perform at a second-rate level with your “By deliberately choosing not to publish it, Berkeley…” statement. What possibly would Berkeley have to gain by not publishing it? Ooohhh I know! Maybe Berkeley admissions is ruled by transfers who are afraid their dirty little secret might get out!</p>

<p>And if what you say about the weeding system and how upper div. courses are suddenly easier at Berkeley is true, then that’s a fault with Berkeley’s weeding system that transfer students’ gpa’s do not undergo the same scrutiny. Instead of forcing transfers to prove themselves which they have done by getting admitted, how about making upper division courses be what they’re supposed to be - HARD! At USC, it’s a linear relationship. Things start out at an intro level your freshman year, and gradually become more difficult, intense, and focused as you progress through your major – something I think we can agree is logical. The process of weeding, which does make sense, is done all along! Why not adopt a system similar to this instead of (apparently) making the beginning courses tough (from a grading perspective), and the later courses easy?</p>

<p>And themegastud, please do not fear, i haven’t. I dont believe by any means that CC transfers are a “plague”. I think, and correct me if my logic is incorrect, that everyone has an equal chance at an education like Berkeley’s, and that it should be equally hard to get. If its hard for the guy taking the weeder class in chem, it should be equally hard for the guy that wont end up taking that class. Anyone who would succeed in that class should perform equally well in taking that final, proving that they have the right to be in those upper division classes. Make it no harder, and no easier.</p>

<p>Ok, I can see your logic, but again I counter that it is then a fault with the system. If transfers are able to skip the difficult weeder courses that are in the first two years, then why not simply adjust things so that courses gradually become more intensive and weeding, and thereby weed the bottom feeders out all along?</p>

<p>What is fair? Is it really fair to make a person take a course twice after he has already mastered the material? Maybe, everybody should have to take it twice. How about, everybody takes the same class in perpetuity, freshmen enrollees and transfer students? After all, there are always new students showing up and it isn’t fair to the new or old students unless everyone has EXACTLY the same experience and takes exactly the same classes. </p>

<p>And everyone should have exactly the same professors too. After all, if it is a weeder class, I may click with one professor and not with another. It’s not fair if I get the harder professor, and somebody else gets the easier professor. Therefore, everybody has to have the same exact professors. So we will keep taking the same class over and over with different professors (Hopefully, one doesn’t die).</p>

<p>Oh, and I have bladder troubles. So when the final comes and I have to go to the bathroom, it wouldn’t be fair if everybody else got to keep working. Therefore, everybody has to stop and wait for me to do my business and get back to the class before the final can continue.</p>

<p>Themegastud, we could go down your road too. But I ask you - do you really think that transfer students would support making the upper division courses hard, as you have proposed? Maybe you would support it. But do you really think all of them would support it ?</p>

<p>And unfortunately your second paragraph betrays exactly the suspicions that people have. All you are basically saying is that the Berkeley transfer admissions office should be ‘trusted’. Why should it be trusted? What has it done to earn the trust of the freshman-admits? Have you proven that the transfer admissions office is just as tough as getting into Berkeley as a freshman + the weeder gauntlet? Has anybody? No, of course not. </p>

<p>And that’s precisely the problem. A lot of people don’t trust the process. Like it or not, that 's the truth. I am proposing a way for the system to become more trustworthy. If the system really does work as well as you say it does, then there should be no problem in implementing my proposals. Why not? What’s so bad about it? Why do you have a problem with publishing the apples-to-apples comparison? If the transfer students are truly just as good, then the comparison will verify that, so you have nothing to fear. If the transfer students are truly fully qualified, then they will be able to get passing scores on the weeder final exams. Once again, you have nothing to fear.</p>

<p>these weeder classes exist at cc’s also. if you check the assist website, you’ll notice that the required classes for transferring to berkeley’s eecs program aren’t exactly classes you can bs through. comp sci, math, chem, physics, and bio is not something you can fake. there are definite answers in these types of courses. if you get them wrong, they’re wrong…as such, you’ll be graded appropriately. a student is “weeded” out of those classes at a cc. i’m sure the same holds true for berkeley and any other school.</p>

<p>UCLAri: The idea of a weeder class is to cut down on class size and get rid of the lesser students, if students can bypass that then it is unfair to those who are just as smart and couldnt get in because of the class. Is this every transfer student? Hell no. I realize this, but theres probably quite a few. </p>

<p>Megastud: If thats how USC does it then theyre probably one of only a few. Most PUBLIC schools are aiming to cut down on the number of students moving up. Not because theyre mean, but because they are spending money on students, why shouldnt they look for the best? In PRIVATE schools YOU pay for your education, sure you take up a spot, but it costs them nothing except their reputation if youre a slacker. Get in the real world, weeder classes have been around for decades at the very least. </p>

<p>“Newsflash sakky, transfers don’t have an inferiority complex, nor should they. The admissions process is the weeder and the fact that they survived that proves they’re every bit as good as freshman admits. Berkeley happens to think so too; they don’t feel the need to publish the statis you call for because it would be pointless.”</p>

