Since Michigan is MUCH more generous with financial aid to OOS students, I’m not surprised it attracts more OOS applicants.
Quite frankly, I’m surprised UCLA attracts as many non-Californian applicants as it does. $65K a year for a school that’s growing ever larger and more impersonal does not strike me as a good financial bargain.
One rankings thread someone states that UMich doesn’t hand much/any OOS financial aid. Now on this thread, UMich is more generous with financial aid. Which one is it?
@warblersrule Well, I’m guessing you weren’t one of the one million+ UCLA applicants since 2001 HAHA! 
Also missing will be any other school that didn’t make the list that is linked to above. Included in the list are:
“123 national universities that were included in the first tier of the U.S. News Best Colleges from 2013 through 2020.”
Feel free to add others big movers that are new to the list since 2013, or have dropped at some point.
Stanford and USC also have lower than expected 4 year graduation rates of 75% and 78% respectively, but like Cal and UCLA, the 5 year graduation rates jump to almost 90%. In most cases, students are only short a class or two and don’t need a full 5th year.
Still, it’s interesting that all these schools are in California when most of their peer schools elsewhere manage to achieve 4 year graduation rates in the mid to high 80s range. Maybe they’re all going to the beach too much. 
UC Merced +32. Is this the highest gain of ANY college on US News?
UC Riverside students graduate at similar very high levels regardless of race or income class. Hopefully that will be common at all colleges someday.
Those big classes are the introduction to CS courses, CS 50 at Harvard and CS 106A at Stanford. Interest in CS is exploding in many colleges.
You can try different numbers in Michigan’s net price calculator to find out.
“Quite frankly, I’m surprised UCLA attracts as many non-Californian applicants as it does.”
I’m not. Remember that:
“…when you’re laying out reading/suntanning after class in January on your college campus nestled between Bel Air and Beverly Hills, you’ll get it.”
“Stanford and USC also have lower than expected 4 year graduation rates of 75% and 78% respectively, but like Cal and UCLA, the 5 year graduation rates jump to almost 90%. In most cases, students are only short a class or two and don’t need a full 5th year.”
Once again, schools with a higher percentage of students in Engineering will typically have a lower 4 year graduation rate. Engineering oftentimes takes an extra semester to complete. (A class or two).
The very aspect of Stanford, which fosters students’ desires to take off time from studies to pursue projects and return — and thereby lead to a lower 4 or 5 years graduation rate — penalizes in USNWR ranking. Or does it?
@websensation: USN considers only 6-year graduation rates in its ranking calculations.
Or co-op job or other gap quarter or semester, which does not increase the number of tuition paying terms, but does increase calendar time to graduate.
Stanford surpassed UCLA few years ago and has extended the lead. Also, Stanford has had the best athletic program overall for the last two decades, as shown by its #1 Directors Cup ranking every year.
@KTJordan78 @IWannaHelp beat me to it. Every year the Director’s Cup is awarded to the athletic program with best depth and breath of winning across all sports for both men and women.
UCLA does very well each year, but Stanford has won every single one (since 1994), but for the first year, which UNC won. This past year, UCLA finished 7th, behind Stanford, Michigan, Florida, Texas, USC and UVa. Obviously, in the two sports that make the most money, football and basketball, UCLA hasn’t been very good for a long time.
https://nacda.com/documents/2019/6/11//June12OverallDi.pdf?id=3669
List of past winners and other universities that placed high:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NACDA_Directors%27_Cup
@IWannaHelp Well I guess my original comment that UCLA has “a great (the best?)” athletic program stands firmly corrected.
Actually, @rjkofnovi , the strong greek system (purposeful lower case “g”) at UCLA, same I assume as Michigan, will attract a lot of non-resident domestic students (out-of-state or “oos”), because they’re coming out to campus not knowing anyone.
That’ll change in 2020 for UCLA football, and sometime near in the future for basketball, maybe this year. Coach Kelly has > 40 1st year players and his cupboard was left bare by his predecessor, and Coach Cronin will have the team playing defense.
Mark my words, 2020 for UCLA football. It took WSU and U-Dub about three years to break out.
San Diego State dominated UCLA (first time ever?) in football. Coach Chip Kelly has a lot of work to do!
USC dominated Stanford with their freshman quarterback who looked great!
The high application volume at UCLA is largely driven by the ease of application (one applications for all UC campuses). You can clearly see that by going to universityofcalifornia.edu site (“undergraduate admissions summary” page). Also, it’s usually perceived as less intense and intimidating than Berkeley so it’s a happier medium for a lot of high achieving kids.
Synopsis based on 2018 cycle:
In-state:
UCLA received 71.5K applications. That’s just slightly higher than its neighbors in so cal, UCSB, UCSD, UC Irvine (65.7K, 66.7K, 71.3K, respectively). The total of all UCs is only 120K. This shows there are a ton of cross applicants. Interestingly, UC Berkeley received 51.9K, low given its prestige but makes sense due to its “fear” factor I mentioned above.
OOS:
UCLA received 22.8k applications, slightly more than UCB. All UCs received just 33.5K. This suggests a lot of overlaps between the two.
International:
UCLA received 19.4K applications while 4 other UCs also received more than 15K applications (17K for UCB, 15.5K for UCD, 16.1K for UCSB and 19.7K for UCSD). It’s interesting that it’s UCSD that received the most applications from internationals. Entire UC system received only 28.6K. Again, this means there are a lot of overlapping applications.
The low yield of OOS and international at UCLA further confirms the the ease of application is more a factor than its “popularity” (24% and 29%, respectively).