As long as people look first at visible race and ethnicity, race and ethnicity will always be overemphasize in popular perception, while stuff that really matters like applied-to major gets ignored.
UC could and should help by giving frosh admission data by division and major as it affects admissions (like with transfer admission), but that probably would not make much difference in popular perception.
No system will make all parents happy. I think the current UC system is well intentioned and does a very good job in driving upward mobility while providing a world-class education. Is it perfect? Likely not and the definition of that is going to vary from person to person. I personally would add SAT back in the mix, increase IS admits while keeping international admits flat and reducing OOS admits but that would require the same CA parents who complain to sign up for potentially greater taxes. Optimizing for the happines of Lynbrook, or whatever school should be the least of the UC priorities.
@CCC4 Don’t misquote to intentionally remove context.
Fixed it for you. Given the demand for seats in the top UC schools the number of OOS and International admits should be close to zero or at the very most single digit percentiles. Priority should be on in state kids.
I have edited my original quote. Though honestly, it makes no difference to my original reaction.
California has 32 4-year public universities in their system (9 UC + 23 CSU.) That’s an incredible allocation of tax dollars to in-state public higher education.
If we zero out all OOS and internationals, the tuition has to go up by ~50% to make up the shortfall. Are people cool with a 50% increase in tuition cost for every CA student simply so that a few incremental kids from Lynbrook/Mission San Jose/Montevista/Pick your school from an affluent neighborhood get to go to Berkeley/UCLA rather than another school.
Are we doing the In state / OOS/International debate again?
Keeping consistent with thread title, even UT Austin sets aside 10% for OOS students.
Having said that, I am a staunch believer for UC to be open to OOS and International students.
Funding aside, it’s good for branding. UC did not become internationally known by having an isolation policy. People all over the country and world come to experience the world class education and go back where they are from and boast about the fun times they had.
Every higher education institution opens their door to people everywhere. It’s good for the experience. It’s beneficial for the institution. Students benefit from this perspective.
Of the posters on this thread, I am just curious. Who here
(Edited to add, **or is a student who applied to UC in the recent past, or will be applying soon? Didn’t mean to forget about students…)
To clarify, do you mean for those who meet criteria #1 and (or?) criteria #2, how many want bullet #3?
(BTW, thanks for bringing this back to the original topic.)
So 26 to UT Austin and another 17 to other Tx public universities. 43 total guaranteed. About 10% to either a middle of the pack flagship or other Texas public.
Compare that to actual results for Lynbrook acceptances the UCs for 2023. Of the 398 students who applied to UCs, 323 were admitted to at least one UC. That’s 81% admitted to a top 100.
As compared to Texas, I’m not sure I even understand what people are complaining about. Would they rather not have all the terrific secondary options?
In CA that’s easy. The reason is the UCs want students from every high school, which means that students in a particular high school (like Lindbrook) are competing against each other for an extremely limited number of spots. The same thing happens in Texas, only CA has more excellent state universities. At a school where most are “excelling” then many will be disappointed if they have their heart set on UCLA or UCB. Fortunately, as is evidenced by the stats above, these students to have terrific options beyond the two flagships.
Almost! 
I am just interested to hear the perspective of people who meet all three of the criteria.
(Rather than asking for a poll or a vote counting the number.)
I have one son in a UC and a younger daughter who I would like to go to a UC/CSU when her time comes. I DO NOT want UC to move to a TX-like system. In fact, I think we already have a top 9% system in place. It’s just that TX only uses grades whereas the UC approach uses 12 other factors.
At a basic level, I think when admissions become competitive you need to decide on more than 1 variable, and that’s where the 13-variable UC approach is I think far superior than a blunt top x% approach.
Strongly agree with these statements.
I agree, and I also agree with the preferences for underrepresented groups. But I disagree with the “we can do what we feel best” attitude of some because it makes things worse, not better. Lynbrook and Mission are interesting because they are outliers with very skewed ethnic demographics. The types of outliers which get the attention of people like SFFA who are dying for a case where they can take a run at “proxies for race” in admissions.
I’m not sure real clarity would help but if it changed peoples feelings to “frustrated with the system” rather than “screwed at the expense of other” it would be an improvement.
I agree with pretty much everything that you said. I’m not sure that taxes need to go up rather than come from another spot in the budget but that is “how” rather than “what” in terms of doing.
