<p>@ blueskies2day Well, you pose an interesting question. Many of us have felt for a very long time that a UC education carried real weight, and for me, I believe it still has some of that value. However the GPA/SAT/AP race to the top in the last 10 or 20 years has put an unfavorable spin on the access to public schools in California. Let’s not fool ourselves, an 800 on a SAT math test is no guarantee a kid will even graduate, let alone become a productive member of the work force, but it might get the kid into UCLA or UCB. We are surely all aware that the system can be gamed to the advantage of the privileged. Not every California kid has $6,000 to spend on a summer long SAT prep crash course, but taking one will give some kids a seat at UCB at the expense of a seat lost to someone who does not have the deep pockets. Many’s the kid who had a coach ‘help’ write his or her Personal Statement. I know a number of UC kids who are working as lab techs or EMT’s instead of engineers or MD’s. There are plenty of smart kids who worked their way through high school and college who are good at something useful besides taking SAT & AP tests, and yes some of them attend Cal Poly. If you know any of the extraordinary kids at Cal Poly you are aware that many of them turned down UC’s some even UCLA & UCB. They go to SLO because they want to, they like it there, and that’s part of the reason it’s tough to get them out in 4 years. Every kid is different, as is every school. Most of the kids at Cal Poly choose to go there because for them it’s a great place to go to get an excellent education, not because it has a fancy label. Pretty smart kids it seems to me.</p>