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I wonder how much of this has to do with viewing the university as a monolith. I believe this may be a case of increased enrollment in 'underwater basket weaving' majors giving an impression that the rigor for STEM courses has gone down.
UCSD is a lot more reputed in my circles (Bio, CS, Engg). UCSD is known for being the most academically rigorous and nerdy among the tier 1 UCs (UCLA is smart party kids. Berkeley is smart hustlers, UCSD is nerds). By research output, UCSD is the world's 4th best university to study CS, above MIT or Stanford. It is top 10 in the world for bio-tech (Top 5 in the US).
UCSD is an elite school by every metric. Arguably better than most Ivy League schools at every field that will define the future (silicon, tech, biotech). Among international students, it's incredibly competitive to get into. In my university's graduating class, couple of students got into graduate programs there (my school needed at least top 1 percentile national scores to get in) and only the university gold/silver medalists got acceptance letters. Practically all of them had perfect quantitative scores on the GRE.
This contrast confuses me. How can a university become increasingly more selective and lower the bar at the same time ?
I think I found the answer. Certain majors are considered 'selective' and students are not allowed to switch into these majors later during their undergrad. It is no surprise that this covers all majors for which UCSD is considered an 'elite school'.
This model is similar to Europe, where getting into a top school is trivial, but a majority of students are weeded out through rigorous freshmen courses. It gives the impression of egalitarianism, while maintaining the high bar necessary to survive in difficult majors. There seems to be a class system emerging at these universities. The name of the university will mean little unless paired with the major that the student completed.
There is a bit of this but its even more that specific programs/majors at specific schools are prestigious. Getting into the school itself isn't necessarily a great feat (unless it's tiny and prestigious, so that the program and the school is the same thing), getting into the prestigious programs/majors at the prestigious school is. People are often not allowed to switch "majors" either, you'll have to reapply and keep whatever credits that are applicable.
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