Lynbrook (which I have absolute zero affiliation with in any way) is just an interesting outlier in so many ways (ethnic composition, test rate, SAT profile almost the same as UCB, and others) but people in this thread are now too focused on it. You can go three miles down the road to Prospect HS; very different profile (relatively balanced Hispanic is largest group, 42% socioeconomic disadvantaged) or go east to Homestead HS (in between the two in terms of profile and the results are the same. which is that their students and schools are above average for the state but their success at the top 6 UCs lags the averages, sometimes by quite a bit. When achieving more results in receiving less people it is human nature for people to question systems.
Quick straightforward math yields 20% not 50% and if we dropped to 10% from 20% the increase would be about 10% across the board. However, a larger number might be the right one if we also increased aid to in effect make the increase zero for students getting aid. For full pay students the increase is still likely reasonable compared to full pay at UM, UVa, UNC, etc.
And we aren’t talking about just UCB and UCLA as has been repeatedly mentioned. The pattern generally holds across the top 6 UCs.
Your numbers are way off as demonstrated above and are you saying that kids from these neighborhoods (who do pay the majority of CA income taxes BTW) do not deserve equal access to the UC system?
I am too, I was making a point. The UC system should not be filling their budget desires via OOS/International students when in state demand is off the charts. They are acting like Private schools in this manner. The system would not suffer one iota if non-residents admissions were capped similar to other states with supply/demand constraints.
Should that be a core mission of a public education system? Maybe for some states that would be a benefit and I can see reasons but I’m not buying that as a priority for a system with the recognition and stature of the UC system. That goal is done and dusted. That said, the UCs reputations and world rankings are largely built on their reputations as graduate and professional schools which would remain unchanged.
My kid did apply to a couple of CSUs because her school generally wants everyone to apply because it is easy and ensures affordable options. I think the CSU system like the UC system is excellent but they were never in serious consideration.
I think that by using Lynbrook along with UCB and UCLA I have led people down a narrower path than I intended. The results and feelings hold across many public and private schools in the bay area and admissions rates running below the state averages is common across the 6 most selective UCs. The rates tend to go above the average for the bottom three UCs. This is exactly why I have mentioned making changes to turn ELC into something meaningful. Kids don’t have to get into UCB and UCLA but I do think that there would be less angst if unsuccessful ELC kids with the numbers for UCB or UCLA were given better consideration for schools other than UCM and UCR. Giving them something that they would have easily got by checking a box and adding $70 doesn’t acknowledge their “excellence” in any way.
So you are basically positing that we already have a TX style system to a certain extent. Maybe we do? Can anyone comment on the admissions criteria into the UT system for those outside of the 6%?
Can anyone characterize how the 13 variables are evaluated or weighed? I cannot find anything that provides clarity and that is exactly what I said so many posts ago. I never said that the systems goals (or outcomes) were incorrect but rather that the system isn’t working because it is opaque and people don’t trust it. They think that it is racist (I don’t believe that it purposely is) or that it is designed to advantage some groups over others (this is likely).
Read what I posted again. The 50% estimate is for a scenario where we went 100% instate.
I suggest you double check the math because In state tuition is 14k vs 44k for non instate (>3x)
The core mission is to provide a productive and nurturing learning environment. Diversity and broad worldly experience contribute to that environment. It’s not about educating outsiders but having the outsiders enhance our in-state students’ perspectives.
I used 2x rather than 3x. The answer is in the middle of our numbers with no adjustments to OOS tuition. But that could also be raised based on the desirability of the schools.
True, but we already live in arguably one of the most wonderfully diverse places anywhere. The glorious melting pot of CA already provides much of that perspective.
The Texas system uses class rank (not grades directly), which can get political within schools or school districts in Texas, and can incentivize cutthroat competition within schools as well as students and parents trying to game the rank system in their schools.
Maybe someone with a lot of energy can look through the thread and help me find people / posts who meet the three criteria?
I want to hear those peoples’ voices if they are here in the thread somewhere, but I feel that they may be getting drowned out by all the other discussion.
There are lots of people on CC who ARE in-state, and whose kids DID apply to UC, and who may not have gotten the results they wanted. I try to help those people in their threads… for example the recent poster whose kid got into Merced, CPP, and an OOS school that they can only afford with loans. But I feel that I am not seeing these people coming to this thread and arguing that they want a system modeled on Texas. Maybe I missed that. If someone can help me find them in the thread I would appreciate it!