<p>Many of asian folks in my area send their kids to lower tier, less fitting UC’s over better fitted, nurturing privates because they carry a brand name. In my experience, they are overrated.</p>
<p>UCLA? That’s the basketball school right?</p>
<p>:D</p>
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<p>That’s better than the SUNYs which no one in California has heard of. A school’s national reputation is mostly dependent on its sports teams, not academics.</p>
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<p>Fit is not objective, so the UCs are overrated to you, but they’re not objectively overrated.</p>
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<p>Actually the OP posted this as a response to a comment in another thread. There was also recently that thread about Berkeley and of course the SuperPippo thread.</p>
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<p>Word. I know someone who went to Berkeley over Scripps for this reason. Regretted it.</p>
<p>If I were the governor of California, I would fight tooth and nail to allocate at least $20b to Cal’s endowment fund. And an additional budget of $10b each for all UC campuses.</p>
<p>^^^ RML, Cal would be lucky to have at least $5b alone. California may not be extremely broke, but it doesn’t have the necessary funding to allocate $10b to each UC. The state govt is issuing out IOUs for goodness sake.</p>
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<p>By that measure, plenty of big state flagships that are fairly easy to get into have better national reputations than top private schools. If a school’s national reputation is mostly dependent on or derived from sports teams, why is that an important thing to cultivate? Is there a belief that “heard of” is good enough?</p>
<p>You brought up “heard of” as a measure of quality:</p>
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<p>The idea that Berkeley and UCLA aren’t well known was brought up by juillet. I was just pointing out that that’s not true.</p>
<p>As for whether that’s “good enough,” who cares? Obviously you don’t, since you seem so constantly determined to point out that the UC’s don’t have a great reputation in other parts of the country.</p>
<p>This is typical Midwest/East Coast perception of the UCs:</p>
<p>Most have only heard of Berkeley and UCLA. They have a vague idea of what the schools are. Hippy movement, engineering, Bay Area = Cal and sports, sunny weather, close to Hollywood = UCLA. While they are excellent schools, they are nearly unattainable to OOS students (UCs accept nearly 90% in-state students at the undergraduate level). The Midwest and East Coast have their own excellent schools. If any student applies to the UCs, they have a better chance of admittance at the graduate level.</p>
<p>from logic warrior:
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<p>No, I didn’t. I described the situation when it comes to awareness. I made no comment whatsoever about quality. In fact, that’s my whole point. Given the regional nature of college awareness (where people know what’s around them and schools they have personal ties to), as well as the influence of national sports, “being aware of” in the mass population doesn’t mean SQUAT when it comes to quality!</p>
<p>LogicWarrior, you’re the one who said it was at least “better” that East Coast people had at least vague hippie/moviestar/sports impressions of Berkeley/UCLA as compared to the SUNY’s which “no one in California” has heard of. It was clear that you thought general awareness among the masses is a good or important thing. I think you’re the one who’s concerned with national awareness. Not me.</p>
<p>So people in the East Coast don’t really know the UC’s. So what? How does that impact the vast majority of people who are going to UC’s, most of whom will stay in California anyway – or, after they’ve had their first job, their performance in that job will determine their future? Why are Californians so upset that East Coast people don’t automatically recognize all the UC campuses? Ditto in reverse for the SUNY’s. Why is it a bad thing that most people in California won’t know the SUNY’s? None of this awareness has anything to do with the quality of education anyone is receiving. I’m fully willing to say that the UC’s (beyond Berkeley and UCLA) are good quality schools. I don’t know why you thought I wasn’t, or that I was attacking them.</p>
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<p>I think you’re confusing “not a good reputation” with “don’t know much about.” It’s not that the UC’s (beyond UCLA/Berkeley) “don’t have a great reputation” in the Midwest / East Coast (as in they’re actively felt to be bad schools or anything). They just don’t have much awareness one way or the other.</p>
<p>Why is this such a surprise to Californians, though? If you don’t know SUNY’s (and I wouldn’t expect you to), if you don’t know which of the midwestern state flagships are better than others (and I wouldn’t expect you to), why would you expect people in the midwest or east to know about the UC’s?</p>
<p>What are you guys talking about? Everyone knows that the University of Michigan is best state flagship school in the midwest. Right? ;-)</p>
<p><em>I</em> personally agree with you that Michigan is the best state flagship in the midwest. However, I also think those of us in the midwest are able to articulate and tier the midwestern state flagships in a way that the East Coast / Californians cannot, simply because we’re more familiar. I think for a lot of them, Illinois / Indiana / Kansas / Missouri / Minnesota whatever all blend together whereas I could easily tier those state u’s.</p>
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<p>Right but don’t let Hawkette know you said that.</p>
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<p>I’m sorry you got that impression. This thread is responding to the people who say that it’s impossible for a state to have 6 top 50 schools, and should have nothing to do with awareness.</p>
<p>Ah. Well, that’s stupid on those people’s parts. California’s a huge state; why couldn’t it conceivably have 6 top 50 schools? What’s the population of all of New England compared to the population of California? Bet New England’s got 6 of the top 50 schools!</p>
<p>They don’t have any public schools in the top 50 because, as one poster put it, going to a private school is a sign of intelligence.</p>
<p>The midwest has Wisconsin, Michigan, Penn State, and Illinois though.</p>
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<p>Are you so sure that there is not another forum where one can “read over and over is that the UC system is overrated?” In fact, except for a small group of very vocal members who relentlessly claim that a certain UC school is UNDER-RANKED by USNews, most people agree that the ranking of that particular Bay Area is pretty representative of its overall reputation and a testament to its worldwide recognition as one of the best graduate schools.</p>
<p>As far as, “The UCs deserve to stay where they are” … again, most will agree with you, especially when considering which schools currently ranked between 50 and 100 could or should replace one of the UC schools. No matter how one looks at it, the pecking order of the first 20-25 (according to USN) is pretty much established and will not change much – with just enough changes to make the annual August releases “interesting” and enough reliance on the subjective surveys to ensure the perennial favorites do not drop too much to form a questionable cluster. After all, you do NOT want to see all the UC schools bunched between 31 and 40. :)</p>
<p>Oh, and by the way, I am not certain you would like to swap the financial prospects of the UT system in Texas for the UC system’s. Getting blood of a turnip is getting harder, even in the land of fruits and nuts!</p>
<p>This was a response to a thread where someone said US News was a worthless rag for saying that 6 UCs were top 50 schools.</p>