Berkeley?

[nyucknyuck]

Note: this is not to start a flame war.

A person and I have had a "discussion" on the views of Stanford students toward Berkeley students. I think you'd be pretty hard-pressed to find a Cal student who thinks that Stanford students are "subpar" in any way. But I don't think it'd be too difficult to find a Stanford student who turns his nose up at

Comments

[pandoradeloeste]

Oddly enough, I'm a Cal reject. I've been rejected not once, but twice (once for undergrad, and again for grad school). Then again I also have a lot of Stanford friends who used Cal as their safety school. ::shrug:: In terms of academics, I think they're about on par with Stanford. Heck, I applied there twice

[starinatdasun]

Berkeley has its logistical drawbacks, like registering for classes and stuff, but for the most part I don't think we turn our noses up at them. There's a lot of overlap with Stanford students and their friends from high school who went to Cal.

I will say, though, that in the past I've had friends who were treated like total shit when visiting Berkeley, upon revealing that they were from Stanford. A PhD candidate I work with (not even an undergrad) went to Big Game and was actually afraid for his and his girlfriend's safety because of the animosity from Cal students who hate Stanford students.

[doctorcarbon]

I'm a Stanford grad engaged to a Berkeley grad. We are both extremely well-educated. I don't see the big deal.

[magaliiiii]

My primary problem with Cal is that, like many other state schools, it doesn't have nearly enough money to do for its students what private and exorbitantly expensive schools can. Since Stanford offered me an aid package making the costs of attending the two basically the same, I picked Stanford because I wanted something closer to home, a bit more isolated and with a stronger humanities program (not that Cal isn't great, just they're better at the techie stuff that I suck at

[nyucknyuck]

I agree about the underfunding. Though its ~3 billion-dollar endowment is impressive for a state school, I think it really needs to invest more. If other schools can grow a billion or more in a year (I believe Stanford grew 3 billion in a year, Harvard 5 or so), then Berkeley probably can. I also think Berkeley needs to reduce its student population by about 10k students, which would solve many problems.

[nyucknyuck]

I take back what I said above -- now that I've gotten much more into the whole college scene, I know quite a bit more

[epistolarysmack]

Academically, they seem pretty much equal, but, as a grad student who knows a few Berkeley grad students, I gotta say, their funding really sucks compared to ours. But they have a much better city -- I mean, palo alto? Sucks.

[nyucknyuck]

Yeah, agreed. One thing that annoys me about Stanford is the location: being in a burb isn't what I want (I'm from a ckufing rural village in so cal), though Berkeley's location is awesome, right next to Oakland and SF with all the fun Bay Area culture. Stanford tries to advertise its proximity to SF but usually doesn't mention that it's 50 miles away lol