<p>I'm a senior in high school and am interested in going to a college with great cognitive science/neuroscience programs. I'm really interested in the UC schools, especially UCSD, UCLA, and UC Berkeley, but I have read that the UC schools are underfunded and, as a result, they only graduate 50-70% of students within four years. I heard that students often cannot take all the classes they would like in one semester, and are forced to stay for extra semesters or even extra years. Since I will be pursuing graduate and doctorate degrees, I don't want to spend anything more than four years in an undergrad program. How true are these findings? Is it really that much of a problem? Is there any sort of preferential program that guarantees certain students the classes they want? Any information would be of great assistance. If there are any current students at any of these schools, especially UCSD, your expertise would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.</p>
<p>Berkeley and UCLA have four year graduation rates of around 70%, which are around the top of all public universities. Four year graduation rates at UCs have generally been rising over the years, as the UCs get more selective, despite the defunding by the state.</p>
<p>Four year graduation rates appear to be well correlated with entrance selectivity and list price cost of attendance. A super-selective expensive private school will likely have a very high four year graduation rate, but a not-very-selective school will likely have a very low four year graduation rate (e.g. many CSUs under 20%, despite some offering four year graduation pledge programs giving registration priority to students following their majors’ course plans and not needing remedial courses).</p>
<p>Remember that late graduation is often due to other reasons:</p>
<ul>
<li>Needing remedial courses (English and math are common needs, especially at less selective schools).</li>
<li>Voluntarily taking light course loads because the student cannot handle a nominal full time course load (more common at less selective schools).</li>
<li>Failing courses and needing to repeat them or take additional other courses instead.</li>
<li>Changing or declaring major late.</li>
<li>Taking a semester off school, which delays graduation by calendar time, but does not require an extra semester of tuition and other costs of school.</li>
<li>Part time enrollment (common at less selective commuter-oriented schools like many CSUs).</li>
</ul>
<p>Berkeley’s class registration system allows all students to register for about half of their schedule in the first phase, then up to about the nominal full time course load in the second phase, then up to the maximum course load later. Courses also have reserved seats for students majoring in subjects that need those courses.</p>
<p>You can ask on the school-specific forums about course registration at each school.</p>
<p>Many community colleges have the worst problems with overflowing classes, because they are open admission and therefore cannot limit students to the capacity that they can handle (which is reduced due to budget cuts).</p>
<p>Thank you for your response. I tried to factor in other variables, such as dropout rates, into that four year graduation rate, but still wanted to ascertain a better estimate.</p>
<p>one other item that reflects in a 5+ year graduation rate is financial aid and the number of low income students, of which the UCs have lots. (UC gives a big tip in admissions to low income students.)</p>
<p>The end result is that many students have to work part time to pay for their education and even send money home to support their families. To keep grades up, such students take a minimum load; thus, 5 years becomes their norm.</p>
<p>OTOH, don’t forget that UC is extremely generous with AP/IB credit, so some/many students graduate in 3 years.</p>
<p>Back in the 1980s, when UC was much better funded, Berkeley’s four year graduation rate was well under 50%. At that time, it was much less selective, and the smaller cost of attendance did not provide as much financial incentive to get done quickly (and also enabled part time “working one’s way through college” more easily).</p>
<p>The lower selectivity meant, among other things, that over half (versus under 10% now) of entering freshmen were placed into remedial English composition courses (which, at the time, were given fewer units of credit than they were counted for course load scheduling). In addition, it likely also meant that a greater percentage of students were unable to handle nominal full time course loads of 15 units per semester, so many took the minimum of 12 or 13 units per semester.</p>
<p>while I would submit that remedial coursework is a huge reason for the grad rates of the Cal States, I’m not convinced it has much if anything to do with the grad rates at Cal and UCLA. Unlike the Cal States, neither of the flagship(s) UC’s offers remediation in a big way.</p>
<p>The Eng/Writing course formerly known as Subject A (aka ‘bonehead English’), was just that – ONE course. After that, English ‘remediation’ was complete. And since it was only one two-unit course out of the 120/180 units required to graduate…</p>
<p>Of course, now with many students coming in with AP Eng credit, or strong Lit scores – due to higher selectivity – even the course formerly known as Subject A is minimally necessary.</p>
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<p>Back then, it was 2 units, but counted as 4 units of workload for scheduling purposes. So a student back then taking a nominal full time course load of 15 units, but which included 4 workload units of Subject A 1, would only receive 13 units of credit, becoming 2 units “behind”.</p>
<p>At Berkeley, at least, they changed it so that students needing it (now under 10% instead of over 50%) take a special 6 unit version of the first semester English composition course instead of one of the usual 4 unit versions. This also gives full unit credit, unlike the old Subject A 1.</p>
<p>There are 5 very recent UC grads in my family. Only 1 didn’t graduate in 4 years due to transfer issues (not everything transfered, had to retake a couple of courses, etc.) The others did graduate in 4 years – but all of them had to do summer school at least once due to difficulty in getting certain courses.</p>
