The headline reads like Berkeley is suspending authorization of international student workers in general, but this actually seems like a relatively narrow restriction?
The other option, pre-completion OPT, requires USCIS approval (in contrast, CPT is totally authorized by the school). This can take 2 months or even longer. It also deducts the 12-month post-graduation OPT, leaving students less time to switch to another worker status.
Many people abused CPT for employment by attending so-called day-1 CPT programs. Ironically, working is the entirety of such programs, so literally the new rule doesn't forbid using CPT under such programs.
I also fully sympathize with those who choose day-1 CPT. International students have to secure a worker status before running out of OPT (1yr standard + 2yr for STEM). For many, this isn't easy. H-1B requires a lottery so one can be unlucky -- it's also increasingly restricted by the admin. O-1's bar is much higher. For Indian and Chinese, even if they qualify for a green card, they have to wait for the national backlog that can be several years.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/28/us/elon-musk-immigration-wash...
I'm pretty sure that the kids getting admitted to Berkeley actually are the best and the brightest. we should absolutely be welcoming them.
what are we even doing here?
TAG is usually quite simple to qualify for. You just need 30 semester credits and to maintain a GPA ranging from 2.0 to 3.5 depending on the program you're applying for.
Are they?
* UC-Berkeley math prof says she has to teach fractions to calculus students because standards have fallen so far. [1] [2] [3] [4]
* "I teach calculus at Berkeley. Some of my students can’t do middle school math" [1] [2] [3] [4]
* Bay Area high school grad rejected by 16 colleges hired by Google -- Zhong had a 3.97 unweighted and 4.42 weighted GPA, scored 1590 out of 1600 on the SAT's [5]
* Star California student rejected by 16 colleges, hired by Google, gets legal win in racial discrimination suit [6]
Seems like the best and the brightest are being rejected and suing over it, with receipts...
[1] https://nypost.com/2026/08/16/us-news/uc-berkeley-math-prof-...
[2] https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2026-05-27/uc-math-...
[3] https://www.forbes.com/sites/lizdoestone/2026/08/24/when-str...
[4] https://sfstandard.com/opinion/2026/08/15/uc-berkeley-sat-te...
[5] https://abc7news.com/post/stanley-zhong-college-rejected-tee...
[6] https://nypost.com/2026/08/30/us-news/california-student-sta...
Another big issue is that many of these under-prepared students came from the same Bay Area 'under-represented' feeder schools: https://www.sfchronicle.com/projects/2026/uc-acceptance-rate...
The sooner Cal cleans its act up, the better. College admissions IS zero-sum and it's absolutely harmful for the students rejected and those enrolled to accept unqualified candidates.
Biggest problem is you'd need to make the entrance exams _actually tough_. Like "basically nobody who takes it gets an A". The objective is to rank students between each other, after all! It doesn't matter if the top scorer only has a 70% or something.
Every argument against standardized testing in this kind of thing seems to boil down to "test results are heavily correlated to socio-economic status". But... every other form of university entrance criteria process is even more correlated, right? All those extracurriculars aren't free after all.
Stankova — who rose through the mathematics world to earn a PhD from Harvard after being born in communist Bulgaria — described the admissions process as “less like careful evaluation and more like chance.”
> Bay Area high school grad rejected by 16 colleges hired by Google -- Zhong had a 3.97 unweighted and 4.42 weighted GPA, scored 1590 out of 1600 on the SAT's
How does that relate to Berkeley?
> Bay Area high school grad rejected by 16 colleges hired by Google -- Zhong had a 3.97 unweighted and 4.42 weighted GPA, scored 1590 out of 1600 on the SAT's
What's the point here? Whatever happened with that person, there are many more Berkeley applicants who have exceptional records.
(There must be more to the story - neither citation says why he was rejected. To the degree there is discrimination, I expect it would be against borderline applicants and not exceptional ones.)
Imagine how the kids that get rejected are performing.
Either Berkeley isn't doing things right, or this is a shakedown. International students are the biggest money-spinners for universities (to the detriment of everything else at this point, from what I hear), and ICE is going for the jugular.
