Audit shows UC admission standards relaxed for out-of-staters

Parents Forum
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@PajarodelCampo Thanks for the note. I will try to get her to head up with me again. I think the biggest block for her right now is a lack of “crew” up there. For some reason we only know one student attending at the moment and it doesn’t sound like anyone from her school is going up. But I will try, try again!

I have told her the only thing worse than going to an expensive college is going to an expensive college and not finishing in 4 or 5 years, so I’m not going to force her someplace she isn’t “feeling it” if we can work out other options. But I agree, if I were 18 and had a chance at UCSC I would seriously consider it. It’s an awesome town and I really like the school’s attitude.

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I agree with @dstark’s remark about Riverside and Merced. As a non-California parent committed to paying for college for my two kids, I would be willing to pay the OOS fees for UCLA, Berkeley. But $60K for any of the other UC campuses is going to be a tough sell. That’s too much to pay for schools that aren’t better than our own state flagship.

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The UC “hierarchy” as commonly perceived by California residents:

UCB, UCLA
UCSD
UCD, UCI, UCSB
UCSC
UCR
UCM

Note that this is not including other aspects where the campuses differ (e.g. residential colleges at UCSD and UCSC, the lingering “hippie” reputation of UCSC, desirability of the locations of the schools, etc.).

Non-residents probably have a similar “hierarchy”, but with a steeper dropoff in desirability as one goes down the “hierarchy”. E.g. a NJ resident might not consider any UC other than UCB or UCLA to be worth paying for over Penn State, Maryland, Delaware, or even Rutgers.

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@CaliDad2020 The standards aren’t lowered for OOS. Don’t just believe the newspaper without any evidence. The average SAT and ACT score for OOS at UCB and UCLA is higher than all the other years. The only conclusion I can see is that the standards are even higher due to competition.

Also, moving students from UCB / UCLA to weaker UC students won’t work. As the OOS/ Int’l student ratio at this schools are very low as not many students are willing to go to a different country or state for a weaker UC school. Perhaps, UCB / UCLA can accept more OOS/ Int’l student since they draw more attention from these students and has higher yield for Int’l and OOS and ask other UCs to accept more in state.

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Speak to their parents and grandparents and inquire from them why they elect legislators who have chosen not to build a world class Uni?

286

@CaliDad2020,
I don’t know why I responded to your posts. I did go to Berkeley. My wife went to UCSB and transferred to Berkeley. I don’t work for the UCs.
My kids were rejected at places I thought they should get into.
I thought the costs of going to college were too high 10 years ago. Now the costs are more ridiculous.
So I could relate.

Looks to me that it is harder for out of state students to get into Berkekey than in state students for fall 2016.

The better out of state students want to go to the schools you like and don’t want to go to the schools you don’t like. The out of state students agree with you.

I offered my son $30,000 if he would go to Cal Poly. He had close friends going there too. He refused.

I understand the money issues.

But… I wanted my kids to be happy and excited to go to college. So… I concentrated on where my kids were accepted instead of where they were rejected.

Everyone reacts their own way. Hopefully your daughter is happy.

287

@Desiree2 Well, there is no evidence for that at all. You cannot replace all the UCB and UCLA students, but if you take the acceptance rate and SIR rate at UCSC, UCM and UCR and accept 100% instead of 50% it is certain you could transfer the tuition of 100 or more kids (I think the bigger problem is the school’s budgets don’t work like that - I’m sure each University, and even each school, and prob. each dept have some control/responsibility over their own budget and UCSC won’t just send them the OOS money to balance their books.

But, over time, there is no reason at all (save politics) more UCSC, UCR and UCM students couldn’t be OOS or International and therefore less UCLA and UCB - and it would be a net wash.

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@Calidad2020,

You don’t like UCSC, UCM and UCR well enough to pay instate tuition for your daughter to go to these schools, but you expect others to want to pay out of state tuition to send their kids to those schools?

289

@dstark if I write the check, my kid is thrilled. She’s got 3 choices she’s excited about, has friends at and going to each and would pack her bags tomorrow.

My issue was and continues to be systemic. The argument (which is purely anecdotal, btw and not supported by easily viewed stats) that UCSC, UCR and UCM couldn’t enroll at minimum a 100+ more OOS/International is simply not supported by the numbers. It is, I agree, an admin problem as those budgets don’t work across the UC schools like that. But the concept - that you could lower the 30% UCB and UCLA OOS/International admission rate by increasing, even just marginally, the UCSC, UCM, UCR OOS/International admit rate remains. It would be a net-wash for the UCs in general, but would cost UCB and/or UCLA a few nickles in the meantime, unless the state made up the difference.

The second, to me more surprising, but no less destructive, issue is the consistently low % of women. URMs and most disturbingly, female URMs in engineering across the UCs and in UCB COE and UCLA Samueli ME in particular.

