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Pros and Cons of Public Flagship vs Private Colleges
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Replies to: Pros and Cons of Public Flagship vs Private Colleges
New campuses like UCM, CSUMB, etc. start at the bottom of the prestige and desirability ranking, so students want only UCB, UCLA, UCSD, UCSB, UCI, UCD, CPSLO (ignoring UCSC, UCR, UCM, and most CSUs) and then complain about being shut out. (Consider the analog of a NJ student who desires only the Ivy League and thinks that Rutgers is beneath him/her.)
Of course, if the six most desired UC campuses and CPSLO were expanded in place, they would not be as selective -- and probably not as desired due to the tendency for people to equate exclusivity with desirability.
There is also the phenomenon where exaggerated high school weighted GPAs may cause students to be overconfident and overreach when they see the lower UC weighted capped GPAs in admission to stats.
There are also plenty of in-state options that are not so hard to get into. E.g. UCR, UCM, CSUC, SFSU, CSULA, CSUCI, etc.. It is not necessarily about location; those complaining about not getting into UCB, UCLA, UCSD, UCSB, UCI, UCD, CPSLO are probably looking for prestige or exclusivity. If that were not the case, they would not be excluding UCSC, UCR, UCM, and other CSUs from their application lists.
Not necessarily. There are other reasons CA students don't apply to some of these colleges: For example, Merced is in the middle of nowhere with a a crime rate 45% above the national average, has zero sports (other than club), no long-term track record of excellent academics; UC Riverside is located in well, Riverside, which is not a great area to go to college; has a commuter feel to it with many living off campus, and doesn't have the same quality of students compared to the other UC's you mentioned that are more popular.
Again, nothing wrong with these institutions but there are factors other than reputation/prestige why students choose not to attend them.
However, a student who is similar in academic credentials to UCR students should expect that a college like UCR will admit him/her, but that a college that is more selective is less likely to admit him/her.
Of course, the students who can only be satisfied with colleges that are reaches for students like them are the ones most likely to be disappointed in April.
In any case, a student who turns his/her nose up on UCR or UCM because of "lower quality students" probably is going to turn his/her nose up on Alabama, Mississippi, etc. for the same reasons.
Overall, though, it makes sense to me that a lot of CA kids choose Arizona, Oregon, and Washington bc those are our neighboring states. It's nice to be a car ride or short flight from home. After that, they tend to choose places they have been to before on vacation (the 8th grade trip to Washington DC or the family vacation to Colorado or NYC), places they have seen positively represented in the media (again, NYC area, the stereotypical New England town), places that have recently done well in college basketball (Gonzaga got a boost from this recently, I'm told--I don't follow bball), and places they have relatives or family friends. I think that's pretty common of all kids. I just don't see an anti-Midwest bias. If you're looking for geographic bias coming from CA students and their families, I would say the Southeast gets a far worse rap than the Midwest, particularly in the last couple of years.
If the midwestern flagships were really hurting for students, it wouldn't be all that hard for them to start marketing to CA students. But they don't seem that interested, either. We get a LOT of college mailers, and apart from University of Iowa, I can't recall a single flyer from a public college in the midwest.
But I agree things are going to change - they are now planning a big expansion, increasing OOS from 30% to 40% and the overall size from 30K to 40K students, so that's a near doubling of the OOS student population.
It is not just liberals in California. Most high school seniors in California are some shade of brown, and, though they and their families may not be especially left-leaning on many political issues, when they see conservative politics seemingly dominated by hostility toward racial/ethnic minorities (which has background in California history in Proposition 187 in 1994 as well as more recent events like "conservative speakers" like Milo Yiannopoulos coming to make inflammatory speeches), that leaves considerable distaste for conservative politics and may also lead to concerns about personal safety. Yes, there is some exaggeration and broad brushing here (particularly with Utah), like there commonly is in political stereotypes (including the political stereotypes against California sometimes posted on these forums).
And you're right there is some exaggeration and broad brushing here....not all Californians are alike.
Also, we didn't get any brochures from Midwest public U's at all, from what I can remember. Just from schools like Northwestern, Wash U in St. Louis, and University of Chicago, none of which my kids applied to. They could start doing a lot more marketing!
WA (in state 33) UW 21, Western WA 5, WA State 4, UW Bothell 3
Oregon U (9) Oregon 6, Oregon State 1, S OR Univ 2
Colorado (6) U Colorado 6
California (10) UC Berk 3, Cal Poly 3, UCLA 1, UCSC 1, UCSD 1, UCSB 1
Arizona (4) U AZ 2, AZ State 2
Montana (3) Montana State 2, U MT 1
Texas (2) UT Austin 2
Midwest (6) U Michigan 3, U Wisc 1, OH State 1, Indiana Univ 1
Southeast (3) UVA 2, GATech 1
That's it for OOS publics. Note this is ca 25%? of the graduates. Most go to a private college.
Univ of Utah is conspicuously missing. Interestingly the only publics that are WUE schools on this list are S OR, AZ State, MT State and U of MT. So most are going to OOS publics where they pay OOS rates.
Arizona State only has WUE for some programs -- mainly the satellite campus ones that are mainly attended by nontraditional students, rather than ones on the main Tempe campus that most students out of high school attend.
A recent article put U Utah's LDS population at 36% (current faith, not childhood faith-of which 54% of students grew up in the LDS church). The next highest represented organized religion is Catholicism, at 5.5%. Based on these number, the LDS religion seems dominant at U Utah. http://dailyutahchronicle.com/2019/05/10/religion-on-campus-more-diverse-than-rest-of-state-with-proportion-of-latter-day-saints-over-15-lower/
Regarding the dry campus, of course drinking still happens. The fact is that alcohol use is less tolerated at U Utah, there is no amnesty program (which puts students at risk), and the penalties for drinking on campus more severe than at peer schools. I do believe that many teens hear the words 'dry campus' and that school is immediately taken off the list, which is understandable.
I don't know why people avoid OOS publics so much....yet we do send a lot of kids to U of Colorado-Boulder, Michigan, University of Virginia, William and Mary, University of Washington, University of Arizona, University of Oregon, University of Texas-Austin...