After watching my son, many of his friends and even kids/parents on CC go through this process, I’m struck by how many high stat CA kids leave the state or head to private schools for their education. Many of those kids are open to attending a UC/CSU or even targeted a UC/CSU campus but because of admissions decisions and various other reasons they go elsewhere.
Is there data that shows what percentage of the top 10% of CA graduates attend in-state schools? How do those statistics compare to other states?
Note: “Private/Public Selective” means schools which admit 50% or less of applicants. “Other” includes all other schools (less selective, for-profit, etc.). “Unknown” includes did not enroll in a US college. High school GPA appears to be UC-recalculated weighted-capped (which is usually about 0.3 higher than unweighted GPA in 10th-11th grade academic courses for students who took lots of honors courses).
If your sample is mainly composed stronger students with high income parents, it is not surprising that you may see a larger percentage of them choosing private or out-of-state public schools, presumably because they can afford it (with parent money, and/or out-of-state or private school scholarships or good financial aid that is more likely for stronger students). Also, stronger students with high income parents are probably more likely to attend academically-focused private high schools, which are often more likely to steer students toward private colleges.
The state of CA’s senate is considering lowering the UC admits for OOS. Who knows where it will end up, but when I hear that Cal and UCLA have over 20% of seats going to OOS, my blood boils. My kids might not be competitive for those schools and that’s fine, but I think 25% (UCLA, for instance) is beyond the pale of what these schools were created for–and that’s to educate Californians.
I am a few years away from college admissions, but I have heard about two local kids who were denied UC admission and chose to go to U of Washington (got denied at Davis) and Michigan (got denied at Cal), instead. So, affluent Californian parents are absolutely creating a demand on other good public schools with their own buying power. Now, before someone says Riverside and Merced, I hear ya. I would be thrilled if my kids got into a lower-tier UC like Santa Cruz, etc., but other parents are not. I think it would really sting to be admitted to Michigan and ask the kid to go to Riverside instead.
I think that makes sense. 20-25% OOS/International is much too high especially when top students in CA are not getting admitted. I feel like other states do a better job of this. It’s completely wrong for families who have paid taxes, voted to increase funding etc to UC/CSU for decades to be required to send their kids to private or out of state schools, regardless of whether they can afford it.
Many kids who graduated in the top 10% of their class were denied admission to UCR and UC Santa Cruz. Also, not letting CSU off the hook, I saw and know of similar stats kids getting skunked at SDSU, Cal Poly, Long Beach as well.
When exactly did we vote to fund UC/CSU? Their revenue from the state has gone down substantially so the money from OOS students is sorely needed.
But more importantly, you don’t get to be a world leading institution without a meaningful proportion of OOS and international students, who bring up the standards for all, since they have higher grades and scores than instate students. 20-25% seems eminently reasonable. UT Austin and UNC are never going to achieve the same level of prestige as UCB and UCLA when they are limited to only 10% OOS.
The UCs are busy trying to harm their academic prestige already with the move to test blind and the (fortunately voted down) attempt to eliminate Prop 209. Let’s not deliberately screw things up even more.
What would be better would be more objective measures for admissions, so the top X in the class know they are highly likely to get in if they tick the right boxes on ECs, APs, etc. The current problems seem to stem from making admissions even more “holistic” and less objective than they were just a few years ago (my kids HS class of 2018 had very predictable outcomes at all the UCs, in fact much better than the private school outcomes that were all over the place).
Under political pressure, the UC regents in 2017 capped nonresident enrollment at 18% systemwide, with a higher share grandfathered in for UCLA, Berkeley, San Diego and Irvine.
I agree with much of what you said above. Especially the suggestion of more objective criteria. We vote regularly on bond measures that benefit public higher education. Most of those go towards brick and mortar projects that are intended to accommodate an expanding CA population. At the same time, it’s true that State funding has continually decreased.
I think accepting OOS and International students is great and I agree it elevates the UC but that should be predicated on space availability. There are CA kids with top flight stats being denied admission. I think the valedictorian for example from any public high school in CA should have their choice of any UC to attend, if that isn’t happening there is a problem.
Capacity limitations in the UC system are why UC Merced was opened (even as other UCs expanded as much as they could).
In terms of CSUs, there are 23 campuses, so are you just observing CSU applicants who are very picky?
Because of California’s large population, if it wanted to have “first and second flagship state universities” that enrolled proportionally as many students to the state population as such state universities do in other states, it would have two UCs, each with perhaps 90,000 to 100,000 students. If it wanted a model like Arizona, Hawaii, Iowa, or Wyoming, where one to three universities double as flagship level universities and broad-access universities, it would need one to three universities for over 500,000 students.
