<p>I don’t know that Berkeley has a problem with its OOS image. Plenty of OOS (and, indeed, “out-of-country” students) greatly covet admissions slots to, say, Berkeley doctoral programs. Berkeley doesn’t promote itself and still gets boatloads of the best applicants in the world for those programs.</p>
<p>Yeah, but undergrad berkeley doesn’t get many non-resident applications considering it size (larger schools tend to get more applicants). I was supised to find that UVA, for example, gets 3000 more non-resident applications than berkeley even though it is only half the size undegrad. Berkeley has a better name than UVA, so that can’t be it. All I was saying is schools like Virginia and Michigan are known to have a good number of non state residents unlike Berkeley and this may encourage non-residents to apply.</p>
<p>UCB’s focus is very much on instate. OOS undergrad enrollment is kept around 10% including internationals. Not much room so no reason to recruit much. You rarely see UCB at OOS college fairs, etc.</p>
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<p>Alexandre, I graduated with a 3.51 in 2002 (33rd percentile) and got offers from 2/5 top consulting firms in the world. I then went to a top 7 B-school as the youngest member of my class. I am not extrordinary at all, most of my friends with 3.2+ ended up at top 7 or better b-schools. Even friends with less than 3.0s are now ending up at top 15 B-schools, a friend of mine with a 2.9 just got into NYU. I would say about 60% of my class had similar offers if they went into business. My friends with 3.75+ went to places like Harvard and Penn Med schools (top 15%), and even my friends with 3.6s are at places like Duke Med! Dartmouth is the second most represented school at Stanford B-school, and fifth at Columbia. It wipes the floor with Michigan at Harvard law. Michigan is nowhere to be found on any list I have seen outside of perhaps Michigan grad schools.</p>
<p>You say the average at Michigan is a 3.0 (and factor in grads inflation too!), so you were well beyond an average student at Michigan in 1996. You also have mentioned before (while arguing Michigan had plenty of good students) that you were able to find a group of much better than average Michigan students as your friends. So are they average, or not? I was much more average and yet had the same success, outside of a couple firms I literally could not have done better. </p>
<p>EVEN if you remove nursing and other vocationals schools and just include the college and engineering, Michigan still can’t compete with placement percentages at the top grad schools. Show me ONE top 5 school where Michigan percentage-wise beats Dartmouth!</p>
<p>I know you were successful at Michigan but I can say the same or better about Dartmouth. </p>
<p>The fact you have to convince a board of Michigan’s prowess shows its lack of prestige. Dartmouth I would say is considered much more prestigious by 95% of Ivy grads (and by Ivy I include Stanford, Duke, etc). I would say that yes, for a majority of students, the student body matters much more than the professors research. </p>
<p>Also, there is the “I applied there also” factor among the Ivies. Yup its elitist and maybe wrong, but it exists. I’d rather be in the REAL top school network than the Wisconsin, Berkeley network anyday.</p>
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<p>Call me a “cynic” but I think one of the reasons that UVA and Michigan may receive more OOS applications than Cal is simply due to the fact that Mich/UVA are more likely to be “safety” schools for many high achievers vs. Cal (which can’t be considered a safety school by many people - certainly a much lower number vs., say, Mich).</p>
<p>Way back during my prep school days, Michigan was a popular safety school mainly due to its rolling admissions process.</p>
<p>Umich is still a popular safety school due to its rolling. I mean, that’s why I applied last year.</p>
<p>It’s just a number game. UCB/UCLA set their oos target at below 10% compared to Michigan at 35% and UVa at 30%. All of these universities are peers academically. Naturally more oos opt to invest their time and money where they have a better chance of getting admitted.</p>
<p>You can draw the same conclusion with UNC with it’s mandated 82% instate quota.</p>
<p>Too bad Umich can’t target its 60% acceptance rate. :)</p>
<p>Drab wrote: Why is it that the Canadians head down to the US for transplants and various other operations? Or is their system poor, too.</p>
<p>Canada’s health care is world class in terms of medical research and expertise and technology however, there are limited spaces for medical prodcedures such as transplants and it’s illegal to use money to get to the head of line, so people with money head south the border to skip the wait. part of the problem is the medical schools cap admissions very tightly in Canada. Also, doctors in Canada are underpaid as compared to their US counterparts as rates in Canada for doctors are fixed by the government. so many doctors graduate from canada and head to the US. Now the government is looking at deregulating medical school admission caps to plug up the shortage due to a recommedation from College of Family Physicians of Canada. They are asking the government to increase the number of medical school spots to 2,500 in 2008 from the current 2,100 and raise the percentage of residency places in family medicine to 45 per cent from the current 40 per cent, just for starters.</p>
<p>hope that explains it.</p>
<p>additional info to my post:
There are no real private hospitals in Canada though a few claim to be, and more are popping up, but they are in defiance of the Canada health act of 1984. Though the lack of space and a conservative government who supports privatization means no one is stopping these “private hospitals.”</p>
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<p>Let’s be careful here when we mention Berkeley, the reason is because it has a large disparity of student quality across its depts. That’s to say, Berkeley engineering students have average quality that is no less even a bit than Dartmouth college.</p>
