<p>I doubt anyone had to sit through 500 students lecture after their first year. Most 500 students classes are calculus 1a, physics 7a, chem 1a, etc… All of which you can actually AP out. Unless your husband started his college career taking basic classes, I don’t see how his years at Cal were filled with 500 students classes.<br>
Berkeley’s junior professors >> Dartmouth’s tenured professors. Just look at their new hires, and see who are more impressive.</p>
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Well, you say Berkeley is a top grad school, which it is. Only the best and brightest apprentices of their respective academic fields get accepted to Berkeley grad programs. You can learn from them just as well as any professor. Sure, there is good and bad teaching by TAs, just like professors.</p>
<p>If you think Ivy league colleges are not research focused and tenure their profs based on teaching ability, you’re kidding yourself.</p>
<p>It’s very easy for prospective students to see how large courses are.</p>
<p>[Home</a> Page - Online Schedule Of Classes](<a href=“http://schedule.berkeley.edu/]Home”>http://schedule.berkeley.edu/)</p>
<p>I don’t understand how people continue to have this argument without realizing that no matter what there is a quantitative and qualitative difference between the small school and big school experience, period.</p>
<p>To deny that fact is to be delusion, simple as that.</p>
<p>Whether one works for you or the other or both, it’s not at all genuine to suggest that the difference isn’t real and pervasive.</p>
<p>These arguments almost always come down to differences that are based on size and focus and to deny that these things have an effect is crazy, however, that effect matters less for some and more for others.</p>
<p>That being said, I wonder if any other East Coasters agree or disagree with what I originally said. Doesn’t seem to be the case so far.</p>
<p>Berkeley is underrated simply because it is a public school competing in rankings stacked heavily in the favor of private schools. I think very highly of Berkeley - much higher than most Ivies. It’s a huge school. It has to educate a lot of people from diverse backgrounds by California law and despite these challenges it STILL is one of the best universities in the world. Berkeley has 25k undergrads. The largest Ivy (Cornell) has half that number. When you compare Berkeley to other places, you should really use the top 50% of Berkeley as a way to normalize for population.</p>
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<p>Well your husband seemed to turn out fine if you married him and sent your progeny to such schools! What I really took away from that anecdote is that Berkeley is a great place with people that have learned how to succeed without getting constant attention from a professor. I think some aspects of education are way overrated if your purpose is to just be successful.</p>
<p>My friend who is a freshman at Cal has an economics class of 700 ppl, but still absolutely loves the school. I think it really boils down to what type/size of school you want. I was accepted to Cal, but made the decisions that such an environment wouldn’t be the right fit for my personality.</p>
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You mean this statement?:</p>
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<p>Most people from CA that I know view Brown as a “lower tier Ivy” and totally the wrong choice for someone to major in the sciences or engineering and is filled with good students who didn’t get into Harvard, Princeton, Yale or MIT.</p>
<p>To each his own.</p>
<p>I’m from the Bay Area, right near Berkeley in fact, so I probably don’t have the most impartial or widely accepted views on it, but would say it’s regarded perhaps a tier below the Ivy Leagues.</p>
<p>^^ To be fair, most people think HYPSMC when they think ivy league. I don’t know anyone from my school who think the people admitted to Brown were any smarter than the people admitted to Berkeley.</p>
<p>Oh yeah, definitely. I wasn’t really basing that on the intelligence of the admits as that’s more or less on par so much as the overall image I’ve gotten. I think the fact that I live so near there kind of dulls Berkeley for me, as it doesn’t seem as exciting and brick and ivy covered as East Coast schools.</p>
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<p>I wouldn’t doubt that, though they’d be wrong. I’m not saying the NY people are right either, just saying what perception is. I’m wondering if this has strayed too much into the typical Berkeley advocates advocating Berkeley rather than being honest about the reputation as an undergraduate school.</p>
<p>Yes, of course there’s a difference between small and large school experiences, and different people may have a strong preference for one or the other. There are students who are in love with being at Brown or Amherst. There are also students that are in love with their big schools. I know several kids who are current Cal students in a variety of majors who are having the time of their lives. It of course does not prove that the Cal experience is superior to [fill in name of random school], just that the big school experience works wonderfully for many. Perceived prestige, with the exception of a very few school names, is going to depend on geography and field. </p>