I am no statistician, but it seems that the fact that these % numbers stay so constant, when the raw numbers of applicants and acceptances to the schools and majors have increased over time, seems odd. Why, every year, no matter how many women apply, are only 15% “good enough” for UCLA Samueli ME? And, since gender is not, by law, allowed to be considered, why, every year, are around 15% “good enough?” Shouldn’t some years 20% be “good enough” and some years 10% be “good enough?” I don’t know what the expected randomness would be in that kind of number if no one was actually looking at gender. I’m sure someone smarter than me out there has an idea.

I know one good, crazy way to change the % numbers at the UCB, UCLA and UCSD engineering schools: Get a whole truckload of girls to apply, whether they want to go or not. The only argument I have gotten from anyone about the intractably consistent % admit number is that it roughly mirrors the application number. So the best thing every HS in the state could do is to encourage any girls not applying to the UCs to apply to their engineering departments. Maybe I’ll kickstart an application fee rebate. Once the application numbers come closer to 50-50, the engineering department’s excuses would have change.

It is telling that despite 209, UCB’s LS CS department has raised it’s raw female enrollment numbers and it’s female SIR % quite a bit, while UCB COE CS&E has not at all. So it can be done in the context of 209 - if the school actually wants to.

That is my bigger concern, actually. There is a systemic, structural barrier to women in the UC engineering admissions process. It is probably encoded in the “holistic” elements that they consider. That is the thing I would most like to change. But my D will have her Phd before there’s any real movement there. We will have to leave it to the Mudds, MITs, CITs, Olins and Cooper Unions of the world to fix it first.

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@CaliDad2020

I am strongly in favor of womens rights.

My anecdote is from my daughter. She is 30 now. Maybe things have changed.
She was a math major at Michigan. If I remember correctly, her math classes were 10 to 20 percent women. I might be high on the 20 percent.

Are there a lot of females applying to be engineering majors?

My wife used to tell me there were no differences between men and women. Women should have equal opportunity. I agree.

But no differences?

I am not watching Pride and Prejudice 25 times. :wink:

Is that even the title?

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@dstark of course. I don’t “like” Alabama either (had a cousin went there - insufferable about the 'tide) yet 36,155 students pay to go there.

You are confusing “me” with “everyone.” Again, you can look at the stats. They speak for themselves. UCSC accepted about 75% of the OSS/international students that applied - 5700 out of 7500 kids that applied. They left about 1500 applicants at the altar. 1150 of UCSC incoming frosh are OOS/International. 1150 out of 5700 accepted is an SIR rate of 15% +/-. So, even if those remaining 1500 that were not accepted only SIRed at 10%, you’d add 150 kids.

Not an army, but with just a click of the “you are admitted button” they could have 150 x 24k added to their budget and UCB COE could add 150 resident students to their freshman class with a net-wash for the UC system (again, I realize their budgets don’t work like that, but it could be done in theory.) That’s 150 more resident kids with one of the highest value degree undergrad degrees the state can offer. And I did it in an hour.

Add Riverside. They accepted 2300 out of 4500 OSS/international applicants. 600 SIRed. That’s 25%. So of the 2200 that were not accepted, let’s figure a 10% SIR again. Boom. 220 x 24000. And 220 more engineers at UCLA Samueli. In 1 hour I added 370 of the highest value undergrad degrees to the resident students. No, you don’t have to pay me Janet’s 570k or give me her 80k a year housing budget. But please make sure a couple of those engineering students are female and URM (without, of course, looking at their gender or ethnicity…)

It’s really not rocket surgery…

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UCB L&S CS and UCB CoE EECS are both under the same department. As noted before, frosh applicants do not apply to UCB L&S CS; they apply to UCB L&S.

It may be more an artifact of the time of the student’s decision to major in engineering or CS. Do male students aiming for those majors decide earlier (while in high school, before college applications)? If so, then the need to apply to those majors (other than such situations as UCB L&S CS) when applying to college as a frosh would tilt applications toward male students.

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@dstark the “are there a lot of women applying” canard is the first quacking duck of a problem. There don’t need to be “a lot” of women applying. There just need to be a certain number of women with top stats applying.

My guess is the adcoms at UCB COE and Samueli (both) do exactly what you just asked… Uh, we didn’t look at gender but we have an 80-20 application split, so, uh… we’ll accept a few more women to bioengineering - they love that pre-med stuff - and let’s say - oh look! it’s 25 - 75 again. What a coincidence. Oh my. 30% women in Bio-eng and 15% in ME, for the 17th year in a row. What a coincidence!

It is a self-fulfilling prophesy.

The only question allowed by law is “what are the objective criteria, absent race or gender used to admit these students and it is being applied fairly and uniformly.”

Now, you might be a stats guy. And you might know the expected randomness in the admit numbers. I don’t. I just know, with a quick look at UCLA’s (they are one of the few that break them down easily by major) that it seems suspiciously consistent over time. Maybe it’s a coincidence. Maybe never more than 18% of the women who applied to ME in any year from 2002 to 2015 were qualified and maybe never less than 13.5% of the women who applied to ME in any year from 2002 to 2012 were not qualified… it’s possible, but, well… I’m a skeptic by nature.

