<p>Barrons - the schools have NOT done well in the pass decade. All districts have been under the qualified economic offer - QEO. The QEO allows district to raise salary and benefits no more that 3.2% each year. The increase cost of health care has usually eaten up the amount allowed for raises.</p>
<p>I would like to know how high the bar is for true oos applicants vs. the wisconsin and minnie students. I asked the admin. dept. and they said the stats were combined. ( Great non-answer) I understand that in state gets 75% of the slots, but people have said it’s the same. I can not believe that the in state student average profile is anywhere close to the oos students. 48 states competing for 1250 slots? As an alum and now a Cal. dad, my kids public hs here is far superior to any wisc. high school i have heard of. Plenty of relatives still in wisc. with hs students. My son’s hs senior class has 660 students, a 3.77 gets you the 29% in rank. 33 ap courses offered, at least 25 will go ivy, stanford, cal, mit. I don’t think homestead can produce that kind of talent. His friend has a 4.92 w , 16 ap courses, and is the 21st ranked 17 y.o. junior tennis player in the nation and Stanford said, Yawn, no thanks. H.s. sports are the same way. Carson Palmer and Mark Sanchez both came out of this conference. My co-workers son was the 21st player selected in the bb 2001 draft by the rangers, and he was picked 3rd on his h.s. team. 2 pitchers went #9 and # 13. Does anyone know how much higher the admission bar is for oos students?</p>
<p>This is very helpful. I am considering transferring to University of Wisconsin, Madison from Minnesota and the main reason I want to is because my university is being cut so much. Haha</p>
<p>I visited the school last month but didn’t really get answers on cuts.</p>
<p>Yes Cali has some of the best and many of the worst HSs in the US. On common public testing Wisconsin does much better on average. Also the grading in Cali seems much easier. It often seems half the students get 4.0s. Really–everyone is that good? </p>
<p>There was a long article that analyzed instate vs OOS admissions and found no significant disadvantages for either a few years ago. That could be changing now but for a decade there has been no major difference.</p>
<p>[Wisconsin</a> Alumni Association - Getting In: Not So Secret Admissions Process](<a href=“http://www.uwalumni.com/admissions.aspx]Wisconsin”>http://www.uwalumni.com/admissions.aspx)</p>
<p>Barrons, thanks for the article. I am in Orange county and my kids hs is brutally competitive in both academics and sports. Kind of like comparing a Milwaukee hs to whitefish bay or homestead i guess. Both of my kids had a 31 act, no practice and both were ranked 29th% out of 660 students. Both had a 3.7 gpa. My opinion is gpa can vary but act scores are the real deal. I know the bar is higher for oos admissions, love to see current stats on it. UW admissions office just danced around the subject and would not answer the question. And yes, I agree in state students should have it easier.</p>
<p>My basis for saying Cali grading is soft is looking at some of the UC campuses that are not the Big 3. You have uw gpas near a 4.0 and 90% in the top 10% of the class yet they score an average of 1000-1150 on the SAT, really. In most high schools there is some relationship and not many 4.0s are making 1050 on the SAT. So I suspect softer grading on average in California.</p>
<p>I assume You are referring to the outdated sat scale. An 1150 sat old scale is a 1723/2400 current scale. It takes at least a 1900/2400 to be considered for a UC, depending on ethnicity. The only UC’s that are easier to get into are riverside and merced. Cal, Ucla, san diego are the top. Look at last year’s profile for davis, and santa barbara, not much different. Santa cruz is next. Easy is of course a relative term. 1 of every 9 college bound students live in California because 1 in 9 U.S. citizens have a California drivers license. Simple supply and demand. That is why so many California students are heading out of state. It’s a huge advantage to be a minority for acceptance to a UC. The ELC program goes from 4% this year to 9% forcing more and more California students oos.</p>
<p>Most schools still place much more weight on the “old” core scores. Yes, they are finally getting enough good students that the grade vs score gap is closing but just go back 5 years and look at places like Irvine and UCSB. Now those 4.0 1100 kids are being forced to go to the state U’s like SDSU and LBSU. There were extended discussions of this around here a few years ago because having everyone in the “top 10%” was giving second tier UC schools an unwarranted boost in the US News rankings.
For example in the 2005 CDS for UCI it shows 98% in the top 10% with an average M+V of about 1210. Most schools with 90%+ in the Top 10% would have a MV average in the 1350 range and UP. I’d challenge you to find any non UC school with 90% plus in the top 10% and an SAT average so low.
