My understanding is that this is nearly impossible to do. Perhaps I am mistaken about that.
Should and would a potential CS major attend Cal or UCLA if it means studying something they have little interest in just because it’s an available major? So high achieving students would willingly give up their dreams of becoming a software engineer just for the honor of attending a slightly higher ranked UC? That doesn’t make sense to me.
@Michelle_Li3 I meant this as a serious question, because a lot of your concerns seem to be tied to limiting the “desirable” UCs to 3 campuses. I would like to understand this better, because there’s just no world I’m seeing in which the “top” students in CA are not already getting offered an education within the UC system.
Thank you for sharing the pre-2007 stats.
Agree with you that top UC’s were prestigious pre-2007 when OOS % of admits was just 6%. It has gone up significantly since then and that’s the issue that many of us are trying to highlight.
For people advocating more and more OOS/international students, I understand some diversity is good for undergraduate experience but if 10% (i.e. 25,000 students) OOS and international students are not enough to provide diversity, then there is no limit to the UC’s greed for more tuition $$ from OOS, at the cost of deviating from the fiduciary duty of providing high-quality education for California students first.
I actually meant to convey that you can craft a high GPA class in a myriad of different ways but holistic review is the only approach that allows for a high GPA class that is ALSO diverse and balanced. UCLA has a median 4.0 UW with the holistic review process so its not like holistic review is dragging down the GPA of the admitted pool.
Yes, the MAJORITY (55%) of UC students pay NO TUITION AT ALL due to being considered “low income” (and the threshold is indeed pretty low).
I’m not overly sympathetic to data and trends which span nearly two decades and more importantly include both a global financial crisis and a global health pandemic. Moreover, the trends in application numbers from OOS and in particular international students are more a factor of the ever escalating chase for prestige and international students coming to the US than anything else. That’s been going on for quite some time now. The UC’s are as much a beneficiary of this as they are a cause of this. Further, OOS/intl admits went up owed to financial needs on the part of the UC system. IOW, increased demand from the UC system which is of course a separate issue from increased supply of applicants.
I’m simply of the view that below a certain threshold, these schools become objectively less interesting. I would argue that a student body composed of e.g. 90% of kids from one state, no matter how large and diverse in and of itself, is objectively less attractive than it otherwise would be. It certainly would be to me, and to my kids.
CA is the 4th largest economy in the world and people will always want to come here. The % of OOS in the UCs isn’t the attraction. Also, Internationals actually add to diversity in a way that OOS kids don’t. Personally, I would like a 85/10/5 split for In-State/International/OOS. People can argue these % targets but a consideration of whether the UCs are interesting to people outside the state shouldn’t be the thing to optimize for.
I think some students (my 3 boys) care more about their major than the university, while other students (my daughter) absolutely care more about the university and are more “flexible” about what they want to study.
As realist, I would say that at some point, the notion that OOS/international students (who are almost entirely coming from the socioeconomic upper tier by any objective measurement) offer “diversity of perspective” is just pure institutional PR/marketing speak for “we love their sweet sweet full-pay tuition $”.
Just noting that you and I are talking about different GPAs. Most high-achieving students that would fit in well at a school like UCLA have the opportunity to earn 4.0 UW (unless their school is extraordinarily rigorous or has significant grade deflation). This isn’t true for the highest level of weighted GPA (4.8+) which depends on access to weighted course options, combined with avoidance of unweighted course options (possibly at the expense of genuine academic breadth, depth, and/or rigor).
I did not say it was the attraction, nor did I say it should be optimized for. I said that below a certain threshold, it’s a detraction. I stand by that notion and distinction.
That is the definition of optimization 
The UC’s Mission is below, but no where in there does it say Cal, UCLA, UCSD, etc… The UC’s are meeting their mission or “fiduciary duty.”
But what about parents who think their child is too good for UCSB? Doesn’t the state have a fiduciary duty to give them exactly what their parents think they deserve?
Well, if those parents really think their children are too good for UCSB, then they could always “upgrade” and attend Cal Poly SLO or SJSU, or even Chico State, assuming they applied and were accepted. 
Top 20 Public Colleges for High-Paying Careers
1). University of California-Berkeley
2). University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
3). University of California-Los Angeles
4). University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
5). University of Washington-Seattle Campus
6). California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo
7). University of California-San Diego
8). University of California-Davis
9). University of California-Santa Cruz
10). University of Virginia
11). San Jose State University
12). Georgia Institute of Technology
13). University of California - Santa Barbara
14). California State University - Chico
15). The University of Texas at Austin
16). William & Mary
17). University of California - Irvine
18). Purdue University
19). University of Wisconson - Madison
20). University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
(Before anyone begins attacking me for this particular ranking, I haven’t looked at the methodology, I’m just using it as a comedic prop )
Hmmm . . . What can The University of Texas at Austin learn from Chico State?
Well, and I will also point out, at the risk of some kind of academic blasphemy, that the CSUs are actually far more stats driven than the UCs, which seems to be the sort of admissions system that those disappointed high achievers often indicate they want and consider far superior and more fair. So in that case, the CSUs are actually a better fit for the high stats kids in the top whatever percent of their class who rely primarily on super high GPA/ course rigor to build their applications.
According to some parents on this thread, the state’s duty goes even farther than providing each student with a suitable school to attend. Some people on this thread feel that the state has a duty to admit every high stats applicant to Cal and UCLA, regardless of whether the student would even attend if admitted. For example, the parent who wanted to petition for changes in the UC system because their child was not admitted to Cal and UCLA, even though the child had already been admitted to their first choice school (not a UC) and was planning to attend it.
well all colleges make independent decisions.
UT-Austin does direct admit of top 6% students from each high school but they know not everyone will join UT either because they didn’t get their first choice major at UT or because they got accepted into a better school, or for whatever reason.
The colleges (including Cal and UCLA) accept more students than their capacity based on historical yield rates.
Thanks but you didn’t answer my two questions which were
Where is the money coming from if you reduce OOS students and therefore funding?
Where is the space on campus coming from when you auto-admit the top 6%, give them their choice and suddenly everyone wants to go to UCLA and UCB?
And I’ll add a 3rd) Do you think by auto-admitting students based on their gpa alone you are somehow watering down the pool and making the campuses less ‘prestigous’. All you need is a 4.0/be top 6% to get in?. What does they do to the university in the long run? (I’m just thinking out loud here).
These are just practical questions.