<p>Ok, so what youre saying is as long as they can get into a CC, then apply to Cal and get in, they have worked just as hard as those who got into Cal regular admission and took weeder classes for two years?</p>

<p>Sakky, making tranfers take the final for a weeder class is the most ■■■■■■■■ thing I’ve ever heard. First, nobody is going to pass a final for a class that they didn’t take. Lets say two people are takeing the same class taught by two different proffs. So they go through the whole semester and then switch and take each others final. They would all flunk. They don’t know what the other proff emphasized, or which concepts were glossed over and which were gone into deeper. It makes no sense. But if your going to be fair about it then you have to make the Cal kids take the same community college final that the tranfer took. Guess what? They’d probably fail it for the same reason that the tranfer would fail thier weeder final. This whole thing just smacks of you being ****ssed that they didn’t have to take the same classes as you and has nothing to do with how smart or how hard they worked.</p>

<p>StanFUrd takes top 3? Nah. I know rank #1 in our school did NOT get into StanFUrd, nor did #2 #3 and #4. I know them all personally. The 2 ppl who got in, got in for sports and the third one was a forensics freak.</p>

<p>Now as a Rank #43 with a GPA of 4.35, I can say that our school is damn competetive. Yet we don’t have many StanFUrd admits.</p>

<p>Now Sakky, you still dodge the question. Who the hell are you.</p>

<p>Dstark: Let me ask you this. When you apply for college what do you send in and what gets looked at more than anything? Grades and SAT’s. Grades and class rank are more often than not pretty useless. I was ranked something around 120 out of over 450. With a 4.1. So how does a college sift through and find which people went to an easy school with inflated grades or took easy classes? They ask you what classes you took, and they make you take a standardized test. The UC’s make you take 4. Why? Because you can be compared with some measure of accuracy to every other person who took the test in that sitting, hence, the SCALED score. </p>

<p>Dstark/Porcupyne: Sure taking the final for a class twice sucks. But that class was meant to filter out the weakest students. The test should serve the same purpose and thats only fair.</p>

<p>Yllwjep, I’ll ask you the same thing I asked Sakky. By your logic, shouldn’t Cal students have to take the tranfer student’s final also? It goes back to how stupid this is. YOU CAN’T TAKE A FINAL WITHOUT TAKING THE CLASS!!!</p>

<p>To Dstark, you are not reading what I am writing. Read my posts again.</p>

<p>I am not advocating taking that those transfer students take the weeder COURSES. I am advocating that they take the weeder FINAL EXAMS. Just the final exams. These weeder courses are about baseline building-block levels of knowledge - stuff that the transfers students should already know. Lower-level physics, chemistry, calculus, linear algebra, computer science, whatever it is, the point is, these are things that the transfer student should have already learned. The material of an intro physics exam is pretty much the same anywhere, whether at Berkeley or at a JC. It’s the GRADING that is different. Nevertheless, if transfer students really did learn the stuff in their JC, then they would be able to pass the final exam of those courses. Maybe not get an ‘A’, and I am not asking them to get an ‘A’. I would grade them on a P/NP basis. But if they don’t pass…well.</p>

<p>Furthermore, it has nothing to do with ‘clicking’ with your prof. Passing a weeder final exam has nothing to do with whether you ‘click’ with your prof. Berkeley profs are generally not even around on the day of the final exam anyway - the finals are usually proctored by the TA’s. </p>

<p>And besides, your harpings about fairness only serve to illustrate a subpoint that I and yllwjep have been making. You say it’s not fair to get a bad prof while somebody else gets a good one. But guess what? That’s precisely what happens to Berkeley students all the time! This is especially true in the weeder courses where the stakes are nothing less than your survival at Berkeley - you flunk out of the weeders, and you may find yourself expelled from Berkeley. One could say that it’s unfair that you got stuck with weeder courses where you hated the profs and so you ended up flunking out of Berkeley, whereas somebody else got weeder profs that he liked and is still in Berkeley. So you must admit that there’s a problem with Berkeley here, particularly with the weeders.</p>

<p>Now, I could in theory go along with themegastud’s idea of simply flipping things around and making the upper-division hard and the lower-division easy. In fact, I had actually thought about this idea awhile ago. The biggest problem of that is that it actually “draws out the pain”. If somebody is going to be thrown out of Berkeley, it is better for everybody if that person gets thrown out earlier rather than later. I would rather be weeded out as a freshman than as a senior. Of course I don’t want to be weeded out at all, but if I do get weeded, it is better if I get weeded earlier, so I don’t end up wasting several years at Berkeley only to find that I can’t graduate from the major. If I’m not good enough to graduate from the major, it’s better if I find that out as quickly as possible so that I have a chance to change majors, or transfer to another school, or whatever. That is what is good about early weeding. It’s a compromise, I agree, but I think if the weeding has to be done, it should be done earlier.</p>

