Vent about UC decisions

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of California - GENERAL
881

I’m curious as to what would happen if the UCs did indeed drastically drop OOS enrollment, perhaps cutting it in half as seems to be the common desire of this forum. Will we see any real change in number of in-state students admitted? Surely there will be 100s more at the most desired UCs and maybe a couple thousand more at the other UC campuses, but this is unlikely to move the needle of the CA public’s perception: UCLA, the most applied to UC campus, admitting several thousand more in-state students will be hardly noticeable given that 100,000 in-state students apply. This is just the nature of a state with almost 40 million people with above average levels of educational attainment.

The three UCs, UCB, UCLA, UCSD were ordered by CA’s state legislature and Governor Newsom to enroll ~ 700 more instate students and reduce nonresidents by the same amount, with this change occurring for the admit classes for 2022. I had a thread in which I showed the applicants/admits/enrolled numbers for 2022 in post #1, then I showed 2021’s numbers in post #3, and the differentials in #6, and it is a bit sloppy because I had trouble with formatting. I provided notes in post #7.

The end result was the following:

2022 2021
Campus Cohort Non-Res % Non-Res %
UCB High School 22.2% 29.6%
Transfers 16.4% 16.6%
Combined 20.5% 26.0%
2022 2021
Campus Cohort Non-Res % Non-Res %
UCLA High School 22.9% 31.0%
Transfers 9.0% 14.3%
Combined 17.9% 25.2%
2022 2021
Campus Cohort Non-Res % Non-Res %
UCSD High School 19.3% 31.1%
Transfers 10.7% 20.2%
Combined 16.5% 27.6%

(Sorry, I had to interrupt my writing this for a good hour plus to break my fast.) It appears that UCLA was the only one that complied with the order and increased CA students by 806, and reduced non-residents by 717. But in UCB’s and UCSD’s defense, it appears they started to increase CA students in 2021.

There’s a hangup in this in that California is not rolling in a surplus anymore. So will the legislature/governor maintain the increase of funding to the three to continue enrolling more CA students, or will B, LA, and SD have to go back to enrolling more non-residents because a possible reduction of funding to the way it was in 2021 and earlier?

In fact, the governor presented a budget that wanted to cut funding to UCLA by $20m to impose transfer-student guidelines. And I think the state legislature has to let UCLA, UCB, and UCSD do whatever it takes to maintain what each provide all students by admitting the amount of nonresidents needed to keep the costs down in what the state reimburses each of these (and all) campuses. Just about all the UCs are excellent in attracting International students, and if they need to enroll a good percentage of them, then that’ll help the state in its budget.

On the flip side, many OOS students (who do not compete for the same spots as in-state students by and large) are from neighboring states in the Western US. Many of these states have a sliver of CA’s population, and have public university options that will not serve the state’s brightest as well as a UC campus or the University of Washington (another very solid state flagship that takes in many Western students as OOS). Cutting OOS enrollment will have a very noticeable impact for these students.

UCLA is actually the UC that draws in the most OOS students now. The University is popular on the eastcoast, in Texas, and somewhat the south in general, as well as Washington, and the other western states that you mentioned. And as you hinted earlier and I stated also, the increased funding by OOS and International students pays for better services for all students.

These students also bring interesting perspectives and geographical diversity, despite making up less than 20% of the UC student body. I like to think that my classmates, dormmates, and friends from NV, NM, CO, and OR bring some diversity to my school that seems to take almost half of its students from three CA counties.

That’s the chief argument for geographic diversity, and I agree that if you look at the CA students to all the UCs, they are predominantly from The Bay, LA County, and SD county.

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882

UCLA’s nonresident enrollment is 18% of a combined high-school and transfer cohort. That’s the target number the state legislature and governor wanted for UCLA, UCB, and UCSD, for the admit class of 2022.

They stated that they would increase funding to the three and all the nine ug campuses, but the state isn’t rolling in a surplus anymore.

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883

As far as the NY Times Build Your College Own Rankings here’s what it says about how they ranked the colleges based on earnings:

Earnings are based on the median income of people who attended the school 10 years ago and who received federal aid. These figures are from 2020.

This information was supplied by College Scorecard. This includes those who finished somewhere else rather than the original admitted-to college, and those who dropped out. So Scorecard is putting the blame on colleges who can’t get these sets of students to graduation.

