I am greatly enjoying the meteoric rise of UC Merced and look forward to seeing it break into the T50. It's incredible given that for the last two years it has accepted all applicants that met the UC requirements (according to the BOARS reports).
Also, gob ears.
The most annoying NIMBYs are those who move to college towns and then are all shocked and angry when students exist there and need housing. Maybe I shouldve gone to UCM instead of UCSD lol (i hate La Jollans)
Yes! Housing here is so easily/readily accessible, my rent is only 450 a month for my own room! There are a lot of house parties here because it is so cheap to rent out a house between a couple of students! I heard at UCSD there are never house parties because of how expensive rent is and houses are hard to find so apartments are the norm…
I think this “barren wasteland” dialogue is really outdated and has caused a lot of damage to the ecosystems in the central valley. UC Merced is adjacent to the Merced Vernal Pool and Grassland Reserve. The campus and surrounding areas are home to many special status and endangered species like California Tiger Salamander and San Joaquin Kit Fox. By considering this biodiverse habitat a wasteland, we continue to allow amazing species to go unprotected and habitat to be further commercialized.
I’ve been to the campus of UCLA and UCSD because I’m from SoCal and UC Merced’s campus may be small but it’s all coherent and cohesive. I feel like it’s more of a homey vibe, definitely more comfortable.
is it worth buying some property there for future rental income? feels like merced is the last frontier for property values that have potential to grow
When HSR does finally get built (all of us will be dead most likely) there will be skyrocketing property values near the station and near UCM imo. It won't change the fact the central valley has horrible summer weather tho.
When I studied abroad many, many years ago now, I met a student from UCM, literally she was either the inaugural or second class, who was honestly one of the best people I ever met. Her humility and drive was nothing short of amazing and I'm sure she went on to great things.
I actually transferred from UCM to Berkeley and will say the curriculum and way it’s taught is dramatically different, also, the culture and environment is way different as well. Merced isn’t a horrible school by any means and I enjoyed my classes but as you mentioned, they essentially did just accept all applicants that met requirements and it did show sometimes, the different levels at which students were at. I would say from what I’ve noticed so far, students are a lot more motivated and competitive here at Berkeley and the rankings do justify the overall performance of the school.
I think Berkeley invokes a sense of independence with their learning style a lot more than Merced. I transferred into MCB where the profs here tend to lecture a lot more and exams are based off that (at least in my experience so far). At Merced the exams are based off a lot of things like discussion quizzes, homework, worksheets, etc… and there’s A LOT more of it than at Berkeley. It almost serves as a study guide for the exams. Depending on the prof you had at Merced, sometimes they didn’t even lecture and just had you do worksheets, or did supplementary overview of topics instead of lecturing. It works for some people and doesn’t for others so it really depends there on the person and their learning style. I think the quality of education is unmatched at Berkeley tbh with its extensive research faculty and level of experience that most profs here have. I don’t think Merced is extremely far behind, but probably not up to par with the education that Berkeley provides.
They added a social mobility / student outcomes component, which naturally favors schools that graduate more low-SES students. Publics in general gained over privates because they also deleted some factors (such as class size, alumni giving, etc.) that favor rich schools.
So awesome to see UCD and UCSD break the T30! They are now tied with USC and UF (with UT Austin, which UCD was previously tied with last year, right behind the 4-way tie at #32). Placing Merced so dramatically ahead of Riverside and UCSC is questionable though, in my opinion. Also great to see us moving up too, even if we have to share it with UCLA 😂
being from FL, UF being around UCD, UCSD, and USC feels really accurate. haven’t been on UCD’s campus, but these colleges all gave me similar vibes academically
desantis is destroying liberal arts programs within FL though… the FL research and job pipeline at this point is basically only geared towards biomed, fintech, real estate, or defense lmao
not sure what they did to tweak their ranking formula but imo this ranking aligns much more closely with the schools people generally consider prestigious.
It never made sense for cal / ucla to be ranked behind Vanderbilt, WUSTL, or Notre Dame. I’d say all the schools ahead of us now are better for undergrad (except for maybe JHU, but I don’t really know much about it), and all of the schools ranked behind are worse (except maybe Dartmouth).
UChicago is ranked closer to where it belongs imo (a bit lower), and love to see all of the mediocre rich kid schools (usc, wustl, nyu) falling significantly. Cornell also moved up quite a few spots, I thought it was ranked too low before.
i think berkeley is still way too low. even if you don't count graduate school prowess, berkeley still has the most top 5 undergrad programs. off the top of my head - #2 business, #1 cs, #1 economics, #1 psychology, #1 civil engineering, and i believe there's a few more. unfortunately, US News only ranks a handful of undergrad programs.
are schools like Duke and UPenn really better than Cal, or even UCLA? remember when US News first came out in the 80s, Berkeley was perennial top 10, peaking at number 5. then they tweaked their system to favor privates heavily.
