Austin and UWashington 2-3% oos CS admission rate is that they admit 2-3 out 100 oos applications. OOS/int’l CS students comprise more than 20% of the whole freshman class. And CS might be the hottest major right now. UCB cutting OOS/int’l students to 10% overall is just insane if I understand this correctly.
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As an OOS student, my D applied to UCB and UCLA, understanding neither provided good chances of admission. Not an easy addiitonal app, considering the additional essays and the effort it takes to apply to UC schools. No complaints there.
UCB is embroiled in a lawsuit and has been fairly transparent about how they are going to prioritize taking in-state students this year and effectively drop their OOS acceptances to a barely registering number. Again, no complaints. They are reacting as they feel they have to, I think backlash would be immense if they didn’t prioritize California natives, etc. Does it slightly upset D that she had a college taken off the list not by an AO but by a court? A little, mostly because she’s looking to maximize opportunities here. But it’s an annoyance.
Now…Is the UC system holding $70 of my money that I feel should be returned to just about every OOS student? Absolutely. I mentioned above (and I’m sure that there are also many attorneys here), but it is a great class action lawsuit once the numbers come out and OOS is a shell of itself. In fact, UC helped itself in public opinion and transparency by announcing what they’re going to do, but exposed themselves legally. I don’t need the $70, but I would venture to guess that for many people $70 isn’t all that easily parted with.
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Fully agree re sentiment and disappointment of current OOS applicants.
I also agree re application fee but to me, that is less critical at this time. I am not sure that a class action works in this case, either.
What I somewhat disagree with in your post is that UCB “has been transparent” that they will be prioritizing IS this cycle. I don’t think that this was transparent AT ALL when applications were due.
The administrative black eye for UCB - first, underestimating the SBN issue, second not dealing with it with force and on time and finally, misleading the OOS applicants about their chances all the way until CA Supreme Court decision is quite troublesome and will leave a mark on the institution in the long-term. Clearly, this year’s OOS are not in good shape. Next cycle, I assume OOS applications will drop (natural reaction) and they will miss a bunch of good candidates. Who knows what happens when they need more/better OOS later, and CA is not in as a great financial shape.
Ultimately, UCB is still a great college, will do more than OK because it is an established institution with a lot of support and vested interest in its success and can ride on its past reputation. The Regents may feel trapped given that they need CA to support them vs SBN and financially but I don’t think the pivot away from OOS may not have been in the best interests of UCB. Anyway, we don’t vote in CA and are ignored, I guess.
Good luck to your daughter and all the applicants!
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Ok, I’ll bite. Please post the admission stats (GPA, test scores) of the instate, OOS, and International pools, to support your “fact”.
“I just don’t see the data points that are used for ranking…will get better or remain the same taking in students who academically are not at the same level as top OOS applicants…”
How do you know that UCB is not rejecting hundreds of 4.0 with high test scores instate students in lieu of accepting OSS? Can you post the data?
(Hint1: 1) back when UC used to maintain a website in which one could parse such data, the OOS pool did NOT have higher stats; 2) it seems like every year there are kids who are rejected by UCB or UCLA yet receive an offer from the Ancient Eight.)
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I agree, and probably should have qualified my statement about transparency to reflect their announcement AFTER the decision a few weeks back and their enrollment goals for this fall based on the ruling.
W-dad: since UC does not offer much need-based aid to OOS students such applicants are mostly upper middle class.
fwiw: IMO, with the exception of a few specialized programs, the UC’s are not a good value at OOS rates.
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I think we need to be careful about interpreting that 10% soundbite. On second listen I think he is saying 90% of incoming class, not 90% of incoming freshman. Perhaps transfers are heavily CA students so they may still have the same level of OOS and Intl freshman and still make up the 90% IS incoming class number.
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For UWashington maybe but Austin must take 90% in-state. You can look up their legislature. I am not against oos or international but that the percentages making up the other in-state are not a downgrade. The poster stated that it was not what he meant.
I do not know of applicant-wide data, but I would note that OOS applicants get zero GPA boost for their honors courses, which are not recognized as honors courses in California. This, together with the a-g requirements, are a built-in advantage for in-state students in California.
The data on the applicants from our local OOS Washington high school showed that the capped, weighted UC GPA of students accepted to UCB in recent years (none of whom received extra credit for honors classes) averaged 4.27.
Those same Washington students are not shoo-ins for the most competitive programs at their own state flagship, either. Only 72
percent of the 2021 class were Washington residents and the UW thread is full of high-stats students who did not get in or did not get into their desired program. And UW rejects don’t have the number of other in-state options California students do. In fact, I think California has at least five schools ranked higher than UW, the Washington flagship.