Unfortunately, those who come from backgrounds that need federal backing don’t have the same initial and medium-term opportunities that others (i.e., the more wealthy) have in finding higher-ranking and higher-paying employment, so it would take longer for this set to earn, say, $100k/year. This is why even no. 1 Caltech seemed low at $112k/year.

I believe the 10-year period may start from the point these students entered college, so regardless of whether they finished or transferred out, it should be a 6-year period at best from graduation. And a six-year period from 2020 is the admit class of 2014, and there have been large changes in admittance to various colleges to now, 2023.

Additionally, this ranking has to be based on median earnings, because a mean would be too hard to calculate with any accuracy, and this measurement is significantly lower for those preprofessionally based schools, like UCLA, which produces a lot of MDs and attorneys. This ranking doesn’t include these professions because it’s a median measurement. Additionally, the poorer students at UCLA have a keen motivation to become MDs to benefit the communities from which they came, etc.

So this particular metric of the NY Times is what I consider to be “nothing to see here.” It’s obsolete, as a 10-year could only be, it’s a median, and the salaries are extremely bound together {with respect to the ranking of the colleges by earnings with just dollar amounts separating decile displacements}.

Edit: And colleges like CPSLO are great at pulling up a greater portion of its students, poor, etc., so the median measurement for it would reflect well, with Construction Management, Engineering, generally tech majors. But it’s the UCs that will produce the higher-compensated professions like MDs, so an average salary would reflect better for them. Of course tech universities like Caltech and MIT will have lofty medians and averages, because they’ll start tech companies, etc.

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884

That’s a good question. Maybe it’s a chance for some of the more overlooked CSU’s to increase their enrollment in that particular subject.

It seems all it takes is for a program to seem ‘popular’ in order for it to move up in order of importance sometimes.

885

This type of earning median has little meaning without controlling for additional factors, such as major/career and selectivity. It should come as no surprise that colleges with a high portion of tech majors, do well in median early career earnings. CollegeScorecard quickly recognized this limitation, so the CollegeScorecard website added controls for major in their earnings report. The NYT article intentionally ignores this limitation and uses the CollegeScorecard numbers without controlling for major…

Current numbers from CollegeScorecard are below and do not suggest higher early career earnings at Cal Poly than UCLA/UCB. The only notable difference between the 3 schools in the listed majors seems to be UCB CS grads earn more, which I’m guessing relates to a larger portion working in Silicon Valley. The other UCs often have lower median earnings than UCB/UCLA, particularly for CS. There are multiple contributing factors.

College Scorecard CS Earnings
UCB – $161k
UCLA – $148k
Cal Poly – $144k

College Scorecard Elec Eng Earnings
UCLA – $87k
Cal Poly – $87k
UCB – NA (EECS dominates median)

College Scorecard Mech Eng Earnings
Cal Poly – $86k
UCB – $86k
UCLA – $83k

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886

I neglected to point out that the NY Times used only a snapshot from a single, solitary year also, and I’m not exactly sure what cohort the NYT referenced, though it says that they used 2020 as 10 years out which would be the 2010 high-school cohort.

And when there are literally just hundreds-to-low-thousands of dollar amounts separating decile rankings (and even larger groupings), this particular ranking should have drastic changes from one report to the next with respect to each yearly cohort. And being a report from a government entity, I’m not sure Scorecard doesn’t just reproduce the results from one year to the next in groupings of years, say three years.

There are numerous factors as you stated in salary differentials:

– Geographic ones – within the state of California, Bay v. LA/SD, northeast v. midwest/south;

– Related to major – tech v. non-tech, in which those who major in humanities or the social sciences will generally take longer to achieve higher income and/or will have attend graduate school;

– Economic background – poorer v. wealthier (via connections, etc.); those of poorer background who eventually who do achieve higher salaries but it taking longer;

– Internships and Involvements (clubs, etc.) on campus – and there’s a wealth factor involved because students from poorer background are often more likely to have to adjust to college by concentrating more on their studies instead of being involved to possibly seek future employment.

The University of California boasts that a good 50% of its undergrads attend its campuses without paying any tuition. I don’t know if most of these are funded by Cal Grants and if it is a state-wide program or whether it is actually a part a federal program, and therefore what portion of these are accounted for in Scorecard.

887

Yep for 2021 - 8,000 opt-in for waitlist and zero got in. UCSD overadmitted students to begin with. Ended up with 7,600 students enrolled. So many students couldn’t get the housing. There were the shortage of labor, too, dining hall food order was 50 mins wait!!! Parents were so upset! So, UCSD had to cut enrollment in 2022. I couldn’t complain about the 2021 overadmit though. We were grateful to be admitted that year, especially into the CSE. It was like a lottery for real. I think that 2023 waitlist movement in general will be similar to 2022.

