So UW is $25K for OOS??? Nice, sign me up, no wait that’s not true, please compare apples to apples, averages mean nothing. Do applicants from CA want to go to South West Missouri State college so they can only spend $25K for OOS tuition vs going to UCLA for $16K
@CU123, while I totally agree with your point that averages mean nothing, to be accurate you actually do have to compare apples to apples. Tuition and fees at UCLA is approx $30K for instate, not $16K.
@scorekeeper1 No, the appx. 30K includes room & board. Tuition and fees alone are $13,260. (Of course there will be costs for books & supplies, etc.)
OK that is what I thought.
Legacy preference is generally inappropriate for a public university to use, if it holds to the mission of being accessible for all state residents who meet the academic merit standards. Legacy preference is basically adding preference to existing advantage.
First generation preference at the college admissions gateway is only a small counterbalance compared to the much larger advantage that those with college educated parents generally have over others.
Personally I believe the UC’s should be a reflection of the state’s demographics.
Not sure what you call “decent applicant”, but here are some admit rates for 2017 from https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/infocenter/freshman-admissions-summary
89% for 3.40-3.79 GPA applicants to UCM
90% for 3.80-4.19 GPA applicants to UCR
76% for 3.80-4.19 GPA applicants to UCSC
(GPA is UC weighted-capped; typically about 0.3-0.4 higher than unweighted 10th-11th academic course GPA if student chose many honors/AP courses)
I.e. it is not that hard to get into a UC for the 3.5+ GPA students. But it can be hard if you are picky about which campus you want, since each individual campus is relatively small compared to the population of the state, high school students, or UC-eligible high school students. If the UC campuses were sized like other flagships relative to their state populations, there would be two UCs of 90,000 undergraduates each.
UCM is not an equal of UCB.
And if UCB and UCLA were 90,000 undergraduates each and as easy/difficult to get into as a typical state flagship (i.e. all of the students who go to the current UC system go to UCB and UCLA only), they would not have the level (mostly selectivity-based) prestige that they currently have and which so many applicants apparently crave.
No UC is an equal of UCB. Merced newest UC and already nationally ranked #165 (2018 US News) and #87 (2018 US News Public Colleges). Will rapidly expand and increase in rank.
UCs rank as follows: top tier - UC Berkeley, UCLA, UCSD; middle tier - UCSB, Davis, UC Irvine; the rest - UCSC, UCR, Merced (this ranking does not include UCSF which is a medical school/graduate school and not an undergraduate campus)
I guess we’ll see how the relative rankings of UCB and UCLA develop. Looks like this year UCLA may have both a lower acceptance rate and a higher yield, judging by the fact that very few are getting in off the waitlist at UCLA, while Berkeley is now offering some fall admits to waitlisted students. My S18 chose UCLA over Berkeley and there’s been a distinct shift in which of them the kids at our NorCal HS favor this year, away from Berkeley and towards UCLA.
@Fisherman99 “Merced newest UC and already nationally ranked #165 (2018 US News)”
This is very misleading as that ranking does not include ALL colleges including many very good LAC and regional colleges.
Probably more accurate is college niche’s ranking of best colleges in which UCM is ranked #490 and has a 74% acceptance rate.
Actually I feel the College Niche ranking is the one that is more misleading. It’s not proper IMO to mix in LACs with national universities, they serve very different purposes. It would be similar to putting in all mutual funds in the world and rank them by one-year yield - it serves little purpose and would mislead everyone. Harvey Mudd for example may be one of the top LAC schools in the country, but with 800 students, it serves a different type of clientele than a school that has 8000 or 25000. I think the US News rankings are pretty close to the gold standard.
^^^Forbes includes LAC in their rankings. Also, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo is a very good large regional college that doesn’t show up on US News rankings nor does Santa Clara University. They are separate categories.
The bottom line is UC Merced has a long way to go before it becomes a significant UC.
They show up under Regional rankings, which I would agree the distinction between a National and a Regional is pretty narrow nowadays. But you are right, if ranking is of a big concern, you’re comparing like schools regardless of the number and whether it’s 150 or 500, it’s not that high at this point.
On another thread, there was some discussion on whether and when SCU (and Cal Poly) might make the jump from Regional to National, which depends on doctoral student numbers. (http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/21512875/#Comment_21512875 and others ) Villanova made the jump last year and landed inside the top-50.
“The bottom line is UC Merced has a long way to go before it becomes a significant UC”
@socaldad2002 …True…Merced was opened only in 2005 though and still considered a brand new UC…will continue to grow and move up the National rankings. US News really the gold standard for National Universities. You are correct though that many excellent Regional/LAC colleges like CPSLO, Santa Clara, Harvey Mudd, etc. are only under “Regional” on US News or for who knows why…lumped together on Niche which is quite misleading like ProfessorPlumb168 stated above.
Of course Harvey Mudd, Occidential, etc are under “LAC’s” on US News as well which has more “apples to apples” comparisons in those different relevant classifications depending on college type. A few of my old classmates both went to Oxy, and Mudd (one to Santa Clara Law School)…all excellent top notch programs!!
I thought I would brush off this thread for some interesting results from my daughters high school just reported. So this is only one schools example and the results were voluntarily provided so may be higher. She goes to a large competitive Orange County California public high school. The senior class this year had 660 students. Lots of AP but no IB classes. These were the reported results on students who have accepted spots at the following UC’s
UCB - 17
UCLA - 16
UCI - 23
UCSB - 20
UCSD - 14
UCR - 24
UCSC - 8
UCD - 6
UCM - 0
In addition to this 5 were accepted to Stanford and 18 additional were accepted to other USNews top 20 (Harvard, Columbia, Chicago, Duke, Penn, Brown, MIT, Cal Tech, Cornell). 11 are going to USC. Add another 50 or so are going to selective and very selective campuses like Emory, Michigan, John Hopkins, RIT, Washington, Texas, Virginia.
That is 128 out of 660 going to UC’s or 19.39%. If you add UCLA to UCB to the top 20 group that is 56 students or 8.48% of the class going to tip top schools. If you add all the UC’s plus all other selective campuses, that is about a third of the class getting in to very selective campuses.
It seems like at least for this school the target for the UC’s of meeting the needs of the top students is working.