<p>How does she calculate that?? She’s told me she would get a 2nd or 3rd job if needed.</p>
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<p>Wrt the bold, one way UCLA tries to maintain its diversity is by having an admissions policy that is based on the quality of high school. Students at top-tier CA public schools are required to have much higher stats, and students at lower-tier schools are admitted with much lower. The prevalence of top-decile students would be significant at both these sets of hss to UCLA, but those admitted to the U from underperforming schools would have lesser uwgpas and significantly lower wgpas and scores. So in other words, to whom is given much, much is required, and certainly things like wgpa wrt AP’s a school has can’t be controlled for those attending underperforming hss.</p>
<p>Youll see UCLA deny a 3.9/4.6/2100 student quite often from an excellent high school, but admit a 3.7/4.1/1800 student from a bad high school, and probably even lower SAT from some schools. Holistics has caused an even larger difference in stats in top-tier students denied and those from bad high schools whove been accepted. </p>
<p>The idea of admitting lesser qualified students in this two-tiered approach its perhaps not a two=tiered one but a multi-tiered one with schools deemed as between these two as having student admittances similarly between these two wrt stats helps UCLA keep its diversity target nos. because those from underperforming hss tend to be urm students, particularly Hispanic. So, though, UCLA doesnt have AA wrt race, the AA wrt economic background is essentially AA wrt race.</p>
<p>Those admitted from top California high schools to UCLA have higher stats than those from the same hss to USC. One better have a 3.9 uwgpa to have reasonable assurance of being accepted to UCLA along with a 2100 SAT. But, where USC catches up to UCLA and even surpasses it wrt scores is in the students UCLA accepts from underperforming hss, which USC wouldnt touch. </p>
<p>Im also guessing that USC probably always had higher scores, its main point of admissions criteria moreso than grades, than UCLA, which concentrates mostly on grades and therefore class rank. But the differences in scores lessen when adjusted for differences in calculation of means and medians. UCLA purposely under-reports SATs and ACTs by not superscoring, by reporting redundant scores of a good portion of students, as well as reporting what appears to be means instead of medians. Im not anywhere a statistician, but medians should be higher than means because of the much lower floor of admits within the lower 25%. In other words, there are a lot of wildly lower scoring people in the bottom 25% of admits to any university, which medians tend to “hide.”</p>
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<p>Im not going to quibble with warblersrules points, especially, about USC is pouring more money into the undergrad experience, but just to say that they are just different schools. USC is heavily geared towards students studying undergrad vocations, and UCLA is more geared towards students studying academic subjects, similar (unfortunately) to the top-tier colleges, especially, the Ivies. </p>
<p>If you want pure bus; public relations; communications as a major towards a television journalism … USC. If you want, for example, history as a pre-study towards law, bio/biochem/MIMG/MCDB towards medicine, poli-sci towards grad bus, UCLA would be better. Both are highly preprofessional but UCLA tends to send greater proportions towards grad professions programs, partly again, because USC is so highly geared towards undergrad trades. They are just different schools, with different goals and different sets of missions statements.</p>
<p>Wrt the quarter system v. symester … this is one of the reasons why UCLA is much harder. One, it is a more rigorous U naturally, but the quarter system adds to the faster pace of teaching and learning. If youre less inclined to study … USC, and this is no knock against that U. UCLA is just more competitive, and more rigorous. UCLA students study much harder. It is still a pretty tough weed-out school as public us tend to be (at least moreso than your typical private us). </p>
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<p>And he/she will keep close tabs on senior years also. UCLA and Cal have pretty tough rules against the onset of senioritis.</p>
<p>And a quick point about acceptance rate, if I may…</p>
<p>This is one of the most overrated measures around, and I think USN’s national college rankings has this one correct, which I find unusual, as it discounts this measure in its selectivity index. (Besides the really bad things USN’s reports, along which is the point of its acceptance of reporting by colleges as accurate – no audit capability, along with the wildly divergent ways that colleges report these statistics, eg, scores, which again USN’s accepts as gospel or at worse … uniform, which obvoiusly they aren’t.) </p>
<p>beyphy made a great point about the specialized apps of UC v. the common app. The applicant is less likely to fill out an application to a particular u, the more specialized it is. Or he/she will fill out and do the extra work only if he/she is serious in applying to the u. One point in UCLA-v-USC-random-app process that works against UCLA (ie, adds randomness) is the checking of boxes in which UC a student would be applying. But this doesn’t take away from the fact that said student would be serious in applying to UCLA.</p>
