3.8 Cumulative Harder At Which Top Public University

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Among the Following Top Public Universities:

  • University of California, Berkeley

    Votes: 85 69.7%

  • University of California, LA, SD, or SF

    Votes: 11 9.0%

  • University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

    Votes: 9 7.4%

  • University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

    Votes: 7 5.7%

  • University of Virginia

    Votes: 10 8.2%
  • Total voters
    122
U

UMICHPremed

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Hey everyone,

In your opinion, at which of the following top public institutions is it harder to maintain a 3.8 cumulative gpa? (assuming same major at each school)
 
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sick "following" you have got there...
 
Hey everyone,

In your opinion, at which of the following top public institutions is it harder to maintain a 3.8 cumulative gpa? (assuming same major at each school)
 
UMICHPremed said:
Hey everyone,

In your opinion, at which of the following top public institutions is it harder to maintain a 3.8 cumulative gpa? (assuming same major at each school)
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lol, you know that you can create a poll after you create a thread, right?
 
Who do you really expect to be able to answer this question intelligently?

Apart from no one individual having experience with all of these institutions, there are so many factors that can affect your experience that there's no way to meaningfully attempt to answer this question.
 
ColeOnTheRoll said:
Who do you really expect to be able to answer this question intelligently?

Apart from no one individual having experience with all of these institutions, there are so many factors that can affect your experience that there's no way to meaningfully attempt to answer this question.
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I am not looking for an "answer" per se. I am more of surveying public impression of the academic reputation of each of these school.

I know that unless someone has taken the same class at each of the schools, they will not be able to objectively say which is the hardest.

However, I am not looking for an objective answer. I am looking for a subjective one.

I AM ONLY INTERESTED IN PEOPLE'S PERCEPTION.
 
Of course it's UC Berkeley,, there are more asians and grade greasing non-asians so going to UC berkeley is just plain stupid for premed.
Other schools are definitely tougher than first tier state schools but not dimensionally.
 
I voted U of Michigan, just so you feel good about your school.
 
libraryismyhome said:
Of course it's UC Berkeley,, there are more asians and grade greasing non-asians so going to UC berkeley is just plain stupid for premed.
Other schools are definitely tougher than first tier state schools but not dimensionally.
Click to expand...

UC Berkeley's average GPA is a 3.27. UVA's average GPA is a 3.21. UCLA's average GPA is a 3.22. The difference in caliber of students between those institutions is pretty insigificant, so Berkeley isn't clearly the most difficult school to get a 3.8 at...
 
Berkeley, no doubt.

UMich is no where near as competitive as Berkeley. I have a lot of friends who go there and they seem to be pretty relaxed. Besides, Berkeley accepts only ~20% of applicants while UMich accepts 50%.
 
Trollol said:
UC Berkeley's average GPA is a 3.27. UVA's average GPA is a 3.21. UCLA's average GPA is a 3.22. The difference in caliber of students between those institutions is pretty insigificant, so Berkeley isn't clearly the most difficult school to get a 3.8 at...
Click to expand...

I voted UC Berkeley too. Cali Residents have it the hardest. Public opinion is that their medical schools and undergrads are hard to get into because of population/cost etc. Idk, I'm a NY'er.
 
SU1989 said:
I voted U of Michigan, just so you feel good about your school.
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Haha. This is not a feel good experiment. You can call me weird if you want, but I am genuinly interested in the way people perceive the world, whether it be academic reputation of public institutions or other worldly issues.

I just believe that sometimes people's perception is much more important than the fact, the way it really is.
 
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UMICHPremed said:
Haha. This is not a feel good experiment. You can call me weird if you want, but I am genuinly interested in the way people perceive the world, whether it be academic reputation of public institutions or other wordly issues.

I just believe that sometimes people's perception is much more important than the fact, the way it really is.
Click to expand...

It's definitely true. That's why Berkeley has the most votes by far even though it's not really more difficult than any other public school.
 
I have also heard of stories of Berkeley of sabotage by premeds of their peers in order to get an extra step. I cannot confirm this but that is pretty bad if true. At my undergrad I did not experience this (my school is an option here)
 
I'd guess that most votes you get are just from people voting for their own school, either A) making themselves feel better for not doing well, or B) giving themselves a pat on the back for doing well at the "hardest" school. This poll really means nothing. I doubt that any of them are objectively more difficult than the next, or even any more difficult than a school 20 spots further down the USNews list. There are too many variables at work.

