Is this headline misleading? From reading the article, Berkeley is pausing authorizations for Course Credit CPT, which enables international students on visa’s to work in exchange for credits to complete their degree program. It doesn’t outright ban work experience if it is an “integral part of an established curriculum”.

The headline reads like Berkeley is suspending authorization of international students workers in general, but this actually seems like a relatively narrow restriction?

The new directive requires that the course requires the internship. Most programs (especially CS/economics etc) dont. This effectively removed any pathway for international cs students interning. It’s far from a narrow restriction

That is not true. It does not restrict anyone from applying for OPT and pursue one or more internships. Given your other comment, it is pretty obvious you are not super familiar with the details of CPT vs OPT.

As someone that went to community college...

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?

How is this related to being "welcome" or not? Of course they are very welcome to study. They are simply not encouraged to circumvent their program of study and go to work under the guise of "CPT."

How is using CPT for a summer internship circumventing program pf study? To get CPT, the experience has to related to your degree, not just a random job. And you can only do it in over school breaks

Reading the article it explicitly says if CPT is designed as part of your program of study that you need to complete to satisfy the degree requirements, they are fine. They just won't approve it for optional internships. That's what Optional Practical Training is explicitly intended for, Optional.

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.)

How prevalent is that kind of abuse? Quantify it. I am sketpical.

Not sure what you mean by "abuse" or what you are skeptical of? Please clarify what stats are you looking for?

You said "They are simply not encouraged to circumvent their program of study and go to work under the guise of "CPT.""

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.

> I'm pretty sure that the kids getting admitted to Berkeley actually are the best and the brightest.

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...

University objectives of making a diverse student body (an objective I basically agree with!) make this tricky and futzy (but not impossible IMO! You can always do something a bit hybrid), but I really feel like if some US university just decided to go to an entrance exam model they'd probably instantly have a cohort of students that would be _much_ easier to onboard into university materials.

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.

> 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.

Plenty of other countries already do it this way

I would support this wholeheartedly. In fact, make the exams blind. No name or info on the exam. Completely fair and level ground for all!

Concerning [5], the article says he was rejected at UC Santa Barbara. Haven't checked in a while, but I believe UCSB historically accepts 40-50% of first time applicants. The schools were not using SAT scores at the time, and UC has banned race considerations in admissions for nearly 30 years. Surely there's more to this story.

Coincidentally, I just checked law school rankings in CA. In my day (mid 90's), Boalt Hall was at the very top, and most kids were told don't even bother trying for it. Now it's not in the top 15 in the nation and latest USNR has it third in CA behind Stanford and UCLA.

Please do.

Hmmm ... lots of NY Post stuff.

> 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.)

“Some students are five to eight years behind in mathematics. Office hours that should be spent discussing integrals instead become lessons on fractions and basic algebra you would expect students to learn in middle school,” wrote Zvezdelina Stankova, of UC Berkeley, in an op-ed piece on Saturday for the San Francisco Standard.

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.”

When I did my CPT more than a decade ago in an age before the current admissions policies, I had to ensure that the place I was going to work at was a good fit for what I was studying, and there needed to be a written explanation of why it would directly benefit my studies. And it was no joke, I couldn't do an internship for a role not directly in my field of study.

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.

So, this is not about OPT, but CPT. Many from various schools have abused CPT; so, they want to put to close that loophole. Some real ones get affected by this because of others' actions.

Cruelty is the point.

This is sad.

Sad for the rest of us immigrants, not so much for the thousands who ruined it for everyone by bringing their whole families through H1B loop holes.

Reading such comments here is just re-enforcing the fact that hackernews has infact gone down in the quality of discussions. Its borderline redditsque now.

Yep, the same user started a thread that got flagged for being really bad. I long for the old Hackernews.

WTF are you complaining about? That is definitely not a "redditsque" comment.

> This comment misrepresents what the cancelled programs does.

It prevents international students from internships at companies while still enrolled in university.

Unless you have a different definition of the word “student visa”?

Perhaps you meant “F-1 green card” visa?

Can you elaborate?

How do you think it is being misrepresented?

SO..you are saying the admin is acting because this country abused benefits. And you are not blaming the admin for stopping OPT from said country but everyone else. Do you see the problem?

I'm saying they gave a huge excuse to the admin.

are you indian or paki? muslim? any of those? you know people are tired of you also? you literally have a reputation of smelling, and have a selfish, dirty culture - do you see how that works?

He's Iranian.

The only people who agree with his rant would also love to see him forcibly deported to CECOT.

Just another bigoted dipshit who thinks he's part of the in-group, even though he very, very much is not.

Imagine being named Behnam and making these types of wild racist posts...

Bro, the people who agree with your take also think you should be kicked the fuck out.

Wait, why can’t you explicitly say who you’re talking about again?

Maybe its about the same admin that is killing Americans in the name of immigration and trying to get rid of the same pathway that same admin took to bring a whole family over[0] -- they just didnt want to get political so avoided naming them

[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-43256318

why even bother with this "you know what I mean" stuff? if you're going to say things like this have the conviction to say it straight. you come off as a bigot AND a coward this way.