Overcrowding/Overenrollment Issues at top tier schools

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I also have a DD graduating from UCLA this year, and her experience is aligned with the reports of other actual UCLA parents in this thread. She's graduating in 4 years, in one of the typical pre-med majors, with a foreign language minor, and has completed additional courses to fulfill the college honors program requirements. It absolutely took careful planning and flexibility, but it wasn't as daunting as has been presented here (and, yes, that includes the chem 20/30 series).

The largest lecture hall at UCLA holds 442 kids. So, tales of 1000+ classes there are simply untrue. However, I agree with the PP (19:14) who noted that after a certain point, it just doesn't matter. The nature of the lecture doesn't change beyond about 50-100, and there are simply more discussion sections available.

I haven't seen this myth in this particular thread yet, but to head it off, there seems to be a belief that the top public universities primarily use graduate teaching assistants to lead classes. In my daughter's experience, this simply was not true. All of her seminars and lectures were professor-led, often with associated TA-led discussions and labs. She took a class taught by a Pulitzer Prize winner, and another by a Booker Prize winner. She worked in the lab of a National Academy of Sciences member.

Did she have to advocate for herself? Yes, strongly and repeatedly. Did she learn how to politely decline to take "no" for an answer in doing so? You bet. These are skills she never had to acquire in her private high school, and they will serve her well.

My biggest complaint (consistent with PP 19:54) is the serious lack of advisement. This is a legitimate issue, and not easily circumvented (although being in the College Honors program does provide students with staff advisors, which can help a bit).

As for housing, yep, most freshmen and many sophomores are in tiny triples. There are larger, double rooms available as students gain seniority, but the first year is very tight. This is the trade-off for having 4 years of guaranteed housing, something that is not available anywhere else in the UC system, nor at many elite private colleges. I must say, though, I have not heard the horror stories about rats, mold, etc., that are frequent in discussions of private colleges on this board.

Whether it's worth the cost OOS is a personal question. I do know that my daughter's OOS friends are glad they made the choice. Given the below 10% rate of freshmen admission, few will have to entertain the question.

Four years of guaranteed housing is common at private colleges.

Not at Cal Tech, Yale, Princeton, Penn, Duke, JHU, or Brown, at least in my experience.

You think Yale does not guarantee four years of housing? You must really know nothing about Yale if you are unfamiliar with its residential college system.

https://housing.yale.edu/undergraduate-housing/housing-policies

States that housing for all four years is not guaranteed. Is that not the case?

All incoming undergraduates are assigned to one of Yale’s fourteen residential colleges. Students remain affiliated with their residential college for all four years (and beyond). Yale makes every effort to represent the diversity of the entire undergraduate community within every residential college. In this sense, each college is a microcosm of the larger student population.

The residential college system is one of the things that makes Yale Yale.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I also have a DD graduating from UCLA this year, and her experience is aligned with the reports of other actual UCLA parents in this thread. She's graduating in 4 years, in one of the typical pre-med majors, with a foreign language minor, and has completed additional courses to fulfill the college honors program requirements. It absolutely took careful planning and flexibility, but it wasn't as daunting as has been presented here (and, yes, that includes the chem 20/30 series).

The largest lecture hall at UCLA holds 442 kids. So, tales of 1000+ classes there are simply untrue. However, I agree with the PP (19:14) who noted that after a certain point, it just doesn't matter. The nature of the lecture doesn't change beyond about 50-100, and there are simply more discussion sections available.

I haven't seen this myth in this particular thread yet, but to head it off, there seems to be a belief that the top public universities primarily use graduate teaching assistants to lead classes. In my daughter's experience, this simply was not true. All of her seminars and lectures were professor-led, often with associated TA-led discussions and labs. She took a class taught by a Pulitzer Prize winner, and another by a Booker Prize winner. She worked in the lab of a National Academy of Sciences member.

Did she have to advocate for herself? Yes, strongly and repeatedly. Did she learn how to politely decline to take "no" for an answer in doing so? You bet. These are skills she never had to acquire in her private high school, and they will serve her well.

My biggest complaint (consistent with PP 19:54) is the serious lack of advisement. This is a legitimate issue, and not easily circumvented (although being in the College Honors program does provide students with staff advisors, which can help a bit).

As for housing, yep, most freshmen and many sophomores are in tiny triples. There are larger, double rooms available as students gain seniority, but the first year is very tight. This is the trade-off for having 4 years of guaranteed housing, something that is not available anywhere else in the UC system, nor at many elite private colleges. I must say, though, I have not heard the horror stories about rats, mold, etc., that are frequent in discussions of private colleges on this board.

Whether it's worth the cost OOS is a personal question. I do know that my daughter's OOS friends are glad they made the choice. Given the below 10% rate of freshmen admission, few will have to entertain the question.

Four years of guaranteed housing is common at private colleges.

Not at Cal Tech, Yale, Princeton, Penn, Duke, JHU, or Brown, at least in my experience.

