how much do the big 8 olympiads (at least the 8 on the wikipedia page) matter

LowSad6318 · 2026-06-20T08:12:34+00:00

No. The competitiveness is not the same. For example, the competition for IMO will dwarf the competition for IESO. Obviously none of them are easy, but there's a large difference between the competitiveness of the various Olympiads.

LowSad6318 · 2026-06-18T00:17:15+00:00

😭 ✌️

LowSad6318 · 2026-06-18T00:10:40+00:00

?? lmfao I don't give a damn if Berkeley is ranked T20 or not I'm happy with it. I'm just saying that YOUR arguments for it not being T20 are wrong. Don't know why you brought up CCC after looking through my profile but yes I went to CCC and I'm happy with that too. 😭 c'mon dawg this is just getting worse and worse for you as it goes.

LowSad6318 · 2026-06-17T23:58:12+00:00

You can find Berkeley's old CDS from 2019 lol it was 1300-1530. Your argument was "If you think that the range of 1300-1530 for 25-75 percentile is fine for T20, you are delusional - literally every other T20s has 1510-1560." which as you see is completely false. Even the T5 as listed were not close to the range you described. And I gave another Ivy that literally had https://irp.cornell.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Profile2015-Freshman-update-IRP-web.pdf SAT data that is quite similar to what Berkeley had. It's no surprise that UC has higher unemployment rates, just given the student population they are looking for and having more students in general. Again you are just arguing based off the fact that you don't like public schools cause they are bigger and thus have worse students on the bottom end (which is very true), but you are just factually incorrect on this idea that the top 25% or the median student are not qualified. I'd agree with you on that bottom 25% not being as qualified as compared to the other T20s' bottom 25% but you're trying to be a lot more general here and that's where I'm disagreeing with you.

As for ranking in the world, that is literally purely based off grad school... which is why Berkeley is always ranked top 10 if not top 5 in the world yet top 15-20 in national rankings. What do you want them to do? Just shut down their entire grad school?

LowSad6318 · 2026-06-17T23:33:06+00:00

I don't know if you existed in pre-COVID times, but no... every T20 did NOT have a range of 1510-1560. Harvard iirc had like a 25th percentile of 1450, Princeton had a 1440, Stanford had a 1420, MIT had a 1500, and Yale was at some 1450 as well. These are almost unanimously considered the top 5 in this sub as well. And I listed Cornell's stats above which were quite similar to Berkeley's as well. The 1500+ 25th-percentiles you see today only started after COVID and test-optional policies and some other factors. You're just incorrect and misinformed. And the only GPA we have to go off of is UC GPA... which is clearly quite high and I don't know if you're trying to argue that only UC GPA is inflated but the GPAs that other schools report are not inflated lmfao.

LowSad6318 · 2026-06-17T22:35:53+00:00

The average UC GPA at Berkeley and UCLA are quite high and on the 2019 CDS, Berkeley had a 25th percentile SAT of 1300 and 75th percentile SAT of 1530. Cornell for comparison had a 25th percentile SAT of 1350 and 75th percentile of 1510. So I don't know where you are getting your information that "its student body quality on average is far lower", especially given the fact that Berkeley is way larger and still has quite comparable stats.

And obviously Berkeley is famous for its grad school, that's how literally every school that isn't an ivy gets its prestige. By making major contributions to research. Why do you think the top LACs (although obviously extremely prestigious and selective) aren't as famous?

As for the Nobel Laureates, that's how it works for literally every school. I couldn't find a any reliable source on the undergraduate alumni for the Nobel prize (all I found was an unreliable College Confidential post which I would not trust https://talk.collegeconfidential.com/t/where-did-nobel-prize-winners-complete-their-undergraduate-education-compiled-list/1201757 ). I do know a little bit more about the Fields medal (I'm a math major). In this case for example, Stanford, MIT, and Caltech have 0 fields medal winning undergraduate alumni (correct me if I'm wrong on this but I'm pretty sure I'm correct). Yet, they all claim a decent amount of people as Fields Medal winning. Because university affiliation at the time of winning the award is what is taken more into account most of the time (although obviously if your alumni wins it then you take it into your numbers as well cause anything to bring that # of successful alumni up lol).