<p>I go to UCLA, and I will be graduating 1 year early (3 years) as a neuroscience major with a completely unrelated minor tacked on as well (philosophy). I will go as far as to say that it is virtually impossible to not graduate on time if someone is proactive about it. Usually, the people that don’t graduate on time only start taking class scheduling seriously their 2nd or 3rd years and think their first year they can pretty much take classes in any order without worrying about things. It’s not that way at any school. From the very beginning, go see your advisor, as for a standard degree schedule tailored to your needs and transferred credits/APs and follow it from the first quarter. You might not get 1-3 classes here or there, but it’s pretty much impossible to not graduate on time unless you came in severely handicapped (like it was mentioned above, having to take a lot of remedial or intro classes) or have a total disregard for scheduling. </p>
<p>Like it’s been said before, the rumor mills surrounding the UC are hilarious at times. I can’t count the number of times that I hear people saying “I don’t want to go to a UC, their graduation rates have been plummeting recently due to budget cuts and everything” and see the surprised look on their face when I point out that UCLA/Cal grad rates have been rising and are pretty much the same or higher than local privates (ie USC etc)</p>
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<p>There may be a valid concern about the quality of advising, however, especially for undecided and undeclared Letters and Science freshmen. The first year schedule for an undecided student is actually harder to make, since it needs to make progress in all of the possible majors that the student may want to declare. In contrast, a student who knows what s/he will major in can just look up the recommended course plan for that major and follow it, with adjustments for APs and the like.</p>
<p>But this problem is not necessarily unique to UCs.</p>
<p>I want to clarify something because ucb’s post is actually really accurate. The advising here is probably the most horrid lousy excuse for a payed service that I can think of. You literally have to do everything yourself and know what you are doing. If you bank on your counselor to hold your hand through everything, you will probably stay here for 6 years or more (or drop out). If you are a go-getter, are independent, and are ok with figuring things out yourself, I still stand by the fact that it is quite impossible to not graduate in 4 years whether you are undeclared or know what you want to do or even double majoring/minoring (I am, and I am graduating a year early). If you have low self-confidence in being able to do this kind of stuff (academic planning, career introspection etc) all by yourself, you would want to avoid UC’s or at the very least UCLA like the plague. That is all.</p>
<p>What certainly helps the UC campuses is the increase in non-resident enrollment. I was just looking at UCLA’s nos. and saw this in the enrollment for 2012 for the freshman class:</p>
<p>CA Residents … 4,002, 71% of total
Resident of Other States … 607, 11%
International … 1,012, 18%
Total Erolled … 5,621</p>
<p>So a total of 29% Non-residents. Btw, I don’t like it. For one, the U overenrolled by around 321, which means they undershot their yields for foreign students as well as other -states’ residents; two, I like the idea of educating CA students because they are more likely to stay and help the state out of its economic funk.</p>
<p>This means, however, that UCLA will be pretty well funded, which is, of course, good.</p>
<p>As much as it pains me to say it, UCLA needs to have more OOS and internationals. It helps the diversity of the campus, it brings in needed funds, and gets UCLA’s international reputation up. I know California needs well educated citizens, but let’s not deny that UCLA and Cal are world class institutions that are better than most private colleges in the country, they can sell their education at full price and still get people to come to Westwood because it’s worth it in a lot of situations.</p>
<p>I hear ya…</p>
<p>I realize we can’t have cake and gobble it all down to ourselves. UC needs funding to overcome state shortfalls and non-residents bring it … but there is a price to pay down the road when UC isn’t educating its denizens/citizenry. </p>
<p>It isn’t like CA is lacking in well-more-than-q’ed students, as in some states that have flagships that have to fill its enrollment with students from nearby states (AZ, CO, etc) because of a general lack of population within their own. </p>
<p>If the eastcoast colleges take in a lot of CA students, there’s a better than good chance they may never come back. So it’s a double-whammy: UC’s, ie, Cal, UCLA, SD, educating a good portion of students who will leave and go home (mainly the int’ls), and a lot of top CA students will be educated elsewhere and never come back, with a result being a serious brain-drain.</p>
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<p>True, but that is largely what California voters want. Defunding at the state level means fewer in-state students can be supported (with the in-state tuition discount). California voters have decided (through propositions and voting habits) that K-12 (proposition 98), tax limitations (proposition 13), and prisons (proposition 184) are all more important than post-secondary education. Health and welfare is the other big budget item.</p>
<p>Like others have said, try to get as much AP/IB credit as you can. If you have a decent amount of credit in useful subjects that you can place out of (the most useful IMO are Calculus, English, natural sciences except Environmental Science) you should have no problem graduating in 4 years and maybe even 3.</p>
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<p>You can actually resolve this by lowering the transfer admits. In other words, make transfers as a second priority. After all, Freshmen application process is way harder than transfer application process.</p>