Duke is guaranteed all 4, always has been since I graduated, and have a kid there now

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I also have a DD graduating from UCLA this year, and her experience is aligned with the reports of other actual UCLA parents in this thread. She's graduating in 4 years, in one of the typical pre-med majors, with a foreign language minor, and has completed additional courses to fulfill the college honors program requirements. It absolutely took careful planning and flexibility, but it wasn't as daunting as has been presented here (and, yes, that includes the chem 20/30 series).

The largest lecture hall at UCLA holds 442 kids. So, tales of 1000+ classes there are simply untrue. However, I agree with the PP (19:14) who noted that after a certain point, it just doesn't matter. The nature of the lecture doesn't change beyond about 50-100, and there are simply more discussion sections available.

I haven't seen this myth in this particular thread yet, but to head it off, there seems to be a belief that the top public universities primarily use graduate teaching assistants to lead classes. In my daughter's experience, this simply was not true. All of her seminars and lectures were professor-led, often with associated TA-led discussions and labs. She took a class taught by a Pulitzer Prize winner, and another by a Booker Prize winner. She worked in the lab of a National Academy of Sciences member.

Did she have to advocate for herself? Yes, strongly and repeatedly. Did she learn how to politely decline to take "no" for an answer in doing so? You bet. These are skills she never had to acquire in her private high school, and they will serve her well.

My biggest complaint (consistent with PP 19:54) is the serious lack of advisement. This is a legitimate issue, and not easily circumvented (although being in the College Honors program does provide students with staff advisors, which can help a bit).

As for housing, yep, most freshmen and many sophomores are in tiny triples. There are larger, double rooms available as students gain seniority, but the first year is very tight. This is the trade-off for having 4 years of guaranteed housing, something that is not available anywhere else in the UC system, nor at many elite private colleges. I must say, though, I have not heard the horror stories about rats, mold, etc., that are frequent in discussions of private colleges on this board.

Whether it's worth the cost OOS is a personal question. I do know that my daughter's OOS friends are glad they made the choice. Given the below 10% rate of freshmen admission, few will have to entertain the question.

Four years of guaranteed housing is common at private colleges.

Not at Cal Tech, Yale, Princeton, Penn, Duke, JHU, or Brown, at least in my experience.

Duke is guaranteed all 4, always has been since I graduated, and have a kid there now

So does Princeton so pp clearly is clueless.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is a public school problem.

Well, to be more accurate: this is sometimes a problem at schools which are very much in demand.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Cornell, USC, NYU, BU (larger privates)
Vs
UCLA, Michigan, Berkeley (extremely large, but highly ranked Publix that are comparable in cost)

Hmmm. I don’t think I would go to any of the California schools to be honest

DP

The cross-admit data that I’ve seen doesn’t seem to align at all with any of the anecdotal noise here …

UCLA 63% vs. Cornell 37%

UCLA 56% vs. USC 44%

UCLA 83% vs. NYU 17%

UCLA 93% vs. BU 7%

Due to instate price

The data isn’t confined to CA applicants. Cross-admitted applicants simply choose UCLA by a significant margin.

Head in palm. You’re a moron bc you do not understand the raw data behind the numbers you’re throwing out.

Really? Let’s use the last one: 93% of applicants admitted to both UCLA and BU, regardless of their residency status, choose to attend UCLA. Go ahead and read the methodology on your own time when you come down off your high of calling others moron in an anonymous forum like DCUM.

But rather than prolong this and pretend you know anything about some imagined insight arising from the raw data, let’s just agree that any kid choosing BU over UCLA - regardless their home state - is an anomaly anyway because they somehow managed a UCLA acceptance, yet couldn’t even secure an acceptance to the 12-15 colleges and universities in the greater New England area that are superior to BU.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is a public school problem.

Well, to be more accurate: this is sometimes a problem at schools which are very much in demand.

Nope. It’s a problem at schools big and small, mostly big, that are under resourced and underfunded.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:every single school

No. If looking at the top tier colleges, it's only a problem at the publics - Berkeley, UCLA, and Michigan. Which is another reason why the USNews rankings became so bogus last year. The UCs are plagued by this problem and have no business being so highly ranked for undergrad. There's classes with 1200 students. And graduating in four years is a real challenge for a lot of students.

Do you have a student at UCLA and Berkeley? I do and she has NEVER had a class with 1200 students, is graduating next week in 4 years with a double major and could’ve graduated last December. Oh and she studied abroad for a quarter too. All her friends are also graduating in four years. In so-called impacted majors too.

Real life experience.

+1
This thread is full of the same "elite private school" parents who love to sniff about public schools. Makes me so very grateful my kids don't go to school with people like that. They attend large state schools which haven't had overcrowding issues and they will have no trouble graduating in four years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I also have a DD graduating from UCLA this year, and her experience is aligned with the reports of other actual UCLA parents in this thread. She's graduating in 4 years, in one of the typical pre-med majors, with a foreign language minor, and has completed additional courses to fulfill the college honors program requirements. It absolutely took careful planning and flexibility, but it wasn't as daunting as has been presented here (and, yes, that includes the chem 20/30 series).

