I think for introductory level courses in STEM fields, a good community college prof can provide a much better foundation than the UC’s. At the UC’s the first year chem series is very much a weed-out course – taught in a large lecture format with hundreds of students in each section. When I was in school, there were at least 400 students in my Chem 1A course – and my TA for my lab spoke no English. (Or certainly not enough English to be able to offer much help or guidance to students like me). So that experience certainly was a factor in my decision to pursue a different course of study. I managed to pull a B+ on the final – but was not at all comfortable with the material, and given that grades were curved, my B+ might simply have reflected that I was not the only one who completed the quarter with a shaky understanding of what we had been taught.
All valid points, certainly fundamentally college is what you make it if you are provided the tools. I feel the same about the Ivy’s as well. Given all that I’ve learned over the last year I don’t see the draw like some.
What may be causing some unpleasant surprises with UC applications is overconfidence and overreaching, driven by the following:
A. Comparing exaggerated weighted GPAs to UC-recalculated weighted-capped GPAs reported in UC admission stats. Many prospective UC applicants on these forums seem to be unaware of the UC weighted-capped GPA calculation that UC web sites generally use unless otherwise stated. So a student whose high school weighted GPA is 4.4 off of an unweighted 3.6 may feel that s/he has a good chance at UCB based on UCB’s 25th-75th GPA range of 4.15-4.30. But his/her true chances may be much worse if his/her UC weighted-capped GPA is more like 3.9.
B. Overreliance on test scores to assess chances, when UCs tend to consider GPA more heavily than test scores. Applicants who are “test score heavy” are especially likely to have disappointing results if they base their reach/match/safety assessments of UCs on their test scores.
C. Competitive majors (commonly CS and engineering majors, but can also be other majors, depending on the campus) can have significantly higher admission selectivity than the campus overall. Applicants aiming for competitive majors may need to aim lower when making their application lists (this is not specific to UCs).
ucb: Good points
What I saw this year, UCB, was inconsistent results with the UCs/CSU’s:
A Mech E applicant rejected by UCSD, but accepted by UCB, UCLA & Ga Tech (OOS).
CS applicant rejected by CSULB but in at UCSB and Smith.
Mech E waitlisted at Davis and in at Stanford
Mech E rejected at UCSD and UCSB and in at Cornell (likely letter)
I agree that STEM majors are seriously impacted, and thus difficult to get into; perhaps that’s the explanation for inconsistencies.
It’s a little conspiratorial, but isn’t it a coincidence that California residents would be shout out of the college in their own back yard and be told to go to the out of state college where they will pay a lot more? Now the colleges and banks can lend a lot more student loans and get more money.
It’s wrong what they’re doing. In 2003 I transferred to UCSB from Ventura College and all I had was a 2.5 GPA.
Prior to 2005 with the opening of UC Merced the last ‘new’ UCs were UCSC, UCI (both in 1965), and UCSD (1960). At that time the state had less than 16 million people. Today with nearly 40 million people and only one new UC the issue is purely supply and demand. The UC system can not meet its’ original charter, nor current one of admissions of the top N % of students. Prop 13 back in the 70s pretty much throttled the system and there is no going back.
With that said the CCC system and the process of feeding into the UC (not Cal State in this discussion) works. My D(19) was a 3.7 UW HS student, did clubs, APs etc. 30 years ago, when I was in HS, this was good enough to get into almost any UC.
Fast forward, she skipped the entire SAT/ACT process and went directly a CCC, where she has a 4.0, and has been accepted to UCSC (Regents & 100% academic costs covered by merit-based grants) She is awaiting decisions by UCB and UCD.
We decided to play the system to win, understanding the long-tail process would ultimately be a financial and academic win-win.
The best thing I heard last week was “Dad, I am happy I went to a community college.”
Well, this is what you get if public universities are banned to use Affirmative Action which greatly puts Asian students in disadvantage.
Do you have problems with Asian students who work hard and rightfully deserve to get into top schools, OP? And you believe many of them are first generational? Asians have been there for more than a few decades.
@sbjdorlo, well the privates would use pretty different criteria to admit than the UCs. For that matter, the CSU’s are a little different as well, and OOS publics seem to be more holistic in their admissions of OOS students than of in-state students. So really only the first applicant (rejected by UCSD, in at Cal and UCLA) is inconsistent. And even there, as engineering at the top UC’s is almost a reach for anyone these days, that’s not too surprising. Nobody bats an eye if someone gets in at Harvard and Princeton but gets rejected by Brown. Engineering and CS at Cal and UCLA (and maybe UCSD as well) probably are as difficult to get in to as the lower Ivies/equivalents these days.
