My sister went to UCD and she loved it. I went to UCB and I hated it. Hubby, Sis, and BIL went to UCB for grad school and they loved it.
They told me I am just a hater lol. That’s why I didn’t think my opinion about UCB is the norm, just my own.
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Doesn’t most of this describe the state of higher ed in general, not the UCs uniquely? They don’t seem out of step with their peers on any of this. The poor treatment of non-tenured faculty is a deplorable national trend and one of the reasons I lobbied one of my kids away from considering a terminal degree whose main value would have been a career in higher ed. Bloated and exponentially growing administration has been an issue for a couple decades – I was reading articles about that problem 15+ years ago.
Athletics is a weird case. I personally have no interest in it, and think a college’s priority should be academic education. I disapprove of the focus our state flagship puts on it, though in that case its being deficit financed by us taxpayers at the loss of hundreds of millions. But some of these programs are self-supporting financially and schools argue they attract students and alumni donations. I know numerous peers whose kids specifically picked schools based on how robust the culture was around sports team spirit. One of them turned down Cornell to go to an out-of-state state college because of the sports teams. He wasn’t an athlete he just wanted to enjoy socializing with his classmates at the big games. Obviously Cornell thought he was a serious student; the two are not mutually exclusive.
It would be amazing to see a major college system with a great national reputation like the UCs experiment with forcing a massive reduction in non-educational expensive for a multi-year trial and tracking the results. The colleges all claim they need to keep up with the Joneses. And government regulation also contributes so some of it – you need experts on Title IX, mental health, etc. But it would be great to see the UCs stop spending a dime on marketing to projective students for 3 years and do an across the board forced reduction of say 10-20% in administration and see if its really the catastrophe the colleges says it would be. Would UC applications really plummet? And even if they did, would that be a bad thing or would the serious students still find them and give the AO’s more time to focus on reviewing apps?
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You seem particularly hung up on expenditure of money on athletics and administration since that’s something you reference in pretty much every reply. But ultimately I guess you are on this thread because of your perception quoted above. But I’ve yet to understand what you think is flawed about the admissions process other than that you keep tying it back to “administrative bloat” and “athletic departments.” Could you elaborate? Because based on your comments throughout the thread, it seems like really you wouldn’t be interested in having a child apply to undergraduate programs at UC schools. Which is fine!
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We are all very grateful for the help you provide to prospective applicants and their families.
Sure 6 of the 10 most applied school are UCs. There could be many reasons. Some of them are: a) CA is a large state and UCs admit a lot of students,
b)CA has a better and larger economy than most of other states, c)other state schools are worse than UCs, d)CA has much better weather than most of the states, e)UCs have excellent reputation due to the research of their outstanding faculties. None of this means that we don’t have room for improvement and certainly things can change in future.
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Agreed. This problem is all over our universities. I recently came across a Bloomberg article that discusses these issues (America’s Educational Superpower Is Fading)
It is hard to watch what is happening with higher education.
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One important reason you missed . . . the UCs are an excellent option and provide a terrific educational opportunity for many (but not all) students. While they are top quality research institutions, their reputation is based on far more than just that.
Could they improve? Sure. Are they the best fit for everyone? Of course not.
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Which begs the question, why not a top-50 private Uni for these wealthier kids? OOS public just makes no sense to me (other than a few majors).
And to get back on point, no need to vent if one is accepted to privates.
Unless you have experienced an education at both a LAC and a massive system with hundreds of kids in a classroom, it’s not possible to compare the quality. Our kids adjust to whatever they have to and nobody wants to feel they paid for a lesser quality product. Personally I think there is a great value in mentorship and personal contacts with professors, something that’s hard to do with hundreds of kids in a classroom.
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Yes, smaller class size in general lets you build valuation connections to your professors who will become your network, which is a plus.
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I’m not sure about other UCs, but at UCSD all classes are taught by professor, not TA. Large classes (taught by professor) will have small weekly groups led by TA for discussions and questions. TA do check the homework assignment and help with the grading. These small break-out sessions are not mandatory but available to students to attend. All my son’s classes were taught by professor and my understanding is that teaching is mandatory for professorship at UCSD.
