I imagine they don’t care about their yield. It’s a state school. Plenty of students want to go there. Their reputation is solid. Good for them for keeping their eyes on the mission to serve students from all parts of the state from diverse economic backgrounds.
@rjkofnovi Thanks.
By the way, just to illustrate: one of my daughter’s best friends loves big schools and desperately wants to go to UCLA, but she knows she won’t get in because her GPA is only about top quarter of the class.
After discussions with the college counselor, her target schools are Michigan and Washington, and her safeties are Wisconsin, Oregon and Colorado. She’s going to a flagship out of state but not because there is any stigma toward Berkeley or UCLA.
^^^^Their so called mission is much easier to achieve than at Michigan simply because CA has so many people in it!
Interestingly, if one looks at Michigan criteria for admission, class rank isn’t one of them. Seems like they carefully target students from top public and private high school, who are good but do not finish in top 10% of their class (and are more likely to be wealthy and pay full out of state tuition).
Yeah Michigan does not look at class rank. Gpa and class rigor is the most important and then essays test scores and recs for umich.
@EEEE127 said “Why does uc Berkeley accept only top 10% when most of them aren’t going to go? That just screws up their yield. Umich defers overly qualified students who seem to use umich as their safety school so it doesn’t face the problem of low yield among top students as much as Berkeley faces.”
They don’t care much about their yield. They get 80,000 applications a year and overenrollment is the problem they face.
And most of those accepted to Berkeley and UCLA go there. Just not most of those few wealthy students at private high schools, because at those schools, if you are high enough in your class to get into Berkeley, chances are you got into an Ivy-plus school too (and your parents can afford to send you there). That’s why it is misleading to look at where the kids from Harvard Westlake or Gunn are going and assume from those stats that there is a stigma attached to Berkeley. Those stats are reflecting an unusual pool of students with unusual sets of options.
You need to look at where the top kids from typical California high school are going - the answer is Berkeley and UCLA.
^^^That does make sense.
@MichiganDad22 said: “My daughter has 3 friends in her sophomore class at UM from Cali. All got into either UCLA or Berkeley. They had the economic means to attend and wanted the “total package” experience that others wrote about earlier in this string. UM had over 44,000 OOS applicants last year. Their OOS acceptance rate would have dropped well into the teens if they didn’t add 500 spots. It’s still sub 20% for OOS. I know of several top ten OOS kids that got rejected from the East Coast. It’s not accurate to say its far easier for a Cali kid to get into UM OOS than to get into UCLA and Berkley. The OOS admission rate and criteria for OOS kids at UM just not support your point. Nor do real Cali kids that I met this year.”
Were they kids from Harvard Westlake or Oakland College Prep? Because those are the students I am discussing. For them, it is easier to go to Michigan. the overall admissions rate doesn’t matter (although Berkeley has an overall admissions rate of 17 percent while Michigan has an overall rate of 33%)
I look at Naviance for my kids’s San Francisco prep school, and I can see the stats in black and white. It’s much easier for kids at these small private prep schools to get into Michigan than into Berkeley. Berkeley requires much higher grades/class standing, and does not allow you to overcome that with superior SAT scores.
Also interesting to note that, according to Parchment, students accepted to both Berkeley and Michigan choose to go to Berkeley, over 2 to 1.
Michigan is a great school. I went there, I know. I’m just challenging the idea that there is a “stigma” attached to Berkeley among wealthy Californians. There is no stigma - it’s a numbers problem. California is so huge, and does not want its flagship to be entirely filled up with students from prep schools and wealthy suburbs who have other options.
So if we accept that the top two schools in California are Berkeley and UCLA, wouldn’t it be wise for California to have one of these schools gather all the top students in each school, and the other to gather all the top students in the state (regardless of school). Because IMHO that too would seem to serve the interests of the state.
Why in the world would California want to send the 2nd decile of students from Palos Verdes or Harvard-Westlake out-of-state when those same kids can likely run rings around some of the top students from weaker school districts?
