I chose not to be a grad student in Berkeley's math department for exactly this reason. I went to a smaller school that didn't have this sort of weeding out.

I chose not to be a grad student in Berkeley's math department for exactly this reason. I went to a smaller school that didn't have this sort of weeding out. (I started my PhD in 2005, and it's possible that this was not the situation at the time and I was acting on outdated information. I don't regret it, though.)