Here’s 2000-2008 data-go to end of tables for overall scores–bumping right around 1200 level right along</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.oir.uci.edu/adm/IA07-fall-fr-mean-sat-by-gender-2000-2008.pdf[/url]”>http://www.oir.uci.edu/adm/IA07-fall-fr-mean-sat-by-gender-2000-2008.pdf</a></p>
<p>“when all else fails, manipulate the numbers” Nobody talks about the old sat scale. Someone decided that writing and comp. is important in life. The sat scale of 2400 is the only measure anymore. Again, it depends on which region and high school of any state. It also depends on the state. “Kalifornia” is about as socialist as France. Alot of UC seats are taken by ELC students who are crushed academically the first semester. That’s a state decision which will only gets worse next year, going from 4% to 9%. FYI, the ELC program means if you graduate in the top 9% of you h.s. class you are assured a spot at a UC. That would be the same as someone from Kewaskum or Clintonville h.s. getting a slot at Madison over a Homestead grad. who was not in the top 9%, but took ap’s, and had much higher act, sat scores. Great system for social justice? Any in state system should be based on the best available talent. The sheer population of Cal. vs. anywhere is overwhelming. Orange county has 3 million people, the UC system has 220,000 under grads. Both of my kids had a 31 act and in the 1900’s sat and both had a class rank in the 29th% out of 660. I know relatives and friends who are seniors at Wi. h.s. right now. Dominican, whitefish bay, private , 12/121, 3.7 gpa, took the act 5 times with prep for a 25. Now who will dominate in college, the 31 act ranked 200/660 with 9 ap’s or the 25 act, ranked 12/121 with no ap’s? Homestead has gone away from class rank for this very reason. If UW treated all applicants the same, the oos students would take most of the slots. I see no reason why UW can not disclose the oos profile seperate. It’s a state funded Uni. so in state should get preference, I would love to see how much higher the bar is for oos.</p>
<p>They do disclose it. It does not matter if you use either scale but the new one only goes back a couple years. They still report the old one so you can draw much better trends over 10 years than a few. Sheesh. Manipulate–that was insulting as adding the third score just tracks the other two. 1200 kids are now 1800–big whoop.
I can say that the vast majority of academic awards earned while at UW go to instate kids so they are holding their own with the “superior” OOS kids.</p>
<p>I just got wait listed to UW Madison. Does anyone know how many people they list and how many they usually accept. Thanks!</p>
<p>Extremely variable.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>[News:</a> Waiting list update and FAQ - Office of Admissions at the University of Wisconsin-Madison](<a href=“http://www.admissions.wisc.edu/news/waitListFAQ.php]News:”>http://www.admissions.wisc.edu/news/waitListFAQ.php)</p>
<p>2001-2005
0</p>
<p>2006
“limited”</p>
<p>2007
0</p>
<p>2008
800
(375 out of 950 by this press release, [UW-Madison</a> admits wait-listed students (May 22, 2008)](<a href=“http://www.news.wisc.edu/15272]UW-Madison”>UW-Madison admits wait-listed students). Apparently they must have admitted more later.)</p>
<p>2009
600
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-wisconsin-madison/733869-waitlist-used-fill-freshman-class-uw-madison.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-wisconsin-madison/733869-waitlist-used-fill-freshman-class-uw-madison.html</a></p>
<p>2010
0</p>
<p>See also:
[Bad</a> news for UW-Madison waiting list hopefuls](<a href=“http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/education/university/article_f0341dac-69df-11df-82c7-001cc4c002e0.html]Bad”>Bad news for UW-Madison waiting list hopefuls)</p>
<p>Curiously UW Common Data Sets say that the school does not practice waitlisting. There must be some technical distinction they are making here.</p>
<p>Regarding WI-CA high school comparisons. This is a tricky business because there are so many confounding variables. The population of CA is about seven times that of WI and no doubt there are areas in CA where demographics concentrate high-scoring students in a much wider area than in WI as well as bigger areas of low-scoring students. On the other hand CA has a much more diverse population which presents special challenges to its educational system. And truly comparable statistics are hard to come by. Standardized tests are not taken by every student and so have a selective tester problem. GPA comparisons are even worse: not only do grading standards vary wildly but grading systems do, too: weighted vs. unweighted, different weighting systems (a 4.92 is an impossible GPA in many systems), etc.</p>
<p>Here is one slice of insight: AP exam scores from CA and WI students.
<a href=“College Board - SAT, AP, College Search and Admission Tools”>College Board - SAT, AP, College Search and Admission Tools;
<a href=“College Board - SAT, AP, College Search and Admission Tools”>College Board - SAT, AP, College Search and Admission Tools;
<p>In 2010, CA had 280,770 students taking 514,150 AP exams. WI had 29,382 students taking 47,552 AP exams.</p>
<p>Overall mean score for CA students was 2.92, for WI students 3.15. If we want to eliminate some of the diversity issue, we can focus on scores for white students only. CA: 3.19, WI: 3.19</p>