The best teaching I found in my upper division experience was from GSIs. So yes, they do, especially since they're the ones that will become professors some day.
> But going to Berkeley gives you access to classes like "Qubits, Quantum Mechanics, and Computers" [1] that are offered almost nowhere else. Those classes can be extraordinarily hard, but extremely rewarding.
But there's a big problem here as well: such courses, that are only offered every once and a while, fill up extraordinarily quickly, which goes back to the issue of lack of funds and too large class sizes. Getting into any preferred upper division course is difficult now. It especially didn't help that I was always behind fellow students in my grade when it came to class registration times because I did not have very much AP credit coming in (my high school didn't teach to APs at all). This meant even some students a year or two below me got registration before me.
Another thing: if you wish to inspire students to take the difficult but rewarding classes that you're speaking about, having a mostly mediocre undergraduate experience does not help at all. If most of my upper division courses were, in my experience, taught poorly, why would I want to take even more difficult quasi-graduate courses, where poor teaching would be more impactful?
In the end, I did choose Berkeley over Carnegie Mellon and other schools. I feel a tiny bit of regret in having done so, only because I feel like a smaller prestigious private school would have offered a better undergraduate experience than Berkeley without sacrificing the awesome opportunities that you're talking about. Then again, there are many things about my experience here that I don't regret at all.
The best teaching I found in my upper division experience was from GSIs. So yes, they do, especially since they're the ones that will become professors some day.
> But going to Berkeley gives you access to classes like "Qubits, Quantum Mechanics, and Computers" [1] that are offered almost nowhere else. Those classes can be extraordinarily hard, but extremely rewarding.
But there's a big problem here as well: such courses, that are only offered every once and a while, fill up extraordinarily quickly, which goes back to the issue of lack of funds and too large class sizes. Getting into any preferred upper division course is difficult now. It especially didn't help that I was always behind fellow students in my grade when it came to class registration times because I did not have very much AP credit coming in (my high school didn't teach to APs at all). This meant even some students a year or two below me got registration before me.
Another thing: if you wish to inspire students to take the difficult but rewarding classes that you're speaking about, having a mostly mediocre undergraduate experience does not help at all. If most of my upper division courses were, in my experience, taught poorly, why would I want to take even more difficult quasi-graduate courses, where poor teaching would be more impactful?
In the end, I did choose Berkeley over Carnegie Mellon and other schools. I feel a tiny bit of regret in having done so, only because I feel like a smaller prestigious private school would have offered a better undergraduate experience than Berkeley without sacrificing the awesome opportunities that you're talking about. Then again, there are many things about my experience here that I don't regret at all.