<p>Another is whether there are floors to qualify for a university. UC has floors. USC might have at one time had floors, but probably took them away to add to the no. of apps as well as lower acceptance rates. There are always an amount of auto-rejects that apply to any u, and this certainly includes UCLA.</p>
<p>Last of these points I can think of immediately would be the quality of students from individual hss who know by word of mouth, etc, how hard a u is in which to gain admission. At a good high school, a school like UCLA or Cal could have a 50% acceptance rate, because those of lower stats know for sure not to apply (even with the randomness placing of check-marks in the UC app). But these students would still average 3.89 uwgpa and a 2100+ on the SAT. The auto-rejects who apply happen at those hss, in which admissions is less predictable and more random, but not at the better performing hss.</p>
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<p>Have you run the net price calculators or financial aid estimators on the college web sites and shown the results to her? She may be in for a shock when she sees the prices… But note that if she is self-employed or has fluctuating income or otherwise has an unusual situation, the net price calculators or financial aid estimators may be less accurate.</p>
<p>Find out what she can commit to contributing even in a worst case scenario of her employment situation. Use that as a baseline for your budget. You may want to ensure that you have solidly affordable safeties (possibly your in-state public universities, or the schools with <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/1348012-automatic-full-tuition-full-ride-scholarships.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/1348012-automatic-full-tuition-full-ride-scholarships.html</a> for your stats).</p>
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<p>While there is significant overlap, it is not the same. Socioeconomic affirmative action pulls in some lower income students not of traditionally targeted races or ethnicities, while not including wealthier students of traditionally targeted races or ethnicities, relative to race and ethnicity based affirmative action.</p>
<p>One result is that UCLA and Berkeley have relatively high percentages of Pell Grant undergraduates compared to other “top universities”. Pell Grant eligibility is probably around the bottom 40% of family income.</p>
<p><a href=“http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities/economic-diversity-among-top-ranked-schools[/url]”>http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities/economic-diversity-among-top-ranked-schools</a></p>
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<p>No question, there is no exclusivity to the idea of “all poor students are urm.” </p>
<p>But, I didn’t think your second paragraph (P2) really has anything to do with your first. There are a good amount of poorer students admitted to both UCLA and Cal that have impeccable stats, including those of urm background, and including most of the Pell grantees.</p>
<p>If applications were race-blind at UC, no checkmarks as to race, I could see your point within P1. That’s why I wish they still had a significant amount of students who X-ed “unspecified.” Who knows, maybe the admissions readers don’t have the race info in the admissions process. But clearly, even then, the readers would have other info to peek at wrt background of the applicant in the process. This is one of the reasons for emphasis on essay, to gain further clues wrt these students. They also have very detailed demographic information of the individual public CA high schools from which these students apply, including those of detailed race %'s. There are also high schools within the geography of each UC that each, specifically target to fulfill quotas and targets of diversity indices. (And I’m not even necessarily against quotas; they should just call them for what they are.)</p>
<p>So the essence here, is though AA wrt race has been outlawed in CA – besides the fact that there are legislators who work night and day to try to repeal this ban or work around it, the admissions readers find numerous ways to point to students’ racial background. So it’s just an added step in the admissions process: going through AA wrt socio-economic background to fulfill those of AA wrt race, with much detailed information to look into students’ race.</p>
<p>I’d like to mention again that these aren’t final choice schools; they were just the first 2 to show up in the college scout list…I’ve still got quite a bit more to go through.</p>
<p>Re: #26</p>
<p>The Hout report ( <a href=“http://academic-senate.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/committees/aepe/hout_report_0.pdf[/url]”>http://academic-senate.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/committees/aepe/hout_report_0.pdf</a> ), pages 29-49, offers a detailed look at how various factors go into the scoring of the admissions reads at Berkeley.</p>
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<p>^UC is always patting itself on the back when they release the nos., and note the increase of urm’s onto the campus as a whole. Instead they should just congratulate themselves on the increase of Pell grantees the system has increased from the year before. Isn’t this better?</p>
<p>Despite my redundant usage of the word ‘increase’: </p>
