For sure. My original statement was in another thread then it got moved over into this new discussion and I think got taken a bit out of context. I had been talking about the fact that my daughter only applied to local (Bay Area) schools because this is where she wants to live for all of the reasons I listed, then made a general statement about how hard it can be for people who already live in the Bay Area to give all of those things up and move somewhere else. It was not a statement that people should come to the Bay Area from other places to go to college if they are not otherwise inclined to do so.
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Are these families who live in the suburbs and not near LA/San Diego proper, etc.? I have lived in Berkeley for 20+ years, raised 3 kids who navigate on public transit and walking and have definitely taught them situational awareness that you need in order to do your best to stay safe, not have your laptop or backpack stolen (most crime here is opportunistic property crime — this past weekend saw the year’s first gun-related incident that resulted in an injury). But based on my son’s experience in Westwood, I think you’ll find homeless people in most areas around college campuses that are in any kind of broader urban area. Cal is definitely not everyone’s cup of tea, but I do think that the reputation it’s getting as some sort of hellhole of crime is pretty inaccurate. I’m biased, but I can’t think of a more beautiful place to be than in the Berkeley Hills, gazing at SF and the Golden Gate. For those reading who are still interested in UC Berkeley and worried about what they are reading in these threads, I think it’s a school and town where you can feel safe and thrive. Come see!
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I think your feelings about any particular area (with respect to urban grittiness and problems, vs. urban amenities and opportunities) might depend on how well you know the area?
We live in Berkeley and my kids go to the high school, which is physically very close to UCB. My senior son has been hanging out in downtown Berkeley (as well as taking public transportation to San Francisco and Oakland for various things) since 9th grade, so it’s not intimidating for him, and we also don’t worry much about him. He also knows the advantages to living in this area (which are many!) and how to get the most out of them.
On the other hand, I don’t know LA and its neighborhoods very well at all… so anything I hear about bad neighborhoods or crime in LA makes me nervous. So I can imagine it might be the same way for people from SoCal coming up to Berkeley / Oakland and feeling nervous in a place where they aren’t as familiar with the urban landscape.
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I did a little internal jig of joy when my son was up here a few weekends ago and remarked how much he missed the bay and how the dream was to get back here if he can find a way to afford it. 
Unfortunately, that’s the hard part. But I’m sure having family already here helps.
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Really excellent points. I confess that if somehow my kids were applying to USC (they didn’t), I would be wondering and asking myself more questions just based on a personal lack of familiarity. I was happy to get to UCLA with #1 and find out that downtown Westwood just felt like downtown Berkeley with a different layout. 
Which, getting back to the topic at hand, might explain why there are regional preferences on the applicant side for some campuses over others. I didn’t know anything about Orange County and Irvine, so son didn’t apply! Oops.
I think this is true. But I also think some of it is the college’s perceived response. I had a kid in NYC, and she certainly saw crazy people on the subway and street corners, and there were plenty of homeless or the drug addicted sleeping on the streets.
BUT… her campus buildings and dorms were safe. Dorms had campus safety staff manning entrances, and security was visible at all entrances to campus, as well as in patrols for the surrounding few blocks. I read a story about a Cal student having a homeless person wander into the bathroom while she was showering. It is unthinkable to me to live in that kind of insecurity.
So, yes, UCLA probably feels a little more comfortable to those from SoCal, but I do think Cal currently, at least with my friends, has a reputation of not being the most interested in protecting students from that gritty urban environment.
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Something almost exactly like that happened last year at a dorm at UCLA. A homeless, mentally unwell person was sort of living in the vicinity of one of the dorms on the hill and managed to get himself in with an old access card and was squatting in a non-occupied room. It took a lot of calls to campus security to get him removed permanently, but eventually he was. I think these issues are going to take place anywhere that you have 10s of thousands of students and unhoused people. All buildings will have some security, but there can certainly be different levels of attention to matters like that, and it’s important to keep that in mind with respect to the school you select. I think there is also some consideration for students not wanting to feel like they are living in a highly-policed environment, and I bet that’s especially the case at Cal. Definitely not everyone’s cup of tea, like I mentioned earlier!
