Any CA parent or student who believes Boulder is “liberal” should read this.
We used student fees to bring a Breitbart News editor to campus to speak!
As much as the Daily Camera wanted to make it seem like we had a protest, we really did not bother.
So much for Boulder being liberal. Its more or less a small town with a lot of conservatives lurking on all sides.
“If I was a California parent, I would choose U of Utah every time…U of Utah has better programs in many areas than CU Boulder. The ranks are simply wrong about Boulder, IMO.”
I agree with you. Utah has amazing amounts of money from donors and wonderful new facilities. But in our liberal NorCal town the reaction to my D18 going to Utah is completely different to the reaction that friends with daughters going to Boulder get. Lots of puzzled looks and “Aren’t you worried about her fitting in in SLC?” Usually followed by a comment about guns, Republicans and/or Mormons.
Unsurprisingly she’s the only one in her school going to Utah (and yes she turned down the UCs to go there). That’s fine with me. It meant there was a lot less competition for their merit scholarships.
If Californians were afraid to send their kids to conservative states there would not be so many going to Alabama.
Yes, it’s a little silly that you all imagine there are no conservatives in CA, or that the liberals are only considering politics and weather when they pick schools. Geez…I know it’s sort of the second national pastime to stereotype CA, but really… it’s a big and diverse state.
I’m not saying that applies to the whole of California, but in our Bay Area liberal enclave, there is definitely a strong bias against conservative states and in favor of liberal ones. Not so much on weather, plenty of kids go to Oregon.
There simply aren’t “so many” going to Alabama here, more like “hardly any”. The one family we know who considered it, ended up at CU Boulder, because (according to them) Alabama was too red, too southern and too far away.
Where we are in Southern California, there’s a very large contingent of students who go to Alabama as well as many students who go to college in more conservative states like Texas and Arizona (though Colorado is also very popular–yes, for some, legal marijuana is a draw.) There are also quite a few who go to University of Utah–a good education with a great honors college and excellent merit money for kids with strong stats. When we visited, about a third of those at the info session were from California.
@Coloradomama – I totally agree with you about Boulder vs. Berkeley. Boulder appeals to Californians because it’s “University of” (as opposed to Cal State fill-in-the-blank, their most likely option in CA) and because it’s overwhelmingly white (none of that pesky diversity to deal with) and as town only pseudo-liberal. It’s small, clean, cute, devoid of street people and a total bubble. Everything UCLA and Cal aren’t, BTW. Not near a beach or a major city, but the mountains are right there and most of these well-to-do California kids either ski/snowboard already – or want to learn. Perfect fit. If based on misconceptions and self-delusion 
Does tendency to go to “conservative states” relate to the demographics of those who choose to go or not go? I.e. are students who are non-white and/or LGBT less willing to go to “conservative states”?
Of course, it is not necessarily true that a given local area or university in a “conservative state” is conservative in a way that is unfriendly to people of various minority groups. And plenty of places not in “conservative states” may not be that friendly to people of various minority groups.
Anecdotal for sure, but amongst those we know it’s the white, upper middle class party kids that are full pay at these OOS PAC-12 (supposedly) liberal schools. So I guess they’d fit in at big football schools like Alabama if it wasn’t for the red state/blue state issue.
Incidentally I agree Utah is trying to get more students from CA. But all the CA kids we met there were from redder bits of the state.
@ucbalumnus, yes, from my experience, students of color or who are LGBT are more likely to go to a college in a state they perceive to be more liberal (such as Oregon and Washington.) And they may avoid states like Alabama, regardless of diversity or climate of tolerance on the individual campus. Kids in California have their own stereotypes/prejudices too, just as those outside of California have about our state. The point was more in response to @Twoin18. California is a state with 40 million people and attitudes aren’t universal and don’t always align with those in the Bay Area. At my daughter’s school last year, which certainly has some conservative families, ten kids went to Alabama and a few dozen applied. (And, of course, besides football, Alabama has great, automatic merit aid for high stats kids. I have no clue whether the kids attending would be full pay or are receiving merit aid. But it can definitely be an option that’s much less expensive than a UC for some kids.)