That is exactly the problem.
Stanford University owns 7 private jets for “administrative use”. The fuck?
Perhaps cut the free money from international students, then universities can finally focus on producing research, or god forbid, educating students.
Colleges look at grades, scholarship organisations look at grades, and employers look at grades too. However, you don’t need to have a 4.0 to be successful. But Good Grades can show every amazing quality you have, and colleges, scholarship organizations, and employers understand that too. Your school degree does not determine your life. However, good performance can earn you a good reputation and success
https://internationaloffice.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files...
Not that I'm against international students. But I think it's misleading to parade them around to show how "diverse" your student body is. The truth is that these international students are almost all the upper crust of the various countries they come from. Not much diversity in "rich kids" around the world.
They mostly are loyal to the USA and that's why they come here.
It's colossally stupid to spit in their faces like this.
Tell that to immigrants being cruel to other immigrants, even in America.
Couple of countries people are famous for this.
It's obvious that OPT will be banned next.
Another modifier is going to be parental income, which I think makes much more sense than race. But those two modifiers can compound to make it where something like an Asian from a high household income family needs to essentially be the next Einstein in order to be admitted over an average student who happens to be from a historically poor performing minority.
My guess is that you're just repeating something to dismiss something you agree with, and misunderstand the quote you're using.
Boalt has kind of been the butt of a lot of jokes since I was a student decades ago. Maybe those jokes came to fruition. (A bit like Brown among the Ivies.)
And no, to be clear, you are totally mistaken about "school break" thing. In fact, you have to be enrolled in credits to get CPT, not on a full break (this is in no way a new rule.)
Furthermore, CPT is used for STEM internships. You cannot do internships using OPT because that requires UCSIS permissions which can take upto 4-5 months. CPT is approved completely by university.
Without STEM internships, there's almost no chance of employment after internship.
Routinely intern recruitments at Google or Facebook start as soon as October of the prior year giving ample time for that. OPT has an optional 30-day response time if you opt to pay for Premium Processing.
> Without STEM internships, there's almost no chance of employment after internship.
Oh wow, you mean F-1 temporary non-immigrant student visa will finally work as intended, to complete a program of study and not as a backdoor for labor importation? Tough.
This implies that you are familiar with the system and aware of how it's abused, so presumably you can provide some evidence.
I wasn't aware of any during my time there, but my personal experience doesn't necessarily mean it didn't/hasn't happened.
The keyword is "Day 1 CPT" if you want to learn about the abuse.
Certain colleges basically knowingly wink wink and allow incoming students to go immediately work under CPT.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/28/us/elon-musk-immigration-wash...
Plenty of other countries already do it this way
I was in the American school system up until HS and then moved to France. The _way_ stricter grading compared to what I had in the US was very hard to get used to.
One thing that I did witness while studying for the engineering school exams (which is a whole two year affair) was seeing a lot of people who were very used to being the top of their class and getting good grades flame out, because they had already been working super hard in high school to keep their grades up.
I think there's a good chunk of "straight A students" who might struggle with the hit to their ego in that environment. But it was helpful and humbling to me.
Speaking as a teacher it's highly unfortunate that at most schools this doesn't really fly - even with curving, because parents and kids alike expect 100% for basic understanding and application. So it's the analog of understanding akin to an assembly line worker instead of an engineer. This is especially a shame in the era of LLMs when rote regurgitation is becoming increasingly irrelevant, and higher order 'understanding' is becoming much more relevant. Though obviously the rote work is necessary to achieve that deeper understanding, but not a path by itself.
I've always been much more an application than theory guy, but we all have to adapt to technology and this is where it's at now.
(on the entrance exams.... in some of the test banks they do something quite cruel where they determine that if roughly everyone gets some question right then they just award zero points for that specific answer....)
In my opinion, it would have to be obvious and fairly extreme to take action over, because there are issues that dwarf whatever impact it might have, the top one being bureaucratic bloat. If 90% of the non-teaching/researching staff at Berkeley were replaced with CPT abusers, I think it would be a net positive.