@socaldad2002. CLU is a regional university… not ranked in same category as the UCs. They are ranked 14thThere are very few religious class requirements in their gen ed. They are division 3 NCAA and they compete well in that division. A large percentage of students are involved in athletics in part because academics always are considered first and coaches/teachers cooperate so that practices/competitions don’t interfere with academics. The requirement to maintain your scholarship is a 2.0 … so there is no real concern that students will lose their merit scholarships. Yes it is a smaller campus in a more suburban environment… but it is close to the beach,Malibu and LA airport. A definite consideration for those not necessarily looking solely for a large urban campus.
@calmom17 I know my kids, like many of their peers, won’t even look at any colleges that are religiously affiliated, which rules out many CA colleges. Do you have any info about how the proportion of religious to secular private colleges in CA compares to other states or areas? Why are so many of the private colleges here religious? I haven’t lived in CA long enough to know much about that history, but it does seem different from other states I’ve lived in, where there is a better mix of secular and religiously-affiliated schools.
Private schools in many states are religious or started as religious schools. Who had the money to start private schools? In the east, there were some wealthy individuals who wanted to start schools (Carnegie, Drexel) and they added the amount of religion they wanted to. I’ve always been surprised that Drexel isn’t a catholic school.
@calmom17 “CLU is a regional university… not ranked in same category as the UCs. They are ranked 14th”
Yes, but the schools ranked above them are more attractive to many students. For example, Santa Clara #2 (USNW Regional West) is in the heart of silicon valley, is ranked overall #101 (Niche), you have Loyola Marymount University (LMU) at #3 and overall #121.
While rankings are not everything, I just don’t see Cal Lutheran as an attractive option for most CA UC applicants as they are generally high stat kids and have many other excellent public and private college options within the state.
If a kid is applying to UCs, he/she generally wants a large research oriented university, not a small liberal arts college. I know my D wasn’t interested in applying to any small schools – she wanted a bigger crowd to mingle in.
Merced continues on list of worst place to live…
http://www.mercedsunstar.com/news/local/community/article158736294.html
For my oldest, her priority list looked something like: 1. west coast; 2. good bio and psych departments, 3. cost not much more than UC; 4. mostly smaller class sizes; 5. smart kids but not competitive/ super-intense; 6. not interested in a heavy Greek or sport vibe. So she did in fact apply to both UCs and LACs, and Cal Lutheran was what we considered her safety school (well, that and UCSC). Nice place and I think she would have been perfectly happy there if some of her higher picks hadn’t worked out.
calmom17 - this is not to bash CLU which is a solid regional school, but you may be doing unfamiliar readers a disservice to describe CLU as being close to LA, or even Burbank airports.
LAX would be more than an hour drive without traffic which, depending on timing, could add another hour to the trip. The Burbank airport (regional with more limited flights) would be about 45 minutes without traffic.
We live a few miles from CLU and know a lot of local kids who attended. Most chose CLU so they could live at home and save money. Most seemed to enjoy it and felt they received a good solid education with smaller class size. My kids would not have considered it in part due to the religious affiliation (although that is not emphasized greatly at the school), but also because Thousand Oaks is very much a family oriented community and not so much a great college town. Kids from out of the area without cars might have a hard time getting around as our public transportation is not great here. For the most part, students who chose CLU were probably not seriously considering the UC’s or even many of the larger Cal States as the atmosphere as the “fit” is 180 degrees. I think that goes for a lot of the private schools in California.
Here is some data from a private school in the bay area.
156 graduates in 2017.
applied/accepted/enrolled
UCLA 61/5/0
UCSB 60/20/1
UCD 54/18/3
UCB 53/10/4
UCSD 40/9/0
UCSC 30/19/0
UCI 26/10/0
I looked at another private in the same area, and over 4 years they have sent as many students to northwestern as all of the UC’s together.
Judging by the private schools I have looked at UC’s are not all that desirable to this demographic.
@nordicdad “Judging by the private schools I have looked at UC’s are not all that desirable to this demographic”
If you can afford private high school, you probably can afford a selective private college instead of going to a state flagship at half the cost. In addition, the private school kids we know, like the small class sizes and individual attention and seek out a similar environment which selecting a college.
Regarding CLU, I happened to meet a financial planner at a networking event last night, he and his future wife went to USC (B.A.) and CLU (MS, Finance) they both were born and raised in Moorpark (CA) which is about 10 mins from CLU. Seems like a very niche college choice.
I have friends with kids in a couple of the prestigious private schools here in the East Bay. The guidance counselors at those schools seem to point kids towards private schools. There’s a lot of focus on prestigious LACs. The guidance counselors also have relationships with admission counselors there too, which helps their kids.
And really, if you’re already paying 35K a year for h.s. tuition, why not pay it for a private college too?
Yes, those who are used to a luxury-class elite private high school experience may not want the economy-class state university experience. However, it would be a mistake to assume that all private high schools, colleges, and universities are luxury-class – the non-elite ones without a lot of money are unlikely to be able to afford to be luxury-class. But forum anecdotes tend to be heavily focused on the wealthy elite ones.
Presumably, these are not the parents and students for whom paying $35k per year for private high school would require financially limiting college choices.
Right – is there really a point in looking at UCs when you can pay whatever you want for college? If I had that kind of cash my kids probably wouldn’t be going to state schools.
Harker is almost $50K a year and Head Royce is over $40K. That’s crazy cash.
If the student cannot get into a luxury-class private school that is a good academic and other fit, then it may not be worth attending an economy-class private school at a luxury-class price.
Also, luxury-class versus economy-class experience is not the only non-cost choice. Academic strength in fields of interest is a major factor for many students and parents. A luxury-class experience may not be worth paying for if it is not at a school with good programs in the fields of interest.
But also remember that those parents who can afford to disregard cost for their kids’ college choices are only a very small percentage of the parents overall (even though they may be overrepresented on these forums).
If the kids are UC-eligible they are also likely to qualify for admission at many good quality private colleges and LAC’s. It doesn’t have to be an Ivy or so-called “tippy top” in order to provide an equivalent educational quality to the UC’s. So if cost is no object, then there are some excellent options.
I agree, of course, that for most parents cost does factor in.
I know one kid (from the private school set we’re talking about) that was looking at decent but not stellar private schools (though these schools will certainly have their defenders, and I’m not going to name them), none of which I consider to be worth the significant premium over UC tuition other than the ‘luxury class’ perks you get from going private. No in-state schools were even considered. I don’t know that any private schools would be considered more economy class than UCs – don’t they all tout their small class sizes, individualized attention, rec centers, etc?
But smaller classes & more individualized attention definitely do provide educational benefit. And it’s very common for the less-selective privates to be discounting tuition with merit aid, so even for full-pay families, they may not be paying sticker price.
Hard to really do the math without knowing the schools involved — but I certainly see why a parent might feel that a “decent but not stellar” private college is worth quite a bit more than any UC simply because of the benefits of an undergraduate-focused education.
Small class sizes and individualized attention are not universal, even among luxury-class private schools. E.g. the 700+ student introductory CS courses at Stanford and Harvard. Smaller than the introductory CS course at UCB, but not what one would consider “small”.
But, among private schools, it should not be assumed that private = luxury-class, since there are many private schools that do not have much endowment and need to carefully watch spending. But most of these are less prominent and well known that the ones that people on these forums obsess over.