Well, as I said, Michigan would be a different matter for me.
My point is/was that you cannot just simply multiply the CoA by 4 years of any university, including the UCâs. You gotta âlook under the hoodâ much deeper than that and history isnât always a great predictor of future performance as they say.
An OOS public like Purdue, considered a cheaper OOS alternative, is having big housing issues too and they havenât raised their tuition in about 10 years +/-.
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I see the thread on US News rankings inevitably devolved into a UC bashing fest. To each their own. I donât see the need to belittle the choice of many families and their students to attend what is arguably one of the best public higher education systems in the world. Emphasis on PUBLIC. Is it perfect? Far from it. But the positives far out way the negatives for the vast majority of students and their families. But hey, this is a public forum. Feel free to promote Alabama and Arizona (and I have absolutely nothing against Alabama and Arizona) over Cal and UCLA to California students. I donât think they will listen to you.
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And here comes the UC cheerleading squad! 
Two (or more) sides of a discussion cannot be represented here? And of course, I was ONLY referring to Alabama and Arizona. Just those two schools. No other OOS schools. 
And you know as well as I do that many CA students are headed OOS, including the UC professorâs kid mentioned above.
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I hear UFlorida is moving up rapidlyâŠ
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To an expensive private. This type of choice is usually, not always, equivalent to privilege. You canât compare expensive privates and expensive out of state publics to what for most students is not only a good choice but also the most affordable choice. And Iâm not only talking about the UCs. Iâm talking about all of it. CC, Cal States and UCs.
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I havenât seen the debit amount to the professorâs checking account, have you? 
Good OOS publics and private schools can be affordable. As I mentioned above, D21 could have gone to Santa Clara for not that much more than a UC.
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I certainly donât mean to bash the UCs. But Iâm not going to go along with USNews ranking them so high when they have major problems. I think itâs critical for students to consider the real costs of housing, of the possibility of losing financial aid if they canât get enough units, of having to pay tuition for 6 years to get all of their requirements. And people who are saying âwell yes, thatâs worth it for a highly ranked UCâ my question is does that high rank mean anything when itâs based on this wildly flawed peer assessment of reputation?
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My kid also got into UMicigan and other state flagship university but received 0 financial aids. With UC, he is qualified for some scholarships. He can graduate in 3 years with all his AP credits at both UC and UMichgan. Now please enlighten me why we should pick out of state over in state?
Far more than 3% of the class is ranked in both half of their high school at the listed Bates and Wesleyan colleges, probably a large portion of HYPSM⊠type colleges too. However, selective high schools like Exeter almost never send rank to colleges, so the 49th percentile rank kid from Exeter would not be included in the CDS stats. At most highly selective privates only a tiny fraction of entering students submit rank. Some example numbers are below from the most recent CDS.
Wesleyan â 18% submitted rank
Bates â 21% submitted rank
Cornell â 22% submitted rank
Brown â 23% submitted rank
Stanford â 25% submitted rank
With such a low submission rate, I agree with USNWRâs decision to remove class rank from their calculation.
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I appreciate your insight from the ground of a UC. I know there are plenty of excellent professors at UCs. And it must suck seeing students struggle to get classes and understanding all the ramifications that come along with over-acceptance. Regardless of what @Visitor1 says, Iâd rather faculty/staff be honest than have their heads stuck in the sand. And as a parent, you can only try to do whatâs best for your kid with all the information you have at hand.
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Good point about submitted rank. With that said, I would say that youâre probably not right that âfar more than 3%â is ranked in the bottom half [I assume thatâs what you meant to type] at Wes, Bates, HYPSM, etc. Admittedly a lot of the LACs donât give the GPA breakdown in their CDS data, but they are hard schools to get into and the typical student who finds themselves in the lower 1/2 of their graduating class (whether rank is published or not, this is determinable) isnât going to make it in. There are exceptions of course. Most of them are recruited athletes.
As this relates to my original response, I wasnât clear on your intent, but I didnât say or imply that your list of UA, ASU, UA was exhaustive. But you did list them presumably for a reason, which I took to be as âaffordable alternativesâ to the UCs, with all their stated problems. And my response was clearly limited to that point: even with those problems, such as they are, Iâm still encouraging my kid to choose Cal or UCLA (and probably the others) over those particular schools unless the economics are truly compelling. Michigan, etc. is an altogether different conversation and point.
UC 4-year graduation rates have been increasing over time, although that may be more related to admission selectivity than anything else.
For whatever reason (probably more student-related than anything else), CSUs tend to have low graduation rates. This includes CPSLO, whose 4-year graduation rate for 2016 frosh entrants is lower than that of all UCs other than UCM.
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Thanks for your feedback. We are using UCs as a last resort for the very reasons you stated.
Is it really true that kids canât graduate on time at UCs because they canât get all their requirements? My son who goes to UC Berkeley had no trouble getting his requirements, there are many options. This is a kid who refused to take a class just for credits, he had to really WANT to take a class, and he still could have graduated in 3 years taking no more than the average 4 classes a semester (applied math with CS emphasis). If you get accepted to Berkeley you are coming in with a lot of credits though, so maybe itâs not true at other UCs. The other thing that surprised me about Berkeley is that all of his classes are taught by Professors, and he has not had one he has not liked. Itâs the discussion sections that are taught by Graduate students. The worst thing about Berkeley are class sizes, at least the CS classes, that part is very true! And housing is expensive too.
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Good luck using the UCs as a last resort!
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Prime time on the east coast:
The UC Debate
To UC or not to UC
In stating this, you have ventured from mathematics into opinion. 3%, when extrapolating from known to unknown data, provides the same 3%, excepting further, credible analysis. Also, some of the statistics you posted may be off. Wesleyan, for example, recently reported high school class standing for 31.1% of its students, not 18% as it appears above.
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According to the 2020-21 Bates common data set, 21% of entering students submitting rank. And among those 21% submitting, 3% were in the bottom of half of their class. Kids who attend selective high schools or high schools where an excellent academic kid is more likely to have a low rank are no doubt far less likely to submit rank then average. So it follows that the average rank for 79% of kids who did not submit rank is almost certainly notably lower than the average rank for the 21% of kids who did submit rank. It also follows that if 3% of the kids who submitted rank were in the bottom half, then a much larger portion of the 79% of kids who did not submit rank were in the bottom half. So I think it is safe to conclude that âfar more than 3%â are in the bottom half.
Using some real numbers, the average admit rate for kids in the bottom 40% of the class at Harvard-Westlake High School as listed at https://students.hw.com/Portals/44/Handbook2020.pdf . Many of the lower half ranked kids are clearly getting accepted to colleges as selective as Bates.
Bottom ~40% Rank Kids at HW
Bates â 7/15 = 47% accepted
Chicago â 6/18 = 33% accepted
WUSTL â 20/76 = 26% accepted
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