Instead, California has nine universities in the “flagship system” (UC). However, most students and parents still want the first or second one, not the seventh, eighth, or ninth one, since they see them in a hierarchical ranking. The “broad access system” (CSU) is intended to serve local area students (including those who commute to save money), although some have become popular enough to out of area students that they are no longer broad-access.
I just think the best California high school graduates should have an opportunity to go to the best California public colleges. I’m open to how that can best be done.
Currently, California high school students whose UC-recalculated GPA meets a top 9% benchmark UC-recalculated GPA from a recent previous class at their high school will be admitted to a UC with space available (which means UC Merced now) if they otherwise get shut out of UCs they apply to (if they do apply to UCs).
So if “best California high school graduates” means “GPA meeting top 9% threshold from a recent previous class”, and “best California public colleges” means “a UC”, then the above policy meets your criteria.
However, it looks like you consider “best California high school graduates” to be more than 9% of them, and it looks like you consider “best California public colleges” to be a smaller set of colleges, perhaps only UCB and UCLA. But note that 9% of California high school graduates is about 37,000 per year, and UCB and UCLA enroll about 6,000 frosh each per year (12,000 for the two combined).
Being from CA this thread is just too tempting not to comment. I think that CA has more than its share of highly qualified applicants and not enough desirable spots for them to land.
I know the “very picky” comment is directed to OP, but heck ya I’d be picky as a top 10% student spending $35k for a UC or $25-30k for a CSU. Anyways, it’s probably just fine to be picky with college choices but “very picky” may not work out well in CA.
For kids we know (including my own), the list of CA publics that we were/are interested in is small. For many that equates to a few UC’s and maybe a few CSU’s. Personally, I think many share this view which makes getting into a small group of CA publics a challenge, even though they tick a few extra boxes on the UC App for schools they would not go to.
To expand options we looked out of state. My top 10% student chose an SEC school with big merit and loved it. My rising high school senior is exploring some WUE options and CSU’s (zero interest in UC’s). The demand is clearly there and I can see some schools welcoming these CA students and elevating their own profiles. For example my high school daughter shared that several kids in her senior class will be going to U of Utah - they made a strong move to attract CA/OOS kids by lowering the bar to qualify for WUE this year.
As a CA resident I think OOS and international students diversify the experience and pay much needed revenue into the pot. UC struggle financially because they don’t get enough funding. We are very near losing the jewels in her system because of lack of investment. Top 10% in a huge state doesn’t really mean all that much. But the UFC’s should be able to accommodate at least the 5%.
I did not anticipate the idea that the best CA residents should have opportunities at the best CA public universities to be controversial and I’m not sure I have any helpful definition of “best”. What I can say is that I know of kids who were near perfect students (valedictorian, 4.0 UW and 4.5 W gpas with outstanding extracurricular and test scores) who did not receive admittance to a single UC school that they applied to. The particular example I’m very familiar with applied to UCSB, UCSC, UCD, UCLA and UCB and went 0-5 (two waitlisted her and one later admitted her). I know dozens of high stat kids in the top 6% or so who did not get in to UCSC, UCD, UCSB, UCI etc. I’m not just talking about UCB and UCLA and I acknowledge that many of these same kids, although they did not apply there, were offered admittance to UC Merced. It seems the UC is not meeting their mission to serve these kids and it appears that many state electeds and UC administrators agree. The challenge is how to do it.
Engineering or CS major applicants? Many of the “UC disappointment” posts in the recent past on these forums involve applicants to engineering or CS majors, which are often much more selective than the rest of the campus. Unfortunately, UC is not all that transparent about differences in admission selectivity by division or major at the frosh level (although it is more transparent at the transfer level at Transfers by major | University of California ).
Also, UC admissions do not use class rank as determined by the high school. If the “top 6%” students that you mention do not have that high (UC recalculated) HS GPA, then their chances could be lower than you may think.
She applied as a liberal arts major. I feel like we are getting caught up in minutia here. The only reason I used %/rank was to avoid going down the gpa inflation/deflation rabbit hole. I chose 10% as a round number to ask how many students in that group stay in-state versus head to private or OOS. I was and still am surprised by how many do. I think we (UC)can and should do better.
If California wanted to offer “first or second flagship” enrollment to the top 12.5% of the state’s high school graduates (the target student group for UC), then it would have to:
Relocate UCB and UCLA to places where they could expand greatly, to about 90,000 or 100,000 students each.
Close the other UCs (or maybe give their facilities to CSU to open new CSU campuses) and consolidate their faculty, staff, and academic programs into UCB and UCLA.
The UC system could also offer fully remote degrees ala ASU, SNHU, Purdue, and others. They can absolutely do that, and it would represent a (likely) cost savings for students who could live at home with their families.
Obviously remote learning didn’t work for all students this past year, but prior to the pandemic there were hundreds of thousands fully remote/online degree seekers at the various colleges that offer that option.