@LucieTheLakie No, I knew you thought it was topnotch. Just tough that you/someone had to defend it.
The truth about UCLA and UCB are much more complicated. The grad schools are excellent but the undergraduate college has changed radically in the past 15 years. For a non AA applicant admission to UCLA or UCB is indeed one of the tougher state schools to gain admission. But the hidden truth about both schools is that they take a very large proportion of the graduating class as transfers mostly from CC. For these students all that matters are the CC grades(SAT scores are not used) and they are vastly less qualified academically than students at the top universities. It is common place for graduates of both UCLA and UCB to have had SAT scores of 1600-1700. The transfer policy is a unfair because they count grades from a CC to have exactly the same weight as grades from a top 20 private university. The practical impact of this policy is to assure that virtually every transfer student comes from the local CC where getting a 4.0 is not a challenge. A student can still get a great education at these schools but the student body today is not remotely comparable to the top schools.
@SAY, the UC’s have taken a ton of transfers for decades now (so does USC; and a big chunk of Columbia’s undergrad student body is in SGS, which isn’t nearly as hard to get in as in to the fall freshman class).
As for being academically qualified, I believe that @ucbalumnus has said that the CC transfers actually get higher GPA’s than the freshmen admits.
In any case, that’s why I prefer to rank/tier by alumni achievements. Arguing over entrance criteria is silly; ultimately, it’s the opportunities, alums turned out, and research and other contributions to society that matters.
The point remains true that a large percent of the student body has stats far below the level of any truly elite school. This entire site exits specifically to discuss the factors of entrance criteria so it’s hardly silly. The alums of the top schools vastly outperform the grads of UCLA by any objective criteria. The supreme court is an example. Go look at where they went to college. This does not mean UCLA isn’t a fine school and has many great high achieving graduates but there is no comparison to the top schools. Check out this list and notice that many tiny LAC’s produce far more Rhodes Scholars with a fraction of the graduates and the top ives hundreds compared to 11 for UCLA. This is well known and exactly why most of readers of this site are focused on the top schools.
http://www.rhodesscholar.org/assets/uploads/RS_Number%20of%20Winners%20by%20Institution_1_15_16.pdf
@SAY, entrance difficulty matters when you are crafting a application strategy.
Trying to say that they matter elsewhere is, IMO, silly (and just because many people fixate on them doesn’t make it less so).
As for bodypart-waving contests, for sure, wave ahead. I tier one way and you certainly should feel free to rank/tier as you see fit (though you’ll find that we’re likely in agreement: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/1893105-ivy-equivalents-ranking-based-on-alumni-outcomes-take-2-1-p1.html). I have to say that I find your indignation odd, though. Who here is saying that UCLA is equal to the tippy-top privates? And if you think that the way the UC’s take in transfers is unfair, man, there’s so much that’s “unfair” about college admissions that I can point to. Pretty much nobody in the top tier in the US admits solely by objective consistent criteria.
I agree that college application strategies are not remotely the same as life outcomes but that is not the purpose of CC. And I said by every objective measure the very top schools have dramatically better outcomes for the highest end positions. It’s just a fact that can not be refuted. On the other hand a large percent of the elite graduates go on good but more regular jobs(doctors,business,dentists, law) where their undergraduate degree serves as little more than an expensive stepping stone. No one cares where their doctor went to college and few care where they went to med school as long as in the USA. I am simply pointing out the facts and have no indignation what so ever. As for the UC method of taking in transfers I offer no opinion on “fairness”. But what I am pointing out is the very hidden truth about how the top UC’s are legally getting around prop 209 and in the process are dramatically lowering the overall standard of the graduates of these schools. The employers are well aware that a graduate of UCLA or UBC can range from brilliant to barely above average intelligence. If a kid is smart and wants to go to med school UCLA is indeed a very good choice but most of the elite jobs in many fields are disproportional filled by graduates of the very top schools. Just look at the politicians for example. Three of the current nominees went to elite schools. Most of their staffs went to elite schools and so did a huge percent of the top government officials. The inbred nature of these relationships is common knowledge. Does it really matter? Is it worth the money? Who can say. But it is for precisely these reasons that the competition to gain admittance to HPYS is so intense.
@SAY, you said “The transfer policy is a unfair because they count grades from a CC to have exactly the same weight as grades from a top 20 private university.”
That isn’t offering an opinion on fairness?
In any case,
- I don’t disagree with your points, but
- I’m not sure why you keep repeating them again and again. I asked before, but you failed to answer: Who here is saying that UCLA is equal to the tippy-top privates?
@PurpleTitan I think it’s implied in post #96 to #100 that UCLA is just as top notch as other top notch colleges. Just noticed @SAY started their counter argument in #101.
@panpacific, I see people saying UCLA is “plenty good enough” (which it may be for some folks), that it’s a top research U (which it is), and that some folks choose a state school over a top private (which also happens).
I don’t see anyone saying that the undergraduate experience at UCLA is just as top notch as at top privates. It’s certainly different.
Oh, for crying out loud. Three THOUSAND four-year institutions in the US, and some CC folks are going to get bent out of shape because others had the audacity to suggest that the national universities ranked 20 and 23 in the nation are allowed to be spoken in the same breadth as the schools ranked 1-5?
Let’s all debate the TOPNOTCHINESS of various schools now.
Do you think it’s a fair method to count grades from say NU or Cornell in math, science or anything else to be equivalent to grades in CC. No other top school does it that way. So Purple why did UCLA and UCB decide to do this? What was their purpose? Most other schools also use the SAT scores for transfers. So in this case I was talking about actual provably objectively unfair policy not some abstract argument about fairness. UC’s purpose of course was to legally get around prop 209 which they did. pan pacific answered your other obvious question. I stated right up front that the top UC’s have great and sometimes world class graduate programs but this discussion is about undergraduates. A roomful of undergraduate students at HPYS and at UCLA are a very very different group of students with only a small overlap.
