Ucb, ucla, ucd, uci + mit, nyu

RML
Fri, 06 Aug 2010 16:59:17 +0000

Okay; I could be wrong on Columbia. It probably would be as hard as Berkeley, or maybe even harder.

The admission rate for Berkeley is 23% whilst it’s 9% for Columbia. However, Columbia’s Early Decision has 43% acceptance rate. For Berkeley engineering, it’s only 16% acceptance rate, according to last year’s data, and this year is Berkeley’s fiercest admissions ever (stats-wise). And since the OP is applying for EECS, the most oversubscribed program in the College of Engineering (COE), chances are, the admissions are even tougher, predicted at less than 12%. The average GPA and SAT scores for COE at Berkeley are significantly higher than all the rest of the colleges. And the stats of the admitted students for EECS are higher than all the rest of the admitted students of the said college. So, in effect, we are talking about Columbia versus Berkeley’s hardest program to get onto.

Top 10% of high school class:
Berkeley - 99%
Columbia - 93%

SAT score (25/75 percentile):
Berkeley
Reading: 620-740
Math: 650-770
Writing: 640-750

Columbia
Reading: 680 - 770
Math: 680 - 780
Writing: 690 - 770

(Please take note that Berkeley’s data is not superscored as Berkeley does not superscore SATs, and engineering stats have usually higher data points than the rest of the university.)

Average unweighted GPA
Berkeley - 3.93
Columbia - no available data

Average weighted GPA
Berkeley - 4.39
Columbia - no available data

BTW, I didn’t go to Berkeley. I would have loved to, but I didn’t get accepted. I, however, was accepted at Columbia.