Why are public undergrad universities so looked down upon?

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of California - Berkeley
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<p>haha sakky, though I respect your opinion, I never did figure out why you didn't transfer from Cal? You're obviously very bright, and I'm sure could have found a private (undergrad) university more to your liking. </p>

<p>dconcerned: agree about the diversity, but we must remember that public universities are legally banned from practicing affirmative action, which many, perhaps even most, private schools use to diversify their student body (funnily enough though, many publics claim more diversity than privates...for example, UCB/UCLA are about 35% white, 45% Asian, etc., while Notre Dame, Boston College, HYPS, etc. all have student bodies where Caucasians make up well over half the population--over 70% at ND/BC, and others). But I do agree with you on the geographic diversity (though again, that's due to state law, not university admissions officials).</p>

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because of the top 10% privilege given to in-state hs graduates in ca, tx, fl and mi).

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I'm not sure what you mean by this...CA has no procedures where students in the top-10% are guaranteed admission by any means. Students graduating in the top-4% are guaranteed admission to a UC school, but not specifically the one of their preference (in that, many of these people end up getting "automatically" admitted to UC Merced, instead of first-choice Berkeley, which doesn't automatically admit anyone under this rule (same with UCLA)). Michigan doesn't have that rule either, at least that I'm aware of (could be wrong on this though, just have never heard of it).</p>

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<p>One reason might be that state schools in many large states lag far behind the top privates, e.g. New York, Florida, Ohio, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Arizona, Tennessee, Missouri.</p>

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<p>all carlifonian hs students if they graduate top 10% are legally given priorities to uc system schools. this came into effect in mid-90s. then came other states like florida, texas, and i'm pretty sure michigan too. many call this privilege. as i said, they're all top-notch schools, particularly grad schools. it's only diversity that turns away many qualified students to other privates. i've read somewhere in one of cc threads featuring survey results of several thousands students done by ny times showing that a great majority of admittees (like 50-80%), if accepted to both ivies/mit/stanford and ucb/ucla, opt to enroll in ivies/ms instead.</p>

<p>affirmative action and diversity have been used by elite schools admission process to more or less achieve their desired target. several decades ago, affirmative action started to be used by ivies to reduce the number of overqualified jews to enroll in ivies. but that's another story. there're so many books, notably the chosen, written about this topic.</p>

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<p>UT would be a great school if they abolished the 10% rule and admitted in a more reasonable fashion.</p>

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a number of public universities like ucb, ucla, u michigan, are overall top-notch. but it comes down to diversity, there's a dramatic difference between top privates and publics. ucb in-states are now well over 90% with asian americans 40% plus (because of the top 10% privilege given to in-state hs graduates in ca, tx, fl and mi).

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<p>I'm actually not so concerned about geographic diversity, at least with respect to Berkeley, as California is a large and diverse state all by itself. Sure, it would be nice to get a mix of more undergrads from other states and other countries, but I think it's a less pressing concern. </p>

<p>What is more disconcerting to me is that the best California students don't really want to go to Berkeley for undergrad. Let's be honest. Berkeley's undergrad yield is only 40%, which means that a clear majority of admitted students will instead choose to go elsewhere. I think we can all agree that those admittees who are the very best students - and hence are able to get into schools like Harvard, Stanford, and MIT - are among the most likely to turn down Berkeley. Now, to be sure, it doesn't happen all the time (i.e. there are a few students who turn down Harvard or Stanford for Berkeley), but the directionality is quite clearly one-way. </p>

<p>In other words, the real issue is not that Berkeley has too many Californian undergrads, but that Berkeley doesn't have enough of the best Californian undergrads, and in particular, that Berkeley ends up with a preponderance of undergrads who just weren't good enough to get into those other schools. Sad but true. </p>

<p>Yet as I noted before, this doesn't happen with grad school. Plenty of the world's best students happily turn down Harvard, Stanford, or MIT for Berkeley when it comes to graduate school, especially for their PhD, as befits Berkeley's status as among the most desirable graduate schools in the world. I've always wondered: why can't the same be true for undergrad?</p>

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<p>sakky:</p>

<p>i find your arguments very constructive and valid and this cc thread of great value. that's sure one thing about cc, that we all can learn from one another.</p>

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<p>
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all carlifonian hs students if they graduate top 10% are legally given priorities to uc system schools.

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<p>You are ONLY guaranteed admission to A UC school if you graduate in the top-4%.</p>

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I've always wondered: why can't the same be true for undergrad?

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Good question, and I think a lot of it has to do with the size of public schools...going away from home for the first time is hard, and many people think it's too great of a challenge to couple that with such a huge environment.</p>

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<p>
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Good question, and I think a lot of it has to do with the size of public schools...going away from home for the first time is hard, and many people think it's too great of a challenge to couple that with such a huge environment.

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<p>Hence the sad irony of the situation. As I said in other threads, you never hear of Berkeley graduate students complaining about the huge, impersonal environment where they feel they don't have sufficient support. For example, I knew one Berkeley PhD student who said that in all her years in her program, she never had to deal with the financial aid or the registrar's office, not even once; instead, her program had a staff member who took care of those sorts of errands for all of the graduate students. </p>

<p>Think about what that means. These aren't young, wet-behind-the-ears teenagers just out of high school that we're talking about here. These are graduate students. These are relatively mature and confident young adults. Yet they are the ones to whom Berkeley dedicates most of its support resources. In other words, those students who get the least support are precisely the ones who need it the most, and the ones who get the most support are precisely the ones who need it the least. That's the sad irony of Berkeley and, I would presume, many other public schools.</p>

<p>To continue the story, that Berkeley graduate that I discussed above was herself a Berkeley undergrad. So she did in fact know, through painful experience, how to navigate the financial aid office. In fact, she recalled how one time, as an undergrad, her aid was so snarled that she basically had to visit the office every day for several weeks in order to get her money, which meant that her registration was blocked because she didn't pay the fees on time, which meant that she ended up signing up for classes late and hence almost didn't get the classes because most of the seats had already been filled, etc. It was a big mess. How much nicer it was to, as a grad student, have a staff member just down the hall who took care of all of those kinds of problems for her, I remember her saying. She wished she had that as an undergrad.</p>

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<p>This is slightly off-topic, but when I was in the middle of the app process and had to call undergrad admissions to ask them a Q, they were pretty much impossible to get a hold of. In fact, I actually counted and one time I went through 9 automated phone transmissions and STILL couldn't talk to someone. </p>

<p>Cal should beef that system up, it gets annoying very quickly.</p>

<p>but other than that, the people there were very friendly to talk to and such.</p>