<p>To respond to your thread title I’ll go out on a limb and be direct with an opinion - </p>
<p>** Yes, I think it’s wrong to discourage her from attending a UC. </p>
<p>Note the wording. If you ‘discourage her’ from attending then you’re likely talking them down, knocking them, trying to come up with reasons why they’re a poor choice for her. Maybe you’re doing this and maybe not. I think at this point, unless you have a major reason why you think she absolutely shouldn’t attend a UC, and I can’t think of what that could possibly be, you should be careful in this area since if she starts to actually want to go to one, or if it ends up being your best option financially, she may end up with a chip on her shoulder if she ends up going to one or thinking that ‘you’ have a problem with her choice - i.e. that she’s somehow not living up to what you want her to do.</p>
<p>I think at this point the most sensible thing to do is to explore the various options including the UCs, privates, and I suppose an OOS public although that makes no sense to me unless it’s a special program not offered at a UC. I think it’s fine to discourage her from any Uni that’s clearly not a reasonable match for her on the academic level or that ends up to be financially unfeasible but if you do that then make it clear what the reason for the discouragement is and make it substantive - not something like whether she thinks she can fit in if she’s fair skinned and quirky (I guarantee she wouldn’t be the only one in that category).</p>
<p>I think she’ll have a tough time finding an OOS public option that’s as good as the UC option. There are many people in other states who WISH they could go to a UC without being OOS.</p>
<p>See if she can head over to UCSD around noon on a weekday and wander around. Go to the bookstore and wander around and go grab something to eat at the Price Center and eat the lunch at one of the outside tables and observe people. If you pay attention you’ll see a variety of people - many races and ethnicities, many styles of dress, different economic backgrounds, etc. There’s a wider variety in these areas, and importantly, larger numbers of them, than at small colleges.</p>
<p>One common thread among these students is that they all performed very well in HS in order to be offered admission in the first place. The same is true with UCLA, UCB and other UCs.</p>