OOS extra tuition for Cal Poly includes two components, “Non-Resident Tuition” and “Opportunity Fee.” https://www.calpoly.edu/financial-aid/costs-and-affordability/undergraduate-costs-of-attendance
Together, they add up to a bit more than $20K per year in extra costs for OOS students.
Here is a screenshot showing these fees for a new student enrolling in Fall 2023:
Non-Resident Tuition: In addition to in-state tuition and fees, non-California residents pay $264 per unit in non-resident tuition. The cost of attendance estimated above is based on an average unit load of 15 units per quarter. Your actual quarterly non-resident tuition will vary depending on the number of units you take each quarter.
Opportunity Fee: This non-resident undergraduate fee is based on your first year of attendance and does not change.
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Our family has been all over the board with the California schools admissions. My oldest wasn’t the most competitive student. If that’s your kid, WUE schools are where it’s at. They’re a great value for middling California kids. My daughter was high stats, but just outside ELC range. She was shut out of UCs, but got into UT Austin, Purdue, and a host of other great schools. She was lucky enough to end up at Cal Poly SLO. Child number three has the highest stats yet, ELC, national awards, worked on published research, etc… but things have gotten so much more competitive over the last few years, I had no idea how this cycle would go. We planned accordingly and made sure he had great out of state options. Yesterday he was accepted at Davis and SLO. Whatever happens over the next two weeks, we’re thrilled. California would have to put more funding into the UC system to further reduce out of state admissions, which I don’t think they’re prepared to do.
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What you mean that she didn’t even get into Merced or riverside?
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She didn’t apply to Riverside or Merced. She was waitlisted at Santa Cruz and Davis, rejected by the other five.
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That’s amazing was it the major choice? ELC I guess means not much now
My 2023 kid is applied physics.
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My daughter was accepted into Psych. In state. Not a lot of extra curricular but two varsity sports and top of her class.
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I think that’s exactly what they’re doing, though - the gov has promised more money to the UC in exchange for accepting more Cali students. Maybe it’s not enough, but it is definitely going in the right direction.
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One thing UW does right is it gives a huge advantage to in-state applicants for their most impacted programs. In-state CS 27% acceptance vs OOS 3%. Engineering ~20% higher acceptance rate for in-state. CU-Boulder is the same for engineering… 30-40% higher acceptance rate for in-state. SLO doesn’t publish data by major that I’m aware, but given the local preference of CSUs and the ag indusyry along the central coast, I’d expect any in-state preference would be pretty heavy in ag, and with significantly higher overall OOS for the school, I suspect SLO has higher OOS acceptance rates in impacted STEM majors. Doesn’t sit right with me… nor should it with some other states/areas (e.g., NOVA STEM applicants at VaTech). States are essentially swapping highly qualified kids from well-to-do families to cover the gap in public funding.
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Wow I had no idea. Thanks!
I would guess that these schools have quality programs at least in part due to the extra $ from those OOS students. So it’s a tradeoff.
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As always detailed and extremely helpful. Really appreciate it. Thanks @Gumbymom
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Regarding the perceived unfairness of these OOS acceptances, I also just want to note that sometimes the label OOS can be misleading in context. A family that moved their teen to California just one or two years ago gets an in-state applicant label. Meanwhile, families such as mine, whose children were born and lived in California for most of their lives (while we were also paying all those taxes) but happen to now live OOS, get labeled as having OOS kids. Are my “OOS” kids who grew up in California actually stealing a spot from those “real” California kids, like the ones that just moved there 2 years ago that get the in-state label? I realize this is only one example, but I just offer it show that these labels can be complicated.
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Yes that was her strategy I guess–each college she applied to seemed to have not-so-overlapping ones, and she sort of picked by process of elimination. Her pick for Cal Poly SLO was Biomedical Engineering and her pick for UC Davis was Animal Science and Management. She has other picks for other colleges she’s applied to (like Finance, Math, etc).
It’s not about stealing any spots from individual kids to me… and with a surplus of highly qualified candidates, it’s hard to say that anyone admitted is undeserving. It’s just about priorities, funding and how the UC (as well as other states) have decided to address the funding challenges. It is not all that uncommon for highly qualified kids to get rejected from UCLA, UCB, UCSD, UCD, CP-SLO, sometimes all of them, and to end up attending an Ivy or other highly selective OOS school. Many of those families would prefer in state at one of the above UCs. No ill-will toward the deserving OOS students, just annoyed by the system.
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My DS2 graduated from Cal Poly SLO in 2020 with a BS in Business (with an emphasis in Accounting and also a later minor in Philosophy)–his first job was for the Small Business Administration approving PPP loans (as he graduated right at the height of the pandemic), and now he works for the FDIC. He loved his major and he easily found great jobs.
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California has 40 million people, the 4th largest economy in the world, and the birthplace of tech. We simply don’t have enough spots at great state schools to include everyone. Part of the reason why our schools are considered so good is because we do recruit from OOS which gives them a national profile. It’s just a hard pill to swallow when you’ve been paying California taxes, and your highly qualified kid doesn’t get in to even their second choice, but if they go OOS they can. Those states are far different than California though (and please don’t point to Texas - I’m from there. UT and A&M aren’t Cal/UCLA or even UCSD).
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I agree with you about OOS admits but keep in mind the yield rate for them is likely very low. So Cal Poly SLO (and UC) may offer more OOS admission than we in-state parents are happy with, but very few OOS actually SIR since there’s little to no need based or merit aid offered for OOS. So presumably when they don’t SIR, that opens up the waitlist to more in-state students. I’m glad Newsom has directed UC to start reducing OOS and international admits (not sure if he did the same for CSU).
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Yes, I feel the same. My family lived in TX and paid taxes for 10 years…and we moved when my son was in high school. He would have loved to go to UT with his friends and it’s nearly impossible as an OOS applicant. I understand the points everyone is making. But I see tons of spots from my current flagship going to OOS students at a higher percentage than CA admits.
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UC has been the pride of CA for decades though… prior to the 2008 meltdown, OOS/Intl enrollment was ~5%. Funding was slashed, UCs responded by enrolling more OOS and especially international, now the state is incentivizing the UC system to get back to 18% from ~21% OOS/Intl. CA had no trouble bringing talent and business to the state the 3 decades prior to 2008… don’t need 20% OOS enrollment across the UC system to do that… purely a financial move.
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