Uc Berkeley acceptance rate is 17% because on the uc application it is easy to apply to multiple schools with just one application while umich has its own application with 3 supplements. That does not mean Berkeley is more selective. Also umich acceptance rate is now 28.6% and used to be 26% before they increased their class size by 500 @ThankYouforHelp
@Eeeee127 The admissions rate is much lower at Berkeley and Berkeley has a higher yield from its accepted pool.
You can say that it isn’t more selective, and for some students that may be true. The student who was first in their class at a terrible high school but took the most challenging classes available, and had mediocre SATs - that kid might have a chance at Berkeley but zero chance at OOS Michigan. Its a completely different admissions point of view.
@ThankYouforHelp I’m saying that the acceptance rate to Berkeley appears low because they receive tons of application since there’s only one uc app and u can apply to as many uc schools as you want with just one app by checking the boxes
@hebegebe said: "So if we accept that the top two schools in California are Berkeley and UCLA, wouldn’t it be wise for California to have one of these schools gather all the top students in each school, and the other to gather all the top students in the state (regardless of school). Because IMHO that too would seem to serve the interests of the state.
Why in the world would California want to send the 2nd decile of students from Palos Verdes or Harvard-Westlake out-of-state when those same kids can likely run rings around some of the top students from weaker school districts?"
Because they want the overachievers from the entire state to get a chance, and return to be leaders in their communities. The purpose of the school is to serve the state. Berkeley could fill itself entirely with rich suburban and prep school kids, and those kids would achieve, but the state overall would not benefit nearly as much.
They also realize that the kid who is first in their class at Ghetto High or Farmville High might be a diamond in the rough, naturally as smart and probably more hardworking than the kid who is second tier at a prep school. His lower SAT may reflect the fact that he has not grown up with all the natural advantages of a wealthy and educated family, neighborhood and school (and didn’t get private SAT tutoring either). Those kids from Harvard Westlake are going to be fine- they will get well educated somewhere else, and are going to return to California anyway. Now the state has both of them well educated and doing things good for the state.
Also there is UCSD, UCSB and UCDavis for those students who aren’t in the top ten percent of the class, and all of those are top 50 schools as well.
Regarding your point, I think this is not just limited to UCB and UCLA.
Consider a student from a rural HS, top of his/her class, probably has not taken many AP classes because they were not available, and has an OK score in SAT/ACT - say, 30. There are two possible ways of looking at such an application: 1) it is a very strong kid who got limited opportunities because of the environment (i.e. pay more attention to their being top of the school), OR 2) this is a not-so-top student who aced their non-competitive HS (i.e., pay more to their scores).
A state school, for its in-state applicants, will almost always go with #1. This is for multiple reasons: balancing opportunity, because they want to actively counter privilege, or the political pressure they have from legislature (elected officials are from all over the state). To give an example, Ohio State University has a scholarship that goes to 1 new student per Ohio County: now, one county has over 500 students coming to OSU and a couple of them only have 1! So, one student has a 0.2% chance of getting it while another will get it for sure. But every county is paying taxes to the State and deserves to get something back, and thus it is considered `fair’. It was started during Gordon Gee’s time, who was very savvy in pleasing legislature …
I think what is different about California is its sheer size, which makes the top two public schools hyper-competitive (together being able to bring in about 2 students per california high school each year). This is not true in most states. Probably the next closest will be Texas, but Texas-Austin is giving auto-admit to everyone in top 7% of their HS (not for all majors though).
I get this and agree with your logic. But California is large enough that it supports two world-class universities. Why not let UCLA use a different criteria?
Having grown up in a family that was poor when I was young, I just don’t accept the line that kids from less privileged backgrounds cannot do well on the ACT or SAT. These are not particularly hard tests, nor do they really benefit from expensive tutoring. I did very well on the tests 30+ years with nothing more than a study guide. I am full pay for my kids, but my D received nothing more than a study guide, and she also did very well, to the point that she took each test only once. I do believe that super-scoring benefits wealthier families, but the schools can easily adjust for that by requiring all tests and using only the first test for example.
