are UC colleges worth applying to if you dont live in cali??

College Search & Selection
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<p>I have no problems hearing that from someone because that is a correct statement. But I have problems believing that USC is already on Berkeley’s level. I think USC is not yet on Berkeley’s league. Only USNews is saying that. Berkeley’s league is the JHU’s, the UVa’s, the Northwestern’s or the Cornell’s of America’s higher education. USC and Cornell, for example, are not in the same league. And, so are Northwestern and USC in any stretch of my imagination. Though that is not to say USC is not a good school. It is.</p>

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<p>No, but a California-centric student body is not appealing to a lot of people who aren’t from California.</p>

<p>A lot of people outside California KNOW that Berkeley won’t take all that many OOS-ers, so they don’t bother. They know that USC has no such California-resident constraint.</p>

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<p>Really? I know quite a few kids from my area who are going to USC, are delighted to be going there, and their competitive set wasn’t HYPSM/Ivies/Berkeley/Claremont. Their competitive sets were Pomona, Vanderbilt, Smith College, Emory, Northwestern, Notre Dame, and Tufts. See, I know you think that everyone starts a college search with Ivies-on-down and that they want to attend a school based solely on its ranking, but a lot of people actually just seek out schools that interest or excite them for some reason. And gasp- there are people who don’t care about the Ivies. Go figure!</p>

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<p>So let 'em say it. Does it detract from your life in any significant way? It’s just so very important to you to proclaim Berkeley’s superiority through the rooftops, and make sure that it’s distanced from any “pretenders to the throne.” Why is this so important to your psyche? I couldn’t care less what others thought of my NU education or if it bobbles up and down in the USNWR rankings … how does it change the caliber of education I received?</p>

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<p>And, let me see, you’ve been honorable yourself?</p>

<p>Looking at a couple of your responses in the first page of your recent history…</p>

<p>You claim that UCLA’s Nobelists are something to the effect of “older, past winners, with research at the university dying,” or however you put it. This isn’t somehow “defaming” UCLA? This is somehow more honorable?</p>

<p>Yes, there’s effectively a Nobelist brain drain at UCLA becasue the u is located on arguably the most expensive real estate in the world, and profs find housing near the u very prohibitive. But this doesn’t mean that there aren’t great profs/researchers at the school. Yes, there are a lot of Nobelists in Economics, say, at UCB and U of Chicago. But that doesn’t diminish the accomplishments of the profs at UCLA in this field, and there are many great educators at the u.</p>

<p>Wrt Nobelists, you have to be in the picture to be able to converse with others about the subject. What has USC ever done in this regard?</p>

<p>Just for your knowledge, in the past two years, two UCLA undergrad-educated alumni have won Nobels in Economics and Chemistry, bringing to six the total won by UCLA undergrads (some of whom have gone on to PHD’s at the u or elsewhere). </p>

<p>That list, btw, floating around listing Nobelists produced by school should be adjusted for undergrad education, because most of the top producers are counting (legitimately) PHD’s as alumni. If parsed for undergrad education, the winners for each of the top would be reduced, and the list more spread out among the colleges and universities.</p>

<p>Stop using self-fabricated lies and speculation…</p>

<p>Isn’t ‘self-fabricated lies,’ somehow redundant? Isn’t that like fabricated lies?</p>

<p>Anyway…</p>

<p>If there’s a specific item that I stated taht you want to address, feel free to dredge it up, and I’ll show you my numbers. Next time, try to spend a bit more time to address some specific concerns instead of throwing a blanket over it. </p>

<p>I’ll try to look for your response early next week and respond accordingly. But I’ve obtained the same numbers of applying and acceptance as in RML”s example of Harker School for other hss. There’s too high a private-school acceptance rate at USC to have high-quality grads at USC from these schools.</p>

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<p>Maybe. But like I said, the number of OOS applicants to Berkeley is big, almost 12k. that’s bigger than U of Chicago’s combined OOS and IS applicants. </p>

<p>How many OOS applicants are there at USC?</p>

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<p>This is personal question and irrelevant to the topic. If you want to ask this personal question, please use PM.</p>

