UC vs IVY LEAGUE

UCLAri
Thu, 25 May 2006 02:17:16 +0000

Snuggle,

Actually, Berkeley loses profs all the time. So do most schools. One grad student I’m acquainted with at Harvard moved there with a professor who got offered a better salary and left.

Money problems never forced me to miss classes, but you’re going to tell me that NOBODY at Cal has problems getting into impacted classes? Or getting into non-impacted classes, even?

And as for campus resources, talk to my buddy at Boalt. He complained bitterly about how Cornell afforded better lecture halls. It almost made him leave for Cornell. And that’s graduate school, and Boalt is one of the better funded UC law schools!



Trust me, I have no desire to hear him drone on anymore than I already have.



I think sakky’s good for Cal, if anything. He’s the kick in the pants that the undergrad program needs to be the best. A lot of undergrads, in my experience can’t handle having their programs criticized. I couldn’t handle it when I was an undergrad at UCLA. But I find that after you graduate and leave those wonderful, insulated walls, you realize that the name value of your school is more than just a pride issue. I want to see Cal perform just as much as I want to see UCLA perform. But just saying, “I don’t want to hear it” isn’t good enough. We need to tackle the fact that Harvard and Yale and Columbia have better yield rates and tend to get more of the top percentile of students. They can’t be going JUST for the name. There’s something at those programs that really appeals to the best students. What is it?



Better than people that actually “go” there? Seems weird to me. We’re talking about UG experience, so I would assume you’d want to talk to someone that has experienced it.



Personally, I tend to believe the words of administrators and chancellors more than myself or even my own anecdotal evidence. If they say that Cal has problems to tackle, then I tend to think that is so.

Can you really say that your major represents the whole of Cal’s program?