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I can also confirm that this year mentally ill homeless/druggies have wandered into a dorm at Chico State, and into an off-campus apartment, and more than once into off campus backyards. And a couple of years ago one homeless person killed another homeless person right on the Chico State campus. (That said, my DS3 is having a great experience at Chico State–a soph there now.)
Personally, I visited UCB with my parents last year for an event and it was our first time on campus. I overall liked the atmosphere of the campus and didn’t feel unsafe at all. It seemed like the ideal university to be at. I could be biased though since I’m from San Francisco.
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My DD has been in Berkeley often but visited the campus for the first time last week (not a tour–for another reason) and proclaimed it “beautiful.”
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When those magnolias are in full bloom, it really is.
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If I am looking at the UCI data set correctly, I’m surprised by the super high % (majority) of current students from the few immediately surrounding local counties. I guess this is why it has a reputation as a commuter school.
IIRC, CSUs have a stated priority for local applicants - but wasn’t aware that UCs do the same? Or is this just a UCI thing?
Perhaps that is due to self-selection of applicants and matriculants to UCI – if it has a reputation as a “commuter” or “suitcase” school, those from out of the area are less likely to apply and matriculate there.
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If you define a commuter school as one where students live at home, drive to school and then drive home in the evening, that’s not UCI. A large percentage of UCI students live on, or around, campus. The weekends are when it is very quiet. That is when a larger than average percentage of students go home.
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This is usually called “suitcase” behavior, as distinct from “commuter” behavior. However, it does seem that many posters include “suitcase” behavior as a part of “commuter” behavior.
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I decided to dig into the 2022 data for UCI… I’ll try to be brief for a change 
Applicants from Orange and LA counties are accepted at ~29% higher acceptance rate (~22% v ~17%) than those from elsewhere in CA. This could be because local students disproportionately apply to less competitive majors at UCI, but as usual, the data are not available at that level of detail.
Edit: replied to wrong post… meant to reply to @ucbalumnus California HS admits Regional preference or not? - #54 by ucbalumnus
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This is consistent with what I always suspected with UCI. They get plenty of applications from NorCal but its a tougher admit than Cal for most majors because of what is a pretty clear tilt towards SoCal and OOS.
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I decided to test my hypothesis that a good chunk of the SoCal/remainder-of-state disparity was due to disproportionate application to impacted STEM majors from NorCal. I focused on Irvine since there is a perception that UCI may have a regional bias. Summary data for 2022 by select county:
Looking by county, Orange has a substantially higher acceptance rate than LA or San Diego, and higher than those counties traditionally considered the core of the NorCal tech hub (Santa Clara, San Mateo, San Francisco). So, maybe this speaks to applicants being heavily weighted to STEM. So, I attempted to look only at comparable schools likely to have a higher % of STEM applicants. I’m no expert on the SoCal schools, so I used the Niche HS STEM rankings for ‘traditional public schools’) and looked at data for the top 5 from Orange and Santa Clara counties. Applicants from these 5-school groups were admitted at 31% and 12% for Orange and Santa Clara county, respectively. This is not definitive proof by any measure, but it certainly raises eyebrows lacking publicly available information explaining this disparity. Anyone with more knowledge of these 5 SoCal schools able to speak to how popular STEM studies are at these schools? Also of interest (smaller, albeit not insignificant sample), is the 27% acceptance rate for Sacramento County applicants, even higher than Orange… not sure what is going on there.
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The county yield rate is interesting. Highest yield from Orange and Sacramento. The yield rate to UC from my daughter’s high school is pretty low (many end up SIR to private Christian schools) so that used to worry me (ie, UC would stop offering UC admission to those high schoolers due to low yield), but so far that hasn’t happened. Still, you’d think UC would like to offer admission to areas with historically greater yield so maybe that’s a factor after all. And that UCI AO in that podcast mentioned that they want students from every county, and he was sort of joking that UCI needs to go make a visit to Alpine county, as they got no apps from there this year.
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