@LucieTheLakie don’t kill the messenger… 
In life, sometimes there is something to be said for something being “good enough” - not perfect but something that will get you where you need to go. Many times, that is the sweet spot. The best fit college is not always the highest ranked. The prettiest, most handsome spouse is not always the best spouse. The rankings are a guide, but an imperfect one. As @LucieTheLakie says, there are thousands of colleges out there . Successful people are being educated at a wide range of schools. And some very successful people haven’t even needed a degree.
Lucie this tread started out as a discussion of Money’s top college list. No one is bent out of shape or even the tiniest bit ruffled. This is an unemotional discussion about facts. Colleges 20-23 are very good schools as I said right up front. Go back and re-read from post 68 and you will see the conversation wandered from a flawed analysis of why small class size is mathematically responsible for a lower admit rates to discussions about whether the top private schools are worth the money for the group of affluent but non-rich families making between 180-300k. One should not confuse the quality of the facility and teaching of say UCLA versus HPYS with the composition of the student body. The quality of the professors and the quality of the teaching are actually quite similar but the composition of the study body is vastly different as anyone who has a kid at these schools can tell you. Does it matter if to your child if numerous kids down the hall are olympians, have won major awards, and almost all have average SAT’s sections close to 800? For most kids it probably doesn’t matter but such an environment is as different from UCLA as UCLA is from the typical state school.
@SAY,
Well, it seems like we are making progress.
So we seem to have established two things:
- You do indeed have an opinion about the fairness about the UC transfer process, even though you stated later that you didn’t. (BTW, if you care about my opinion, it’s that any admissions criteria that isn’t completely based off of the same standard for all, such as, for instance, scores off the same test, is subjective and potentially “unfair”). Also, for your information, when Cornell hands out guaranteed transfers, the kid who gets that just has to hit a certain GPA his first year, regardless of difficulty of major or school; it could be at the toughest possible school in the country or the easiest CC. Is that fair? Also, When Cornell is considering transfers, it’s easier to get in to the contract colleges there if you went to a CC/SUNY that already has an articulation agreement with Cornell and got a GPA above their stated hurdle (closer to 4.0 is better) than if you went somewhere else that was much tougher and got a lower GPA. Is that fair?
- You like to repeat the same thing 3 or 4 times even though I don't see anyone here arguing the opposite of your point by saying that the quality of the undergrad student body, from top to bottom, is the exact same quality at UCLA as at a top private.
Of course, no one is saying that the “quality of the undergrad student body, from top to bottom, is the exact same quality at UCLA as at a top private.” UCLA is public , has some responsibility to the citizens of California and its’ diverse population, has lots of spaces to fill and cannot just select for the superstars that would probably do well at most places… I’m sure the “top” students at UCLA are doing quite well. As they do at many universities. Tim Kaine , just picked as the VP candidate, went to Mizzou as an undergraduate, did very well there, and then went on to Harvard Law.
I find it strange that the salaries from so many schools- from good to middling schools- seem to so often be clustered in the $50/$60k range. Really? Graduates from Podunk U. make only $10k less than graduates from Yale?
"Graduates from Podunk U. make only $10k less than graduates from Yale? " That is part of the strangeness of it all, that some people actually think a kid should be paid some premium, just out of college, just for going to a school like Yale. And I say that, with Yale grads in the family.
The kids that will be advantaged by a degree from a place like Yale, are the ones most interested in things like finance, consulting, etc. If they are interested in these things and have some aptitude, employers will seek them out. That is nothing new.
I know four people who have degrees in French from Wisconsin, Wyoming, Wesleyan and Metro State in Denver. French helped 3 of the 4 get their first jobs out of college, but all 4 went on to get grad degrees in non-French courses after working for a couple of years. The one who went to Metro makes, by far, the most of the 4. Her MBA is from U of Phoenix, paid for by her employer. She started college in the honors program at U of Chicago, but chose to moved to Denver, worked, went to school part time, worked some more, got a job with a small French telecom company and her career grew from there.
Many paths to a career, and no reason to think going to Wesleyan is going to get you 5 steps ahead. French is French.
Whoa! Wait a minute! I have yet to see one word of explanation as to why my analysis of the mathematical relationship betwwen class size and admit rate is “flawed.” Let’s go over this once again. Suppse you have two schools, A and B. Each gets 30,000 applications, each has a 50% yield, but A has a freshman class of 1,500 to fill while B has a freshman class of 3,000. Then B will need to admit exactly twice as many applicants as A to fill its entering class. A will admit 3,000, which with a 50% yield will get it 1,500 matriculants. B will admit 6,000 to get its 3,000. So A’s admit rate will be 10% and B’s will be 20%. What, pray tell, is “flawed” in that analysis.
Note that I never said class size is the only factor influencing the admit rate. It also depends no the number of applicants and the school’s yield, and these things can vary for any number of reasons. LACs get far fewer applicants than research universities for many reasons: they offer fewer programs and majors, they don’t have as much depth in some fields, even the best of them don’t have the same kind of name recognition as leading research universities, many students want to be in a somewhat larger and more multi-faceted institution, and so on. (Other students strongly prefer the intimacy of LACs, but that is distinctly a minority position judging by the numbers of people who apply to and attend LACs as a class). But the fact that you can point to some small schools that don’t have low admit rates and some large schools that do have low admit rates doesn’t come close to refuting my mathematical point.