<p>I just wanted to say that sometimes UC officials don’t concern themselves with the welfare of some students who would be better suited in attending CSU along with that system having more undergraduate trades. Social engineering takes greater importance over who can do the work at UC. Sometimes those admitted to UC overlaps with those to CSU, when there should be a greater demarcation of these at least on the low end. So a lot of the more ‘at risk’ students at UC would be placed in majors like sociology so they can flourish … rather ‘get by,’ when they don’t have the same opportunities at graduation as those who come in with higher quals regarding grad school and the professions.</p>
<p>How does she calculate that?? She’s told me she would get a 2nd or 3rd job if needed.</p>
<p>Oh good heavens. If you have adequate instate or other options, please don’t put your mom into a situation where she’d have to work a second or third job. If she’s a single mom, she’s already working TWO jobs…her “pay job” and her “home job”.</p>
<p>Seriously, while it’s nice for your mom to offer to take on add’l jobs, if you can avoid that, please do. Four years of working extra jobs (along with her two current jobs) could be bad for her health, and shouldn’t be necessary.</p>
<p>Ask her how much she can contribute based on her CURRENT job only. </p>
<p>You have an ACT 31 and a 2050 ACT. Are you retesting? What is your math + critical reading SAT score? </p>
<p>What is your weighted GPA for the last three years?</p>
<p>With your stats (if GPA is strong), there are schools that would give you good merit…like Seattle Univ, Chapman U, Redlands, and others. There are other schools that aren’t on the west coast that will give you merit.</p>
<p>You mention some long list of schools that you’re going thru. That’s nice, but may be a waste of time since those kinds of lists don’t take into account affordability. They just consider stats, a few other things, and maybe major.</p>
<p>What is your major?</p>
<p>The people here on CC could probably give you a good list of schools that would work with Major, GPA, Test scores, other interests, and the amount your mom will spend.</p>
<p>One result is that UCLA and Berkeley have relatively high percentages of Pell Grant undergraduates compared to other "top universities</p>
<p>I wonder how much the fact that the UCs don’t use NCP info like the top univs do. I realize that Pell is based on FAFSA only, but there may be a number of Pell students attending UCLA and Cal on full/near full aid, that would not get that full aid if they attempted to attend a school that required NCP info (from an NCP that won’t pay).</p>
<p>I also wonder if at some point UCLA and Cal will require CSS Profile and NCP info. Since Cal has gone to a more generous need based aid for instate students, it might make sense for them to better capture the family financial picture. That said, Cal still won’t give aid to cover the OOS portion, which is substantial.</p>
<p>UCLA won’t give you aid but USC might</p>
<p>No doubt, the OP in his/her instance shouldn’t consider a UC, and I’m thinking that he/she was more into topic-starting than anything else. He/she said something to the effect of “I was just getting started and that UCLA and USC are just two on my list.”</p>
<p>Semi-recent USC Marshall alum here. I find warblersrule’s take to be rather spot-on. </p>
<p>While I agree with the general thrust of drax12’s overall point regarding the flaws of the admission rate statistic, I fully disagree with him/Beyphy about “floors” as it pertains to self-selecting applicants. </p>
<p>Back when I was applying to college (‘03), the UC’s had a common app whereas USC’s was a standalone. Our guidance counselors (public high school in suburban San Diego) instructed <em>all</em> of us to check off Berkeley and UCLA as schools we were apply to on the UC app, even those of us for whom Riverside was a stretch. Undoubtedly this occurs elsewhere, and undoubtedly this has inflated both schools’ admit rates – the benefit being that UCLA gets to claim the mantle of most applied to school in the nation. </p>
<p>Now that USC is on the common app, I’m sure it benefits from a little reaching as well. Though, to be fair, Harvard and other ivies are on the common app, so it seems to me that with the common app, you’d still be somewhat selective about your reaches (if for application fee considerations only), as opposed to with the UC app where the “reach” choices are obvious. </p>
<p>Moreover, considering the steady increase in USC’s selectivity over the past 10 years or so (and its admit rate dropping year-over-year well before common app adoption), I’m not so sure that the numbers post-common app are statistically significant from what the trend would have forecasted regardless. However, I’m probably just being a bit of a homer here, and this all is just another consideration that underscores drax’s and beyphy’s point. </p>
<p>Nike – my initial inclination is to tell you to just go with USC because I think paying out-of-state tuition for a public is a waste of money (unless there’s a meaningful increase in prestige or other factors compared to the private school being considered… which isn’t the case here). </p>
<p>But who knows? Perhaps you’ll visit UCLA and won’t be able to picture yourself anywhere else. Perhaps you’re 5’6" and of Irish ancestry, qualifying you for the Aloysius McGillycuddy Memorial Scholarship for UCLA students of Irish descent, that are 5’6", and hail from Oregon. Perhaps you won’t mind taking out extra loans, provided you understand the responsibilities involved, because you think the ROI on a UCLA degree would be far greater than middling schools which gave you merit aid. </p>