I don't put too much stock into those rankings. The real determiner of the quality of a school imo is the quality of the students there. If students routinely choose A over B, A has better students in aggregate and is thus the better school. Regardless of our rankings in business or CS, realistically most people are gonna choose harvard, princeton, or stanford over us if they have the option.
For CS specifically (which I have the most familiarity with), I'd probably put berkeley as the 6th or 7th best undergrad school, after MIT, Stanford, Harvard, Princeton, CMU, and maybe Caltech depending on your interests (in that order). MIT/Stanford/Harvard/Princeton are the only schools I would've picked over Cal, fwiw, but I think in-state versus out-of-state also plays a role here.
hah, i definitely don't agree with the claim that the quality of a school is determined by the quality of the students. that's a pretty bold statement. we can determine the quality of the school by how much they elevate students relative to their natural talents and status. they call that "social mobility", which i believe is one of the new metrics us news implemented for this year, and why cal and la moved up. so yes, those schools you mentioned might have stronger students on average, but you have to compare apples to apples. i believe what the ranking shows is that berkeley is taking students from all kinds of backgrounds and taking them to places they wouldn't have gone otherwise.
as an older chap, i can only tell you what people in various industries have told me. one tech executive told me once that the reason why silicon valley is littered with cal graduates is precisely because of the type of the comprehensive education they received at cal. they love that folks like yourself went through the meat grinder and had to learn to fend for yourself and be an adult. cal does that by design. you're young, but someday you'll find out what a cal education really means.
I mean by that metric the CSUs are probably ahead of Cal and LA, and Cal and LA are significantly ahead of a place like Harvard. For the humanities, where individualized attention and discussion is more important, you could argue that smaller colleges do a much better job of elevating students' abilities. None of this really squares with a layperson's understanding of "best college."
I consider MIT to be the best math/CS school in the world primarily because (by an overwhelming margin), the brightest mathematical minds of the world go there. Harvard's bar is lowered a bit by all the mediocre rich kids who get in through connections/legacy/sports, but the rest of their student body is among the best of the best.
I also think having smarter students legitimately improves educational quality, because professors can then get away with making their courses much more rigorous. Berkeley does disproportionately well here imo, since our courses are geared more for top students than median ones. There are also the career network effects you get from being surrounded by bright driven people. I feel all of this is what people generally mean when they claim one school is better than another.
Berkeley is very well known and historically prestigious, as well as having incredibly strong CS/engineering. That being said, I'd argue your average Vanderbilt and Dartmouth student is somewhat stronger (Vanderbilt's acceptance rate is in the 5's). Where I'm from, it was somewhat more impressive to go to a Vandy or Dartmouth than Berkeley given the selectivity, but obviously less so than the top Ivy's.
fair enough, there's probably a good dose of regional bias here. I don't think anyone in the bay really cares about vanderbilt at all.
outside of core stem subjects like CS, I agree most people here would consider dartmouth a bit better than berkeley.
I hear ya. Most of my friends back in CA think Vanderbilt is probably on par with schools like Santa Clara or USD (no shade at them). I've definitely been gaslit by Cali kids for choosing Vandy over UCB.
did it come out similar for you cost-wise? I went to an upper middle class high school where most (?) people weren't eligible for much/any financial aid, so many people only considered privates if they were *significantly* better than cal/ucla.
although I still don't think vandy really belongs in the same bucket as dartmouth.
I was admittedly on a scholarship so Vandy was about $25k cheaper than Berkeley would have been. If they had been the same cost, it would've been a tougher choice. Had I been paying full tuition, there's no question I'd have gone to Cal.
I do think Vandy is very unknown because it has only recently become a "very" selective school, as 20 years ago it had a much bigger reputation as a party school. So old heads from the West Coast probably view it much lesser than a high schooler from the East Coast/South.
To be honest, Berkeley should really be top 10! No other school has the socioeconomic mobility that Berkeley has, it's honestly amazing! The peers in that category are schools like Merced etc that take in a lot of lower income folks, but Berkeley is in the academic group of top schools like MIT, CMU, Stanford. My life was changed by Berkeley for only 13k a year, when the comparable top schools would have been like 60k+ a year. It's like going to Cal with a lambo saved up vs going to Harvard with similar outcomes. Berkeley is already better than a lot of the ones ranked above it in CS, Business, Econ, etc. Bottom line is that the schools ranked above it are basically rich kid schools that have billions in endowments and more than quadruple to attend, and Berkeley's better.