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We have one kid in a UC, and another one at a small elite LAC. The two kids have very different personality and different interests. I can’t say that one type of institution (State university v.s. private LAC) is better than another. It also depends on fit and preference of the student. There are pros and cons in both. We can’t expect the state public university to run like a private university. The mission and instituition priority are not the same.
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It is good to hear. I think UCSD has promise to be just as great as UCB even in research. I know that they were very carefully building their math department. They pulled Kedlaya away from MIT and then gave Gross ( a famous number theorist from Harvard) joint appointment at UCSD. Gross might have retired by now. I really hope UCSD succeeds in being the top notch research university rivaling UCB in math.
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It’s the same at all the UCs I know about.
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Isn’t that how it works in most places that use grad student TA’s?
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I never understood this statement which I see often “it makes no sense to pay a lot for OOS public schools”.
This statement implies that private schools are somehow worth the $$ where OOS public schools are not, which is totally untrue.
If i can afford to pay $75K a year, I don’t care if the school is private, public, big, small, OOS, instate, LAC, Technical, etc…I am going to pick a school that my kids will most likely to thrive
and happy in, period. Actually, my kid will pick. Those categorization means nothing to us or my kids.
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Not necessarily true at UCB, where I was myself a GSI. I taught several classes myself - no professor involved (although I had a department supervisor to help if any issues arose). I designed the curriculum, gave lectures, did all the grading. Specifically, I taught foreign language classes (very common for grad students to teach at UCB), R&C (also very common for grad students to teach), but also taught a large-ish (around 50 students) lecture course that satisfies one of the undergrad breadth requirements (somewhat less common for grad students to teach, but obviously it sometimes does happen). So it depends. But I can say for a fact the GSIs at UCB do often teach classes quite independently.
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I think the decision for OOS is nuanced by a couple things.
First, you’re speaking from the full-pay family experience and the majority of families aren’t full pay. And most don’t do great research in advance of applying. So they get their acceptances and find that the cost of attendance is potentially higher than at private colleges that were more generous with aid or merit.
Second, at least for some, given how awesome the UCs are they would still be contenders against many private schools that don’t have as strong a reputation as they do. But they make less sense for OOS when compared against private schools with at least comparable reputations, since as OOS you would pay as much and end up with a far worse student:faculty ratio, larger classes, more competition to get those classes, housing issues (no guarantee all 4 years (or even 2 years in some cases), in the case of UCSB possibly windowless rooms, etc.), less resources to help secure internships, research or jobs, etc.
And of course there’s so many specific factors to the application – do they specifically want to be in CA, is a given UC really top for their specific major, etc.
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Edit to change:
Yes if you are not full pay, I do see the reasons to balance out all the costs and benefits. But still, the implication that small classes are better than big classes, that may be important for some but not for others. Or private schools are better and providing internship opportunities. I don’t fully agree with that general assumption.
But yes I was talking about full pay and those who can afford it. But if I wasn’t full pay, and willing to take on the debt, I still don’t agree with the general assumption that private school is better than OOS public.
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I have a feeling a lot of OOS students come to UC for a chance to live in CA and all that it offers–especially the weather. My 3rd DS’s sole criteria for college was “somewhere warm with no snow.” After I started helping him look around the US for affordable colleges, I was surprised how difficult it was to find a college with zero snow and cold (for a CA OOS student who qualified for neither need-based nor merit-based aid). So he ended up staying in CA, needless to say.
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Yes CA has a lot of appeal for my kids - mostly the culture and the views (and of course some schools), not necessarily the weather. My kids also like public schools. That’s where they find their people. My D loves everything Berkeley and the Bay Area have to offer. Yep, everything including the homeless. Every Sunday she brought the unused dorm meals to the homeless, even know their names.
For grad schools, she is looking into Seattle, NYC, Bay Area, Boston. Most likely she will apply to public institutions.
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