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

[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).

Also, because they're (in my opinion) greatly underfunded, the logistics of signing up for classes and getting academic advising and etc. are a bitch. There aren't enough resources to go around and you have to really want them and fight for them to get them.

Cal wasn't my second choice (UCSD was), but it was up there; it's an excellent school with an excellent reputation. I just happen to love being coddled and babied by the administration, thus postponing any inevitable reality check for a long while.

I agree with Sev though; I feel like I get a shit ton of harassment on a semi-daily basis from Cal friends, and people with whom I was/am very close resent me for my choice of school. Not so bueno.

[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.

"it doesn't have nearly enough money to do for its students what private and exorbitantly expensive schools can."

This, I agree with. Publics obviously tend to have lower spending per capita than their private counterparts, namely the tippy-top privates like Stanford and Harvard and Yale, which have insanely high endowments.

But I think it'd be a bit far to say that Berkeley is "underfunded." Endowment is the best measure of funding. But it isn't fair to compare publics and privates simply by endowment, as privates tend to hoard whereas publics tend to spend. Typically, a university will spend 5% of its endowment each year (by policy). Berkeley alone gets over $400 million from governmental revenue -- just to spend. In order for a private school to match what Berkeley gets just in spending money from the government, it needs an $8 billion endowment (5% of 8 billion = $400 million). So Berkeley actually has an "implied" $8bn endowment (about), and an "actual" $3.5bn, for a total of about $12bn.

But even then, the comparison isn't completely fair. Medical schools make up a large portion of a school's budget, and consequently, its endowment. Berkeley does not "officially" have a medical school; UCSF, founded right after Berkeley as its med school, has always played that role (sharing faculty, students, funds, facilities, programs, degrees, etc. with Berkeley). Stanford, however, does have a med school, a top one at that. Supposedly, UCSF and Berkeley separated in name so that UCSF could legitimately claim more governmental money. Today, it receives over $600 million in governmental revenue, not to mention it has a $1.2bn endowment. If we were to add the two endowments (implied + actual) together, as one entity to make comparison easier, they'd have a $26bn endowment.

Now, of course, Berkeley doesn't get nearly as much revenue from student tuition, and its alumni giving total is lower. And it has more students to support, though Stanford is fast approaching, with 20,000 students currently (2x as many grads as undergrads, and we all know that grads are way more expensive), and Stanford now has budding plans to increase its undergrad size. Stanford also gets a lot of private funding, but Berkeley too has been competing very vigorously for that. In 2007, it was chosen as one to receive $500 million to develop more green technologies. The Hewlett foundation recently granted $220 million to Berkeley (though also a huge sum to Stanford, the founder's alma mater).

"There aren't enough resources to go around and you have to really want them and fight for them to get them."

I agree and disagree. I don't agree that there aren't enough resources to go around -- I think there's plenty for everyone, in many ways -- but I do agree that you do have to fight for them, as Berkeley is a big environment, so you really have to seek out and seize the opportunities.

Anyway, just wanted to get that out there, after months of contemplating/researching.

Also, regarding the humanities program, generally Cal and Stanford are on par. In fact, for the most part, both have top-10 departments (though in the NRC ranking, Cal had slightly more). The NRC ranking in the five main areas places Berkeley #1 for Arts/Humanities. Stanford, too, is ranked in the top 10.

http://www.stat.tamu.edu/~jnewton/nrc_rankings/nrc1.html#RANKBYAREA

Of course, that's an old ranking. In a more recent one of world programs:

http://www.topuniversities.com/worlduniversityrankings/results/2007/subject_rankings/arts_humanities/

Either way, I think they're pretty comparable in program strength, humanities or not.

(I did apply to Stanford through a scholarship program, though, as I still really like the school.)