Re: Univ. of Oregon, I think their 78% acceptance rate and relatively low SAT/ACT scores might also have something to do with some OOS students (e.g. CA) going to this college. They probably didn’t have the academic record to go to a UC and top CSU anyways.
just a few comments, Merced can’t just add football and be added to the Pac 12. The Pac 12 has not shown any interest in expanding and if they did they would only accept a school that has a comparable complete athletic program (all sports, stadium size, enrollment, etc… That takes mega mega bucks. It would cost less just giving students free tuition. That would probably increase the numbers. Also, there was a serious movement by the faculty senate at Berkeley 5 or so years ago to do away with football when the program went seriously in the red. It is tough keeping a D1 program in the black, and once they have it, it is impossible not to loose most of the alumni if they attempt to alter. At one time Santa Barbara and Riverside had football but there were less then 300 in the seats for every game. They have since been disbanded. But the quest for D1 is still important as UCSD join the ranks of the sister campuses and moves to D1 by campus vote. They won’t be adding football though.
Another one of the reasons California students are looking at Arizona, Washington State, Oregon State, is the Western College Exchange which provides California kids money to go to a PAC 12 School at nearly a in-state rate, 150% of the cost and sometimes less. OOS kids can come to a Cal State if they are more interested in the sun or a specific major.
@19parent we extensively researched WUE for my son. It’s a O.K. deal if you really don’t get in anywhere in CA that you like, but I wasn’t as impressed by it once I looked further. The only Pac-12 schools in WUE are Washington State and Utah. U of A generally (one major only), ASU (except for a couple of majors not on the Tempe campus), Oregon, Oregon State, UW, CU don’t participate. You’re looking more at Mountain West schools like Colorado State, Montana State, Wyoming. etc. I suppose it was a better deal than paying full freight OOS but you need to know what you’re getting. WUE at Colorado State and Montana State would have been cheaper than Davis for my son (he got the max OOS scholarships/grants) but not cheaper than Cal Poly or any Cal State.
And WUE isn’t encouraged at Utah either, because there are limited slots and it is relatively simple to get in-state tuition after living there for the summer before or after your first year.
“Are Cal kids really voluntarily paying more to go to a better football school?”
A lot of kids do. Probably a smaller percentage of the academically tippy-top kids, however.
“Which costs less: building a world-class football program at Merced, or building more capacity at Cal?”
Getting UCM or UCR in to the P12 any time soon will be essentially impossible.
Even getting them up to DivI would take a large infusion of money.
“Some might say the strategy of building a top football program worked for USC as well as Alabama.”
Most definitely. Also Duke (basketball) and ND (football).
In fact, if you go back farther, football also built up the University of Chicago and HYP, all of whom have won multiple national titles in college football. In fact, HYP are still in the top 10 all time in college football national titles (pretty much all before WWII with the vast majority before WWI). In fact, you can make a strong argument that football dominance (and the resulting alumni financial support) is what moved Yale and Princeton to join Harvard to form HYP rather than Columbia, Penn, or Brown (all founded about the same time as Yale and Princeton).
SC Anteater thanks! that is helpful.
UC Davis is the only UC beyond Cal and UCLA that has football, and it moved up to Div. I about 10 years ago. Having football is nice, but to the best of my knowledge the it has not advanced UCD’s brand all that much. It needs to be in a big time conference for that to happen.
I wish Cal wasn’t so in debt for the stadium so that moving down in football class to where Davis is would be a possibility. Even if they didn’t have that debt there would be a 99.9% chance of that not happening. I’m liking the Big West because there are 4 UCs (soon to be 5 with UCSD), 4 CSUs, and Hawaii and there is a more appropriate level of emphasis on sports.
I don’t know the numbers, but it seems Stanford shot up in popularity when Harbaugh brought them back to prominence in football. Cal either needs to follow their model or move down IMO (from someone who was going to games when Ray Willsey was coach).
Jim Harbaugh definitely did great things for Stanford football. Now back at his alma mater of Michigan. Big West has a good mix of schools in it as well.
@Scipio, yep, UCD isn’t even in FBS, much less a P5 conference.
Sports have helped and will help schools rise in prestige*, but moving up is tough; you have to already be playing big time football.
*Besides ND, Duke, USC (and UChicago and HYP and arguably UMich in the past), being good at football has also helped OSU and PSU rise immensely in desirability. OSU was open admissions in the '70’s (and maybe '80’s as well) when a bunch of other OH publics were more renown in various fields but now they are seen as the most desirable OH public in no small part thanks to Buckeye football. PSU was seen as an ag school in the middle of nowhere when Paterno became coach. Now it’s seen as a desirable dream school to tons of teenagers in NJ and other places along the East Coast despite still being in the middle of nowhere.
It is difficult to keep up with this thread but I’ve read probably 50% of the posts.
Has anyone questioned how universities are evaluating or ranking high school education now that API is gone? The “tippy top” “super smart” “high achieving kids” at one high school aren’t viewed as the same “tippy top” “super smart” “high achieving kids” at another high school. Could the change in acceptance from one HS to another be because the way that the UCs evaluate high schools has changed?