BUT, since you're asking purely for "perception" I voted Berkeley. This is just from what I hear from Berkeley grads, though, so for all I know they just bitch the loudest.
 
Trollol said:
UC Berkeley's average GPA is a 3.27. UVA's average GPA is a 3.21. UCLA's average GPA is a 3.22. The difference in caliber of students between those institutions is pretty insigificant, so Berkeley isn't clearly the most difficult school to get a 3.8 at...
Click to expand...

I was wondering where you found this information? Is it on individual school websites or is there a collective site with graduate GPA averages?
 
I've never heard anyone complain about Umich the way people complain about Berkeley. Then again, I live in Ypsi, not California.
 
Unless you live in CA, don't even consider Berkeley. They want you to pay 50000 a year. I don't know how my university compares to Berkeley, but it's one of the top private ones and a 3.85 wasn't too hard to get.
 
Mute98 said:
I have also heard of stories of Berkeley of sabotage by premeds of their peers in order to get an extra step. I cannot confirm this but that is pretty bad if true. At my undergrad I did not experience this (my school is an option here)
Click to expand...

Haha .. having just graduated from Berkeley, I can tell you that that's more a myth than anything else. It's true that there is a lot of competition, and that you may not be able to just turn to the person next to you in lecture and ask for help, but I wouldn't say people actively sabotage each other. I think a large part of the competitiveness at Berkeley (at least from my perspective) is the way a lot of classes are graded, with the deflation and cut offs that foster the insane competition.

That said, I do hope that having a slightly lower GPA coming from any of the competitive programs listed won't go unnoticed by adcoms
 
I have some experience with multiple institutions on the list (and I know other folks that have taken classes at more than one).

Here is my take: sdn is dominated by people from CA (read: "ASIANS"). As a race, you'll find more whiners among Asians. There is a lot of pressure from folks to get all As and become doctors. As a result their is a perceived notion that UC Berkeley is hard. As someone that has taken classes at both their campus with their undergrads and through their extension school, this is pretty exaggerated. I've NEVER in my life met as many people complain about how "hard" classes are in my life. Not when I took classes at Harvard, Brown, Northeastern etc.

As far as REAL difficulty is concerned, UVA is actually much harder. That said, it really comes down to prof/class. Each of these institutions have easier/harder classes. U of MI is no cake walk either. Some of the other UCs aren't really in the same ballpark as these other institutions (UCLA and UCSD... UCSF doesn't have an undergrad program). I don't know anything about UNC Chapel Hill so I can't fairly comment, but I don't believe its in a similar ballpark (but this is based on my perception of it).

morning said:
I've never heard anyone complain about Umich the way people complain about Berkeley. Then again, I live in Ypsi, not California.
Click to expand...
 
I didn't vote b/c I don't know enough about most of the schools' undergrad programs to form an opinion.
However, I did my first 4 semesters at 4 different schools (long story but 3 universities and 1 liberal arts college) and then my last 4 semesters at UC Berkeley, so I can compare Cal to other schools to some degree.

The difficulty of obtaining a good GPA at Cal all depends on your major. It is far, far easier to get As in social science/humanities classes than in hard sciences. It really isn't fair to compare a pre-med chem major's GPA to that of a women's studies major who fulfilled science requirements with classes for non-majors.
My impression at other schools was that there was a less of a science/non-science divide: at the other schools I attended, science GPAs were higher while humanities/social science GPAs were less inflated.

The curve in science classes at Cal was definitely WAY harsher than at the private schools I attended (which were of similarly good reputation, even though IMO the comparisons are apples-and-oranges). The curve at the other public universities I attended was similar but there were fewer students gunning hard for the As. This is especially true in the pre-med prereq classes. At Cal, these classes were often curved at a C, whereas upper level courses were more likely to be curved at a B- (similar curves existed at other large public universities I attended but the competition for the As was less fierce than at Cal)

But ultimately, I think Cal students just really like to bitch!

The HUGE difference I saw between science classes at Cal vs. science classes at other schools was the competitiveness and selfishness of Cal students. Science classes FEEL more stressful there b/c the students just aren't very generous, helpful, or friendly with each other in most 'weeder' classes. I've seen pettiness and selfishness from Cal science/pre-med students that I've NEVER seen elsewhere.

