Comparing various public flagship universities: why are some more highly regarded than others? etc

[ucbalumnus]

@NiceUnparticularMan

I’m always like, no, we arguably ALSO have the best public university system in the world. Like if “all” we had was the Cal system, the Big Ten, UNC and NC State, UVA and Virginia Tech and William & Mary, UGA and Georgia Tech, Florida and Florida State, Texas and TAMU, Colorado and Mines, Washington and Oregon, Arizona and Arizona State, the SUNYs, UConn and UMass, Pitt and Temple, Delaware, Clemson and USC, Auburn, NJIT, UNH, Utah . . . I’m running out of steam, and there are so many more.

However, financial accessibility of many of them depends on one’s state of residency.

@NiceUnparticularMan

But point is you could completely ignore our privates, and in terms of depth and breadth of higher education systems, I think we would at worse be tied with the Brits, and I am not sure even they really would hold up.

Even in terms of financial accessibility?

[goldbug]

Here’s some interesting data on in-state/OOS acceptance rates and even some granularity around GPAs and test scores for a subset of schools.

Out-of-State versus In-State Acceptance Rates at Top Public Universities

and here’s an article from Brookings Institute naming the phenomenon I’m describing: https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Final-_GreatStudentSwap_9-6-22.pdf

[goldbug]

Yeah, the housing issues at UCSC are legendary.
I also think that (setting aside cost for a moment) there’s merit to getting out of state for school and being exposed to new people.
I am super curious, actually, about which solid state universities have great housing, good food, etc. There’s a lot we take for granted in CA (produce quality, generally mild climate, sunshine, etc.) and I’m trying not to assume that the grass is definitely greener elsewhere. But at this point in the process I want us to explore a bit.

[DadOfJerseyGirl]

The college transitions article is from Jan 2021, and likely relies on data from the 2019 admission cycle (pre-Covid era). Almost all schools went test optional starting 2020, which led to a large increase in applications and a drop in acceptance rates. So this data is not necessarily reflective of current acceptance rates, especially at the most popular flagships.

[ucbalumnus]

@goldbug

Yeah, the housing issues at UCSC are legendary.

As described at Santa Cruz is A Housing Nightmare - by Darrell Owens ?

[goldbug]

Your S23 and my kiddo might be pretty similar statwise (although mine hasn’t figured out what he wants to study yet, which is part of why I was steering him towards SLACs.) We know someone whose kid is thriving at Purdue (super into robotics).

[goldbug]

exactly.

[goldbug]

good to know.

[goldbug]

We have a friend whose kid is dead set on ER medicine and nuts about skiing and mountain biking. Doesn’t drink. Solid B student with As in science and math when he’s interested. Utah is his top choice and he’s not super stressed about admissions. I’m wildly envious (my kid has NO IDEA what he wants to do and his better grades are in subjects that he has less interest in, so that’s fun…) But anyway – yes, Utah seems like a solid bet these days. As do most state schools for kids who are self-directed, independent, clueful.

[Thorsmom66]

S24 is a sophomore at UMass Amherst and the food is excellent (I’ve eaten there a few times) - it is rated among the top in the country every year. Housing is a different story . . .

[kaslew]

Though the Brits are strong at the top, ultimately the UK is too small to hold up in a comparison with a country more than 5 times their size. The Brits best schools are as good as anywhere. But the excellent public universities in the US just keep coming …

[ucla_cs_god]

which solid state universities have great housing, good food, etc.

UCLA is pretty well known for having great food and guaranteed undergrad housing for 4 years. I know that while UW doesn’t guarantee housing, students find housing very easily in the surrounding neighborhood (and often prefer that to dorming). This seems to be the case with other public unis too.

[Zrt42]

@Acpurple22

. I have no idea on most of these but as far as UDub and Oregon, UDub is harder to get into.

This is a very important point. Selective institutions and organizations throughout our society play a very important role. As an example, some companies will only hire their accountants from the big four accounting firms.

Selective colleges and universities also play a very important role in society. There is no greater risk for a company than making a bad hire. The more selective the college or university, the less of the risk for the hiring company. While this is true, this truth is very upsetting to some people. Usually the people upset by this have children that attended colleges and universities that are not very selective at all.

[twoinanddone]

@kaslew

And there is also a locational hierarchy in that region, based proximity to urban centers, with Minnesota, in Minneapolis, in a much better situation, for instance, than Iowa, two hours to Des Moines and four hours to Chicago.