UW does not have in place anything like the new 18% nonresident cap at UCB or the new court-imposed cuts. I am not sure why there is a perception that OOS students are more advantaged in California versus other states. It’s tough all over.
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The range of Cal’s USNWR ranking for the last 20+ years has been between #'s 20 to 22. Here’s the USNWR ranking from 2015-2022. It’s #22 in the present ranking. There’s another similar average ranking list dating back to 2000-2001 or so, but I can’t find it at the moment.
Anyway, Cal’s USNWR ranking isn’t going move too far one way or another if/when they admit less OOS/International students.
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The first is not relevant as the OOS (and International) pools are reviewed separately from the instate app pools. But regardless, lets the see the data for unweighted GPA’s. (btw: not all instate high school ‘honors’ courses are eligible for the GPA boost, the curriculum has to be approved by UC.)
The second sentence is just the minimum requirements to apply. Yes, many OOS’ers get caught up by the VAPA requirement, but it’s been a requirement for many years.
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Again, it seems everyone on this site thinks there’s some sort of “cut line” for stats and only the highest stat applicants are admitted and nothing else matters. And lower stat applicants are rejected.
If we’re using the sample of just one HS, for both my kids’ admission cycles, for a large public HS in CA, there were many higher stat applicants rejected in favor of lower stat applicants to UCB.
GPA isn’t the evaluative area for admission to the UC’s. My opinion, Cal could backfill every OOS/International applicant with high stat applicants from CA only.
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And, to my point, I think UW could backfill every OOS/international applicant with high stat applicants from WA only, also.
But the thread is about Cal and the lawsuit, not UDub.
I think this is pretty simple. If Cal wants to remain a world class university it cannot become an insular California only school. If Cal want to continue to be known for it’s research labs they need students from outside the US.
Something interesting to do:
- Go to any of the Cal research websites
- Click on the “People” tab
- Say to yourself “Hmmmmm”
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Does it though? That depends on whether or not you think UCB’s prestige is mostly due to the reputation of their undergraduate programs or their researchers and graduate programs. International applicants at least are more likely to be influenced by UCB’s global rankings as determined by QS, THE, and ARWU and less US News National rankings. Overall global rankings and their accompanying subject rankings are not really a reflection of undergraduate quality. As long as UCB can continue to attract top researchers, they will continue to also attract top graduate students, which will ensure that their position in the global rankings will not be impacted.
With regards to US News though, only 7% of a school’s ranking is attributed to “student selectivity” so even if the average GPA of UCB’s entering class did slip a fraction (and it’s not certain that it actually would), it’s unlikely to have a significant impact on it’s overall ranking.
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The thread is about UCB, and the volume of the anti-OOS arguments and insinuations that OOS students are getting away with lesser qualifications for the privilege of paying $67k/year strike me as very hostile to OOS students like my child, whose holistic qualities and stats stand up well among any group of candidates.
My child has plenty of family in California and is the kid of an alum but many of you will be happy to hear that all the UC schools are now crossed off the list before we even receive admissions decisions. My kid has committed elsewhere.
The whole tenor of the court case and subsequent debate left us dismayed and chilled our former enthusiasm about the UC schools. Those who want to reserve them for in-state students only may succeed, but I don’t know that it is for the best. California certainly has plenty of great students, but cross-pollination of people from other communities and experiences and systems is part of what sparks the intellectual climate at a major research university.
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I don’t see it that way at all. This thread is a reaction to the unexpected cuts in enrollment anticipated from the court ruling. And from that standpoint, many people including myself were advocating that in state students be insulated from the impacts as much as possible while acknowledging that OOS and Internationals are important to the vitality of UCB.
If anything, I’ve seen many argue that OOS students are held to a higher bar and that reducing their proportion will make UCB less elite.
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However, most such people are PhD students, whose admission and enrollment would not be affected by the politics of undergraduate admission and enrollment, where the in-state versus out-of-state ratio is a hot political topic, and NIMBYs tend to see undergraduates as more rowdy and annoying compared to graduate students.
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I haven’t been to the UF, UT and UNC forums, which “aggressively” limit OOS enrollment, do parents and applicants from OOS complain this vociferously over there too? 
Or is it just the “late notice” of the lawsuit, because that was public last August before the UC app opened?
Neither of my kids attend a UC. One went OOS, the other is at Cal Poly SLO. And neither one had any interest in attending Cal. So, I’m just looking at it from the POV of a CA taxpayer.
We’re the biggest state in the Union with 7 of the 10 (or something like that) most applied to schools in the US. UCLA received 150,000 apps. So, the UC’s should make more room for in-state students, but the tenor here from OOS applicants seems to be that the OOS student population is going to ZERO. But it’s obviously not.
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