<p>The problem, as I and yllwjep have been describing, is that because the weeding process is done early, transfer students get to leapfrog it. And that’s a problem. If freshman-admits get weeded, then so should the transfers. The transfer process, in effect, lets the transfer students out of the weeders. </p>

<p>Now, I agree that some transfer students are good enough that they would have survived the weeders had they taken them. Fine, good for them, then they will easily handle those weeder final exams without a hitch. At the same time, again, if transfer students really are performing just as well as the freshman-admits, then we should be able to verify that fact through a proper apples-to-apples study. </p>

<p>The point is, there may be weak transfer students who, either wittingly or unwittingly, use the transfer process just to get out of weeders. And that’s a problem. That’s especially a problem to those highly qualified transfer students, because the existence of weak transfer students potentially makes all transfer students look bad. Which is why I would like to get down to the bottom of this issue and have a proper study published. If it turns out that transfer students really are just as good as freshman-admits, then I would be very happy to publish the study and point to it as strong proof that the transfer admissions process is solid.</p>

<p>Conor, first, a Cal student isnt applying to a CC, its the other way around. Now, sure there are things that would would only know by going to a particular prof’s lecture. But then again, there are only so many “BEST” answers to a question. If said question is phrased in such form that only a person who knows the material (or is a very good guesser) gets it right, then whats the problem? If the test asked what chapter was discussed on a particular date the “transferer” would be screwed. But if it asked a question about some basic precept or even some minute detail that could be gleaned from either class then whose fault is it? Go get the same textbook as Cal uses and start studying.</p>

<p>sakky, UC Berkeley says that transfer students have similar gpas and graduation rates compared to students who get in as freshman.</p>

<p>Since you are implying they don’t, where is your proof? Why are you complaining about a system and coming up with remedies to fix that system when you don’t even know the facts? Don’t you think you should actually find out if there are problems before you complain about them?</p>

<p>Usually, I like to know if there is a problem before I start complaining and looking for solutions. But that is just me.</p>

<p>Oh come on, conor, are you serious? I know that you know Berkeley fairly well and we both know that weeder courses are about basic building block materials. Calculus is calculus, intro physics is intro physics, Ochem is Ochem, basic circuit analysis is basic circuit analysis. </p>

<p>Look, I haven’t been in undergrad for years. Yet I am fairly certain that with a few days notice, I could pass the Math 1A final exam at Berkeley. Maybe not with a great grade, but I could pass it. It wouldn’t matter which prof was running the class. It wouldn’t matter which book was being used. All I would need to know is which book he was using, which chapters he covered, and so forth. I am sure that the profs are using different calculus books than what I used when I was there. But it doesn’t matter. Calculus is calculus. I probably wouldn’t know enough to get an ‘A’, because you’re right, every prof has some things he emphasizes, and I wouldn’t know what those things are, so my grade would suffer. But I am not talking about getting an ‘A’. I am just talking about passing. Which would be just fine because it would be graded on a P/NP basis. And that’s just me. Berkeley transfer students are supposed to be well-tuned and well-honed students. So why is it so scary for them to take an extra pass/not-pass final exam on things that they are supposed to know well? </p>

<p>And come on, your objection that you can’t take the final exam without taking the class is not a serious one. That’s a very easy administrative problem to handle. You just make another class designation (call it Math 1A-X, or whatever), graded pass/not-pass, and open only to transfer students, where the only assignment is a final exam - which happens to be the exact same final exam as given out in Math 1A. The key is that all the final exams for both Math 1A-X and Math 1A are collected, scored, and graded all on the same curve.</p>

<p>Dstark, you’re right, I don’t have proof. Which is why my first idea is to get that apples-to-apples study published. Only through that study, will we really know what is up.</p>

<p>The problem is, as has been seen by this thread, is that people don’t even want to have that study published. I know the data is already there - it’s just sitting in Berkeley’s student databases. All of Berkeley’s student grades are sitting in computer systems that the registrar runs. So is the data regarding graduation rates, flunkout times, when people get expelled, and so forth. It’s all there. So I’m not asking for Berkeley to collect new data. Berkeley already has the data. It’s really not that hard to collect the data and compare it in the way that I have described, and then publish the statistical results, and then we can see whether it’s really true that transfer students are really just as good as freshman-admits, on an apples-to-apples basis. What’s so scary about that?</p>

<p>Dstark, a belief to the contrary is not necessary to question a statement. It doesnt explicitly state that the statistics compare post sophmore GPA’s. It doesnt state that graduation rates are based on only students who proceeded to upper division courses. Its ambiguity is at fault. If it clearly says that these things are the same, “apples for apples” as it were, then that issue is resolved.</p>

<p>I don’t care. Get the study published. For all I know it is published. Berkeley publishes a lot of data.</p>

<p>Until you know the facts, go ahead, complain about phantom problems and come up with make believe solutions.</p>