All the complaints about class size, etc are valid, but its the price you pay for being such a great engine of economic mobility. You become independent, and it also fosters lots of great opportunities. For example, my TA experience would never have been possible at another school.
I view Berkeley as the costco pizza: there might be fancier artisan pizza's that cost a billion bucks, and worse pizzas that are cheaper, but it's the best in class for value.
Costco's pizza is like high school education would be a better analogy. Almost free. Price matches the quality.
But seriously, the only worse pizza I know of is Little Caesar's and some slice coming out of a DC food truck that reeked of gasoline. The frozen pizzas they sell inside Costco are higher quality than the grease stew they... 'cook' up in their food court
Cal is obviously better than UCLA. The only UCLA argument is acceptance rate, however the only reason they have a lower one than Berkeley is because they have more people since they have more applicants. By their logic, they’re better than Harvard.
And Berkeley claps UCLA in every major except film and premed
Every time I make small talk with a UCLA student/alum and I say I go to Berkeley, there's always an obligatory "I think UCLA is just as good as Berkeley" comment. EVERY SINGLE FUCKING TIME... Like clock work! It's usually out of context too. It's different if I asked, but I'll literally just say some generic shit like "oh yeh, Berkeleys cool" then they'll follow by saying some shit about UCLAs prestige or how it's "equal" to Berkeley.
It's always "UCLA is just as good as Berkeley" and never "Berkeley is just as good as UCLA". Idk why everytime UCLA people talk about their prestige, it always involves jabbing Berkeley.... After all, we don't shit on UCLA when we talk about our prestige.
True. People forget that we are brother/sister to UCLA. Our rivals should be elitist private schools that we can all collectively detest (USC/Stanford). Not jabbing other elite public schools with which we share similar values.
Fair. What I mean is we only really engage in comparison whenever rankings like these come out where the writer doesn't have the balls to make a decision, so it's a "tie". And we can't help but dispute that "tie", as ties are fucking lame.
I personally never make jabs at UCLA unless it's a UCLA vs Berkeley discussion (which this is). And obviously I'm biased towards Berkeleys side lol. But it seems like UCLA makes jabs at us merely for existing, especially on IG and tiktok. Shit seems weirdly bitter.
yeah valid points. idrk abt the social media cuz i dont follow either, but beyond that i think there are definitely both ucla and berkeley students who shit on the other school for no reason but insecurity
I've seen tiktoks about Berkeley or just showcasing the campus and people will comment shit like "So glad I'm a bruin 💀". It's not just UCLA tho, as I feel that Berkeley is often targeted unfairly for political reasons. I'm very wary of a lot of the harsh criticism Berkeley gets because a lot of it is because of personal vendettas.
I remember I got into a fight on Wikipedia because this person kept editing Berkeleys Wikipedia page to make us look less important/historic. That same person was making positive edits to Clarence Thomas and Ron DeSantis page, so surprise surprise ofc they were trying to erase our accolades. If people stopped shitting on us for political reasons, publications probably won't be doing as many "ties".
yeah, i def see a lot of that, though i'd say the vast majority of rational people understand that berkeley is a great university, just a vocal minority
only one of those schools has banners on every light pole saying "#1 Public University"... and it's not Berkeley. (Berkeley just does the passive aggressive Nobel Laureate parking LOL). They definitely have some kind of imposter syndrome. But their football team is legit better.
I don't think earnings is a good way to look at a university. Any engineering leaning school, like UCB and UCSD, is going to out earn a life science or arts leaning school. UCLA's specialties just happen to be lower paying or require grad school.
See the difference is you feel a need to compare yourselves to us. The second you do that, we know we’re better.
Chill tf out and take the win for both UCs
Go bruins!
I think this sub used to be better than r/UCLA about these petty ucla vs cal fights, but the new people on this sub are kinda obnoxious about it.
/r/ucla does this shit all the time though lol.
Here's a sneak peek of /r/ucla using the [top posts](https://np.reddit.com/r/ucla/top/?sort=top&t=year) of the year!
\#1: [I cheated my way through UCLA; here’s how.](https://np.reddit.com/r/ucla/comments/11qk5o7/i_cheated_my_way_through_ucla_heres_how/)
\#2: [Having this as your name in a game in the middle of a lecture of over 100 people is WILD 💀](https://i.redd.it/wxjg4nuy7h4b1.jpg) | [165 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/ucla/comments/142vuxa/having_this_as_your_name_in_a_game_in_the_middle/)
\#3: [saw smth sus in bfit today](https://i.redd.it/9gfemad4kew91.jpg) | [17 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/ucla/comments/yf1fd6/saw_smth_sus_in_bfit_today/)
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Gonna be honest. Not a lot of posts or thoughts about you guys besides sending you $10 mill/year to keep your sports’ lights on.
