The UCs aren't overrated

College Search & Selection
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<p>One thing I read on this board over and over is that the UC system is overrated. The reasoning usually goes that no one state/public university system could possibly be good enough to have 6 schools in the top 50, usually followed by a snarky comment about how no one's ever heard of Davis/Santa Barbara/Irvine.</p>

<p>The UCs deserve to stay where they are.</p>

<p>Let's look at another group of 6 public top 50 schools: College of William & Mary, UVA, UNC, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Georgia Tech. The combined population of the 5 states they represent is 42,308,596. By contrast, California has 36,756,666 people. You need to have a lot of good schools to fit a state that large.</p>

<p>California is also not the best public university system according to US News. California has 1 public school in the top 50 per 6,126,111 people, making it only 3rd best by that measurement. Number 2 is Wisconsin, with 1 top 50 public per 5,627,967 people, and the top public university system is Virginia, with 1 top 50 public per 3,844,545 people.</p>

<p>But, you may say, Texas, Florida, and New York have over half the population of California. Why don't any of them have 3 public schools in the top 50?</p>

<p>Texas and Florida have the same problems. First, there is no state income tax in either state. Good for business, bad for funding public universities. Floridans and Texans also have lower incomes than Californians. Florida and Texas are ranked 20th and 22nd respectively in terms of per-person income and California is ranked 7th. Florida and Texas can't exactly make up the gap with financial aid either, because there's no state income tax to fund the amount of financial aid California gives.</p>

<p>New York has a completely different problem, that of having simply too many good alternatives. While the UCs compete with Stanford and USC, SUNY competes with Columbia, Cornell, Syracuse, Penn State, UConn, and many others. The Northeast has more good private schools and more good public schools, while the West has few private schools and all the good public schools are in California.</p>

<p>Hopefully this clears up some confusion.</p>

2

<p>There’s no confusion. The UCs are undoubtedly fine school but outside of UCLA and Berkeley, their sphere of influence is more regional and their awareness drops considerably. So is pretty much any school beyond a few at the tippy top. For some reason this seems to bother Californians!</p>

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<p>Virginia’s 2 top publics educate only about 28,000 students. That’s far less than a school like UCLA. The amount of schools that a state has, has little bearing on how many students it’s educating in cases such as this. I am not impressed that a state like Virginia might have 2 top 50 schools in it and at the same time serve so few of it’s residents.</p>

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<p>The same thing could be said about any state school without BCS football. Ask anyone on the West Coast about Binghamton, URI, UNH, and Stony Brook and they’ll have the same reaction as an East Coaster being asked about Davis or Irvine.</p>

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<p>There is no third. I didn’t say there was a third.</p>

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<p>“One thing I read on this board over and over is that the UC system is overrated.”</p>

<p>I’ve never noticed that!</p>

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<p>I figured that out LogicWarrior and edited my remarks. Honestly, having 2 top 50 schools in a state like Virginia with 7.6 million people in it is not that impressive when you consider that only 28,000 students are being educated.</p>

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<p>Let’s assume each UC has 20,000 students. (a rough estimate, but so is yours) 120,000 Californians would be getting a top 50 education. That’s 1 in every 306 people.</p>

<p>By your estimate, 1 in every 275 Virginians are getting a top 50 education. So Virginia is still more impressive.</p>

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<p>I just figured out, using wikipedia numbers, that the 6 top 50 rated UC schools educate over 180,000 students. That’s one per every 203 residents. In Virginia, their 2 top 50 schools educate one in every 275 residents. Quite a difference in numbers. Of course both schools have some OOS and international students, but that’s a wash because both states’ schools have a high number of instate students. So Virginia is NOT more impressive.</p>

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<p>In thousands:</p>

<p>UC system (6 top 50 schools)</p>

<p>UCB 35.4
UCLA 38.5
UCD 31.4
UCI 27.6
UCSD 27.6
UCSB 20.5</p>

<p>total 181.0</p>

<p>Virginia (2 top 50 schools)</p>

<p>UVA 19.8
W&M 7.9</p>

<p>total 27.7</p>

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<p>Then California wins, because Wisconsin counts Minnesotans as in-state.</p>

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<p>This is true Logicwarrior. Schools like Wisconsin and Michigan have much higher OOS enrollments that the UCs and Virginia publics.</p>

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<p>The UC’s make me wish that I was born in California! </p>

<p>But now UCB is a reach because of OOS status…:(</p>

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<p>The UC system is great! Best public schools you could ask for, really. I was planning on attending Berkeley over UCLA&UCSD until I got into a couple of private schools.</p>

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<p>So clearly they’re underrated. Nothing wrong with that. What is annoying is when people say the opposite.</p>

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<p>I never heard anyone saying the UC’s are overrated except by ppl like SuperPippo from the UT system or ppl from the UF system :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: </p>

<p>They are JEALOUS! lololol</p>

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<p>What’s your point?</p>

<p>Places don’t have good schools because of proportional representation; there’s no “good school to people” ratio. Places have good schools because of the policies those schools have, the professors, researchers, and administrators they attract, and the resources they have to spend.</p>

<p>In addition, it has to do with a difference in the value of education in different parts of the country. The Northeast (and East Coast in general) has always been a bastion of elite, prestigious private education, and so private schools are valued over public ones. We have good public schools, but are known for our privates. On the other hand, the Midwest and West Coast don’t have the same value placed on elitism, so their public schools are very solid. (There’s actually a study that’s been done on this recently.)</p>

<p>But let’s face it – among the general population, even UC-Berkeley and UCLA aren’t that well known. If you asked my mother how good Berkeley was she’d stare at you blankly. Among the college-going population, UC-Berkeley and UCLA have a good reputation, but few people have heard of the other campuses. I hadn’t even heard of Irvine, Riverside, Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz, or Merced before I came onto College Confidential, and I thought UCSF had an undergrad campus. I grew up in New York; it wasn’t relevant information.</p>

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<p>My point is that 6 schools in the top 50 is not unreasonable because California is the size of 6 states.</p>

<p>And I didn’t even know what New York’s public university system was CALLED until I went onto CC. And my dad’s from New York. Compare that with UCLA, which everyone’s heard of, and Berkeley, which people either have heard of or they’ve heard of “Cal” which is Berkeley’s athletics name.</p>

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<p>I’ve never lived on the East Coast, but I doubt there are many people who simply haven’t heard of Berkeley and UCLA. They may not be relevant often or may not be colleges that come to mind when listing top schools, but few schools can match them in terms of visibility nationally, whether through sports, historical importance or some other reason.</p>

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<p>Who said that the UC’s are overrated? They’re just only regionally known and irrelevant to people in the Midwest or East Coast, that’s all, that’s all. I think it’s a bit arrogant to think that people in the East Coast should be terribly knowledgeable about all the UC’s … Just like it would be arrogant to think that people in California should know all the different campuses in the SUNY system.</p>

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<p>I think you’d be surprised how many people on the East Coast (who aren’t otherwise into researching or knowing about colleges) would just have a vague impression of Berkeley based on historical-hippie perspectives, and UCLA as a sports school that’s probably pretty decent. Again, so much of this is all regional; I don’t know why that seems to bother people so when their “pet school” isn’t acknowledged or bowed down to everywhere in the country.</p>