There are 23 CSUs and at least one of these is a safety for most kids. However, the majority of them are commuter campuses with limited housing. Kids looking for a traditional college experience where the majority of freshman are offered on campus housing may apply out of state for this reason. Also, some kids are looking for schools with big sports teams with all the rah rah and other than maybe SDSU, the CSUs and most of the UCs don’t really have that. As others have said there are some good out of state deals out there.
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More residential CSUs that are not campus-impacted and have few or no impacted majors other than nursing include:
- Chico
- Humboldt
- Monterey Bay
- Sonoma
For non-impacted majors at non-impacted campuses, frosh admission should be offered with completion of a-g courses with a 2.5 CSU-recalculated HS GPA.
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Humboldt has challenges for many students because of its location. It’s easier to fly to some out of state universities than drive there from large swathes of CA.
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I think that a lot of students don’t. They apply in-state, study in-state, and graduate in-state. This includes some very strong students.
Some people are hung up on the idea of a “dream school” or an “Ivy League school” or care about what some magazine thinks deserves a high ranking.
Some very strong students also qualify for need-based financial aid and find some highly ranked private schools to also be affordable. Some students get good merit aid at out of state universities.
Some parents can comfortably afford to pay more.
Generally speaking I think that it comes down to tradeoffs. There may be (but probably shouldn’t be) “dream schools”. There are no perfect schools. There are upsides and downsides everywhere (whether we recognize the downsides or not).
Each student needs to think about what would make a college or university a good fit, and find a school that is a compromise between a good fit, a strong program in their likely major, affordable, and likely for admissions.
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Your question generates another question. The UC’s are very good and the Cal States are very good as well. So, the next question is, Good at what? Certainly at being cost effective is one answer.
Looking a little closer, the California public universities range in student:teacher ratios from 19:1 to 28:1. In contrast, small liberal arts colleges are typically less than 10:1. The smaller teacher student:teacher ratios allow for certain kinds of approaches to teaching that are precluded by large teacher:student ratios.
Private research universities are often between 10:1 and 15:1. Some even rival the small LACs. Again, even these student:teacher ratios allow for a greater range of approaches to instruction than can be found at universities where staffing ratios are large per student.
So, to answer your child’s question, if a student values seminars, even occasional tutorials, smaller classes where they have the opportunity for greater interaction with their professors, and an increased likelihood to participate in research with their professors, then such a student might pursue an option other than their state university in California. Other reasons have been mentioned in this thread, which are equally valid as well.
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All the important points have been covered above.
I’ll just say I really like the framing of “not better, but different”. Meaning when you have good in-state options, it may well not be possible to get objectively “better” options in the private or OOS markets. But it may be possible to get subjectively “different” options, and for some kids those can be worth exploring.
And in fact, even if in the end a kid chooses one of their in-state options, just having the choice can be nice.
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Some participate in Western Undergraduate Exchange program,
which allows participating states ‘ public universities to offer discounts in certain majors.
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