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

This info seems to indicate that recent OOS and International students admitted to UCB do not have lower SAT’s or GPA’s than the average instate admit… http://admissions.berkeley.edu/studentprofile

@bluebayou Katehi was hired despite protests due to her admissions/inside dealing shenanigans UCI. The 50k won’t mean anything in the big picture, but it is just another indication, along with her board conflict of interests that she is another in a long line of self-enriching folks brought in from OOS to bilk and milk the system.

Many of the carpetbaggers the UC’s hire are not here to help the UC system and the California kids, but to enrich themselves with money, (more) powerful connections or both.

That is probably true, but almost all publics are increasing OOS and international students to fund their budgets. I will be surprised if they back off at all. They need the money.

@Much2learn It will be up to the legislature. They should increase the OOS/International at Merced, Riverside and Santa Cruz, lower it at UCB and UCLA. The rebenching can send money to UCB and UCLA. If they hadn’t changed it to let the UCs control their own OOS/International funds, there wouldn’t be the same pressure.

@Much2learn And again, it’s not just the number, it’s also the specific degrees. Look at UCB for 2015. Undergraduate, 400 international students, 787 Graduate engineering students. And of the 2500 in the L&S school, the top declared majors are Econ, (followed by Coe’s Electrical Engineering & Comp Sci, L&S Comp Sci, Stats, Architecture, Applied Math, Business and COE’s ME.

47 out of a total of 124 Industrial Engineering undergrads are International students… Almost 40%.

Why would you “sell” those seats? There were 13000 new applications and 3k transfers. So you admit students to impacted and restricted majors? That’s just giving a big middle finger to your own resident students and applicants. By what logic do we need to admit international students to capped or impacted majors? That’s insane.

http://internationaloffice.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/shared/docs/student-stats2015.pdf

@Calidad2020 I know. UIUC does the same thing. They do it because they need the money and those seats are the most valuable to sell for OOS tuition. Very frustrating. In state kids get offered the majors no one wants. OOS and int’l kids get the CS, engineering and business majors.

@Much2learn except when you getting 16k application to fill 1500 seats, do you really think none of those applicants are applying for anything but Comp Sci and engineering (and to be fair, 1200 of the international students in LS were undeclared) But the Engineering students pay the same as the journalism majors. Why admit International students to impacted majors? There is no reason to do it. The tuition money is the same color in every department.

^^^You admit international students to impacted majors, because that’s what sells. A linguistics degree from UCB isn’t going to pull in a large number of full pay OOS students.

In fact, it’s HARD to recruit full pay OOS students (at $38-40K a year in tuition). Even in engineering, you can’t get enough domestic OOS students, you have to pull in international students. If they limit the number of OOS in impacted programs, then the overall % of OOS students will decrease.

@Gator88NE I don’t know if you are an Adcom, but again UCB gets 13000 international applications for Freshman admits and 3000 applications for transfers. They admit 1500 and SIR 600 freshman. You are saying ALL 13000 of those applicants are for Econ, Engineering, etc. (obviously they aren’t since 2400 UCB international students are L&S undecided.

I will bet my house that you could easily fill those 400 international engineering slots with L&S majors from the applicant pool without lowering the L&S admit standards, which is already lower than Engineering anyway.

There is no evidence that UCB “needs” to admit students to impacted and over-subscribed engineering programs except that they want to.

I don’t understand why people continue to want to believe myths that are not supported by actual UC data.

The UC OOS and International applications have risen by 10%+ every year for the past 3+ years. The UC’s overall got 60,000 OOS/international applications this year and 7000 transfers. OOS/international demand is not a problem.

That’s a argument without fact, Gator. UCB does not admit by major for Letters and & Science. So, a Haas-Finance wannabe (which must first start in L&S), could just as easily mark down Econ, Philosophy, Linguistics, or Undeclared – none of it matters to L&S admissions. (And besides Engineering and premed, I’d guess the third most popular intended major for Internationals is pre-biz, aka Commerce as it is known in many countries.)

That’s a naive pov. California residents don’t want to attend Merced, why would those from OOS or overseas?

Resident applicants want priority in UC admissions, non-resident applicants want access to a UC that is comparable or better than their own state flagship. The UC is obligated to serve the first group by law, it is compelled to serve the second group for money.

Might one solution be this: The UC adopts a threshold GPA/test score/class rank requirement for nonresident admission to UCLA, Berkeley and San Diego. The threshold requirement for nonresident applicants would be set higher than the average stats of the most recent admitted class. A separate threshold requirement is tailored for the over-subscribed majors in engineering which will be even more demanding. The threshold requirement is the nonresident equivalent of the in-state top 9% of class rule. However, unlike the top 9% rule, the nonresident threshold requirement guarantees only a review/consideration. It does doesn’t guarantee admission.

This would put to rest the concern about lax requirements for out-of-staters. The less-desired lower tier UC campuses do not have such a requirement, which will make them more attractive to nonresident applicants.

Since nonresident aid is already eliminated, you’re basically telling the rest of America that UCLA, Berkeley and San Diego will only take the cream of the nation’s crop who are able to pay full sticker price.

@PragmaticMom Something along those lines would make sense, but I would say all impacted majors simply eliminate OOS or International admits as long as they are impacted. UCSD took a huge number of international applicants last year. As the UCB numbers show, plenty of international applicants are applying as L&S undeclared. Go ahead and admit them to L&S and cap international students in certain majors.

Again, the OOS and International pool is already at a 10% admit rate and the applicant numbers are growing by over 10% per year. The idea of scarcity of “full pay” international students is a myth. As schools like UBC, UofT and McGill rapidly increase their international tuition, and as the British schools become more expensive for non-EU resident students, the more competitive UCs get by simply doing nothing. They do not need more OOS/International applicants.

They need to find ways to “need” less of them - and admit more resident students. CA has the population of Canada, and has loads of high-achieving students that could fill those slots if they could get funded.

Obviously, there’s a good market for the preferred campuses. If out-of-staters can buy their way in, let in-state people do the same thing. Allow in-staters to pay extra money to get into the campus they prefer. The campus then gets the money it wants, and in-staters have an additional option. Why should outsiders have the buy-it option and not Californians themselves?!

I wonder what the cross application is between CS at UCB and UIUC? It would be interesting to find out if it would be easier for a Cal resident to get into UIUC CS than UCB CS, and visa-versa. Since both schools are desperate for OOS tuition, it would not be surprising if that was the case.

My D. was very interested in UCLA and Cal as well as Michigan and UVA. When the financial aid offers came out, there really was no discussion. Michigan and UVA offered fantastic financial aid, even though we were OOS. Cal and UCLA valued her for her tuition dollars. Michigan and UVA certainly don’t want for international or OOS students but increasingly see themselves as national universities, competing for students regardless where they are from.

Was the aid merit based or income based?

Mich and UVa have been in this game far longer than any UC. Also far cushier endowments

Michigan voters and politicians do not seem to mind that the University of Michigan is using non-residents’ tuition to make up for defunding by the state government (42% non-resident at Ann Arbor). Note also that the University of Michigan - Ann Arbor does not admit a very financially-needy student population (only about 14% Pell grant), so its financial aid budget is not stretched too much, even if it does offer good financial aid to non-residents.

^^Ditto UVa. It’s Pell grant population is up to 13% from <10% a decade ago.

Comparing the UCs to U of M or UVA makes no sense. California has a population of nearly 38 million people. Michigan’s is less than 10 million; Virginia’s under 9.

OF COURSE flagships in these states will be more OOS-friendly! They HAVE to be!