3/30    Is there a school that has an uglier website than Cal?
        http://www.berkeley.edu
        \_ There are plenty of schools with ugly websites.  Generally,
           one of two things causes a bad university web site:
           1) The process gets taken over by people who are only familiar
              with print publications, and they think the web site is like
              a print publication.
           2) The process gets taken over by bad corporate web designers who
              think Flash is great.
           Berkeley's situation is #1. -tom
        \_ http://www.stanford.edu
           \_ <DEAD>stanford.edu<DEAD> doesn't work.
        \_ http://www.florida.edu
        \_ http://www.texastech.edu
        \_ I would argue we have a worse website than Stanford.
           \_ Ya get what ya pay for.
                \_ Why do you all hate cal so much? Why didn't you just
                   work harder to get into a better school back when you
                   had a choice? Regardless, why don't you share with us
                   an attractive university website? Or do you only know
                   how to mock?
                   \_ I (and I imagine others) DID get into "better" schools.
                      We/our parents couldn't afford them.
                        \_ Then be bitter at yourself, for not being able to
                           work while in school. You have no right to be such
                           whiny bitter bitches if you attend(ed) Cal.
                           \_ Wow, you need to loosen up and get the stick
                              out of your ass. It's pretty common for
                              students and alumni to mock their own school.
                              It's part and parcel to having a sarcastic
                              sense of humor that exists in decent
                              institutions of higher learning such as Cal.
                              Anyway, Cal's fine. I doubt you can get a
                              much better education somewhere else. In
                              terms of price/education ratio it's the
                              best deal on the market.
                                \_ No, I agree with you about the humor and
                                   all. It's only that the anti-Cal sentiments
                                   on this motd are pretty strong and frequent
                                   so I just wanted to comment. Sure I don't
                                   think Cal was perfect, but I still do believe
                                   it is an outstanding university.
                              \_ How do you measure the quality of education
                                 a school provides?  As someone in the business
                                 of hiring the product of schools, I tend to
                                 measure the quality of a school by the quality
                                 of the graduates (which is of course unfair,
                                 since I do not take into account the quality
                                 of the incoming students, but just the
                                 graduates).  However, just measuring by the
                                 the quality of the graduates, Cal is far from
                                 the head of the pack.
                                 \_ You have a self-selecting sample. You
                                    remind me of the recruiter at BofA who
                                    said that I must be bad at math because I
                                    had average grades in math. Nevermind
                                    that the people with a 3.8 in math are
                                    trying to get tenure at Princeton instead
                                    of applying to work at BofA. Cal grads
                                    compete very well overall.
                                    \_ Well, I don't think I self-select in
                                       the sense you mean.  It's somewhat
                                       unlikely that I would see nth quartile
                                       students from other schools and (n-1)th
                                       quartile students from Berkeley.  Cal
                                       new grads just aren't that competitive
                                       compared to new grads from other "good"
                                       schools (mit, the farm, caltech, or
                                       even utaustin (just 1 interview trip
                                       there, but I was impressed)).  If it's
                                       a sop to your school loyalty, I found
                                       CMU students were even worse for what
                                       I was hiring for (EE, not CS, with some
                                       knowledge of circuits and transmission
                                       lines).
                                       \_ *YOU* don't self-select. The students
                                          do. Maybe your project did not
                                          attract the best, because it was not
                                          interesting. Perhaps Cal students
                                          are not strong at that one particular
                                          field and you are over-generalizing.
                                          I *do* know that Cal turns out an
                                          awful lot of graduate students who
                                          do top notch work, as well as the
                                          standard doctors/lawyers/businessmen.
                                          At my work, I don't come across a lot
                                          of good Cal grads either, but that's
                                          because I am in aerospace and Cal
                                          has no department. Schools like
                                          Purdue, UT, and MIT dominate there.
                                          What it says about the average Cal
                                          student is absolutely nothing.
                                          \_ So you're claiming that some
                                             difference in Cal students cause
                                             them to be somehow uniquely less
                                             interested in the companies I'm
                                             hiring for.  I find this claim
                                             incredible.  Perhaps you would
                                             explain what is so different with
                                             Cal grads (vs. MIT, Caltech,
                                             'fraud, UTAustin etc.)?  I've
                                             already specified what I look for
                                             in new grads (EE, some circuits
                                             and transmission line).  Could
                                             any EE program that doesn't cover
                                             some circuits and transmission
                                             line be considered a "good"
                                             program?
                                             \_ Completely possible, for
                                                example, if the jobs you
                                                are hiring for are in
                                                another state from CA. However,
                                                what I am saying is that you
                                                are probably not evaluating
                                                the *best* students from *any*
                                                of the schools. After that,
                                                it's not given you are comparing
                                                second quartile to second
                                                quartile or, if you are, what
                                                exactly that means.
                                       \_ Of course the average MIT student
                                          is better. Their incoming scores are
                                          higher on average (as you state).
                                          However, for same level of
                                          achievement I find Cal students
                                          better than those from, say,
                                          Stanford. Also, I hired a guy from
                                          Caltech as smart as all hell but who
                                          is a terrible employee who has to
                                          be told what to do all of the time.
                                          He's been close to fired several
                                          times now for incompetence. There
                                          are other ingredients to success than
                                          being book smart.
                                          \_ I found Caltech grads to be
                                             impractical (in the sense that
                                             they spend too much time arguing
                                             over and working on the optimal
                                             thing rather than the good enough
                                             thing).  They are very good once
                                             you've slapped them around enough
                                             to break them.  Small sample size
                                             of only 2 though, so definitely
                                             ymmv.
                  \_ I guess it depends what you mean by "better school".
                     I think Cal was a lot of work for minimal reward. By
                     that I mean not that the rewards are small, but that
                     the work was large. It would have been easier to go
                     to "lesser schools", learn less, and do less work.
                     Heck, the main appeal behind Stanford is not that it
                     is "better" but that you can do less and still get
                     a 3.2+ GPA while also having a name on your resume
                     that people care about (and fewer alums from that
                     school in the workforce because of the size).
                     However, you pay $100K+ for that honor.