888

wow. I wonder how they managed to overenroll and still send out so many waitlists. Something obviously went wrong somewhere!

Perhaps that’s a good insight into why the admissions seems different for my youngest. (Although like I said in my earlier post, it could just be my perception this year - this year my daughter has so many friends with either 1 waitlist and the rest rejections, all rejections or just 1 offer. My other two had a very different experience where they and their friends had almost all offers. Maybe 1 waitlist or 1 rejection here and there. They had a lot of options to choose from).

I feel lucky that my youngest has 2 offers, 1 waitlist and 2 rejections in light of what her friends are going through.

889

My impression is that everything changed dramatically in with the 2021 admissions cycle. 2020 was obviously a mess towards the end because of COVID, but that actually meant a lot of students that year got offered spots off of waitlists because families decided to keep kids closer to home or to have kids take a gap year or just not to want to spend too much on college because of all the uncertainty. Things really went off the rails that next year, and despite predictions of waitlists getting used, things haven’t worked out that way. My sense is also that UCs are considered a good value for in state students, so perhaps yields are inching up a little bit. I’d be interested to look at that data. But if this is your first cycle of admissions since 2020, I do think things are objectively harder in terms of admit rates, etc.

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890

@worriedmomucb, I believe, someone correct me if I’m wrong, UC favors public HS students over private school students. Im not sure if still true, but some public HS are direct feeders to UC’s.

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891

UC’s do not favor any particular schools. They may have more admits from certain high performing HS’s in the area but each applicant is evaluated within the context of their HS and their resources/courses offerings etc….

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892

it may appear that UC favor public high schools, but they really favor low income, first gen, and students who overcome adversity, few of which attend private high schools.

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893

@bluebayou, @gumbymom,
Very good points.
Back when my kid was in middle school, the school’s counselor advised us to send my kid to this particular public high school because “it was a feeder HS for UC’s”. Maybe it used to be that way? not sure.
(By the way, we didn’t follow her advise as my kid selected the HS)

894

Another key factor is what portion of academically quality students apply to a UC, and attend if admitted. A much larger portion of students at CA public HSs generally apply to the CA public college system and attend if admitted than students at private HSs. However, at non-selective public HSs, a good portion of class often applies to Cal States, rather than just UCs. One can look up application rate and admit rate for specific HSs on the UC website.

For example, looking at nearby HSs in my town, the private HS had the higher admit rate, but the public had quadruple the portion of class attending a UC, so the public is more likely to be thought of as a “feeder HS” for UCs.

  • Nearby Private HS – 17% of class applies to a UC, 65% of applicants admitted (average UCLA admit GPA = 4.28) , 35% of admits attend , % of class attending = 17% * 65% * 35% = 4%
  • Nearby Public HS – 55% of class applies to a UC, 57% of applicants admitted (average UCLA admit GPA = 4.27), 52% of admits attend, % of class attending = 55% * 57% * 52% = 16%
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895

For parents here who have been through the college admission cycles before - Does UC admission decisions this year feel like an outlier or has it always been unpredictable and follows a hope-denial-reality-reconcile cycle?

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896

My sense is that it’s much less predictable post 2020. (My older kid was a 2020 grad so I’ve been monitoring things since then in preparation for the younger sibling this year.)

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899

I have been a CC follower and contributor for 13 years and I have found the UC’s unpredictable for most of the years that I have been following decisions.

Going test blind really opened up the flood gates with applications which has made it increasingly harder to get into the UC’s although prior to going test blind, the UC’s pretty consistently saw an increase in applicants each year. What I also see especially on this website, that the top students are mainly applying to a select a few select majors ie. Engineering/CS which further skews the difficulty of getting an acceptance. Again, my opinion based on what I have seen these many years.

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900

I agree with Gumbymom about the concentration of kids in select majors. I think the PIQs are the key to standing out. Generally, the list of extracurricular activities and GPA are quite similar and not very memorable, but a well written PIQ will be memorable.

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901

@data10, good points. For instance, in our HS, students apply to high ranking UC and selective privates. And, it’s not unusual for some students to go to a selective private college even if accepted to a high ranking UC.

902

Agreed but will add it’s a well written and properly read PIQ. I’m so many find it in piqs get ignored.