I enjoyed the article as well, very insightful. However, I wish the writer had commented a bit more on the sharp divide between top publics and ivy-type institutions. The differences between a UCLA student and a Yale student are also very stark, but in a way that is different from the distinctions drawn in this article.
As a product of UC's (UC San Diego Math/English major followed by MS in Engineering at Berkeley), I know my experience was utterly different from an Ivy, mainly because I attended Columbia Law school for one semester before dropping out to get the MS in Engineering. I learned that you can absolutely sit on your thumb and get through an elite law school at an Ivy. Berkeley engineering was as brutal and uncaring as Math at UCSD: one mistake, and your ass is out.
I'd say that students at top public universities aren't coddled like Ivy Leaguers, and they're more acutely are aware of the possibility of failure, but still have the opportunity to succeed on the highest level and work with the top researchers in their fields (this isn't just true of Berkeley, it's true of many large, research oriented publics, like Texas, Washington, Michigan, Illinois, as well as UCLA, UCSD, etc...) Check out rankings for PhD programs and you'll see a heavy representation of these schools, especially in Engineering and the Sciences.
Overall, I'd say that the danger isn't an elite education, its a culture of entitlement. Nobody leaves Berkeley feeling entitled to a damn thing, and almost everyone feels like they got knocked around a bit. Part of the reason is the sheer number of undergrads at these publics. Berkeley may have a great faculty, but you have to compete with four-five times the number of undergrads to get there. No wonder Berkeley is a little more willing to grade hard and kick people to the gutter. You just can't coddle 24,000 undergrads. You have to start shedding them.
And there's the problem - Berkeley may be, uh, character building, but does that sound like a fun way to spend years 18-22? You have a better chance of making your Venture Capital connections at Stanford or Harvard. Kinda sucks, but membership does have its privileges, and honestly, doesn't it sound better to go to a school that won't give you a C in physics and deny you entry to the CS major?
Comments
I enjoyed the article as well, very insightful. However, I wish the writer had commented a bit more on the sharp divide between top publics and ivy-type institutions. The differences between a UCLA student and a Yale student are also very stark, but in a way that is different from the distinctions drawn in this article.
As a product of UC's (UC San Diego Math/English major followed by MS in Engineering at Berkeley), I know my experience was utterly different from an Ivy, mainly because I attended Columbia Law school for one semester before dropping out to get the MS in Engineering. I learned that you can absolutely sit on your thumb and get through an elite law school at an Ivy. Berkeley engineering was as brutal and uncaring as Math at UCSD: one mistake, and your ass is out.
I'd say that students at top public universities aren't coddled like Ivy Leaguers, and they're more acutely are aware of the possibility of failure, but still have the opportunity to succeed on the highest level and work with the top researchers in their fields (this isn't just true of Berkeley, it's true of many large, research oriented publics, like Texas, Washington, Michigan, Illinois, as well as UCLA, UCSD, etc...) Check out rankings for PhD programs and you'll see a heavy representation of these schools, especially in Engineering and the Sciences.
Overall, I'd say that the danger isn't an elite education, its a culture of entitlement. Nobody leaves Berkeley feeling entitled to a damn thing, and almost everyone feels like they got knocked around a bit. Part of the reason is the sheer number of undergrads at these publics. Berkeley may have a great faculty, but you have to compete with four-five times the number of undergrads to get there. No wonder Berkeley is a little more willing to grade hard and kick people to the gutter. You just can't coddle 24,000 undergrads. You have to start shedding them.
And there's the problem - Berkeley may be, uh, character building, but does that sound like a fun way to spend years 18-22? You have a better chance of making your Venture Capital connections at Stanford or Harvard. Kinda sucks, but membership does have its privileges, and honestly, doesn't it sound better to go to a school that won't give you a C in physics and deny you entry to the CS major?