<p>Kentucky, and yes.</p>
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<p>annasdad - I think the problem is the misuse of USNWR and the people who act as though #6 is meaningfully above #11 and so forth. The PA score is certainly something one can quibble with, but the rest of the data? It’s fairly useful data - you just have to combine it with weights that you feel meaningful (for example, I couldn’t care less about alumni donation rates, but I do care about class sizes and ACT/SAT ranges). Sure, it’s not perfect, but if you use it properly - which means squinting at it as opposed to treating it as a perfect ordinal ranking - it’s useful to identify “like” schools.</p>
<p>I grew up in Virginia and I wouldn’t trade Va schools for California. </p>
<p>I am now in Maryland and I would trade.</p>
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<p>I don’t look at any rankings, since the concept of ranking colleges and universities is pointless. The impact that a given school has on the life of a given student is what is important, and no ranking can measure that. </p>
<p>The USNWR rankings are especially. nonsensical, since they’re based on meaningless measures assigned arbitrary weights. If you really think that high school guidance counselor opinions should have any weight in assessing the quality of a college, then you are very gullible indeed.</p>
<p>PG, there are certainly metrics that an individual family or student can look at when making a college decision; but an intelligent decision requires figuring out what metrics are important to you, and why. To say that you are going to pick USNWR 20 over USNWR 50 simply because 20 means it’s a “better” school is ridiculous - because it may not be better ** for you**. </p>
<p>The only validity of USNWR is in measuring national prestige, because that is what the ranking measures (and what it determines - it’s circular). Even that is bogus from the standpoint of an individual who is likely to spend their life in one geographical area. UC Davis may be prestigious in California, but to those of us in the Midwest, it’s less well known than UW Lacrosse or UIC or Michigan Tech. And when you get to LACs, it’s even more meaningless. </p>
<p>These people on CC who try to end a discussion with “A is better than B because USNWR says so” are fooling only themselves and a few gullible others.</p>
<p>katwkittens - Thank for the great summary of NC schools. I am another NC person who wouldn’t trade.</p>
<p>Just to clarify, the UCs currently cost about $13000 a year in tuition, compared to a national average of $17,000 a year for state universities. They are, IMHO, not overpriced. They give a lot of AP credit, so a student can still easily graduate in 4 years. The same is not true for the California State University system, which is more impacted, but the tuition is $5472 a year, quite a bargain, especially for an excellent school like Cal Poly SLO. With 112 community colleges, 23 California State Universities, and 10 UCs, our higher education system is larger and more comprehensive than that of most countries. If only the legislature would treat it like the jewel that it is…because as the Chancellor of UCSF said on the CBS Evening News last night, education is one of the keys to getting people back to work. (She was the CEO of Genetech, jointly founded by Stanford and UC Berkeley people).</p>
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<p>I agree, but if you are trying to objectively compare two university’s utility for a population, you don’t have much better options.</p>
<p>I actually went to SF State in California, in its current state I would definitely trade UC for say UNC’s program. The sticker is $13k but I went about 10 yrs ago and the increase yearly is crazy. In addition that stick plus room and board and extras push its to around $31k a year unless you live at home. Plus the size of classes make them very unpersonal. I think for lots of individuals unless you an over achiever its a big downside.</p>
<p>I really like UNC Chappel Hill but I know its out of my sons price range. S definitely has the grades and scores to get into Berkeley but don’t know if him taking the train everyday to school would be healthy or make him sick of the school. Only time will tell. We’re definitely applying out of state.</p>
<p>I can top you santookie. I went to SFSU 30 years ago and my fees were $125 a semester. I went to UCSC before that and it was about $225 a quarter.</p>
<p>California does appear to have a larger number of “good” state universities relative to its population than many other states, though scaling the comparison by population removes the exaggeration caused by size.</p>
<p>For example, California has what many consider to be about six (plus or minus a few, depending on arguments about which schools count) “flagship” quality state universities. Virginia and North Carolina have one or two each (depending on arguments about which schools count). But these states have only about 1/5 and 1/4 the population of California, so they proportionally are not that far off of California.</p>
<p>So it is not surprising that residents of Virginia and North Carolina may not see California’s public universities as necessarily being an upgrade over their own state universities.</p>
<p>Wisconsin and Minnesota can also be considered comparable or overachieving relative to California, each with a “flagship” quality state university on 1/7 the population of California.</p>
<p>However, some states seem to be underachievers at the “flagship” level. Texas, with 2/3 the population of California, has only one. New York, with 1/2 the population of California, does not have any that most people would think of as “flagship” quality comparable to the top six or so in California.</p>
<p>No- would not trade to a UC with the current financial situation. UW-Madison has been increasing access to freshman level courses. Also a different kind of diversity (including Californians). No one state has it all, just different things.</p>
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<p>List price wise, the cheaper out of state publics would include Minnesota and Virginia Tech among the well known schools. Most other well known public schools have out of state costs greater than in-state UC costs.</p>
<p>Virginia Tech is currently $31,336 for out of state students for tuition,fees,room and board. This figure does not include books,personal expenses, computer,transportation.
There is also an additional $30 per credit hour expense for engineering students for upper level courses.
[Cost</a> of Attendance](<a href=“http://www.admiss.vt.edu/cost.php]Cost”>http://www.admiss.vt.edu/cost.php)</p>
<p>PG, my answer was in reply to another poster who asked:</p>
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<p>My point was that the CA college system, as a whole, does a good job of fulfilling the purpose of colleges for the state.</p>
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<p>If the rankings did that, then perhaps there would be some justification for their existence. But there is no data that the rankings do any such thing - and indeed, without agreed-upon criteria for “utility for a population,” how could they?</p>
<p>The problem is that the rankings purport to be what they are not (USNWR’s screaming covers, before it went broke, “AMERICA’S BEST COLLEGES”), which induces the lazy and the clueless to make stupid decisions - and some money-hungry college administrators to do every thing they can to feed the frenzy, often to the possible detriment of those whom they nominally exist to serve.</p>
<p>^^If it’s meaningless to try to rank schools, then on what basis do you claim that the Univ. of Illinois is “world class?” Clearly you rank it among the world’s best and better than a lot of other schools (unless you consider all colleges world class). </p>
<p>You must have some criteria for deciding that Illinois is among the world’s best and not down in the college cellar. The main difference is USNews and all those other rankings have written down their criteria where we can all judge their validity.</p>
<p>I don’t think it really matters what you folks on CC think about the UCs compared to other state flagship systems. They get so many applications (UCLA gets the most of all the colleges in the US) that they don’t need to be any more desirable. I went to a transfer task force meeting, and trying to transfer to UCLA or Cal from a community college has almost become a pipe dream. Even UC Riverside has become competitive. Nursing programs on ALL campuses, (UC, CSU, CC, and private schools), are impacted. At some CSUs, like San Diego State, Cal State Fullerton, and Cal Poly SLO, ALL majors are impacted. Community college transfer students are no longer guaranteed admission, even if they meet all transfer criteria. We must be doing something right, since there is no shortage of students.</p>
<p>tptshorty,I’m sure California is doing something right as their schools seem highly desirable to instate families. Virginia public universities(there is no “UVa system” in Virginia) and probably NC, Texas,Michigan,Wisconsin,Illinois,Ohio,Pennsylvania,etc) are probably also desirable to their citizens. Each state has their own way on this.</p>