<p>The smart but poor Californians get free tuition at the UCs. It’s called the Blue & Gold plan for families whose income is under $80,000.
“Under the plan, your systemwide fees will be fully covered by scholarship or grant money if you are in your first four years at UC (two if you’re a transfer student)…Students with greater financial need can qualify for even more grant support to help defray other educational expenses (like books, housing, transportation, etc.)”
It’s the middle-class or rich and smart who pay full ride (like my D).</p>
<p>^^Right, but how many poor kids can the Blue and Gold program fund if the tuition gets jacked way up under Bay’s theory to enroll as many rich kids as possible? How long before before it gets cancelled altogether, since, by definition, it won’t be bringing in any rich kids to fund the university?</p>
<p>Common sense says that there are only so many rich, smart kids to go around. And the both richer and smarter they are the more competition the UCs will get from other schools (read: Stanford, et al) to enroll them. As they price more and more smart, poor or middle income kids out of the UC, at some point they will have to start taking kids with thin stats but fat wallets to fill up the slots.</p>
<p>Sorry, if this is a really stupid q with an obvious answer, but:
Is UC admissions need- blind or need-aware?</p>
<p>^^Officially need blind. But they undermine their own need blind claims by openly saying they have increased OOS enrollments to harvest more tuition.</p>
<p>I’m pretty sure the UCs are need-aware in favor of the poor. Bluebayou has more info on this.</p>
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<p>Sure, at some point, but at what point will that be? $55K? $65K? Considering the UCs are academically competitive with Stanford and USC, they’ve got some runway left. Stanford and USC cannot possibly take all the smart CA rich kids. They are already 50% and 62% full-pay, respectively. They will look bad if they take many more. Is there any data showing that the UCs have priced themselves out of the CA smart market yet?</p>
<p>USC is not 62% full pay for UG’s. Where on earth did you get that figure? Over 60% of entering freshman RECEIVE financial aid from USC.
From USC 's 2011-2012 accepted student profile:</p>
<p>Cost and Financial Aid
USC practices need-blind admission. A student’s ability to pay has no bearing on his or her admission.
USC is committed to meeting every student’s USC-determined financial need through a combination of merit scholarships, university grants, state and federal aid, student loans and work.
23% of the 2011 entering freshman class received a merit-based scholarship from USC. Over 60% received need-based financial assistance. Many received both.</p>
<p>I got it from here: [College</a> Search - University of Southern California - USC - Cost & Financial Aid](<a href=“College Search - BigFuture | College Board”>College Search - BigFuture | College Board)</p>
<p>and did the math. 1096 out of 2869, or 38.2% of freshmen received FA. Leaving 62% who did not receive FA.</p>
<p>the college website is accurate. College board is wrong, which does not surprise me at all.
[Freshman</a> Profile - USC Undergraduate Admission](<a href=“http://www.usc.edu/admission/undergraduate/apply/fresh_profiles.html]Freshman”>http://www.usc.edu/admission/undergraduate/apply/fresh_profiles.html)</p>
<p>USC has advantages that you generally will not find at less expensive institutions: smaller classes; tenure-track faculty teaching General Education courses; top-ranked programs in virtually every field; the opportunity to choose from more than 150 undergraduate majors and 130 minors; and the lifelong support of the Trojan Family. While attending a private university is a major investment, more than 60 percent of students at USC receive some type of financial assistance. </p>
<p><a href=“http://www.usc.edu/admission/fa/[/url]”>http://www.usc.edu/admission/fa/</a></p>
<p>How do you know which one is accurate? You would need to know how FA (or “need-based financial assistance”) is defined in order to determine the accuracy of each. Presumably, collegeboard uses a standard definition for all colleges, so comparatively, USC offers FA to a minority of its applicants.</p>
<p>In any event, if USC doesn’t care whether they get the smart, rich CA kids or not, then that bodes even better for the UC system. USC can take the poor smart CA kids, reject the rich ones, and the UCs can fill the 35% of seats that are going to OOS/internationals with all those smart, rich CA kids that USC rejects.</p>
<p>Since 'SC refuses to publish its Common Data Set, the numbers are whatever 'SC wants to publish/spin (which includes athletic scholarship $$ in the mix). That being said, USC does have a large proportion of Pell Grantees (18%) for a top private college. (That’s a higher number than any Ivy, for example, and even of top publics such as Michigan and UVa.)</p>
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<p>Are Common Data Sets audited for accuracy in some way by an outside agency? If not I don’t see any reason to believe a Common Data Set has any greater accuracy or less spin than whatever other numbers the school does choose to put out. If a school is given to lying about such things, I don’t see where labeling the lie a CDS is going to make it any better.</p>
<p>BB, indirectly from the same source. </p>
<p>[University</a> of Southern California Tuition, Costs and Financial Aid - CollegeData College Profile](<a href=“http://www.collegedata.com/cs/data/college/college_pg03_tmpl.jhtml?schoolId=1138]University”>http://www.collegedata.com/cs/data/college/college_pg03_tmpl.jhtml?schoolId=1138)</p>
<p>For the CDS doubters, there are the federal surveys.
<a href=“College Navigator - University of Southern California”>College Navigator - University of Southern California;
<p>Happy debate!</p>
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<p>USC appears to be less selective academically than UCLA, if the listing of last years’ students (numbered, not named) from a certain southern California high school and their accept/reject results (posted in another thread) is accurate – there were many admitted to USC but not UCLA, but hardly any (if any) the other way around.</p>
<p>UCLA and Berkeley also have a significantly higher percentage of Pell Grant students than USC (37%, 36%, and 19% respectively), although USC is higher in this respect than most other “top” universities.</p>
<p>xiggi:</p>
<p>yeah, I’ve seen those indirect source, but that IS the point. With the CDS, at least one can factor out merit (NMSF) and athletic awards, from the students-receiving-aid category. With ipeds, all aid is lumped together under USC’s listing.</p>
<p>coureur: sure, any college can purposely misread/ignore rather clear directions when completing a form. But eventually, they’ll get called out for it, perhaps by a former employee?. But the broader question, at least to me, is why does 'SC (and some other top colleges) not publish their CDS? What do they have to hide? :rolleyes:</p>
<p>Are certain students being shut out of the UC system due to the higher costs of tuition?
UCLA’s common data set reports out of the 5,825 enrolled freshmen only 155 were Black or African American.</p>
<p>Sounds like 2.5% at UCLA compared to 7% for USC.</p>
<p>Judging from the African Americans from our local high school with the stats to get into UCLA or Berkeley, those students are heavily recruited by super-selective private schools and often go there with great financial aid.</p>
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<p>That is not due to tuition (BGO covers tuition for California residents with family income below about the 70th percentile). There are relatively few black students in California to begin with, and the uneven quality of K-12 education in California hurts black students disproportionately (although perhaps in large part because the distribution is skewed toward the lower income range where the K-12 schools tend to be worse).</p>
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<p>While it’s true that Smart Poor students are favored for admission to UC (still), I wouldn’t assume that “dumb” but rich have an advantage as the system becomes more need-aware. UC will have plenty smart-but-rich OOS to add to the poor category. (But maybe that was already said or conceded.) </p>
<p>Aside from this tuition discussion, it has become increasingly unpredictable over the last 6 years for upper-middle-class Californians to count on a particular UC campus. Given this trend, the reaction of relatively wealthy Californians has been to add privates to their college list, and ironically lots of OOS western region public colleges (Pacific Northwest, Colorado, Arizona). Oregon and Colorado have become especially popular.</p>