I noticed that for the Class of 2021 Admissions Cycle that the OOS admissions rate was higher than the in state admission rate. Is there a clear explanation for this? My thoughts were that a low out of state yield rate coupled with a more competitive applicant pool contributed to this.
Money
$$$$$
OOS students pay twice the price of instaters
The same table says that out-of-state applicants had an average GPA / SAT / ACT of 3.75 / 1953 / 31, versus in-state applicant averages of 3.64 / 1723 / 28. The admit stats were also higher for out-of-state than in-state.
I.e. the out-of-state applicant pool was stronger than the in-state applicant pool.
Under a new policy, the first of its kind at UC, nonresident enrollment will be capped at 18 percent at five UC campuses. At the other four campuses where the proportion of nonresidents exceeds 18 percent — UC Berkeley, UC Irvine, UCLA and UC San Diego — nonresident enrollment will be capped at the proportion that each campus enrolls in the 2017–18 academic year.
So the applicant pool will be smaller and more competitive.
I wanted to also state that non-resident includes International applicants as well as OOS.
This pattern isn’t new. For example, the acceptance rate at Berkeley for OOS applicants (not including internationals) was higher than the acceptance rate for CA applicants in every year between 2010 and 2014. The biggest discrepancy was in 2011, when the OOS acceptance rate was more than twice as high as the CA rate (37% vs. 18%).
https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/infocenter/freshman-admissions-summary
The reasons for elevated OOS acceptance rates: (1) OOS applicants generally have high test scores and GPAs; (2) OOS applicants have lower yields, so are less likely to actually enroll if accepted; and (3) OOS applicants pay a lot more if they do enroll.
For 2015 and 2016, Berkeley accepted CA applicants at a higher rate than OOS applicants. However, the pattern reversed for 2017. It’s possible that Berkeley deliberately accepted a particularly high number of non-resident students for the 2017-18 school year, because non-resident enrollment will be capped at the 2017-18 level in the future, as noted in Post #5 above.
It is likely that OOS acceptance rates will fall in the future, because OOS applications will probably continue to rise, while non-resident enrollments (and therefore acceptances) will be capped.
@Gumbymom It will be interesting to see the impact of this new policy as, at the same time, University of Michigan and University of Virginia are significantly increasing their OOS enrolments (Michigan’s OOS enrolment now exceeds 40%). And both Michigan and UVA offer increasingly generous financial aid to OOS students, with Michigan committing to meet the full need of OOS students with incomes below $85K.
My guess is that the UCs will slip in the USNWR rankings, while other public universities like Michigan, USA, and Georgia Tech gain. In fact, most of UCs slipped in the newly-recently rankings, as they began to implement new policies of admitting more in-state students while limiting out-of-state enrollment.
My guess is also that public universities like Michigan, UVa, and Georgia Tech will face increasing public discontent as they become less accessible to state residents. Michigan’s enrollment, for example, is rising overall – yet the number of slots available for in-state students is actually falling.
http://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor/index.ssf/2016/10/breaking_down_the_university_o.html
As far as USNWR is concerned, the UCs are doing the “wrong” things, while state schools that enroll increasingly large numbers of well-qualified non-residents (at the expense of residents) are doing the “right” things. The question is whether the USNWR criteria are the most appropriate measures of what public universities should do.