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Actually, even the OOS yields of top publics would tell you that the publics struggle somewhat, at least compared to the top privates.</p>
<p>If the public colleges want to retain even that level of attractiveness, money issues will certainly play a role. Fortunately, the leadership at some of these top publics aren't treating this as a "problem that doesn't exist." At the highest levels, eg, these colleges know that for the USNWR Top 20-40 national universities and USNWR Top 20 LACs, the college arms race is not likely to slow down a whole lot.
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<p>DStark pretty much nailed it. These schools serve different markets, albeit with some overlap.</p>
<p>Each school at the top of publics should be considered differently because they have different compositions of student bodies -- e.g., Michigan and UVA have more OOS students than Berkeley.</p>
<p>What strikes me in what you've said on this board, Hawkette, is your assumption that the top publics are engaged in an arms race to attract the top students. This is a view very much informed by what the top privates do; indeed, they effectively "buy" the best in some cases and in other cases they don't need to do so.</p>
<p>Again, I don't know about UVA or Michigan (or UNC/Wisconsin), etc., but I know in Berkeley's case it's actually moved in the opposite direction. For instance, it used to spend a fair amount of effort and dollars recruiting National Merit (either Finalists or Scholars, I can't remember which) folks. But it stopped the practice because it didn't prove to have a lot of benefits above what the normal recruit process yielded.</p>
<p>What Berkeley does is focus on academic research excellence, and it does this quite well. That's why in many fields it is tops.</p>
<p>And then when it comes to undergrad recruitment, it simply succeeds in garnering a lot of interest because it's Berkeley -- and is academically pre-eminent.</p>
<p>It gets a student body with a substantial percentage of really brilliant students. Probably half of the student body, or maybe a third depending how closely you want to calibrate it, are Ivy League and "near Ivy League" caliber.</p>
<p>It gets a much greater number -- and percentage -- of people who are first time college attendees in their families than privates. It wants these and it gives them aid often.</p>
<p>I don't think Berkeley is even all that actively competing in the game that you are saying is an area it is vulnerable and is not doing as well as it would like. </p>
<p>There are many people in California that see no great value proposition in leaving the state to go to schools that have lesser general academic reputations. This is especially true when, in many cases, they would still pay significantly less at Berkeley than these other schools (and of course this is truer of the people from families in the middle income ranges who are good enough to get into top private schools but too "rich" to get good financial aid). There is an element of different "cultures" that go into this decision. Firstly, people in general are less "Ivy crazy" on the West Coast. It's a combination perhaps of generally just caring less, and also because the West Coast has its own "Ivies." And then on the West Coast there are also people who wouldn't really consider a public school for all the reasons dstark articulated, so some of that applies as well. </p>
<p>Overall, what this means is that Berkeley (and probably UCLA) have other worries besides winning cross-admit battles that it isn't even fighting -- or at least not fighting in any direct way. It does really well, and I warrant if the numbers were there would be winning more cross-admit battles than people would realize when they consider the nation as one big national market for education rather than what is: sub-markets where people have greatly differeing senses of where value is. I have seen a lot of this. Among several friends, I can name people who had applied and been admitted to HYPSetc. A couple of examples: friends who got into Princeton and Stanford and chose to stay in-state/go public (Princeton => UCLA) (Stanford = > Berkeley). In both these cases, it was owing to cost; these were people from respectable upper middle class families that balked at the high prices. In many other cases I know, people took a lot of schools off their list without even applying. I had a brilliant friend who really wanted to go to Chicago and would likely have gotten in. He ended up not applying even because he just couldn't justify to himself making his middle class family stretch to afford an education that wouldn't, he felt, be worth the marginal difference. He opted for a UC. And I remember hearing an older friend of mine who is sending his children to some of the most prestigious private elementary and high schools in California that for university they will go to UCs because he feels there are maybe 3 or 4 [his words, not mine] universities that would justify the additional cost for him. </p>
<p>How much do privates fight for yield -- and for recruits? I remember hearing that Chelsea Clinton was calling new admits at Stanford to get them to decide in favor of Stanford. Clearly the schools want to boost yields and get the best students and they are fighting to do so. But I think it's out of touch with what happens at least at some of the top publics to suggest that they care so much about this on the undergrad levels (on the grad level, this is entirely different at least for a place like Berkeley which is fighting for and often "winning" the best students in the world in their respective fields).</p>
<p>Again, Berkeley's mission is different. It focuses on core academic quality. It opens the door wider to undergrad admission -- and it extends a hand of admission to people from lower socio-economic position at a much higher rate than any of the top privates at the same time that its different market position still garners it a fair amount of top-tier students. </p>
<p>Prestige of the kind your assuming (i.e. the kind that redounds to schools that are quite actively trying to manage their yields as so many are) simply isn't going to redound nearly so much to a place like Berkeley -- and yet it still does quite well as an institution.</p>
<p>Let's say tomorrow that Berkeley could "convert" to a fully private type model with all that implies. It would suddenly lose its function as a school arguably in the top tier that is a huge window of opportunity for people with fewer socio-economic advantages. It would still pump out the same number of top-notch engineers and other technically trained graduates which are such a boon to a lot of the industries and companies in the Bay Area. It would still be one of the centers of research that has spun out incredible economic advantages -- and patents -- for the state's economic fabric. But it would lose a key raison d'etre of the university and the system in which it exists, IMO. What "hurts" Berkeley in the kinds of assessments you are trying to make are exactly the things that make it a truly valuable asset to society and the state in which it resides, IMO.</p>
<p>From the standpoint a student considering his or her options for college, I think he or she would have to evaluate according to their own preferences and what they think they'll get at each place. I think there is a huge argument to be made for LACs, for the rarified environment of many private schools. But at the same time I think a lot of these differences are not so clear-cut. It turns out that the student/faculty ratios of 99% of courses offered at Berkeley fairly well match those of places like Stanford, for instance. </p>
<p>There is absolutely no question in my mind that Berkeley is a sink or swim environment good for some and not good for others. I don't doubt for a second that for those admitted a place like Stanford is a more forgiving and coddling environment. These are parts of trade-offs as well, the cost, if you will, of Berkeley pursuing its mission and by and large doing exceedingly well at it.</p>
<p>Again, as I said above, these reasons is why the peer assessment rating is actually entirely appropriate. You don't need peers to make the assessment of all the variables that are already reflected in the statistics of USNWR, but you need to provide an accounting for the core academic excellence that exists apart from these measures, as vaguely specified as it might be.</p>