I think the frustration is real here in Texas too when your son or daughter has good grades and good scores but does not get into UT or Texas A&M. They used the top ten percent rule to create a more diverse college and I think it has worked but it pits larger, more difficult high schools against small schools. For instance, most of the kids at our high school have AP classes, calculus, chemistry etc and if you have a 4.5 you are not in the top 10%. If you had a 4.5 at the high school that is 15 minutes away, you would be in the top 5% and would get in everywhere. So, you have a lot of people whose whole family went to UT and their kids cannot get in even though they pay taxes and have lived here their whole lives. Also, they can charge out of state and foreign students more to attend their schools so it makes sense that they want those kids over your kid because they can charge more. So, you see so many kids attending OSU, OU, LSU, Ole Miss, etc. because they cannot get into the main Texas schools and it is causing angst. People are angry here.
A lot of the kids leaving our state are well-rounded kids who may not have had time to do all AP classes because they were soccer players or softball players or football players. It is a difficult topic but when your kid does not get in and he has worn an Aggie cap his whole life, it makes you mad. We do not give much money to them.
@woodlandsmom I feel your pain and completely understand the frustration, I just feel the game has changed for certain desirable schools and if the end goal is to attend X in-state university, the student needs to adjust accordingly. For example, D used to play year-round travel softball but gave it up at the end of freshman year to focus on school academics. She still plays HS ball but it does not have the same commitment that travel ball does. It’s unfortunate but there is no way she could take 9 APs in HS and play her sport year round.
There is a corporate book called “Who Moved My Cheese?” and to summarize, when your cheese moves (i.e. college admission requirements change), one needs to adapt quickly or be left behind.
Hey, I am back on this thread as we just went on a tour of UCSC (D was accepted as a CCC transfer, Regents, etc.) She is holding on a final decision based on Y/N from UCB.
I was thinking about the ‘name recognition’ aspect of the UCs and I believe that the visibility of NCAA sports on TV has a LOT to do with ‘prestige’. I’d venture to guess that beyond the hard-core academically minded fields (tech, law, etc.) a school’s ranking among the rest of the non-CA population has a LOT to do with how recognized their sports teams are.
As an example, CMU, Caltech, Cooper Union (wow all “c” schools) have crazy smart students, are tough to get into, etc., yet probably have almost no name recognition. I know them well due to my working in the tech sector.
So a UCM, UCSC, UCSF (yes only a grad school), all seem to get poo-poo’ed by kids and parents alike because they are not a ‘premier UC’. I think we are all REALLY short-sighted in thinking this. The ten UC schools are as a whole among the top universities in the world. Each school has their top programs and students and parents alike should focus on which school matches the academic/vocational goals that are long-term.
I wouldn’t say that UCSF is not a premier school-it’s in the Top 5 of medical schools. Add to it the location and a roughly ~1% acceptance rate…some applicants may prefer it to Harvard Med.
@SFBayRecruiter did you confuse UC Hastings (the law school) with UCSF (the med school)? Because no pre-med would look down on UCSF.
“yet probably have almost no name recognition”
Caltech has no name recognition?? In what world is that ???
“So a UCM, UCSC, UCSF (yes only a grad school), all seem to get poo-poo’ed by kids and parents alike because they are not a ‘premier UC’”
UCSF is a MEDICAL school. not a UG school.
I suggest you double check your facts first before you post on this forum.
I seriously doubt that sports has anything to do with the prestige or desirability of Berkeley. The men’s rugby team (which I believe is technically a club team playing at the D1 level) is about the only one to have won a championship in recent years. Oh, maybe golf or swimming pulled one off as well. I can’t quite recall. Major athletics, with some rare exceptions, has never been Berkeley’s claim to fame since the 50s.
@Hamurtle not at all - My comment is that those that are not in a particular field, seem to put certain UCs on a pedestal, and I think that is based on NCAA athletics/recognition. I am in the tech field, have friends who are Mds, etc., so I tend to ‘rank’ the UC schools much differently than a corn farmer in Nebraska (no offense to any corn farmer reading this.)
UCSC is a great example. If you are into Astrophysics or Marine Biology, UCSC is top university worldwide. We are talking top five. Yet that is known by only those in those fields. Ask that same farmer and they will say Santa what?
UCSF is an AMAZING Med school.
@menloparkmom please read my comment in context. Caltech is VERY well known among the fields of study and industries that students move to. Due to its size, the number of grads is much smaller than Cal or UCLA, and they don’t have any teams that play on TV. See my corn farmer analogy - again no disrespect to the corn farmers reading this.
NCAA D1 participation generates name recognition - It shouldn’t generate academic recognition, but I do think it does.
@AboutTheSame - Berkely Rugby is a really interesting anomaly among sports. Yes, they are a club team, and yes they have achieved a national championship. They ALSO are the main financial supporter of the women’s gymnastics and I think the women’s volleyball team. Yes, a club team financially supports two NCAA D1A teams. I think that is a testament to just how good the school is.
Sports, in general, is an interesting aspect of the top universities. The top schools in terms of Olympic medals are USC, Stanford, UCLA, Cal. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_universities_with_Olympic_medals) Two private, two public, all California.
Top schools for NCAA Championships
Stanford, UCLA, USC (Cal is #10)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NCAA_schools_with_the_most_NCAA_Division_I_championships
Athletics and Academics at the very top universities are intertwined. The very top students who possess the combination of world-class athletics and academics go to the schools with the programs that have the best chance of optimizing their performance on and off the field, get them exposed to the networks they need, etc.
I think it would be nieve to say that there is no ‘they are better by association’ for all academic and athletics at those schools. Likewise, it is not that other schools are inferior by lack of association, it is just that they simply do not get the name recognition (and therefore prestige).
This is a case of "perception is reality in the eyes of the beholder’