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You ignore the fact that people will pay luxury prices for luxury goods. Berkeley, UCLA, and UCSD (UCSB?) are considered luxury goods. The students the UCs want to attend are presumably over-represented in applying for the top-tier flagships not the consolation prizes of Riverside or Merced. I’m too lazy to look but I’d bet CPSLO gets a larger number of OOS applicants than either of those campuses.

Putting it in perspective, would you substitute University of Washington Bothell or University of Washington Tacoma for the Seattle campus? With the exception of a guaranteed entrance to a major, you’d be daft to do so. Your idea suffers from precisely the same flaw.

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@calidad2020, I am not confusing you with somebody else.

The numbers of out of state students applying to Riverside, Merced, and UCSC is a fraction of the numbers applying to UCB and UCLA.

And I already told you, it is easier for an instate student to get into UCB than an out of state student.

This is really about politics and very little to do with your daughter.

How much would Janet make in the private sector?

I have a friend who worked for the UCs . She would have made 5 times more if she worked in the private sector.

I am going to spend some time with my wife.

296

@fragbot except you’re using anecdote and I’m using actual numbers. Just go here. http://admitguide.com/

Click on the school and it will get you a searchable table. I mean, are those 600 OOS/international kids already at UCRiverside the only kids in the entire world who will go there? The 2200 who were rejected - NONE of them would have actually gone if accepted? Same for UCSC? The 1200 OOS/International who actually SIRed. They are the only 1200 kids in the entire world who would go to UCSC? Even though there were 7500 applicants and 2200 were not accepted?

It kind of seems unlikely that 0 of the kids that were not accepted would have gone if accepted. Even with a very low rate. Say 5% SIR for both schools (and they have a combined OOS/Sir rate of more like 15-20%), you add 200+ students. Again, instantly.

I don’t understand the confusion.

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@ucbalumnus exactly. And that, as I mentioned elsewhere, I believe is a big part of the barrier to entry.

the UC engineering schools are set up to apply specifically to the major, unlike most other top engineering undergrad programs (some do - the Canadian schools for example, UWash for some majors etc.) This, I believe, contributes to the consistency of the numbers. But it does not explain the consistency of the numbers.

Do you think those admission rates have a logical degree of randomness or show an “unseen hand” in their consistent pattern? Again, I have no idea not being a stats guy, but I have some doubts.

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@dstark they might be a fraction. but a positive fraction is more than 0. So, you don’t think it is worthwhile getting 2 or 300 more in state engineering grads out of UCLA and UCB (and, of course, it won’t be my daughter, unless she appeals and is successful…) next year, if the money to the UC system is a wash?

Ok. You don’t. But I do. I would rather peg 2 or 300 more in state students for a starting salary on graduation of 75k or so (nice tax base, likely to buy a house one day, maybe get in a company where they vest some stock options, look for a bit of cap gains tax down the road…) than export that degree OOS or internationally.

I’m not sure why you keep trying to make this about my daughter at this point, expect perhaps to goad me or because it’s easier than actually doing the numbers.

Have a nice night with your wife.

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Statistics re: engineering and women, URM’s (which you are concerned with) haven’t really shifted that much over time. Women that do pursue engineering do seem to go into biomedical, chemical , environmental more than things like mechanical. At many schools, you are not admitted to a particular engineering discipline until after you have taken the initial courses. So, many women may be choosing thinks like biomedical , bioengineering because that’s where their interest lies, not that they are placed there by “adcoms” because they know that women “love that pre-med stuff.” http://www.asee.org/papers-and-publications/publications/college-profiles/2011-profile-engineering-statistics.pdf

Other states with good publics face similar issues-more qualified applicants than available slots at the schools considered most desirable by instate students. Virginia has that issue and UVa, W & M and Virginia Tech are all about 30 % OOS, much higher than California’s numbers. There are complaints, like clockwork, by disgruntled instate people every year when acceptances come out, when their kids don’t get accepted to their school of choice.

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@CaliDad2020 But budgets don’t work that way and they never will. You are essentially asking UCs to give each other money. Why should UC Merced give UC Berkeley money for no reason?

If eventually they do work the way you wanted them to, every UC would have the same budget.

One of the major reasons that UCB and UCLA are good is that they invest more money into the campus than UC Merced because UCB have a bigger budget. Then, it wouldn’t matter if you daughter got into UCI or UCB or UCLA because each university would have the same resources available to them. Same number of labs, equal quality of professors, research because they would all have the same budget.

The “better” UCs need to have a large number of OOS/ Int’l students to support their labs, renowned professors, and other resources.

Instead of shuffling all that money around, you can also decrease the number of OOS students required by petitioning to allocate more of your tax dollars to the UCs or increase your tax. But of course, why do something that doesnt benefit yourself, when others can go to a worse university so your daughter can go to a better university.

Also, if your daughter was’t even waitlisted by UCB/ UCLA/ UCSD , then even if the number of OOS students decrease. She still wouldn’t get in because the UCs would just accept the waitlists in place of the OOS students.