I think you really have to look at each school individually. All UC Schools are not created equaly. I wonder what the numbers would look like if you exclude Riverside, Merced and Santa Cruz. Also, I think if you kid did not get into the school they wanted and it appeared they were at the high end of the GPA and ACT scale you might feel different. If you had a choice between diversity and your child not getting accepted which would you pick.
Isn’t the idea behind deversity for people to understand and accept other cultures and religions. Wouldn’t a better way to do this be to send more students overseas for a semester or to other states to study for a semester? How much is enough devirsity. Isn’t 10% enough. As California taxpayers do we have the right to expect that the UC Schools educate California kids? Otherwise aren’t they just acting like private schools. My daughter was on the UC Davis wait list. 3,000 students accepted being on the wait list. If 1,500 less OOS or International students get in then she has a 50% chance. Weren’t the UC schools originally formed to educate California students. I know that if we limit OOS and International to 10% it will not increase the California acceptance rate that much but it is still 1,500 to 2,000 students per school.
To me its not a question of getting quality kids or even diversity, California has plenty of both, its a question of getting dollars.
Not really. The reason many people caution against applying to UC from OOS is for the lack of finaid for OOS students.
They already do. Every UC predominantly educates California kids.
Competitive private schools in California (e.g. Stanford, USC, Santa Clara, Claremonts, Oxy) all have much higher percentages of OOS students than the UCs. In fact, they are all majority OOS, or close to it.
Your stats are wrong (again). If UCD had decided to limit non-residents to 10% of the class, then that would have open up maybe 1,250 slots for CA residents . But based on data for previous years, they would have had 10,000 wait-list candidates lined up to fill those slots – not 3,000.
3,000 is just the number of candidates who accepted a slot on the waitlist. There would have been far more candidates (probably about 100%) who would have been willing to consider an offer of admission.
You have to admit that the non-residents pay for those slots, fair and square. They willingly accept high tuition costs and no financial aid. So you are proposing to remove tens of thousands of high-paying, profit-making non-residents, and to replace them with an equal number of low-paying, loss-making CA-residents.
There is no way that the UCs are going for that deal – unless it is accompanied by a clear alternative source of revenue to compensate for the massive loss of tuition.
It’s true that the UC system could function with only 10% non-resident enrollment, because they did so in the past. However, it’s also true that UCs also had more state funding in the past. The state could cut a deal here: more funding in return for more in-state slots. This would probably result in lower stats and prestige for the UCs (they get better students when they recruit worldwide, rather than just statewide). However, I personally could live with that, because I think it makes sense for a public university to sacrifice prestige for the sake of accessibility.
So if you want more in-state slots, start by figuring out how to pay for them. Again, the non-residents paid for their slots, fair and square. You can’t just swipe them for free.
Hasn’t the cap already been decided? 18% OOS cap except at UCB/UCLA/UCSD which is whatever the percentage was as of 2017. Probably in the low 20’s.
Yes, there is now an OOS cap in place at the UCs, and it is one of the most restrictive in the country. To my knowledge, the only lower caps are at UT-Austin and in the University of North Carolina system.
It is 18% at UCD, UCSB, UCSC, UCR, and UCM. At the other four campuses (including UCI), it is capped at 2017-18 numbers, which I expect are in the 19-24% range. I think the idea is that this represents a systemwide cap of approximately 20%.
Incidentally, the caps are for total undergraduate enrollment, not just freshman enrollment. The UCs admit large numbers of transfer students, not just freshmen, and the transfers are heavily in-state. So the UCs can actually exceed their caps in terms of freshman admissions, because they will be below the cap in terms of transfer admissions, so the total undergraduate enrollment will still meet cap requirements.
The issue here is not whether there should be a cap, but whether the cap should be even lower, perhaps at a systemwide level of 10% as opposed to 20%. But your question (“Hasn’t the cap already been decided?”) is probably the exact response that many state legislators would have. They just cut a deal with the UCs last year, and probably aren’t in any hurry to reopen it – especially because any deal to lower the cap would likely involve more state funding, which in turn would mean higher taxes.
Correct but only 3,000 accepted and my daughter was one. Not all people are going to accept a spot on the wait list. So if 1,250 come off the wait list then that is better than none. Still gives my daughter a better shot to get in. Whatever percent it is or how you look at it. In my opinion it shouldn’t be about money. The number of out of state and out of country students have increased 4 fold since 2008 and the UC System openly admits it is because they needed the money. I just think they should have done what it takes to deal with it and continue to fight for more funding but not change their model. I don’t think it was about diversity. Plus who says how much is enough deversity. They should have made the cutbacks necessary. Yes, this may have had a negative effect on the quality of education. But things in life aren’t always perfect or fair. There are a number of well qualied California kids being closed out of the UC System. It could be 1 or it could be 6,000. I still think the UC schools were designed to educate California kids. I think it is a good idea to have some out of state kids but I think the threshold should be 10%. That said, this is a Democracy and if the voters say I am wrong then I am OK with it. This has nothing to do with numbers so if my numbers are off I am sorry. But it is more about principal and doing the right thing. Maybe my daughter would not have been admitted but another California student would have.
I understand your point. But I think the limit should be at the Freshman entry point because then more California kids that want to go straight to the UC System, but end up having to go to the community college route, will be able to. Let’s set up a better program for the out of state and country to go to the community colleges. Yes, maybe the demand will be less but I am sure enough students will want to come. We can let them apply to the honors program and TAG program. We can charge more at the community college level. Lastly, you mentioned that most of the transfer students were from in state and this was effecting the percent. Why? Are students transferring or failing out and creating the room. I thought the UC System had such a high rate of graduation. Whatever the reason I would rather the space be created at the Freshman level so they can get the full 4 year experience.
