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The annual race to get into college has begun, and for students who want to attend California's public universities, the competition this year is going to be cutthroat.</p>
<p>The number of high school graduates in California is expected to peak with this year's graduating class. Despite the soaring number of potential college students, the University of California and California State University are cutting back the number of freshmen they admit.
. . . </p>
<p>All of it adds up to more high school seniors considering public universities in other states and private colleges as an alternative to California universities, said counselors across the region.
. . . </p>
<p>"We can't count on the UCs or the CSUs anymore," [private college counselor Margaret] Amott said.
<p>Also, since so many UC hopeful kids have such high stats, they would be pleasantly surprised to learn that privates and some OOS publics would give them nice merit scholarships if they applied on time. :)</p>
<p>There are California students and parents on CC who found themselves last April comparing aid offers and deciding that paying a few thousand more per year for a private education where the odds were in favor of graduating in four years were high would put them money ahead of full freight at a CSU or UC where gift aid was largely unavailable and graduation in 5 years was iffy,</p>
<p>x posted w/ mom2collegekids: I didn’t realize last year that OOS merit may have been in place for my UC eligible DDs and wish I did. Not that it would have been likely to matter. In the end they both went small in their campus choice.</p>
<p>Good point, historymom. The difference in cost between the UC that my D applied to, and the LAC she is attending, was large but not nearly as large as I would have expected. Especially when we compared the LAC’s financial aid offer against the laughable package which UC presented. In the end, the LAC is actually less expensive, by a long shot.</p>
<p>This was true for us. My D was admitted to UC Davis with no aid, and to several LACs with generous aid packages that made the cost of attending equal to or cheaper than at UCD, even when we factored in OOS costs (travel, etc) for the LACs.</p>
<p>Private universities look at finances differently than many publics. Our choice was $26K for UC Berkeley for most likely 5 years or $7k for Stanford for 4 years. No-brainer choice.</p>
<p>Admission rates for the top UC’s will still be far higher than comparable top universities (UCLA and Cal have been more along the range of U of Chicago than comparable east coast schools; and until recently UCSB accepted about half the applicants, and it is a great college), and the costs for a full payer will still be a lot lower. And a kid who is organized will have no trouble finishing in 4 years in almost any major. This is not to say that a California resident should always send a kid to a UC; some colleges do offer attractive merit aid for full payers, need-based aid at the UC’s are gapped, and the experience is quite different than an LAC or an East Coast university. But some of the negativity seems overboard to me, as a Cal alum.</p>
<p>D’s choice: UCSC where they wouldn’t even tell her what her FA package was until AFTER she committed and an LAC where after aid it was about 25K…roughly the same as the UC sticker</p>
<p>Other D (twins) had such a nice package from her LAC that the only thing cheaper would have been staying home and going to CC so like emgamac said, it was a no brainer.</p>
<p>mamenyu: what’s your source? Even the universities themselves are openly admitting that in the most popular majors even on the not so popular campuses, getting the necessary classes is tough and becoming tougher. </p>
<p>Agree that the four year finish is doable and that any Californian paying full sticker everywhere would be getting a great return on their investment and getting a fabulous education by going to a UC and/or many of the CSU campuses but faculty positions are being lost, furloughs are cutting into class time and the number of students coming out of California high schools this year is at a record high.</p>
<p>These all impact a student’s ability to graduate in four years.</p>
<p>Graduating in 4 yrs from a UC is much easier then one would think- this is because in order to be competitive (unless you are URM or from an under performing school, or athlete) for the top 6 campus’ these days you need many AP’s, and the UC’s are generous with credit- check the page of each to estimate- most Frosh come in as Soph’s or near soph’s- this trend will intensify in this budget crisis, because they have a strict program in place to measure the progression to graduating in 4 years- or else you need to petition.</p>
<p>All very true, and for many students, it’s coming down to class availability. The biggest complaint I’m hearing from the UC/CSU students that I know (and I know alot of them) is: Being unable to get into the classes they need. One CSU student I know is taking Spring semester off, because she can only get 2 of the 4 classes she needs. She sees it as being more cost-effective to work fulltime and then hope for better luck in the fall.</p>
From what I’ve seen graduating in 4 years or less at UCLA/UCSD at least hasn’t been an issue for most. Most of those taking longer than 4 years are doing so because they’ve changed their major a time or two, are taking a light load (3 courses/qtr), are dropping/repeating some classes in an effort ot maintain a high GPA (pre-med), or have decided to take a tough minor along with a tough major. Some majors, ex: computer science, also require that more classes be taken than some other majors, ex: PoliSci. If a student really wanted to and they had lots of AP credits that were transferable because of the major, and they were taking some of the less rigorous majors (PoliSci, history, etc.) there’s a good chance they could graduate in 3 years. </p>