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<p>Field of study has something to do with this. Science and engineering majors aren’t generally noted for having undergrad experiences that are carefree. Economics is another big issue. I’d guess there are more students working part-time to help pay for school at a big public U than at a LAC, though of course there are exceptions both ways. </p>
<p>This is making me think about Tom Lehrer and bright college days and sliding down the razor blade of life.</p>
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I have never recommended Berkeley blindly. </p>
<p>I readily admit to its “problems”.</p>
<p>What I will do is frequently correct the misplaced stereotypes about it not being a great place for undergraduate education.</p>
<p>I talked to my transfer counselor about Berkeley admissions and her main point was: Berkeley doesn’t play the stats game.</p>
<p>Other schools try to make their median GPAs and SAT ranges as high as possible to appear more selective. Berkeley, on the other hand, wants a more diverse campus, not just racially, but people who have done unique things or come from different economic backgrounds. This is why the graduate rankings, which are based on papers published and faculty quality, have always been higher than the undergrad rankings, which incorporate the stats of admitted students. And Berkeley’s peer assessment rating trumps every university besides HYPSM.</p>
<p>So it’s not a lack of quality that brings Berkeley from the top 10 to the top 25 in the USNWR rankings, it’s their admissions process.</p>
<p>Logicwarrior-- that’s compeltely untrue, especially in comparison to my own university. You’ll find students in the sub-2000 SAT range amongst those accepted who post on CC righ tnow. The truth is that Berkeley’s undergraduate student quality is largely “hurt” because it’s a state school, period. This isn’t a bad or good thing necessarily, but to say that they are playing less of the number game relative to other top schools is not true. It’s about the same except for when you account for the public school aspect.</p>
<p>Great posts by UCBChemEGrad 
Very informative as well.</p>
<p>In conclusion, Berkeley is an amazing school with an enormous amount of resources. It’s public, but it’s rich with an endowment fund of nearly 3 billion and an annual budget of over 400 million for teaching and research. The community is huge and vibrant. The facilities are state-of-the-art. The students are very talented and come from more than 100 countries around the world. The community is dynamic and vibrant. As a university for teaching and research, its prestige is parallel to HYPSM + Oxbridge in a global scale. </p>
<p>For undergrad, it’s a top 10 school and its reputation is only surpassed by HYPSM. For grad and postgrad education, its one of the most elite in the entire world. Overall, as an undergrad and postgrad academic institution, Berkeley is a solid top 10 in the US and the world.</p>
<p>modestmelody</p>
<p>the problem here is, what for you is intelligent may not be for Berkeley. So, before you try to say something about intelligence, let’s first settle what really that is.</p>
<p>melody,</p>
<p>How you can get into an Ivy League school yet not know not to use anecdotal evidence to back up a point is beyond me.</p>
<p>Brown:</p>
<pre><code> Critical Reading Middle 50%: 650 - 760
Math Middle 50%: 670 - 780
Writing Middle 50%: 660 - 770
</code></pre>
<p>UC Berkeley:</p>
<pre><code> Critical Reading Middle 50%: 580 - 710
Math Middle 50%: 620 - 750
Writing Middle 50%: 590 - 710
</code></pre>
<p>Berkeley is a great school, and though its undergrad is not as strong as its grad programs, it is still invariably more well regarded than prestigious schools like Carnegie Mellon, Vanderbilt, etc.</p>
<p>Let’s get this straight: Berkeley is NOT an Ivy-like university. Really, who are we trying to kid?</p>
<p>People don’t apply to schools like Berkeley, Michigan or UCLA because their wishful thinking tells them they’ll get an education like that at Penn, Dartmouth, Harvard or Stanford. No, in many cases, people apply there for the opposite reason…because it ISN’T like those schools. Students who succeed at Cal, Michigan, UCLA and the likes succeed because they are undaunted by the task ahead of them. Some of them are even crazy enough to stare that challenge in the eye. Imagine that, a student body where people don’t care about getting held by the hand and led to the promise land. Where you don’t get a research grant because of what your mom or dad did 30 years before, you don’t get admitted based on who your uncle works for, and you don’t get graded a certain way because the 50k in tuition demands it. </p>