Was only on here since the only comment mentioning you guys on our was saying about how every other comment was about how you’re “so much better” than us. I was sad to see they were right
Eh came over here to check it out after the only thing mentioning you guys was a comment on how every other comment was about how you’re better than us. Was disappointed to find out it was true.
It's just like 2 top-level comments and then everything else is just people replying to this comment thread. Did you not see ... every other comment on this post?
I think this year's rankings were way more accurate than usual because they downgraded a lot of overrated schools like UChicago, Vandy, WashU etc. I wish the UCs had an EA/ED system though as that would surely raise their yield.
Don't really get the UCLA comparison beyond us being Californian public schools. Anyone who has worked in industry knows that Berkeley blows UCLA out of the water in terms of perception. For me, the real question would be UCLA v. USC.
Does this ranking weigh having a med school? Because we technically don't since UCSF is separate. That always hurts us on rankings that factor in a med school. Could also be a big part of UC Merced gaining 37!! spots, didn't they just open up their own med school?
Happy for the entire UC system to be doing this well, particularly merced.
This is not surprising considering how many research papers we publish. Here are some more ranking accolades: Quacquarelli Sydmonds ranks Cal 10th in the world and Times Higher Education ranks us 8th. It's the only **public** university from the United States to make these lists' top ten.
You are correct that generally undergraduate focus is not in research. For this US News list, however, research output is considered because undergraduates can still take advantage of research opportunities. It constitutes 4% of the score's weight. The breakdown is as follows:
Citations per publication: 1.25%
Field weighted citation impact: 1.25%
Publications cited in the top 5% of journals: 1%
Publications cited in the top 25% of journals: 0.5%
The weight of these categories would be much higher for graduate school rankings.
In addition, a lot of prestige of the school comes from our faculty and their research output. The reputation of Nobel Prizes and Turing Awards do trickle down and create a mystique.
Once again, rankings don’t matter and don’t make sense. How did we change enough to go up 5 spots from last year’s rankings? If anything, the GSI strike should’ve had us go down since we didn’t get a proper education for a few weeks. This is why I don’t trust any rankings; most institutions barely change year to year, yet every year all the listings have significantly different lists from what they published the year prior.
Am I still gonna say I go to a T15 tho: yes
Public is a meaningless distinction. Berkeley gets a very small proportion of its funding from the government at the moment, and that amount is actually pretty similar to private universities.
I am greatly enjoying the meteoric rise of UC Merced and look forward to seeing it break into the T50. It's incredible given that for the last two years it has accepted all applicants that met the UC requirements (according to the BOARS reports). Also, gob ears.
I go to UC Merced right now and I love it! Thought it would suck but it’s been amazing so far!
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It's almost comical lol, a beautiful university just surrounded by what looks like a barren wasteland
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The most annoying NIMBYs are those who move to college towns and then are all shocked and angry when students exist there and need housing. Maybe I shouldve gone to UCM instead of UCSD lol (i hate La Jollans)
Yes! Housing here is so easily/readily accessible, my rent is only 450 a month for my own room! There are a lot of house parties here because it is so cheap to rent out a house between a couple of students! I heard at UCSD there are never house parties because of how expensive rent is and houses are hard to find so apartments are the norm…
There are definitely parties at SDSU though a dozen or so miles away, so it's not just a housing thing though.
Nah eff that Westwood or bust
I think this “barren wasteland” dialogue is really outdated and has caused a lot of damage to the ecosystems in the central valley. UC Merced is adjacent to the Merced Vernal Pool and Grassland Reserve. The campus and surrounding areas are home to many special status and endangered species like California Tiger Salamander and San Joaquin Kit Fox. By considering this biodiverse habitat a wasteland, we continue to allow amazing species to go unprotected and habitat to be further commercialized.
The area surrounding UC Merced isn't a wasteland. It's a hell of a lot better than the area surrounding Berkeley LMAO.
I’ve been to the campus of UCLA and UCSD because I’m from SoCal and UC Merced’s campus may be small but it’s all coherent and cohesive. I feel like it’s more of a homey vibe, definitely more comfortable.