<p>It doesn’t appear that this has changed much yet but I suppose it could if cuts get more severe. The other thing to keep in mind is that all UC/CSU campuses aren’t impacted the same way. The UCs in general aren’t faced with the exact same challenges as the CSUs and then the various UCs aren’t all the same as each other and the various CSUs aren’t all the same as each other. If someone is considering a UC or CSU they need to look beyond the headlines and general statements that lump them all together and determine what changes that would have a direct impact on their student are likely to be since not all of the changes will have a direct impact, ex: if certain less popular majors are dropped. Things that could have a direct impact include increased tuition and fees and possibly housing costs, certainly increased competition that could impact getting accepted at the most competetive UC/CSU campuses in the first place, and possibly the awards given to Regents scholarships, etc.</p>
<p>olympiclady, we’re in the Northeast but this approach served us well. Dual-enrollment, AP and summer courses are popular approaches to graduating in 4 or even 3.</p>
<p>My source? my kid recently went to a UC and graduated in 4 years in the humanities without any difficulty. Most requirements can be met with a wide variety of options. And one advantage of the UC’s over LAC’s in this regard is that courses are generally offered every semester, not every other semester in courses like languages, and there are many more sections to choose from. Sciences may be a different matter, though my kid began as a prospective science major and had no trouble getting into the Chem 1A course, though it was huge.<br>
It’s really a matter of focus: selecting a major early on, looking through the catalog and determining the requirements, and mapping out a plan. A student who does that can avoid some of the problems of impacted courses by being flexible about fulfilling other requirements that term, or selecting another course that fills the requirements. Yes there are furloughs, but realistically they have no impact on the students; first, the professors are not permitted to take the furloughs during course time (they use them when they are not actually teaching), second, the job market is such that it isn’t easy for professors to simply move somewhere else instead (and they might just prefer living where they are anyway)…Stanford has frozen hiring, for example. So on a day to day basis, not much will change for the students. It is true that some LAC’s and wealthy Ivys offer generous aid packages, though, and someone who is choosing among options, might well take that route. On the other hand, things are tough financially at lots of schools, including the super-wealthy ones like Harvard, where they’ve stopped serving hot breakfasts and laid off many of the advisors, etc.</p>
<p>Like mamenyu, I am also a Cal alum. The years I was at Cal, a long time ago, I got waitlisted on many classes also. But I did pretty much what mamenyu suggested. I picked a major and stuck with it. I had plan A, plan B, plan C every semester depending on what classes I got waitlisted. Everything worked out fine but it does require planning and being organized. And some scrambling at the last minute also.</p>
<p>My guess is UC/CSU must have gotten much better over the years. So now it is a big deal when students cannot get into classes.</p>
<p>mamenyu: I don’t dispute what you say about your own child’s experience, but things are changing very quickly at the UCs. The staff cutbacks, reductions in enrollment, class eliminations, furloughs, ginormous fee hikes – these are all developments that have taken place or been announced this year. This is new, even since as recently as a year ago, and you should count yourself lucky that your student graduated before the California economy imploded.</p>
<p>Not true, there is a 10% reduction in instructional days due to furloughs at the CSU my son is attending. The situation is the same at my local CSU where a friend teaches. This has a direct impact on the students: they are being presented less material in all of their courses. It’s the students who are losing out, along with the faculty who experience a reduction in pay.</p>
<p>On the topic of graduating in 4 years, I have the sense that there’s a new urgency, at least at the CSU level, to get kids out of college in 4 years. This is to make way for the incoming classes. We might see some requirements waived or substitutions allowed in order to make it easier for students to get out. This is just a sense - we’ll have to see what the reality turns out to be.</p>
<p>I have the same sense, vballmom. Along those same lines, some of the CSUs are beginning to put pressure on “super seniors” to get out already.</p>
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Even assuming there is no effect on the quality of the current students’ education (a dubious assumption IMO), think down the road a few years. The best professors will eventually begin to migrate to schools which are willing to pay them a full-time salary. The best students will begin to migrate to schools where they get full-time instruction in return for full-time tuition. Furloughs, if they continue, are going to have a long-term detrimental effect on the entire system.</p>
<p>I couldn’t get D2 to register for one class in the summer at a local CC, everything was full. That said, my niece is set to graduate in 3 years from a UC with perfect( or near perfect) GPA and her brother graduated in 4 years with 3 diverse majors. So if it has not been impacted in the past, it’ll probably will be bad in the next few years.</p>