Why so many California residents choose not to apply to CA state public universities?
For many California residents, it is more affordable and less competitive to apply to OOS schools. Also with impaction, budget cuts and large class sizes, OOS schools can be more desirable. If you consider the schools in the WUE, these schools offer reduced tuition which many times makes them a better deal than staying in-state.
Some CA students will only consider UCB and/or UCLA, which is risky, given their low acceptance rates, and rather foolish, as many other UCs and CSUs are excellent universities.
Probably the same “grass is greener elsewhere” reason that many students in other states want to go out-of-state even though the in-state public schools meet their academic and financial criteria.
I found that a lot of my former students only wanted to apply instate to our California schools unless they received such a great OOS aid package that going instate would have been costly.
The kids at our local high school still prefer to attend California colleges, primarily the UC’s (and SLO), but several of the other CSU’s are also popular. A small percentage applies to out of state colleges. Not all the kids qualify for cal grants/blue & gold and some prefer to attend community college then transfer to the UC’s rather than attend an out of state college (where they would receive merit scholarships). There have been a lot of community college to UCB/UCSD or UCD (tag) transfers among my kids friends.
UC has a very different admissions protocol than many [all?] of the comparable institutions elsewhere. D’s college counselor accurately predicted that UCB was a gamble as compared to Ivies and others.
I can only speak from my personal experiences, but currently in California, at least in most of the UCs and CSUs, Mechanical Engineering is considered an “Impacted Major”. I’m a California Community College Student, but because of this impacted status, despite being well above admission eligibility for most CSU’s that offer engineering, I’ve been continually denied admission. This has forced me to look out of state to other schools such as Arizona State, in order to be able to fulfill my educational goals. There’s an interesting article that talks about this here. http://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/article/Locking-students-out-of-California-colleges-a-6190683.php
http://www.calstate.edu/sas/impactionsearch/ indicates that the following CSU campuses are impacted at the campus level, but mechanical engineering is not impacted at the major level:
Chico
Los Angeles
Northridge
Sacramento
San Francisco
Thanks for the info! I applied to Sacramento for Fall 2016 so here’s to hoping I get in! 