Depends on the comparison being made, and in this case, Pell Grant % makes perfect sense. The total size of the population is not relevant, since there are plenty of poor folk in Michigan and Virginia. The fact that UC chooses to actively recruit and admit them while the other top two public Unis do not is worthy of discussion. Indeed, even the Legislature in Richmond was aghast when they saw the (very low) published numbers for UVa awhile ago.
@Zinhead Need-based. Both universities state that they focus their financial aid budgets on meeting the need of students with demonstrated need.
@katliamom . The UCs reputation has taken a severe beating and they now openly admit that they have difficulty competing nationally. UCLA said at its Admitted Students event that it was looking at ways of attracting more OOS and minority students, and was fundraising for OOS students. They admitted that the yield for OOS was deteriorating. Michigan is investing and growing; Cal sent a letter to parents talking about the “new normal”, i.e. permanent austerity. Californians have managed to trash what was once the nation’s finest public universities. Not any longer by a long shot.
@bluebayou The interesting thing about Virginia is that admissions policy is not set by the legislature but by university administrators.
@CaliDad2020 Living in Britain, I can attest to the fact that British universities are far cheaper than any state university. EU students attend for free (as do Scottish students). English students pay a maximum of £9000 a year and don’t pay this until they are working and making £20,000 a year. After 20 years, any remaining debt is forgiven.
exlibris97 – the UC’s reputation has taken a “severe beating” ? Please. Cal was just rated 6th best ON THE PLANET… it regularly shows up among the top universities in the world. When you put them together, the UCs are an unparalleled academic powerhouse. Just add up their Nobel Prizes and see who else can match them.
Yes, it’s a system that needs to stay competitive, especially against mega-wealthy privates such as Harvard. And yes, it’s a system that suffers serious periodic budget crises. Yes, it’s a system that isn’t as prestigious as it once was, in the 50s and 60s when the US government was showering it with untold wealth to fund its impressive science research.
But then, no one is showering American public universities with wealth anymore. We’re not that country anymore. Is it any surprise that’s reflected in our public schools?
@katliamom You are free to think that but for anyone from OOS, the UCs are over priced with poor and deteriorating facilities. Have you seen Cal? We walked around the campus and were shocked. When we asked, we were told that they were practicing “deferred maintenance”. As for periodic budget woes, California has been in crisis since the late1970s. That’s when Californians decided to no longer adequately fund their public universities. And unlike Michigan or UVA, they didn’t have the foresight to start building up their endowments.
I cannot imagine an OOS student paying full fare for UC if they had a chance to go to any Ivy. Or Michigan or UVA. Eventually, UC will be stuck taking those OOS students who don’t get in elsewhere or have more money than sense. That’s tragic but that’s California for you.
Fine, so you can’t imagine anyone OOS paying for Cal. Tell that to the thousands who apply and are upset when they don’t get in.
And as long as you’re comparing facilities, have you ever seen the ones in Europe, the ones not at Oxford or Cambridge? Schools there may be “free” but luxurious they aren’t. Heck many of the facilities at some of the top schools in Europe wouldn’t pass code here!
Fact is, Berkeley still has a worldwide reputation. Look, I myself am a Cal grad. I have relatives who recently graduated. I’ve been to the campus. I know a few faculty members. I read this site, and many other educational sites. So I’m pretty informed. I worked alongside a graduate of an Ivy League school. When we talked to international executives no one had ever heard of Dartmouth, where he went . A few had heard of Penn, where he got his grad degree (although not at Wharton.) But EVERYONE heard of Berkeley. I got a lot of kudos, he got none :)))
And don’t tell me “that’s California for you.” Because California residents are the luckiest ones in the US. No one has the wealth of choices that California residents do. Try living in the center of the country or parts of the south… and then tell me how tragic Californians have it when it comes to educational options.
@bluebayou UVa has made efforts to increase the number of lower income families . Not sure why you think otherwise. The demographics are different in each state and at each school. UVa actually has more black students than Cal (9% vs. 2%). I could ask, why is Cal not doing more to admit more black students? The Asian population is higher at Cal than UVa, as is the Hispanic population. The Asian population in Virginia tends to be primarily present in the metropolitan areas of Virginia, particularly the DC area , and tends to , in general, be well educated and well paid. UVa has been up to 1/3 OOS for decades. They have always had plenty of OOS students and have no problem attracting OOS applicants. Yield is ,of course. higher for instate students, but lots of OOS students do find UVa attractive.