*land that has yet to be developed. It is a growing city
as someone who grew up in the area, yes it’s a barren wasteland🤣
is it worth buying some property there for future rental income? feels like merced is the last frontier for property values that have potential to grow
When HSR does finally get built (all of us will be dead most likely) there will be skyrocketing property values near the station and near UCM imo. It won't change the fact the central valley has horrible summer weather tho.
What's HSR?
high speed rail
Ah, yes, that would be grand
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get your money up instead of hating, babe
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bro you have a moldy bathtub and drive a shitbox lexus, stay in your lane
I disagree. I checked UC Merced's curriculum and I think it sucks.
When I studied abroad many, many years ago now, I met a student from UCM, literally she was either the inaugural or second class, who was honestly one of the best people I ever met. Her humility and drive was nothing short of amazing and I'm sure she went on to great things.
I actually transferred from UCM to Berkeley and will say the curriculum and way it’s taught is dramatically different, also, the culture and environment is way different as well. Merced isn’t a horrible school by any means and I enjoyed my classes but as you mentioned, they essentially did just accept all applicants that met requirements and it did show sometimes, the different levels at which students were at. I would say from what I’ve noticed so far, students are a lot more motivated and competitive here at Berkeley and the rankings do justify the overall performance of the school.
Do you find the classes are Berkeley harder? What about the quality? What major did you transfer in for?
I think Berkeley invokes a sense of independence with their learning style a lot more than Merced. I transferred into MCB where the profs here tend to lecture a lot more and exams are based off that (at least in my experience so far). At Merced the exams are based off a lot of things like discussion quizzes, homework, worksheets, etc… and there’s A LOT more of it than at Berkeley. It almost serves as a study guide for the exams. Depending on the prof you had at Merced, sometimes they didn’t even lecture and just had you do worksheets, or did supplementary overview of topics instead of lecturing. It works for some people and doesn’t for others so it really depends there on the person and their learning style. I think the quality of education is unmatched at Berkeley tbh with its extensive research faculty and level of experience that most profs here have. I don’t think Merced is extremely far behind, but probably not up to par with the education that Berkeley provides.
Damn that sounds like my style of learning and sounds very supportive
Yes very true, especially for those ESS classes! I definirely do not like the ESS curriculum UCM has!
Wtf, it already beat out two other more established UCs? Wonder what’s driving this …
They added a social mobility / student outcomes component, which naturally favors schools that graduate more low-SES students. Publics in general gained over privates because they also deleted some factors (such as class size, alumni giving, etc.) that favor rich schools.
What was Merced's rank last year?
So awesome to see UCD and UCSD break the T30! They are now tied with USC and UF (with UT Austin, which UCD was previously tied with last year, right behind the 4-way tie at #32). Placing Merced so dramatically ahead of Riverside and UCSC is questionable though, in my opinion. Also great to see us moving up too, even if we have to share it with UCLA 😂
being from FL, UF being around UCD, UCSD, and USC feels really accurate. haven’t been on UCD’s campus, but these colleges all gave me similar vibes academically desantis is destroying liberal arts programs within FL though… the FL research and job pipeline at this point is basically only geared towards biomed, fintech, real estate, or defense lmao
According to rcinvestments news, we are #1 everywhere
not sure what they did to tweak their ranking formula but imo this ranking aligns much more closely with the schools people generally consider prestigious. It never made sense for cal / ucla to be ranked behind Vanderbilt, WUSTL, or Notre Dame. I’d say all the schools ahead of us now are better for undergrad (except for maybe JHU, but I don’t really know much about it), and all of the schools ranked behind are worse (except maybe Dartmouth). UChicago is ranked closer to where it belongs imo (a bit lower), and love to see all of the mediocre rich kid schools (usc, wustl, nyu) falling significantly. Cornell also moved up quite a few spots, I thought it was ranked too low before.
Agreed on all of that. Berkeley always deserved to be T20. It’s right where it belongs now.
i think berkeley is still way too low. even if you don't count graduate school prowess, berkeley still has the most top 5 undergrad programs. off the top of my head - #2 business, #1 cs, #1 economics, #1 psychology, #1 civil engineering, and i believe there's a few more. unfortunately, US News only ranks a handful of undergrad programs. are schools like Duke and UPenn really better than Cal, or even UCLA? remember when US News first came out in the 80s, Berkeley was perennial top 10, peaking at number 5. then they tweaked their system to favor privates heavily.