This must not be the year that UC Santa Cruz is “lower tier” and grouped in with Merced and Riverside. My daughter has a friend who was denied by SC and accepted at UCLA. She has eight high achieving classmates that were rejected by Santa Cruz, with high gpas, lots of ECs, great test scores and were accepted to schools with lower acceptance rates.
My friend’s daughter applied to UCSC for astronomy with a 3.9 gpa. Wait listed at UCSC. SC is tough this year.
For transfers too it was tough. In the past pretty much all transfers have been accepted but I’ve seen a lot of flat out rejections to well qualified students
Do you mean that Boulder appeals to all or just some Californians for this reason?
@katliamom…agree with your post #946 about University of Colorado. “University” name, lack of diversity, politics, and sports programs factors for a number as well. I do recall a few of my classmates from back in the day from there bragging about skiing/snowboarding hundreds of times a year! Glad I attended one of the most diverse California schools which exposed me to reality and wasn’t an extension of high school although it would’ve been nice (but an expensive distraction) to have been a “ski bum” for a while!
CU Boulder was on S17’s list because he wants to major in physics and it is highly ranked for physics, has several Nobel winners, and has related gov’t institutions nearby. Also, he spent 6 weeks there in an astrophysics program and was very impressed by the teaching of the faculty members. (Along with the on-campus food and the hiking nearby.)
Utah never came up on any lists of physics programs.
S21 doesn’t plan to go to a red state because he is transgender. States with offensive bathroom laws are on his boycott list for travel. He plans to attend college in (coastal) California or an equally blue state. When his safety or perceived safety is involved, I’m OK with him staying physically in our bubble.
Astrophysics is a highly-rated program at UCSC. A number of professors there collaborate with professors at Caltech. The first optical image of the neutron-neutron collision that created the gravitational wave detected by LIGO was by a team at UC Santa Cruz.
“Most of these families are in the $150-250K income range, some are full pay, and would be above $250K.” @theloniusmonk you have been around here long enough to know you should back up these statements with some kind of source."
Sure many sites have ca income info based on 2016 data, here’s one on Santa Clara county:
https://datausa.io/profile/geo/santa-clara-county-ca/#category_income
It shows 32% between $100K and $200K, 23% above $200K,17% between 60K and $100K and 28% less than $60K. If you get into say Stanford, the less than $60K pay nothing, the 17% less than 100K only pay room and board. Above $225K is where you get no FA ,and that would be about 20% (say 3% in that 23% are below $225).
There are many factors that kids and their families consider in school choice and the UC’s are no different. For us, we really looked at individual UC’s and only applied to UCLA. Within CA, SDSU and SLO were preferred over the UC’s we looked at - just didn’t love any other than UCLA. My D had just over a 4.0 UC GPA and 30 ACT so UCLA was a reach - so not bitter at all.
In the end, Bama was her choice. Really good merit aid, beautiful campus, generous AP credit, pre-health/pre-OT advising and shadow/intern program were all pluses. Guess they also have a decent football team. Fun place to go to school and a big alumni network. Lots of CA kids going to Bama, probably most on scholarship.
Just my opinion, but I do think that good instate students are somewhat underserved in CA. Many have 5-7 CA publics on their list but competition to get in is incredibly high, especially in certain majors. Don’t even get me started about the lack of undergraduate business programs at most UC’s - seriously?!
“I’m not saying that applies to the whole of California, but in our Bay Area liberal enclave, there is definitely a strong bias against conservative states and in favor of liberal ones.”
We see it here, too. Oddly, it’s often in the people who moved from those liberal enclaves, so it doesn’t appear to be a CA thing.
IOW it’s not just the CA peeps who consider the politics of where they send their kid to college.
@katliamom I’ve been to Boulder several times – it’s by no means devoid of street people. Not as many as Berkeley, true, but there were definitely a population of street people there (mainly of the Haight St. gutter punks variety).