You must drive awfully fast. It is 400+ miles and 6 hours to Chicago (edge of Minn to edge of Chicago) and 3.75 hours to Des Moines (and Iowa city is at least another 30 minutes). I lived west of Minneapolis and it took me 5 hours to get to my friends on the south side of Madison. IF there was no snow happening.

[ucbalumnus]

@Zrt42

Selective colleges and universities also play a very important role in society. There is no greater risk for a company than making a bad hire. The more selective the college or university, the less of the risk for the hiring company. While this is true, this truth is very upsetting to some people. Usually the people upset by this have children that attended colleges and universities that are not very selective at all.

Hiring college graduates based on the admission selectivity of their colleges effectively means hiring them because of their achievements in high school and their parent-based circumstances (e.g. parents not imposing restrictive limits (often financial) on college choice).

[burghdad]

A 50K student body school isn’t for everybody.

[Metawampe]

Well, there’s overall rankings, for what they’re worth, and then there are standout programs. For example, there aren’t many schools more highly regarded for Linguistics than UMass-Amherst, and for CS and Polymer Science it’s pretty top rate. It’s business school is on the rise…

[GRR]

@goldbug

I have two questions:

1. Why are some publics so much more popular/desirable than others for out-of-state applicants?
2. When is it worth it to go to an out-of-state public flagship university (as opposed to an in-state public)?

My starting observations:
–I’ve noticed that Minnesota and Iowa seem much less popular for high stat out-of-state kids than Wisconsin or Michigan. But all four schools seem like solid R1 universities with good faculty and decent quality of life/proximate college-town-type-stuff. Similarly, Oregon, ASU, and CU Boulder have the reputation of being party/safety schools among Bay Area kiddos while UDub seems more prestigious. In the same vein, I wonder why UConn, UMass-Amherst, Rutgers, Binghamton, and Stony Brook aren’t rating higher on students’ lists (I think a fair # of kids from here apply to Vermont for some reason).

I’m curious (as a California parent) how some of these less popular/hard to access (so, not Michigan, UVA, UNC) state flagships might compare to the experience of going to, say, UC Davis or UC Santa Cruz.

Cost is obviously a factor for many/most, and I know some schools (e.g. Arizona, Alabama) throw a lot of scholarship money at good out-of-state students.

But taking financials out of it for a minute…what else might one consider?

Factors I’m thinking of: food, housing options (e.g. is there sufficient housing), ease of accessing required courses, research opportunities, diversity of student body, the degree to which schools are commuter schools or have a well-defined and vibrant campus life, intramurals and extracurricular music groups, access to recruiters and internships, study abroad opportunities, etc.

By way of background, our son is almost certainly not a candidate for the toughest-to-access UC schools but could probably get into UC Santa Cruz and maybe UC Davis. He is most likely to land at a SLAC, and so we’re visiting a bunch – but he might also enjoy a larger school. I’m trying to gauge whether it’s ridiculous to look beyond our own backyard and consider something like Iowa, Minnesota, U Mass-Amherst, a SUNY, or Rutgers – or if we’re likely to end up spending signficantly more for a similar quality of life/educational experience to what he’d get at Santa Cruz or Davis.

My dad says we all vastly overthink this college versus that and that you can get a great education at almost any top-100 school or so.

[eyemgh]

This is a nice story that we like to tell ourselves, but not borne out when looking at real world data.

If it were the case SJSU wouldn’t rank just behind Stanford for number of employees at Apple, Cal Poly wouldn’t have more grads at JPL than MIT, Georgia Tech or Caltech, and Central Florida wouldn’t rank #2 across all of NASA.

The truth is that when you look into elite teams, at least in the tech sector, they rarely hire new grads, and the people that work in them have been educated all over the world.

[Wjs1107]

When we were looking for D22, we would have been happy for her to end up at Oregon (she received 10k merit and acceptance to honors college), Vermont (18k merit), Wisconsin or Michigan. But when she got into UCLA, all of that was off the table. I wasn’t about to pay full OOS prices at Michigan or Wisconsin when UCLA was an option. We would have paid for a LAC if she’d chosen it, as it’s a specific kind of experience.

For S26, we will likely add Utah, UMass Amherst and UNH to the list of OOS publics we will consider. Maybe also WWU and Oregon State for WUE. He really wants cold weather and a different experience. He’s into physics, math, and studio art.