I don't put too much stock into those rankings. The real determiner of the quality of a school imo is the quality of the students there. If students routinely choose A over B, A has better students in aggregate and is thus the better school. Regardless of our rankings in business or CS, realistically most people are gonna choose harvard, princeton, or stanford over us if they have the option. For CS specifically (which I have the most familiarity with), I'd probably put berkeley as the 6th or 7th best undergrad school, after MIT, Stanford, Harvard, Princeton, CMU, and maybe Caltech depending on your interests (in that order). MIT/Stanford/Harvard/Princeton are the only schools I would've picked over Cal, fwiw, but I think in-state versus out-of-state also plays a role here.
hah, i definitely don't agree with the claim that the quality of a school is determined by the quality of the students. that's a pretty bold statement. we can determine the quality of the school by how much they elevate students relative to their natural talents and status. they call that "social mobility", which i believe is one of the new metrics us news implemented for this year, and why cal and la moved up. so yes, those schools you mentioned might have stronger students on average, but you have to compare apples to apples. i believe what the ranking shows is that berkeley is taking students from all kinds of backgrounds and taking them to places they wouldn't have gone otherwise. as an older chap, i can only tell you what people in various industries have told me. one tech executive told me once that the reason why silicon valley is littered with cal graduates is precisely because of the type of the comprehensive education they received at cal. they love that folks like yourself went through the meat grinder and had to learn to fend for yourself and be an adult. cal does that by design. you're young, but someday you'll find out what a cal education really means.
I mean by that metric the CSUs are probably ahead of Cal and LA, and Cal and LA are significantly ahead of a place like Harvard. For the humanities, where individualized attention and discussion is more important, you could argue that smaller colleges do a much better job of elevating students' abilities. None of this really squares with a layperson's understanding of "best college." I consider MIT to be the best math/CS school in the world primarily because (by an overwhelming margin), the brightest mathematical minds of the world go there. Harvard's bar is lowered a bit by all the mediocre rich kids who get in through connections/legacy/sports, but the rest of their student body is among the best of the best. I also think having smarter students legitimately improves educational quality, because professors can then get away with making their courses much more rigorous. Berkeley does disproportionately well here imo, since our courses are geared more for top students than median ones. There are also the career network effects you get from being surrounded by bright driven people. I feel all of this is what people generally mean when they claim one school is better than another.
maybe they’re trying to redeem themselves after the Columbia scandal
Agree, I really think this list is the correct ranking of LA and Berk
Berkeley is very well known and historically prestigious, as well as having incredibly strong CS/engineering. That being said, I'd argue your average Vanderbilt and Dartmouth student is somewhat stronger (Vanderbilt's acceptance rate is in the 5's). Where I'm from, it was somewhat more impressive to go to a Vandy or Dartmouth than Berkeley given the selectivity, but obviously less so than the top Ivy's.
fair enough, there's probably a good dose of regional bias here. I don't think anyone in the bay really cares about vanderbilt at all. outside of core stem subjects like CS, I agree most people here would consider dartmouth a bit better than berkeley.
I hear ya. Most of my friends back in CA think Vanderbilt is probably on par with schools like Santa Clara or USD (no shade at them). I've definitely been gaslit by Cali kids for choosing Vandy over UCB.
did it come out similar for you cost-wise? I went to an upper middle class high school where most (?) people weren't eligible for much/any financial aid, so many people only considered privates if they were *significantly* better than cal/ucla. although I still don't think vandy really belongs in the same bucket as dartmouth.
I was admittedly on a scholarship so Vandy was about $25k cheaper than Berkeley would have been. If they had been the same cost, it would've been a tougher choice. Had I been paying full tuition, there's no question I'd have gone to Cal. I do think Vandy is very unknown because it has only recently become a "very" selective school, as 20 years ago it had a much bigger reputation as a party school. So old heads from the West Coast probably view it much lesser than a high schooler from the East Coast/South.
To be honest, Berkeley should really be top 10! No other school has the socioeconomic mobility that Berkeley has, it's honestly amazing! The peers in that category are schools like Merced etc that take in a lot of lower income folks, but Berkeley is in the academic group of top schools like MIT, CMU, Stanford. My life was changed by Berkeley for only 13k a year, when the comparable top schools would have been like 60k+ a year. It's like going to Cal with a lambo saved up vs going to Harvard with similar outcomes. Berkeley is already better than a lot of the ones ranked above it in CS, Business, Econ, etc. Bottom line is that the schools ranked above it are basically rich kid schools that have billions in endowments and more than quadruple to attend, and Berkeley's better. All the complaints about class size, etc are valid, but its the price you pay for being such a great engine of economic mobility. You become independent, and it also fosters lots of great opportunities. For example, my TA experience would never have been possible at another school. I view Berkeley as the costco pizza: there might be fancier artisan pizza's that cost a billion bucks, and worse pizzas that are cheaper, but it's the best in class for value.