The UC and CSU systems by design have more capacity for upper division students than lower division students, so that space is available for junior transfers, without relying on attrition.
Reallocating UC and CSU capacity to accommodate more lower division students would reduce the number of upper division students that they can accommodate, thereby reducing the overall capacity to grant bachelor’s degrees, while “wasting” (for the purpose of helping students earn bachelor’s degrees) lower division capacity at the lower cost community colleges.
The UCs strongly favor California Community College students in transfer admissions (this is part of the Higher Education Master Plan). And the vast majority of CCC students are state residents. People often come to California from out of state to attend 4-year schools – but it’s much less common to come from to California from out of state to attend 2-year schools.
No, there aren’t.
To the best of my knowledge, the UC System continues to offers a spot to every qualified student – in other words, every student that is eligible in either the local or statewide contexts. This represents approximately 12.5% of high school seniors, as per the Master Plan.
Now, it’s true that such applicants can’t count on getting into the most popular campuses. But they will still get in at UC Santa Cruz and/or UC Riverside and/or UC Merced. And in that case, they aren’t getting “closed out of the UC System”.
Look, I get it. My well-qualified nephew recently applied to multiple UCs, but did not get into the preferred mid-tier campus where he had family connections. There was general shock and surprise. There are lots of stories like this every year now.
But – my nephew did get into UCSC and UCM. He probably would have been admitted to UCR too, but he didn’t apply there. That’s not getting “closed out of the UC System”.
Note that UCs do not have legacy preference.
Yes, we all know that. Regardless, if your extended family has a longstanding tradition of attending and supporting a particular school, and then you become the first member of the family to get rejected by that school, it stings particularly hard.
@parent90276 How many highly capable OOS students do you actually think would want to attend a CCC? Why on earth would I as a parent be willing to send my student to California to attend a community college when they could stay at home, attend our local community college for less money. There is no incentive to attend a CCC; possibly a guaranteed transfer admission to a specific UC might do it, but even that is not particularly appealing.
I am from Texas, my top 12% class ranked DD2018 received a guaranteed transfer offer for UT-A, which she declined. There is nothing so special about UT-A that made her want to postpone her full participation in campus life or compromise her academic choices; especially when she received full offers of admission from other equal, or even better, ranked private and public universities that equalled nearly the same money. Fortunately, my DD2018 received a full admissions offer at TAMU (after holisitic review) that she was thrilled to accept; other wise she would have been off to one of the other 7 state flagships (University of Florida, Florida State, U of South Carolina, University of Colorado-Boulder, Auburn University, University of Mississippi, LSU) that were happy to have her and made her a full admission offer, often with money that made it within spitting distance of tuition at an in-state school.
We are in the same boat here in Texas as CA, too many students, not enough slots at the “desired” campuses. Frankly, my issue is not with the OOS students, because, IMO, that is not a big enough sum of students to make a real difference in the admissions game and I value geographic diversity. My issue, here in Texas, is the inane 10% (6% at UT-A) auto admit rule. https://apps.texastribune.org/price-of-admission/getting-to-graduation/ & https://apps.texastribune.org/price-of-admission/?_ga=2.72081040.2011567676.1530974082-691252047.1530974082 The whole reason the guaranteed transfer programs exist at UT-A and TAMU are to fill the spots that are vacated by the auto admit freshman who were unprepared and fail or drop out. Nobody really wants to be some school’s second choice, back up plan. One of the bonuses to the auto admit rules is that the GPA and test scores at the directional/“second tier” schools increase; so maybe we need to do a better job of selling those schools to our students and to the companies that hire interns and graduates!
Also, by and large, I don’t think OOS students are choosing the “desired” UC schools because they want to enjoy the fun & sun in Cali, lol (sure it’s a perk); OOS students are choosing those UC schools because of the academic reputations. If you want to limit the number of OOS students (full pay) you are likely going to have to accept that your cost of tuition is going to increase to fill the gap.
I find it interesting that some lay the blame of not achieving admission at the feet of other students (OOS, Auto Admit). The fact is…my kid knew what it took to hit the auto admit mark and she just missed it; that is on her! So, we had to accept her fate and employ alternative school options. In the end, she has no one else to blame but herself. Ultimately it all works out.
Yep, you only have to look at Texas to see that restricting OOS doesn’t solve the problem, just don’t have enough slots at UCB/UCLA.
You can’t come to this site and complain that your kid didn’t get into UC Berkeley when you continually misspell the name “Berkely” even after posters have corrected you in this very thread. You come across as bitter and set in your ways without listening to the advice given.
You also complain that your CA tax dollars are disproportionately benefiting OOS but you state you are able to afford 30k a year for high school which seems you can easily afford a very good private college.
The bottom line is that getting into the first and second tier UCs is very difficult and savvy applicants will be best served applying to many different colleges not just the top UCs.
The tax payer argument is pretty null and void. California state funding makes up very little of the UC budget. Especially for Ucla and cal. That means how much of your actual dollars make it to a UC. Not a lot. Bottom line is the schools are competitive and no one should feel entitled to a spot.
There is no requirement that anyone be a taxpayer to attend a UC at instate rates. MANY people pay no income taxes but are still residents, can vote, can go to public parks, can borrow library books. Many students in California are citizens but their parents are not, and they still get to go to college in California for instate rates. DACA students get to be California residents for tuition purposes (and get some financial aid). Any of these groups of people might be paying income taxes, registering cars, paying use taxes. Or not.
OOS people may be doing all that too. They may have cars registered in California, second homes, pay income or partnership taxes. No instate tuition for them.