So what I am saying is that IMO it is very likely that many of the 2nd decile kids in the high performing school districts will outperform the stars in a lower performing school district. Since they can’t get into the top two schools, they are getting sent out of state. And while you think they will automatically return to California, I am not so sure. I have lived in California, and while parts of it are very appealing, it comes with a lot of baggage (e.g. high taxes, high housing costs, horrible traffic, etc.).
If UCLA were to choose students based on criteria that is closer to that of Michigan than Berkeley, its student body would tilt towards the wealth of Michigan as well, meaning less SES diversity. While SES diversity is an appealing attribute, there are many fine schools that make a meaningful impact on the world with less SES diversity (WashU and Michigan for two).
Berkeley is unquestionably one of the world 's elite academic powerhouses, right there with Stanford, Harvard, University of Chicago, Oxford, Cambridge, MIT and Columbia. But this is at the GRADUATE level. The undergraduate experience is beset with problems, Huge classes. Many oversubscribed courses, difficulty graduating in four years, housing issues and a significant group of prominent radical over the top left wing students which make others uncomfortable. Michigan is much more undergrad friendly.
@hebegebe I don’t think they do that for several reasons. First, the UC system has 6 of the top 50 national universities in the nation. Berkeley, UCLA, UC San Diego, UC Santa Barbara, UC Irving and UC Davis are all in the top 44 in the rankings. There are spots for those very good but not top 10 percent private school and rich suburb students in very good UCs if they want to go there. For 98 percent of the state, that is fine. However, the very wealthy are not interested in sending their kids to state schools unless they are Berkeley the flagship (or maybe UCLA), because tuition is not as big an issue for them as it is for most people. The parents at those schools are paying near-college tuition to go to Harvard Westlake already.
Second - what’s the point of making that change, really? The purpose of an undergraduate state school is to benefit the state by creating a lot of educated people and spreading them around. California is getting that with the current system. The purpose of grad school/research is to “make a meaningful impact on the world” and in that sense, Berkeley is doing spectacularly well, and UCLA is doing just fine too.
Third, the people I am taking about are the very wealthy. Very few of their kids are going off to Michigan and then staying in Michigan after they graduate. A few go to New York City or Washington DC, but most return to California. The cost of living in California is high, but they can afford it, and if you are wealthy, life in California is awfully hard to beat. Moreover, if the family has been in their nice house for a long time, the tax burden is actually extremely low due to Prop 13, and the kids will inherit that house and artificially low tax base someday (as an aside, stupidest law ever).
I live in San Francisco. The whole Bay area private school scene is packed with wealthy people who went to Ivies, Chicago, MIT, Amherst, Duke etc… as well as Stanford and Berkeley. California doesn’t lose those people because Berkeley and UCLA didn’t let their kids in. Their top quartile in the class at Harvard Westlake kid can go to Middlebury and Tufts, just like dear old mom and dad did 30 years ago.
Good explanation. Thank you.
I second with ThankYouforHelp and I live in California. There’s no stigma and the reason Berkeley has lower yield seems to be because more of them get into elite privates. Also, California is full of immigrants and migrants; sending their kids OOS is simply no big deal. I think it’s quite a stretch to assume Michigan admits from California also got into Berkeley or UCLA or both. For one, Michigan has higher admit rate and secondly, Michigan admission seems more predictable when the candidates have high test scores and decent GPA. On the other hand, admission at Berkeley, and to a lesser extent UCLA, looks less predictable to me, even for in-state applicants.
Is uc Berkeley more numbers based than umich? An in state girl from my top 5 feeder school to umich was deferred and Waitlisted to umich with a 34 act and 3.9 gpa but accepted to Berkeley oos and UCLA. She ended up going to msu brcause it was much cheaper in state. Apparently she wasn’t involved In that many extracurriculars and leadership position