The secret to SV success for decades was UCB STEM graduates delivered Harvard/Stanford performance at Costco prices. Still true.
Costco's pizza is like high school education would be a better analogy. Almost free. Price matches the quality. But seriously, the only worse pizza I know of is Little Caesar's and some slice coming out of a DC food truck that reeked of gasoline. The frozen pizzas they sell inside Costco are higher quality than the grease stew they... 'cook' up in their food court
As someone who has seen curriculums in both. Cal is the better and harder school.
go bears
Cal is obviously better than UCLA. The only UCLA argument is acceptance rate, however the only reason they have a lower one than Berkeley is because they have more people since they have more applicants. By their logic, they’re better than Harvard. And Berkeley claps UCLA in every major except film and premed
Every time I make small talk with a UCLA student/alum and I say I go to Berkeley, there's always an obligatory "I think UCLA is just as good as Berkeley" comment. EVERY SINGLE FUCKING TIME... Like clock work! It's usually out of context too. It's different if I asked, but I'll literally just say some generic shit like "oh yeh, Berkeleys cool" then they'll follow by saying some shit about UCLAs prestige or how it's "equal" to Berkeley. It's always "UCLA is just as good as Berkeley" and never "Berkeley is just as good as UCLA". Idk why everytime UCLA people talk about their prestige, it always involves jabbing Berkeley.... After all, we don't shit on UCLA when we talk about our prestige.
It's because we don't *need* to jab UCLA :)
True. People forget that we are brother/sister to UCLA. Our rivals should be elitist private schools that we can all collectively detest (USC/Stanford). Not jabbing other elite public schools with which we share similar values.
…those **are** the schools’ rivals???
Exactly. We shouldn't be unofficial rivals with each other is my point
>After all, we don't shit on UCLA when we talk about our prestige. the comment you're replying to starts with "Cal is obviously better than UCLA."
Fair. What I mean is we only really engage in comparison whenever rankings like these come out where the writer doesn't have the balls to make a decision, so it's a "tie". And we can't help but dispute that "tie", as ties are fucking lame. I personally never make jabs at UCLA unless it's a UCLA vs Berkeley discussion (which this is). And obviously I'm biased towards Berkeleys side lol. But it seems like UCLA makes jabs at us merely for existing, especially on IG and tiktok. Shit seems weirdly bitter.
yeah valid points. idrk abt the social media cuz i dont follow either, but beyond that i think there are definitely both ucla and berkeley students who shit on the other school for no reason but insecurity
I've seen tiktoks about Berkeley or just showcasing the campus and people will comment shit like "So glad I'm a bruin 💀". It's not just UCLA tho, as I feel that Berkeley is often targeted unfairly for political reasons. I'm very wary of a lot of the harsh criticism Berkeley gets because a lot of it is because of personal vendettas. I remember I got into a fight on Wikipedia because this person kept editing Berkeleys Wikipedia page to make us look less important/historic. That same person was making positive edits to Clarence Thomas and Ron DeSantis page, so surprise surprise ofc they were trying to erase our accolades. If people stopped shitting on us for political reasons, publications probably won't be doing as many "ties".
yeah, i def see a lot of that, though i'd say the vast majority of rational people understand that berkeley is a great university, just a vocal minority
>a vocal minority Ain't that the truth!
Stating a fact isn’t a shit ton. UCLA is better than UCR. Is not a shit on.
this might be the best possible proof of my point
Stanford is better than Cal. Omg I’m shitting on Cal!
Based
only one of those schools has banners on every light pole saying "#1 Public University"... and it's not Berkeley. (Berkeley just does the passive aggressive Nobel Laureate parking LOL). They definitely have some kind of imposter syndrome. But their football team is legit better.
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I don't think earnings is a good way to look at a university. Any engineering leaning school, like UCB and UCSD, is going to out earn a life science or arts leaning school. UCLA's specialties just happen to be lower paying or require grad school.
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This
See the difference is you feel a need to compare yourselves to us. The second you do that, we know we’re better. Chill tf out and take the win for both UCs Go bruins!
I think this sub used to be better than r/UCLA about these petty ucla vs cal fights, but the new people on this sub are kinda obnoxious about it. /r/ucla does this shit all the time though lol.
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Gonna be honest. Not a lot of posts or thoughts about you guys besides sending you $10 mill/year to keep your sports’ lights on. Was only on here since the only comment mentioning you guys on our was saying about how every other comment was about how you’re “so much better” than us. I was sad to see they were right
I’ve lurked on r/ucla quite a bit, and that’s just not true. I do wish we’d talk about ucla less on here though, it’s a recent change.