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<p>Now, back on topic.</p>

<p>YES, the UCs are worth the penny for OOS. The UCs are all great schools with superb academic facilities, impressive faculty line-up, talented student bodies, are situated in amazing locations and offer world-class college degrees that are highly respected world-wide. If you can afford attending a UC, go for it. It’s well worth your bucks. Of course, if your OOS parents are low earners, attending a UC would only be a wishful thinking.</p>

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<p>What does U of C have to do with anything? U of C is a far smaller school, and it doesn’t have OOS / IS quotas or obligations, since it’s private. Weren’t we talking about Berkeley and USC?</p>

<p>Anyway, it’s weird to compare raw numbers. The relevant number would be applicants per spot.</p>

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<p>UC Berkeley and UCLA can be said to be nationally and / or globally respected. But you’re smoking something if you think that outside of California, the other UC’s are seen as anything other than “oh, some University of California campus in some town that doesn’t mean anything to me.”</p>

<p>And therefore – when it comes to my theoretical OOS dollars being spent - I’d spend them on UC Berkeley, UCLA, and some other state u’s - Michigan, Wisconsin, Virginia, UNC/Chapel Hill coming to mind – but I would see absolutely no reason to spend OOS dollars for a large public university with no national brand. RML, the other UC’s are meaningless outside California. It doesn’t make them not-good schools, but they are as good as unknown. Put it this way - they are as unknown outside California as the Grinnells and the Carletons and the Haverfords are / were to you.</p>

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<p>Here are some reasons I would not pay $50K for UC Berkeley (while at the same time, I think it is an excellent value for $25K):</p>

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<li><p>The UCs do not require personal interviews or accept teacher or counselor recommendations. Therefore, screening for personality or character factors in applicants is virtually non-existent. Grades and test scores rule as admissions criteria. Make what you will from this; to me it means there is potential to find a study body that is composed of uninteresting study-grinds.</p></li>
<li><p>90% of the student body is from California. Thus, there is little geographic diversity (altho someone pointed out that this may be changing). This also means that a good portion may be commuter students.</p></li>
<li><p>The student body is huge: 25K undergrads and 10K grad students.</p></li>
<li><p>32% of the student body is Pell Grant recipients.</p></li>
<li><p>There are a significant number of community college transfer students. They are not your applicant peer group.</p></li>
<li><p>On-campus housing is limited. Some people think the neighborhood is sub-par.</p></li>
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A total of 47%, or 16,823 applicants, for Fall 2010 were Out of State at USC.</p>

<p>For Fall 2010, USC had 35,794 applicants. 53% (18,971) were from California, 12% (4,295) were International applicants, and 35% (12,528) were from US states other than California.</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.usc.edu/admission/undergraduate/private/1011/FreshmanProfile2010.pdf[/url]”>http://www.usc.edu/admission/undergraduate/private/1011/FreshmanProfile2010.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>Pizzagirl –</p>

<p>After UCLA and Berkeley, you’re right that the national name recognition drops quickly.</p>

<p>However, you mentioned University of Wisconsin, which I agree is a great overall school. Here in California we would view UCSD and UCSB in a similar way to Wisconsin. Both of these are ranked higher than Wisconsin in USNWR, and not far behind in the NRC rankings (or ahead of Wisconsin if the Agricultural Sciences are removed from the NRC rankings.) </p>

<p>Then the other two mid-UCs, Irvine and Davis. Of these two, Davis matches closest to Wisconsin due to strength in Agricultural Sciences, and is similarly highly rated in the NRC rankings.</p>

<p>What UCSB and UCSD lack is prestigious professional schools in Law, Medicine and Business. Lacking these professional programs creates a false impression that in RESEARCH circles these schools are lightweights… which is not true at all.</p>

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<p>Bay, most of the problems you said that Berkeley faces now are almost the same problems that other elite schools are facing, except the large size part. </p>

<p>You shouldn’t worry that Berkeley has almost 90% IS students because diversity isn’t lacking in California. If you’re in Berkeley campus, you can tell right away that it is full of diversity. In fact, it could never get more diverse than it is now. What is so special with having more OOS students anyway? The University of Cambridge has a little over 10% international students only, yet diversity wasn’t a problem for me. If California was such a small State with very small population, then perhaps there is a reason to get paranoid. But California is quite a large State and quite populous. It has the most number of students anywhere in the whole US. You can see that from the number of applicants that Berkeley receives every year, which is larger than most schools except only UCLA. </p>