But that’s not what the numbers show. The Master Plan calls for the UC’s to admit the top 12.5% of California high school grads, but the Legislative Analyst reported than in 2015, 21% of California high school graduates applied to the UC’s.
See: http://www.lao.ca.gov/reports/2017/3532/uc-csu-enrollment-capacity-011917.pdf
Bottom line, the UC’s are admitting more than 12.5% of California high school grads, and they do have room to expand – but expansion is taking place on the unpopular Riverside and Merced campuses.
I really think that the best thing that the UC’s could do would be to beef up quality of offerings on those campuses in popular majors – or create new cutting edge programs there – or look for ways to create incentives for faculty and students to choose those campuses.
When UC Irvine opened its law school in 2009 and was still unaccredited, it offered free tuition to its inaugural class. That immediately brought in high stat applicants. Now the school is ranked #21 among law schools nationwideby US News – and well above the UC San Francisco law school (Hastings) which is ranked at #54, despite a clearly desireable location. So in less than a decade the law school went from not existing to bumping against top 20 status. So there are things that can be done to improve the public perception of those campuses – the “middle of nowhere” claim doesn’t hold a lot of weight because there are many very prestigious colleges in rural locations.
“Prior to 2005 with the opening of UC Merced the last ‘new’ UCs were UCSC, UCI (both in 1965), and UCSD (1960). At that time the state had less than 16 million people. Today with nearly 40 million people and only one new UC the issue is purely supply and demand. The UC system can not meet its’ original charter, nor current one of admissions of the top N % of students” (I haven’t been able to edit properly on this site from work in a year. grr…)
@SFBayRecruiter I agree with most of your post, but one small quibble with this is much more than just population has changed since 1965, or even 2005. There’s been a fundamental jump in the baseline achievements of a top or even good candidate. Grades are way up, honors and AP opportunities are way up, EC expectations are unrecognizable to anyone over the age of 40, and to make things look even worse kids are applying at far higher rates than ever before. The UC system, all schools really, are just adjusting to meet the changes in the quality of applicants. Truthfully, would adding three more average schools to the UC system help much? Many are already turning their noses up at Merced, so why would relabeling SJSU or building another greenfield campus make the OP suddenly feel good about (still) not attending UCLA?
Yup. Exactly. My heart aches for normal good kids trying to compete in this new world of super humans.
@PurpleTitan Regarding your comment about how hard it is to get into some of the UC engineering programs, UCSD’s acceptance rate for 2017 according to asee.org was about 27%, surprisingly not that much different than the school as a whole. The year before it was under 22%. The one that might surprise you is UCSB which had an acceptance rate of 15.5% which is about half overall acceptance rate. I heard about that same number 3 years ago there, so it has been fairly consistent. I haven’t seen Cal numbers for a while, but most engineering majors were under 10%. UCLA had a 12% acceptance rate for engineering this year and a few of those majors have been under 10% the last couple of years (Aerospace, CS, ME). Cal Poly also has several engineering majors with acceptance rates in the single digits to 15% range.
Re: paying a lot more by going OOS. That’s not necessarily the case. Yes, someone who is headed to, say, U of Michigan OOS will pay top dollar, but kids who are headed to places like Tulane, Kenyon, Wooster and the like probably have significant merit.
Kids who are headed to auto-stats schools like Bama (and several others) also have significant merit. NMF kids headed to places like UTD, BAMA, UNM, UNLV, ASU Barret, etc, those kids are paying far less than they would at a CSU.
Even UNM with just the Amigo or WUE-plus (OOS tuition waiver) is less than a CSU.
@gallentjill – why would your heart ache for “normal good kids” in California when they have more high quality choices and options than just about anywhere in the country? I don’t get this attitude.
“normal good kids” still will have plenty of good options. Especially in CA with the guaranteed CC-to-UC path available.
The common model in many states is to have one or two big flagships to accommodate all “flagship level” students, similar to states like Arizona. Students attending the one or two big flagships may feel better about themselves than if they were attending the 8th most selective UC or some such, even if the 8th most selective UC is more selective than a first or second flagship like UA or ASU in Arizona. However, for a state with the population of California, that would mean, instead of a 9 campus UC system, there would be just 2 UC campuses of 99,000 undergraduates each or 1 of 198,000 undergraduates.
@PurpleTitan I know they do have options. I worry more about the stress they live under watching all this unfold and comparing themselves to these new standards. I’m glad its not me!
I think in many cases the kids are stressing a lot less than us parents are.