I think that toxic atmosphere contributes A TON to Cal students' stress levels and 'need' to bitch.

(full disclosure: I graduated about a decade ago, so that's when most of my experience is from. But I have taken science courses at Cal as recently as a year ago).
 
successful_troll.jpg


Who cares?
 
No love for UW? Berkley most likely.
 
aza said:
I think that toxic atmosphere contributes A TON to Cal students' stress levels and 'need' to bitch.
Click to expand...

This is pretty much true. Cal grad here. It's the students.
 
Seems like there are a lot of Cal students on here. I'm curious as to whether any of you have opinions on WHY science at Cal and Cal science students are the way that they are (in terms of hyper-competitiveness, selfishness, pettiness). Do you think that the school just attracts more gunners, type A-personalities and 'me me me' types than other strong state schools (esp UCs), or do you think everyone is just sucked into the toxic environment (i.e. the average student just thinks 'nobody here will lift a finger for me. So why should I do anything for them?').

Has anyone had a large science class there on a tight curve where the atmosphere was dramatically different (i.e. a sense of camaraderie, most students being willing to lend their neighbors a hand, etc)? If so, I'd be curious to hear what you think was the cause of the change.

The last class I took there amazed me. I would miss a day on occasion and ask around for classnotes and lab data. Student after student after student said 'no'. I found this especially low-down because I xeroxed hundreds of pages of my notes and lab notebook for others and some of them had the nerve to blatantly not reciprocate.

thank you for the website trollol - it made for very interesting reading (I wish they had Cal on the humanities vs. science chart. I also wish that their data on that score controlled for something like entering SAT scores).

Having taken a science course at community college recently, I don't fully agree with their conclusion that there isn't grade inflation there. There DEFINITELY is (but less so than other places I've been). This is totally impressionistic but I think CCs just have a very different grade distribution than 4-years. I think that there may just be a lot more students at CCs who are unprepared (for a variety of reasons, often non-academic) for their coursework who never withdraw, wind up with Ds or Fs, and bring the overall GPA of the CCs down. But at the upper ends, I'm pretty sure that students who would've gotten B+s a decade ago now get A-s just like most other places. But that's just my totally unsupported impression based on a couple of classes.
 
This question is probably impossible to answer, and I recently graduated from one of the schools listed in the poll. The only thing you can objectively compare are the numbers (SATs of average entering student, average acceptance rate, average grading curve for classes, % of pre-med students who get into top medical schools, etc.). You can be sure that medical admissions committees have access to some of these numbers based upon previous applicants to their school. However, these numbers don't always tell the whole story.

Even subjectively, you would only be able to say anything relevant if you've attended at least two of these schools. And even so, it would be hard to say anything based off of that, because the difficulty of your schedule will be class/professor/year/major-dependent.

If all you are concerned about is reputation, then you are concerned about something over which you have no control. Just do well as you can at whatever opportunities you have available to you. I understand that students want to feel like their school is "one of the hardest", but I would say, leave that to the admissions committees.
 
ofcourse no one has attended all these schools, but theres always reasons for rumors. (if they ARE rumors)
As a cal alumni, i know that there is a UCSD science professor went to Berkeley, his upper div class exams had grades averaging B+ without a curve. We all know Berkeley's science avg per class is usually lower and curved up to a B- avg. And no, kids werent avging B+ in UCSD.

with that said, im not saying Berkeley kids are smarter than the other institutions you just listed, but like with everything else, when you have more people in the competition, it gets a lot harder if you're those on the border lines. People who could potentially be holding A- avg at other schools may drop to B+ at Berkeley.thats a 3.7 -> 3.3 GPA, and as a pre-med im sure you realize a .4 GPA drop is significant.

there is also more to the story. You can pick easy classes/professors/major combo and maintain a very good GPA. i know a friend who did this and graduated with a 3.8 or 3.9. But for most pre-meds, they major in MCB. MCB's graduating avg is not 3.2x, but rather at like 2.8 or 2.9.

i'm sure if you compared class size, Berkeley would have the most students. You take the same pre-reqs as a pre- med with some engineer kids who gave up ivy leagues for Berkeley's engineering program (i know numerous people like this). Is it going to impact your chance of getting that top 25 percent (A range) in class? ofcourse.

But hey I'm not complaining. Competition is what fuels progress, its part of life. Might as well get started with it sooner than later.
 
i would also beg to differ on these stereotypes of cal kids being too selfish. I'm a cal kid. I share plenty with my classmates.