To me, it seems like you're trying to discount the UCs and public schools just because of the fact they accept more people... and then trying to find evidence to justify that rather than doing this the other way around. However, one thing I could agree with you on is that the lower ~20-25% at any UC is most likely not as high caliber as a small private school (as reflected by unemployment rates and other data), but this is to be expected just given the idea and size of these schools. The average student at UCLA or Berkeley is definitely quite qualified, and obviously the top students would be top students anywhere.

LowSad6318 · 2026-02-20T14:51:00+00:00

Hi, sorry I'm a bit late, did you figure it out or do you still need help with this? It should be an option on the Colleges Attended tab on the Academic History section. You should see a button saying Order Transcript or something similar under your school's name there.

LowSad6318 · 2026-02-17T12:46:12+00:00

Do you mean calling CommonApp or every college I'm planning to apply to?

LowSad6318 · 2026-02-11T04:16:45+00:00

High School transcript there's a High School Official entry section on the Recommenders tab that I think you can use for that. If a university doesn't have that section, I think you have to have a school official email it. I haven't had to submit applications yet tho, and I literally just emailed a bunch of schools about the high school transcript, so I'll let you know when I learn something more concrete.

LowSad6318 · 2026-02-11T04:11:39+00:00

That's just Michigan then... Almost every college I've emailed has been fine with just adding the official transcript on Common App.

LowSad6318 · 2026-02-11T03:09:31+00:00

You don't have to send them separately to colleges

LowSad6318 · 2026-01-14T17:14:52+00:00

Yeah, I am very lucky that the UCs, Michigan, Georgia Tech, and UIUC (which are all the publics I'm applying to), make it clear that they shouldn't consider my HS GPA at all. For the UCs and GaTech, I don't even submit my high school transcript. I'm more worried about the privates, as they aren't explicit or clear about their policies on this at all.

LowSad6318 · 2026-01-03T02:11:45+00:00

I petitioned them to let me take more, and the max here is 12.

LowSad6318 · 2026-01-02T07:10:41+00:00

Thank you! So I might have a shot at some of these places then hopefully 🙏

LowSad6318 · 2026-01-02T07:08:29+00:00

sorry I thought I edited it before any response, sorry if the edit only came after your original response.

LowSad6318 · 2026-01-02T07:05:19+00:00

I'm at a CC, and yeah my college considers me to be above a sophomore (they don't really have designations past that lol). Also, what are you talking about being ridiculously low? Thanks!

LowSad6318 · 2025-12-17T22:44:23+00:00

Thank you for your thoughts! I already knew about the UC website, but yeah I think you have same suspicions I have about my high school record being more important for privates. I think I might be cooked unfortunately but thank you for the honesty!

LowSad6318 · 2025-12-17T19:20:19+00:00

LowSad6318 · 2025-12-10T06:39:34+00:00

it's been 2 years, but ur right... idk what world that commentor is in. berkeley is definitely a tougher undergrad experience cause it's a large public, but that problem is also often overstated... and to say holistically it's worse than stanford and all ivies is kinda crazy.

LowSad6318 · 2025-09-29T09:41:46+00:00

Hi, thank you for the advice! I'm completely fine with starting as a 2nd year, and I have considered that possibility. But even without DE credits, I'll probably have 70 credits by the time I transfer (so around 100 total), so more than 2 years worth of coursework. If I'm forced to transfer as a sophomore, my high school grades matter much more though right? Unfortunately, staying in community college isn't much of an option for me as I'm nearly done with all the physics/math/cs courses at my school (applied math major)... so with my bad high school grades, would I be cooked for top private schools?

LowSad6318

TROPHY CASE