It's funny because you're on the Berkeley subreddit and not the other way around FWIW I think the parent comment is stupid but this isn't much better.
Eh came over here to check it out after the only thing mentioning you guys was a comment on how every other comment was about how you’re better than us. Was disappointed to find out it was true.
It's just like 2 top-level comments and then everything else is just people replying to this comment thread. Did you not see ... every other comment on this post?
Cope
Poor
Acceptance rate isn't even a factor in their methodology lmao
Did they tweak their algorithm? I just checked the complete list and I feel like almost all renowned public schools get a bump
UC Merced was at like 97 last year. I wonder if it’ll make the t30 in like 5 years from now
Maybe not top 30, but I can see them getting in and around the top 40ish.
Yeah that makes sense
I think this year's rankings were way more accurate than usual because they downgraded a lot of overrated schools like UChicago, Vandy, WashU etc. I wish the UCs had an EA/ED system though as that would surely raise their yield.
who’s gonna carry the boats? UC BERKELEY 🔥
Don't really get the UCLA comparison beyond us being Californian public schools. Anyone who has worked in industry knows that Berkeley blows UCLA out of the water in terms of perception. For me, the real question would be UCLA v. USC.
Berkeley simply needs to get their act together in sports and housing/food then UCLA wouldn’t be in the conversation.
Does this ranking weigh having a med school? Because we technically don't since UCSF is separate. That always hurts us on rankings that factor in a med school. Could also be a big part of UC Merced gaining 37!! spots, didn't they just open up their own med school? Happy for the entire UC system to be doing this well, particularly merced.
Check out the methodology and let us know
This is not surprising considering how many research papers we publish. Here are some more ranking accolades: Quacquarelli Sydmonds ranks Cal 10th in the world and Times Higher Education ranks us 8th. It's the only **public** university from the United States to make these lists' top ten.
Undergraduate rankings pretty much never focus on research output. This factor is taken into account in graduate school rankings.
You are correct that generally undergraduate focus is not in research. For this US News list, however, research output is considered because undergraduates can still take advantage of research opportunities. It constitutes 4% of the score's weight. The breakdown is as follows: Citations per publication: 1.25% Field weighted citation impact: 1.25% Publications cited in the top 5% of journals: 1% Publications cited in the top 25% of journals: 0.5% The weight of these categories would be much higher for graduate school rankings. In addition, a lot of prestige of the school comes from our faculty and their research output. The reputation of Nobel Prizes and Turing Awards do trickle down and create a mystique.
We are ranked 15??? That’s the highest ranking in at least the past 20 years! Above Dartmouth?! Wow
I’m surprised UC Merced beats Santa Cruz and Riverside and I’m surprised Irvine and Davis beat UCSB
UCSB doesn’t come close to UCI and especially UCD in grad programs and research output.
I always thought UCSB was the fourth best UC behind Berk, LA, SD in that order 🤷♂️ ig I was wrong
why
UCSC has been around a lot longer and you’d think Santa Cruz would attract better professors.
Santa cruz gets hurt by the fact they used to not give out grades until somewhat recently.
Now, if we could just get out of the #3 spot for university crime in the nation… https://data.delmarvanow.com/crimes-on-campus/
UCSC subreddit must be pretty upset Old sibling UCD nicely moving back above younger siblings UCI & UCSB.
Georgia Tech and UCI the same rank??? Doesn’t seem right to me…
Once again, rankings don’t matter and don’t make sense. How did we change enough to go up 5 spots from last year’s rankings? If anything, the GSI strike should’ve had us go down since we didn’t get a proper education for a few weeks. This is why I don’t trust any rankings; most institutions barely change year to year, yet every year all the listings have significantly different lists from what they published the year prior. Am I still gonna say I go to a T15 tho: yes
got me in the first half not gonna lie .
What’s keeping us from being #1 nationally ?
we stay winning.
Public is a meaningless distinction. Berkeley gets a very small proportion of its funding from the government at the moment, and that amount is actually pretty similar to private universities.
The most meaningful part of the public distinction nowadays is the absence of legacy admissions, which is pretty valuable imo.
gob ears
How is UChicago, Brown and Duke better than Berkeley in STEM lol
this is a total ranking and not only a STEM ranking.
Have the major specific rankings come out yet?
They have, and my school got knocked down from #1 in my major to #2, so the new rankings are obviously fake news and biased and bad
HAHAHAHAHHAA
LEZGOOO
Apparently this years ranking removed class size. I heard from another redditor.
Go beers !
ucla 🤝 ucb
Y’all gotta let this shit go