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<p>I second this thought.</p>
<p>Call it “elitist” but when I meet a fellow Ivy grad, I give him the benefit of the doubt that I wouldn’t readily give to a State U. grad. Call it a “qausi”-extended network if you want.</p>
<p>I guess you would extend that “courtesy” to the CEOs of Exxon, Halliburton, Qwest, Kimberly Clark, Whirlpool, Pitney Bowes, Applied Materials, Rockwell, Jefferson-Pilot, MGIC Investment, Intuit, Autodesk, American Family Insurance, etc, and to the COB and former CEO of Cisco.</p>
<p>Of course I’m biased, but I wouldn’t lump Berkeley in with any other state schools in terms of recognition. From my experience Berkeley is seen in the same light as the lower ivies in terms of prestige among students at other top schools. I think alot of oos apply to Cal along with the ives and often times don’t get into Cal but do get into schools like Duke, Dartmouth or Cornell. Getting into Berkeley oos is extremely difficult, more so than many other higher ranked schools.</p>
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<p>Call it stupid to include schools not in the sports conference as being in the sports conference.</p>
<p>Barrons, anyone would give those high acheivers tremendous respect. We are talking about the benefit of the doubt you give someone you don’t know, clearly state schools produce incredibly talented students. But if most top school alums had to hire two kids all else equal from Michigan or Duke, its pretty clear the Duke kid would get the nod by most people. Its a case of lowest common denominator. GentAndScholar, I’d say Berk’s reputation for selectivity is probably more on the west coast to be honest, but its clearly at the top of the heap among state schools as far as selectivity is concerned. Drab, I denoted “Ivy” as those top privates so I didn’t have to list them each time.</p>
<p>Dartmouth kids have less to prove than Michigan kids. Its a truth.</p>
<p>Well, I can’t consider Duke, Stanford, MIT, or Caltech as part of something thye are not. You don’t have to list them each time. Saying “Ivy League” means 8 particular schools, and if people don’t know what they are, they can look at the homepage of te discussion forum and read.</p>
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<p>I think this may have to do with single geography. Let’s face it. The East Coast has lots and lots of states, many with quite significant populations (New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, etc.), where a paucity of strong public schools exists, so people apply to a range of schools around the area.</p>
<p>In the West Coast, the only really populous state is California. And by a quirk of history, California is one gigantic state. In reality, Southern California and Northern California share almost nothing in common culturally, and neither share much in common with the Inland Empire. A person from Bakersfield who applies to Berkeley is an instate student, but only technically so. That person is probably going to experience as much culture shock coming to Berkeley as a guy from Kansas would. </p>
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<p>I have a hard time believing that it is just the marketing. For example, I’ve never seen UCB being marketed at any of the doctoral fairs either, but that doesn’t stop hordes of OOS and out-of-nation applicants from applying to the Berkeley doctoral programs. Forget about not being from California, there are plenty of Berkeley doctoral programs, especially in engineering and science, of which the majority of students are foreign nationals. </p>
<p>I suspect that the answer is not marketing. Namely, I think it is a combination of the difficulty of OOS undergrad admissions compared with the quality of the undergrad education. The fact is, if you’re good enough to get into Berkeley OOS, then you’re probably good enough to get into one of the top private schools. And the top private schools would probably cost almost as much (or perhaps even less due to the highly aggressive financial aid policies that many top private schools run). And the undergrad education at Berkeley, while good, is not better than that of the top private schools.</p>
<p>It’s a completely different story with the doctoral programs. First of all, nobody ever pays for their doctorate, unless they really want to. Every doctoral student can get a full-ride of some kind (fellowship, RA, TA, etc.). Hence, there is little financial incentive to go to an in-state doctoral program. Secondly, there is no discrimination against OOS or foreign nationals in doctoral admissions. Being a Californian doesn’t give you a boost to get into a Berkeley doctoral program. The doctoral programs have no ‘mission’ to reserve most slots for Californians. Thirdly, the Berkeley doctoral programs are just darn good, and in many cases the very best in the world. It’s hard for me to see somebody choosing Berkeley over Harvard or Stanford for undergrad except to save money, but plenty of people do precisely that for their PhD. </p>
<p>So the point is, I don’t think marketing is the issue. I think it is the quality of the programs, the OOS cost, and the OOS difficulty of admissions that kills the interest.</p>
<p>Actually in my real world I give people respect based upon what they have accomplished. That means I give Hines and Crow and Zell and other successful developers lots of respect. I know Zell went to Michigan and Hines went to Purdue–not even sure about Crow.</p>
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<p>call me crazy, but I don’t think that the culltural differences are as drastic as you mention. I’m from the Inland Empire, and, along with everyone I know from there who came here, am doing quite well culturally speaking. While the differences between the cultures are noticeable, is it any different from Florida (southern most compared to northern most)? Different areas of Texas (the major cities vs the rural towns)? While I think that the general culture of Northern and Southern california differ, and maybe even parts of central California do, I don’t think most students are merely “technically” in-state.</p>