Is it worse here? probably. Why? its the environment, not the people. We have limited opportunities, (you'd have to be on a waitlist for over a semester for some volunteer at the school health center where you can start doing front desk clerk). Are people going to be less generous in sharing then? why not. If theres plenty to go around, then im sure kids here would gladly share. thats just not the case.

its hard to get to know professors (im not saying its imopssible), hard to secure good volunteer opportunities (really good ones have over a year waitlist), and hard to do just about everything else that premeds do because we have so many of them. oh and we have no advising what so ever.

we all know experiences are built upon each other. Everyone usually goes to college for 4 years. If you are one year behind, that makes a lot of difference.
 
charju said:
i would also beg to differ on these stereotypes of cal kids being too selfish. I'm a cal kid. I share plenty with my classmates.

Is it worse here? probably. Why? its the environment, not the people. We have limited opportunities, (you'd have to be on a waitlist for over a semester for some volunteer at the school health center where you can start doing front desk clerk). Are people going to be less generous in sharing then? why not. If theres plenty to go around, then im sure kids here would gladly share. thats just not the case.

its hard to get to know professors (im not saying its imopssible), hard to secure good volunteer opportunities (really good ones have over a year waitlist), and hard to do just about everything else that premeds do because we have so many of them. oh and we have no advising what so ever.

we all know experiences are built upon each other. Everyone usually goes to college for 4 years. If you are one year behind, that makes a lot of difference.
Click to expand...

I don't think that this is exactly a unique experience. In fact, I think it's probably true of the majority of public universities.



On a side note, judging from the link posted above, it appears as though Berkeley students have an average GPA comparable to, or even higher than the most other public universities. It also appears that this average GPA has inflated right along with the rest of them. So what gives with Cal students crying grade DEflation? Am I interpreting something wrong here?
 
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charju said:
i would also beg to differ on these stereotypes of cal kids being too selfish. I'm a cal kid. I share plenty with my classmates.

Is it worse here? probably. Why? its the environment, not the people. We have limited opportunities, (you'd have to be on a waitlist for over a semester for some volunteer at the school health center where you can start doing front desk clerk). Are people going to be less generous in sharing then? why not. If theres plenty to go around, then im sure kids here would gladly share. thats just not the case.

its hard to get to know professors (im not saying its imopssible), hard to secure good volunteer opportunities (really good ones have over a year waitlist), and hard to do just about everything else that premeds do because we have so many of them. oh and we have no advising what so ever.

we all know experiences are built upon each other. Everyone usually goes to college for 4 years. If you are one year behind, that makes a lot of difference.
Click to expand...

+pity+
 
This post is meaningless because obvious Danville Area Community College is by far the hardest institution to maintain a 3.8 cumulative GPA.🙄
 
I went to Berkeley. Of course, I went there and only there, so I have no basis for comparison. But in all honesty, I did not think the upper-division biology classes were particularly demanding -- the tests were generally straightforward and reasonable. Most upper-division classes were team-taught by 3 professors. There were a reasonable percentage of A's given in all classes. I have never experienced sabotage and readily e-mailed my notes to classmates who asked (and had friends in those classes who I got notes from when I missed class), so I did not experience this hyper-competitiveness that some of you mention. I felt that upper-division classes and lab classes had a greater sense of camaraderie, but it was nothing to write home about. I felt that many pre-meds were unhelpful and slightly gunner-ish, but never outright malicious. In general, the Integrative Biology classes I took were easier (grading/test-wise), friendlier, and less rigorous than Molecular and Cell Biology classes. I thought some of the IB classes were a waste of time (e.g., so easy that I didn't learn anything), so I took mostly prereqs in my first two years and upper-division Molecular and Cell Biology classes (that was my major) in my last two years. (I didn't make time to take the MCAT until this year so I'm applying right now.)

The biggest drawback is what charju wrote above, IMO. Too many pre-meds, limited opportunities for research and volunteering. Some classes hard to get into. Not impossible to know professors very well, but difficult esp. because they tend to teach 1/3 of a class. Cal doesn't have its own medical school, so you have to volunteer/shadow at local hospitals and UCSF (~45 minutes away). Terrible (nonexistent) pre-med advising.

tl;dr: IMO, Cal has reputation but is not necessarily harder than the other state schools listed. Drawbacks are mostly due to being a big state school.
 