<p>Point being: I agree that EFC is probably the primary consideration here, but I think it’s too early to rule UCLA out as we don’t even know the EFC comparison, let alone what he/she intends to study. Sure, it’s easy to predict that the EFC at UCLA will be much higher, but say they’re pursuing a subject for which UCLA has the much stronger department (and in a field for which departmental reputation has a meaningful bearing on grad school/job hiring). Then the calculus suddenly becomes much less straightforward.</p>
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<p>I’m not comprehending the part in bold. Obviously you were a higher-stat applicant, so this would follow that you would apply to Cal and UCLA and not necessarily to Riverside.</p>
<p>You misunderstand the reasoning behind why UCLA wants as many students applying therein as it can encourage. It does so to let holistics take its course to admit a portion, however small or moderate, to diversify its student body, generally ethnically, even more specifically wrt increasing Hispanic enrollment. Diversity to the UCLA administration, is the most important index within the whole of all demographic indices. All the indications are that UCLA isn’t trying to game any statistic within USN or any other publication to improve its ranking, especially in light of how it under-reports scores. As I stated in another thread, it underreports scores so as not to dissuade those of poorer background (and therefore generally urm background) in applying to the U (because those of poorer->urm background tend to score lower, or stated more legitimately, being of wealth (or of majority background) helps students “buy” higher scores. And I realize the error in making seeming exclusive statements as in the above, but I don’t mean them to be. ) </p>
<p>The reason warblersrule is wrong is in how he/she (I’m guessing the latter, she) stated or inferred a lack of happiness of UCLA students with their classes. He/she stated, that he/she knew a math student who was ecstatic with his/her classes or something to that effect -> generally, that students were not ecstatic, or more likely were unhappy with their UCLA educations. I would say this couldn’t be further from the truth. </p>
<p>Also, the point warbersrule misses, and I generally inferred in my prior post, was that UCLA is usually a preparatory for grad school. Students there generally study academic subjects preparing for grad professional school (or, eg, use history, polisci, econ, etc to place within the various bus-sector jobs – you’ll see a lot of UCLA grads in finance that have history, poli-sci baccalaureates without having attended grad school). This leads to UCLA being more impacted for subjects within the social sciences and some of the humanities. You won’t find this at USC, because academic subjects at that U are not as heavily enrolled in which students there would even go as far as to major in them, but would just more or less be there as breadth reqs. (~ 1200 students take bac degrees in bus-related fields out of a total of ~ 5,000 at USC.) This leads to less crowding at USC in these (academic) subjects because they are roads less traveled. (I’ve heard of a Physics grad at USC, and he apparently stated he was the sole person in the department in the year he graduated, and said it lacked rigor.) Students who choose USC want their specific majors: bus, pub relations, communications, film, etc. Conversely, a lot of students who attend UCLA are just happy to be there and will take an anthropology, math/econ, or philosophy (sorry, beyphy) opening as the only resort to attending.</p>
<p>Ucla has much more prestige outside of southern California.</p>
<p>Sent from my HTC One X using CC</p>
<p>Let me fix this for you:</p>
<p>“Diversity to the UC administration, is the most important index within the whole of all demographic indices.”</p>
<p>In other words, it comes from upon high, Regents & Legislature (who still hold some purse strings), and is one of the most important non-gpa factors at every UC campus.</p>
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Let’s not put words in my mouth. My point was obviously not that undergrads at UCLA are unhappy with their educations. Rather, my point was simply that I think USC is currently devoting more money and resources to its undergraduates than UCLA is. I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing or something UCLA needs to “fix” – it’s simply a matter of institutional focus and needs. UCLA is first and foremost a research university with a lot of top-flight programs to support, and its funding is limited; undergrads therefore sometimes get the shaft. In some programs, particularly the smaller ones, I do think undergraduates at UCLA are receiving the attention and small classes they deserve - in many other programs, less so. A go-getter would obviously excel at either.</p>
<p>You are welcome to counter that by pointing out that I have never attended UCLA as an undergraduate, which is true. I would respond by pointing out that neither have most UCLA undergraduates attended another college to see how well it treats its undergrads in comparison (aside from the obvious contingent of CCC transfers, which for the purposes of this discussion don’t count). Most grass looks green until you compare it to the neighboring field, eh?</p>
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<p>Some people think that their own grass is always greener.</p>
<p>Some people think that someone else’s grass is always greener.</p>