Students who just want to go to a UC may find that UCM and UCR are not that competitive for admission.
But also, the state schools in California include the CSUs, which enroll about twice as many undergraduates as the UCs, and are mostly less competitive (with a few well known exceptions like CPSLO engineering and SJSU CS/CE/SE).
Relative to state populations, the rough equivalents in undergraduate enrollment would be:
- Florida: UF, FSU, USF
- New York: all of the doctoral granting campuses (including the semi-public parts of Cornell) plus half of the comprehensive colleges
- Ohio: The Ohio State University, Ohio University, Miami University
It does look like New York is the outlier, among these states, since the total undergraduate enrollment in its public universities relative to the state population is rather small compared to the other states. In the other states, the rough equivalents (in numbers) to the UCs enroll a minority of the undergraduates in public universities, while in New York, the rough equivalents (in numbers) enroll a majority of the undergraduates in public universities. But New York is in the northeast, where private colleges and universities are more common and popular.
So a fair comparison of admission selectivity would be, is it easier or harder to get into a UC (including UCR or UCM) as a California resident, versus one of UF, FSU, or USF as a Florida resident, or a SUNY as a New York resident, or one of tOSU, OU, or Miami as an Ohio resident?