<p>Most elite schools don’t require interviews as well. I have applied to several elite privates including 3 Ivies and none of them has interviewed me. I applied to MIT but I was never interviewed as part of the admission process. The only top schools I know that require interview on applicants are Oxford and Cambridge. </p>

<p>And lastly, it is not true that at Berkeley, “grades and test scores rule as admissions criteria”. In fact, that is far from the truth. Berkeley does not rank the applicants based on their test scores and GPA alone and decide from there. If that’s what the adcom at Berkeley does, then they wouldn’t require several people to read the personal essays, and you’d see that only those students with near-perfect-to-perfect test scores are admitted. As you can see, even those students with 1900 SATs are admitted to Berkeley and those with 2300 SATs are rejected. In fact, there are CC members with superb stats who were rejected at Berkeley. Berkeley’s admissions are unpredictable, just like some top privates are. [YouTube</a> - UC Berkeley Undergraduate Admissions](<a href=“UC Berkeley Undergraduate Admissions - YouTube”>UC Berkeley Undergraduate Admissions - YouTube)</p>

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<p>Pizzagirl, I don’t agree with your opinion, but I will respect it anyway as a co-member of this forum. </p>

<p>Why can’t I agree with you? Because I know a lot of students who are very interested to attend a UC school, but wouldn’t apply because they knew it would be much harder for them to get admitted. But if they only see that the UCs are fair-play with their admissions, perhaps we can see many OOS applying even when they’re expensive. And, if the lower-ranked UCs aren’t popular or well-respected, how come they host thousands of exchange students a year? From my experience as a student in the UK, people there wouldn’t really care if it’s UCLA or UCSB or UCSD or UCB or UCI, as long as it is a UC then they’d be quite delighted to spend a semester or year there.</p>

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<p>Thanks for this information, alamemom.</p>

<p>As you can see, there’s only about 4k more applicants that USC receives for a school that’s open for everyone. The figures do not suggest that USC is more popular than Berkeley in other States. </p>

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Pizzagirl, I was trying to tell you that the 12k OOS applicants that Berkeley received is impressive given that Berkeley has a 20% limit for OOS admits. So, your basis that Berkeley isn’t popular to OOS is unfounded.</p>

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<p>… actually, I won’t say it bothers me even a little, but it struck me as odd - why would he consider some of the things important:</p>

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<p>I’m not a defender of Cal; I’ll leave that to RML. And maybe he/she’s already addressed some, which I might have missed…</p>

<p>4, especially, why is 32% of the student body receiving Pell Grants so important? Most schools would be extremely happy with this high %. I thought finding one’s intellectual equals (as in 5) would be more important than being around those of like economic background. </p>

<p>All people who attend Cal are extremely intelligent poor as well as rich, so this is the driving force for someone choosing the university. And most rich kids know that any college they attend will have some who pay nothing compared to their parents paying the full tab. </p>

<p>5, those from community colleges ‘are not your applicant peer group.’ Really? Those who xfer in do about as well as the rest of the student body. They attend the same grad schools in the same %’s as those who came in from hs and take the same jobs in the same proportions. Grad schools aren’t going to reject someone with two-year transcripts if the applicant is stellar in their eyes. </p>

<p>And the last two years are the most important because they’re the years the applicant has taken the most major courses, including the pre-med curriculum, etc. Bay, I think you’re thinking of USC which uses the cc system, esp those who enroll there after one year, to bypass the reporting of these students as frosh.</p>

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<p>Because people who aren’t from the US know of the overall concept of California and find it appealing. That has nothing to do with whether it’s “worth” the OOS price to a kid in the US who has his own state school as a choice - especially one of the better state schools. </p>

<p>And can we please pull apart UCLA and Berkeley from this discussion? They are different from the other UC’s. They have a national reputation.</p>

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<p>Doesn’t matter. If they all come from California, there’s still a lack of diversity. I don’t care if they are Asian, Hispanic, Afr Amer, white, or purple, it’s boring when they are all from the same state.</p>

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<p>The frosh class entering 2010 had I think it was 23% non-resident students. </p>

<p>I’d like to see where things lead for 2011 if things increase especially for Cal and UCLA.</p>

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Is there any non-offensive explanation for this comment? If so, I’m not seeing it right now. But perhaps someone can enlighten me…?</p>