highopes

What really sucks is being a Midwest student.

k&s

^ Why - plenty of real good Midwestern state schools?

tocollege

TheBlackLantern is using UCB and UCLA as his safeties...

UCB: 21.4% admitted. Rejected: 38,075 students, all of whom were in the top 12.5% of graduating seniors in the state.

UCLA: 22.7% admitted. Rejected: 42,832 students, all of whom were in the top 12.5% of graduating seniors statewide.

Be sure to come back next March and let us know how your "safeties" worked out for you.

Source: University of California - Admissions

highopes

^ Somehow I find it hard to believe that every single rejected student at UCB/UCLA was in the top 12.5% of California seniors graduating that year.

And, about the Midwest thing: Californians have Stanford/UC's. East Coast-ers have a crapload of prestigious schools to choose from right near home. Kids in the Midwest who want great colleges have to go to either side of the country to find them (with a couple exceptions).

Plus, we have to live in the Midwest.

Pizzagirl

So what? Kids who live in the major midwestern states also have great backups. What's so special about them being UC's?

bclintonk

Wait a minute, you can't have it both ways. If you don't want to live in the Midwest, then there's nothing wrong with "go[ing] to either side of the country," is there? That's just what you want.

If you WANT to live in the Midwest, then you don't get to complain about "having to" live there. And there are plenty of good schools in the Midwest, not just a "couple of exceptions."

National universities:
U Chicago (#9 US News)
WUSTL (#12)
Northwestern (#14)
Notre Dame (#19)
Michigan (#25)

That's 20% of the top 25 right there, more than the West Coast (Stanford #4, Caltech #5, UC Berkeley #21, UCLA #25), same number as the South (Duke #8, Rice #17, Emory #17, Vanderbilt #19, UVA #23).

Plus some of the other Midwestern public flagships, especially Wisconsin-Madison and UIUC, are very strong.

As for LACs;
Carleton #5
Grinnell #11
Oberlin #20
Macalester #26
Kenyon #32
plus another 20 or so in the 50-100 range.

kyledavid80

The University of California is designated for the top 12.5% of California.

Berkeley's stats this year were especially competitive. For enrolled freshmen (not admitted), average UW GPA of 3.9, W of 4.4, median SAT score of 2060 (and this isn't superscored), 21% acceptance rate, 17% OOS acceptance rate. I daresay Berkeley is as selective, even in-state, as some top privates. Obviously not HYPSM, and of course its admissions process is different (emphasizing different things) from some other top schools. If anyone uses Berkeley (and to a slightly lesser extent UCLA) as a safety, they're being a bit arrogant/too optimistic about their chances with colleges and need to re-evaluate their college list. Sure, someone with a perfect score/GPA/excellent ECs might consider them safeties, but the fact is, some schools just should not be safeties. Those same students might consider JHU or ND safeties, but just because certain students are overqualified for a school doesn't mean that school should be considered a safety.

Funnily enough, I saw many, many students on CC who considered Berkeley/UCLA their safeties, and they ended up getting rejected from top privates. Now they're going to their "safety."

tocollege

highopes,
To be eligible to even apply to the UC system you do indeed have to be in the top 12.5% statewide. University of California - Admissions
If you are not in the top 12.5%, you can try to apply as "eligible by exception," but only a very small % of those students are admitted - and they usually have extremely unusual circumstances and have shown great potential in some way.

tocollege

And to address post #10:

Quote: "i should be more clear. UCs i mean UCLA and UC berkeley. even i look down on other UCs."

Keep in mind that only the top 12.5% statewide are eligible to apply to ANY of the nine undergraduate UC campuses. So when you see UCI's admit rate of 48.5% or UCSB's of 49.2%, those were selected from a pool where virtually all of the students (including the rejected ones) were already in the top 12.5% statewide. They are far more selective than those numbers would lead you to believe.

supertramp

UMass Amherst Commonwealth College

TheBlackLantern

well i said that i meant CC kids since most of cc kids tend to be in the top 10 percent of the academic field and a lot of them have good shot at ivies. if you are applying to the ivies chances are you will use ucla and berkeley as safeties for californians

kyledavid80

I think that's just how you (and some others) think, but for the overwhelming majority of Ivy applicants, Berkeley/UCLA are not safeties. Think about it: Harvard alone receives 27,000 applicants. Does, say, Berkeley accept 27,000 applicants? Last year, it was only 10,000. That means 17,000 students would have been rejected.

Of course, not all are from California, but even Californians shouldn't consider them safeties. Backups? Sure. Many would really prefer to go to the Ivies+ instead. But they're not "safeties" for these students.

tocollege

If - by your definition - "cc kids" are in the top 10 percent, and if only the top 12.5 percent (in CA) can even apply to your "safety" schools UCB and UCLA, it seems to me that "cc kids" and UC applicants (at least those cc kids who also live in CA) are pretty much the same group (except for the bottom 2.5 percent of UC applicants that don't meet your definition of cc kid). As UCB and UCLA have admit rates (for the previously defined group of top 12.5% of students in the state) of about 22%, doesn't it follow that somewhere in the neighborhood of 70-75% (allowing for that 2.5% at the bottom) of your "cc kids" would be rejected at those two schools?

tocollege

Yeah! What kyledavid80 said!!!

Bourne

Lol. Being a student on the east coast? I think you're blessed?

Imagine if you lived in Wyoming...