I love how Georgia Tech isn't even mentioned because I'm pretty sure there is no comparison. Then again I go to school in the south so I guess I'm biased 🙂
 
Let us not forget other rigorous public institutions. UW-Madison is right up there too, it is very much a "grade deflation school." According to the UW registrar, average graduating GPA for engineering is ~2.7, and other majors is ~2.9. Despite its reputaton as a party school, it attracts the same quality students as U-Mich and Berkeley.

This of course has not been mentioned, because SDN is indeed full of whiny, entitled Cali residents who think they live on a different, superior planet than all the rest of us. They therefore "deserve" better opportunities, grades, and that their schools are the hardest, etc. It is a different culture out there, and the propagation of a hyper competitive, cutthroat attitude and backstabbing behavior is really obnoxious.
 
Quite frankly, any pre-med major that says that their biology or bioengineering major is "hard" should really take some upper division math (Algebraic Geometry) and programming/CS (OS design) classes. Just because you struggle through classes doesn't mean that your class is somehow harder than average, or even that your major is one of the harder majors.

This is coming from a major in Molecular Cell Biology.
 
mspeedwagon said:
I have some experience with multiple institutions on the list (and I know other folks that have taken classes at more than one).

Here is my take: sdn is dominated by people from CA (read: "ASIANS"). As a race, you'll find more whiners among Asians. There is a lot of pressure from folks to get all As and become doctors. As a result their is a perceived notion that UC Berkeley is hard. As someone that has taken classes at both their campus with their undergrads and through their extension school, this is pretty exaggerated. I've NEVER in my life met as many people complain about how "hard" classes are in my life. Not when I took classes at Harvard, Brown, Northeastern etc.

As far as REAL difficulty is concerned, UVA is actually much harder. That said, it really comes down to prof/class. Each of these institutions have easier/harder classes. U of MI is no cake walk either. Some of the other UCs aren't really in the same ballpark as these other institutions (UCLA and UCSD... UCSF doesn't have an undergrad program). I don't know anything about UNC Chapel Hill so I can't fairly comment, but I don't believe its in a similar ballpark (but this is based on my perception of it).
Click to expand...

Rank 24 University of Virginia Charlottesville, VA
Rank 24 University of California--Los Angeles Los Angeles, CA
Rank 21 University of California--Berkeley Berkeley,
Rank 27 University of Michigan--Ann ArborAnn Arbor, MI
Rank 28 University of North Carolina--Chapel Hill Chapel Hill, NC
Rank 35 University of California--San Diego La Jolla, CA

I assure you UNC is in the similar ballpark
UNC is the oldest public university in America and the best
 
biorenaissance said:
Rank 24 University of Virginia Charlottesville, VA
Rank 24 University of California--Los Angeles Los Angeles, CA
Rank 21 University of California--Berkeley Berkeley,
Rank 27 University of Michigan--Ann ArborAnn Arbor, MI
Rank 28 University of North Carolina--Chapel HillChapel Hill, NC
Rank 35 University of California--San DiegoLa Jolla, CA

I assure you UNC is in the similar ballpark
UNC is the oldest public university in America and the best
Click to expand...

At the end of my graduation ceremony, the closing speaker was able to say "Congratulations for the successful completion of your degrees at the number one public institution in the world."

Just playing.
 
CoolWhipp said:
At the end of my graduation ceremony, the closing speaker was able to say "Congratulations for the successful completion of your degrees at the number one public institution in the world."
Click to expand...

that's interesting!


2050vlsb said:
Haha .. having just graduated from Berkeley, I can tell you that that's more a myth than anything else. It's true that there is a lot of competition, and that you may not be able to just turn to the person next to you in lecture and ask for help, but I wouldn't say people actively sabotage each other. I think a large part of the competitiveness at Berkeley (at least from my perspective) is the way a lot of classes are graded, with the deflation and cut offs that foster the insane competition.

That said, I do hope that having a slightly lower GPA coming from any of the competitive programs listed won't go unnoticed by adcoms
Click to expand...

awesome username 👍
 
The one without an outlandish grade-inflation policy. So that means, none of the above. 😉
 
there were annoying ppl at cal but none of them were so evil that they would sabotage someone else 🙂 cant we all just get along???
 
I <3 contaminating the Reagent bottles in Ochem lab. 😍😍
 
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