My daughter did as well. She definitely has a designated advisor and was told to reach out by email to set up an advising appointment in June in order to plan July class registration. Her advisor also answered questions during the Cal Day meeting.
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No. Honestly no. My largest classroom was 30 kids. Cafeteria was always accessible and given how busy we all were and how crazy schedules were, no, standing in line for 50 minutes (as I was told was a normal occurrence) would have been absolutely intolerable. I wouldnât pay $75k per year for that experience.
I realize we are all shaped by our experiences.
Exactly this. I am a product of a small LAC. I had an exact same experience as you did. I am in disbelieve that my kid chose a UC over a LAC and I am sure we are going to regret this, but he doesnât know what he doesnât know.
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Students will have all sorts of valid decision points in comparing options. To characterize adequate access to advising, counseling, professor office hours, and the like as âhandholdingâ seems strange to me though. I would again point to what public universities implement for the their top students in their honors programs: lots of so-called âhandholdingâ.
My comments on this thread arenât meant to run down public universities as an option, but to use data points and stories that illustrate that using college rankings based primarily on research output and reputational surveys (which are highly correlated to research output) is a poor way to determine undergraduate educational quality. There are a number of indicators that UCs have even less of a focus on undergraduates than other top state flagshipsâpart of that is related to the dismal funding decline by the state, as well as massive enrollment increases.
UC Davis in particular has that dynamic. For a n=1 story, I was just talking the other day with a friend who retired last year very early as a professor in a humanities department at UCD. A large part of their decision was due to large enrollment increases without commensurate increases in instructional supportâi.e. lack of faculty hiring and pressure for large class sizes. As someone who was very focused on the teaching and mentoring side of the equation, this became no longer tenable for them. In the STEM fields at UCD where grant funding is king, the recent UC system graduate student workers strike provides some indication of the issues:
UCD has also been particularly bad in comparison with other UCs in providing on-campus housing to keep pace with their enrollment increases despite having the most land available. But they do have more capacity for mega-lecture classes now with this 600-student capacity facility: New Lecture Hall on the (California Ave.) Block
I bring all of this up because I wish the UCs did better and had a stronger focus and prioritization of the undergraduate educational experience as more befitting of their global reputational prestige and based on research output.
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The freshman dining hall line at my Ivy college was where I met lots of friends! Just because it was a fancy/expensive private school didnât mean there were no lines. It was not a burden but rather a break from all the rest of the stress. Now I will agree that at UCLA during COVID precautions last year, when they didnât have enough dining workers (and were BEGGING students to apply to work for a good wage!), lines were excessive. But thatâs gotten much better and there were always some dining options that were without long lines. But yeah, if you wanted to eat at the most popular places, you had to wait.
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Fellow NJâer here. This feels like an odd comparison. Stevens accepts a majority of applicants and by any major ranking (of overall school) is way below UCB/UCLA. This is not to disparage Stevens â it could be an amazing fit for some people seeking specific majors/degrees. But UBC/UCLA are T20/T25 schools by most measures. Forbes has UBC #2 right now just ahead of Princeton, but even if you donât agree most people would agree that UCB and UCLA are tippy top institutions with worldwide reputations.
Since weâre picking on NJ, it would be closer to compare UBC/UCLA to Princeton. So the question is if you are OOS for UCs and assuming the student has no preference on geographic location or a specific major that one of those schools is exceptionally known for, and doesnât have some emotional attachment to any of the schools (all reasons that potentially trump economic value for those who can afford it), would you pay a similar price for UCB with a 20:1 student:faculty ratio, no guaranteed housing after Freshman year, and a plethora of other resource constraints, or would you pick Princeton with a 5:1 faculty ratio, amazing guaranteed campus housing all years, and the largest per capita endowment of any US university, which allows them to spend a multiple of the UCs per year on student resources?
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Same with my D, met her advisor during orientation at Berkeley. She stays very connected with her advisor through out 4 years since she goes for 2 majors and taking additional CS courses, she finds herself having conversations with her advisor very often and they were very helpful for her.
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And good luck getting into Princeton. If my D gets into Princeton she would go there too lol. Good school is good school.
I was rooting for Stevens for my son for many reasons, but itâs b/c itâs a good school and my son got in. I am just saying if he picked Stevens and paid 82K (he actually got 45K total in merit aid), no one would raise and eye brown, so why the UCs???. Your point about Stevens not being equal to UCLA/Cal actually made my point - even Stevens a private school and less âfamousâ as the UCs, no one complained about its value or whatever, why the OOS publics get criticized. That was my point.
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Princeton has a 5% acceptance rate, and the option for SCEA. Berkeley has an 8% OOS acceptance rate, with no early option. Not worlds apart.
That is fine, but my D didnât get in, she got into the UCs, soâŠ
The last 4 years our HS didnât have any kid admitted to Princeton, but plenty to the UCs. And we are 30 mins away from Princeton. Donât know what to tell you.
(Sorry I donât know how to quote)
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You seem to be focusing a lot on Davis. Yes, they built a new lecture hall. They also built a new engineering design center and will open a Center for Agricultural Innovation in 2026. Additionally, they opened Green at West Village which houses approximately 3300 sophomore and transfer students.
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⊠measures that are primarily based on professor research output (publications and securing grant funding), and that mostly donât address quality of undergraduate education and resources directed to support services for undergrads.
IMO, the reliance on rankings, and the associated use of phrases like T20 or T40 or whatever has really warped the conversation and thinking about educational outcomes for undergrad programs.
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I couldnât agree more! I really wish we stopped this ranking nonsense so we could start looking at more qualitative things about undergraduate teaching and experiences
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I focused a bit on UCD because, as I documented in another post, they have class size stats far larger than the norm for other top UCs (which, in turn, have class size stats larger than other top-ranked publics in other states). They have a large share of larger classes over 50 and a smaller share of smaller classes under 20. This explains the need to construct that new 600-student lecture hall.
UCD has indeed been doing a lot residential construction lately, but has a larger on-campus residential shortfall for the past couple of decades to catch up on than other UCs. The recent memorandum of understanding (MOU) they signed with the City also is really weak compared to those that other UC campuses have with their communities, and with a lack of teeth in enforcement measures itâs unlikely they will actually meet their pledged commitments for residential construction to bring UCD closer to the on-campus residential shares of other UCs.
I thought this was a discussion about the OOS value proportion of the UCâs versus comparable privates in general not specific to a specific student.
I would say the discussion is about the school that is best for your student, whether is it in-state or OOS or Private or Public.
When you (general you) said âI would never pay xxx for OOS public vs. Privateâ, the implication would have to be that the student did get admitted, and had a choice. What is the point of discussion if the student didnât even get in (to the top private/Ivy) to begin with? Top school is top school, given the choices whether private/public/OOS/instate. Singling out OOS public makes no sense to me.
But you used Princeton, for comparison, and itâs only one private college.
What about the value proposition for other much larger privates, some of which I mentioned above, such as NYU, Cornell, USC, BU, GT, NEU, etc.?
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I agree. My original post said the same thing. It depends on the schools and the students priorities. I advocated against either extremists statement and was responding to a poster. As noted I only picked Princeton as an example to pick another NJ school to the other posters example that seemed closer in comparison to UCB/UCLA.
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I have two daughters at UC Davis and I agree with you. There is no housing issue at Davis.
This poster seems to have a dislike of UC Davis and wishes to believe the worst in them. Hey ho - you canât please everybody!
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