@katliamom , I agree. California has an abundance of great schools.
“I could ask, why is Cal not doing more to admit more black students?” Because they can’t admit by race, @sevmom
@exlibris97 "Have you seen Cal? " …“I cannot imagine an OOS student paying full fare for UC if they had a chance to go to any Ivy”
There may be many reasons to choose an ivy over Cal, but campus and facilities is not one of them. The most dilapidated campus we toured 2 years ago was an ivy. As for having a sinking reputation, there simply is no support for that proposition.
Ha ha , That’s true @katliamom . There’s that pesky 209 thing again. And even though UVa has more lower income students than they did even a decade ago, they are not going to admit lower income students just for the sake of raising the Pell numbers. They still have to be academically qualified . They are committed to funding lower income students, and established AccessUVa in 2004 to address the need for making an education available, regardless of ability to pay.
The state of Virginia also has a higher percentage of black people than the state of California (20% versus 6%).
It used to, but in a clumsy way that provoked a backlash in the form of Proposition 209.
Note that the University of Virginia lists ethnicity as “very important” in frosh admissions, according to http://www.collegedata.com/cs/data/college/college_pg02_tmpl.jhtml?schoolId=1571 .
Yes, and California has more Asians than Virginia . Virginia has 6.3% Asians and UVa is 11% Asian. California is 14.4 Asian and UCB is 20%. Agree, that California has a smaller African American population but it is still 6.5 so too bad the numbers don’t end up at least closer to the representation in the state. But Virginia has a 19.5 % black population and UVa has only 9 % black students. There are no easy answers with some of this. But each state and each school has their own way of dealing with race and income issues.
UVa undergraduates are 6% black (fall 2014). Another way to look at it, UVa is 61% white, UM-Ann Arbor is 62% white, while UC-Berkeley is 28% white.
Affirmative action as practiced by many/most(?) colleges is against the state constitution. But let’s not get off topic, which is/was about low-low income folks, as represented by Pell grantees.
You would have to know where the higher number of Pell grant students at a place like UCB were coming from. Maybe that is broken out somewhere.
@exlibris97 I think you are overstating the slide in international prestige, certainly for Cal and UCLA. We had a number of Chinese exchange students stay with us last year, they knew very little about California - but they all knew Berkeley and CIT and all wanted to go to Berkeley. UCLA had 100k + applications.
The Brit schools are only inexpensive for EU residents. For Chinese and Indian students, while there is a difference in price, it is not so marked. Even EU citizens who are not EU residents pay the higher rate.
The UCs have no problem with OOS/international applications. They do not need to lower the standards. They need to be more fiscally responsible, not hire Chancellor’s husbands as highest paid lecturer on campus, not allow rebenching to be jobbed so there is an incentive for Cal and UCLA and now UCSD, Irvine and Davis to overstate their need for OOS/International students.
the UCs should, at the very least, increase OOS/international tuition to UMich levels - for the top 6 campuses anyway - work very hard at graduate donations, which are poor relative to other schools of their ilk, and get back to educating CA kids, which is, of course, their prime mandate.
@CaliDad2020 I always find this reference to UCs “mandate” sad. People cannot accept rejection and so they need someone to blame. People were joking about it at the Cal Admitted Students day. Thousands of California admits were present. They vastly outnumbered OOS students. Somehow they got in despite the OOS students stealing their places. About the only thing missing were black students. They were notable by their absence, and so California voters can take pride in having reduced their numbers.
I also think it will be hard to markedly increase donations when the University must bow to voters. CA residents already believe they pay enough. OOS alums are unlikely to donate when they already feel fleeced. Indeed, Michigan’s research shows that OOS alum are far more likely to donate than Michigan residents, especially if they received financial aid.
@katliamom Your comment about blacks at UC every offensive. You are suggesting that blacks are only “admissible” when they are given special preference. It’s also ironic since Asians claim they are being systematically discriminated against by the UCs.
I’d suggest you look at the Gates Millennium Scholars. All are low income URMs. They are highly qualified, but the university with the highest number in California is Stanford.