<p>I’ve seen people question the intelligence of the student body at these elite public universities; they would compare SATs of students at UCLA and Cornell down to the decile, if there were such a thing. As a student at one of these elite public universities, I will say flat out that most Ivy’s would win in that category. But what does an SAT prove? That you can sit down for 4 hours, write down some genius, and then rub it in everyone else’s face? All too often that is the result, it seems. Students at Harvard have higher SATs than those at Cal, or Michigan or UCLA. But it’s the admissions officers at UCLA who are admitting kids from discouraging backgrounds, and professors at UCLA who take their students into the ghetto neighborhoods of South Central Los Angeles to teach them about price discrimination in the housing market, and perhaps a lesson on humility, too. Harvard and Yale and Princeton admit brilliant minds every year–no one can, nor should, deny that. But why discount the hard work of students at larger public universities, who, while not as naturally bright in some situations, still take the risk to attain a degree from the people’s university? They don’t ask for shortcuts, for a dinner with a professor, or for an eating club. They simply seek real-world experience, a true victory for the common man. </p>
<p>America is not Harvard, Yale or Princeton. It doesn’t live in the arches of gorgeous Stanford University, or in the suits and bow-ties of the Princeton Triangle Club. If America is what we say it is, a country founded on the principles of hard work, opportunity, merit, and, most importantly, sacrificing oneself for the betterment of the whole, then the American spirit lies instead in the large lecture halls of Haines Hall at UCLA, in the beakers and measuring cups of the Berkeley Lab, and in the excitement and unity of the Diag. But mostly, it’s written in the university seal on the diploma, where all grades have been earned, all research projects highly sought-out, and all finals greatly labored over. Nothing is left to question.</p>
<p>Students do not attend “Public Ivy’s” because they’re expecting small class sizes and white-tie dinners. No, we attend because we recognize the importance of a PUBLIC education; what we lack in SAT scores or monetary donations we gain in intellectual independence and academic camaraderie, something many alums of Ivy League schools I’ve befriended are still desperately lacking. The Ivy League is a revolving door of the privileged helping the privileged; the public university system is a revolving door of TRUE socioeconomic diversity, with the disadvantaged and sorta-advantaged building themselves up to the fortunate and privileged, and then lending a hand back to their communities and doing the same for future generations of Bruins, Bears and Wolverines. </p>
<p>So no, elite public universities are not Ivy League-caliber. Not because they lack the resources, but simply because they don’t want to be. I’m attending a certain elite public university because I want to learn to stick it out in a capable and competitive crowd of 450 scholars. When I earn an A, I know I earned it. When I’m awarded a scholarship, I know I stood out in a student body numbering 26,000, all smart and extremely socially and intellectually gifted. I attended this school not so that I could eat with people paying $50 for a dinner, but so that I could learn how to make financial decisions on a daily basis; I’ll no doubt look back 20 years from now with fond memories of my midnight runs with friends to Enzo’s and Taco Bell. I attended so that I could cheer on my team with 90,000 of my closest friends, drenched in blue and gold; so that I could put in extra effort in a class of 150, and be rewarded by a professor setting up lunch for me with a former governor and presidential candidate. </p>
<p>Mostly, we attend because we fear growing up and speaking a foreign language, one I call “Doctor.” Associating with the common man and presenting information eloquently is a skill learned best at an institution built for and by the people. After all, Thomas Pain didn’t write “Common Sense” for the Nobel Laureates, if there were such a thing. But that pamphlet stands today as one of the foremost works of political literature on the planet. </p>
<p>This is not meant to discredit the accomplishments of Ivy League institutions in any way (because each of them are unique and prominent in their own right), but rather to shed light on the fact that we, as students, really don’t care that our school isn’t considered Harvard, Yale or Princeton. Cal has discovered 17 periodic elements and UCLA’s Geography Department has more Guggenheim fellows than any other geography department in the nation. While students at Yale and Princeton were studying Longfellow and Whitman, students at Berkeley were starting the Vietnam War protest movement. If the President of the United States is injured anywhere West of the Mississippi, he is flown to be treated at UCLA Medical Center. </p>
<p>So lighten up. There are a lot of great schools out there, including the Ivy League. I’m sure some will attempt to pick apart my argument, and I’d be shocked if someone DIDN’T post a set of rankings, in desperation to dispute one of my claims. But take it from a current undergraduate, sister of an undergraduate, and legacy^10 (if only it mattered in admissions!) of undergraduates at a large, elite university: We don’t mind. We may not have the yacht at the end of the day, but at least we’ll know how to talk to the captain of the water taxi.</p>
<p>PS: Suggested reading: [The</a> Disadvantages of an Elite Education: an article by William Deresiewicz about how universities should exist to make minds, not careers | The American Scholar](<a href=“http://www.theamericanscholar.org/the-disadvantages-of-an-elite-education/]The”>The American Scholar: The Disadvantages of an Elite Education - <a href='https://theamericanscholar.org/author/william-deresiewicz/'>William Deresiewicz</a>) EXCELLENT article.</p>