The largest lecture hall at UCLA holds 442 kids. So, tales of 1000+ classes there are simply untrue. However, I agree with the PP (19:14) who noted that after a certain point, it just doesn't matter. The nature of the lecture doesn't change beyond about 50-100, and there are simply more discussion sections available.

I haven't seen this myth in this particular thread yet, but to head it off, there seems to be a belief that the top public universities primarily use graduate teaching assistants to lead classes. In my daughter's experience, this simply was not true. All of her seminars and lectures were professor-led, often with associated TA-led discussions and labs. She took a class taught by a Pulitzer Prize winner, and another by a Booker Prize winner. She worked in the lab of a National Academy of Sciences member.

Did she have to advocate for herself? Yes, strongly and repeatedly. Did she learn how to politely decline to take "no" for an answer in doing so? You bet. These are skills she never had to acquire in her private high school, and they will serve her well.

My biggest complaint (consistent with PP 19:54) is the serious lack of advisement. This is a legitimate issue, and not easily circumvented (although being in the College Honors program does provide students with staff advisors, which can help a bit).

As for housing, yep, most freshmen and many sophomores are in tiny triples. There are larger, double rooms available as students gain seniority, but the first year is very tight. This is the trade-off for having 4 years of guaranteed housing, something that is not available anywhere else in the UC system, nor at many elite private colleges. I must say, though, I have not heard the horror stories about rats, mold, etc., that are frequent in discussions of private colleges on this board.

Whether it's worth the cost OOS is a personal question. I do know that my daughter's OOS friends are glad they made the choice. Given the below 10% rate of freshmen admission, few will have to entertain the question.

Four years of guaranteed housing is common at private colleges.

Not at Cal Tech, Yale, Princeton, Penn, Duke, JHU, or Brown, at least in my experience.

Duke is guaranteed all 4, always has been since I graduated, and have a kid there now

So does Princeton so pp clearly is clueless.

DP. You and the Duke parent should consider marshaling your ample resources and assisting these fine schools in correcting the false information they are apparently promoting through their own websites.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My neighbor has a crazy sorry about first year students showing up at BU and not having housing. They were eventually put up at hotels. This was only a few years ago.

This happened at VT too in 2019. It sucks but it happens everywhere. Some large schools have done partnerships with private companies that operate private freshmen dorms.

https://www.newsleader.com/story/news/2019/08/25/virginia-techs-dorms-overflow-putting-some-freshman-hotels/2117887001/

Some were placed in the Inn at Virginia Tech, which is a very nice hotel right on campus - so I'd say they lucked out.
DP

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I also have a DD graduating from UCLA this year, and her experience is aligned with the reports of other actual UCLA parents in this thread. She's graduating in 4 years, in one of the typical pre-med majors, with a foreign language minor, and has completed additional courses to fulfill the college honors program requirements. It absolutely took careful planning and flexibility, but it wasn't as daunting as has been presented here (and, yes, that includes the chem 20/30 series).

The largest lecture hall at UCLA holds 442 kids. So, tales of 1000+ classes there are simply untrue. However, I agree with the PP (19:14) who noted that after a certain point, it just doesn't matter. The nature of the lecture doesn't change beyond about 50-100, and there are simply more discussion sections available.

I haven't seen this myth in this particular thread yet, but to head it off, there seems to be a belief that the top public universities primarily use graduate teaching assistants to lead classes. In my daughter's experience, this simply was not true. All of her seminars and lectures were professor-led, often with associated TA-led discussions and labs. She took a class taught by a Pulitzer Prize winner, and another by a Booker Prize winner. She worked in the lab of a National Academy of Sciences member.

Did she have to advocate for herself? Yes, strongly and repeatedly. Did she learn how to politely decline to take "no" for an answer in doing so? You bet. These are skills she never had to acquire in her private high school, and they will serve her well.

My biggest complaint (consistent with PP 19:54) is the serious lack of advisement. This is a legitimate issue, and not easily circumvented (although being in the College Honors program does provide students with staff advisors, which can help a bit).

As for housing, yep, most freshmen and many sophomores are in tiny triples. There are larger, double rooms available as students gain seniority, but the first year is very tight. This is the trade-off for having 4 years of guaranteed housing, something that is not available anywhere else in the UC system, nor at many elite private colleges. I must say, though, I have not heard the horror stories about rats, mold, etc., that are frequent in discussions of private colleges on this board.

Whether it's worth the cost OOS is a personal question. I do know that my daughter's OOS friends are glad they made the choice. Given the below 10% rate of freshmen admission, few will have to entertain the question.

Four years of guaranteed housing is common at private colleges.

Not at Cal Tech, Yale, Princeton, Penn, Duke, JHU, or Brown, at least in my experience.

Duke is guaranteed all 4, always has been since I graduated, and have a kid there now

So does Princeton so pp clearly is clueless.

DP. You and the Duke parent should consider marshaling your ample resources and assisting these fine schools in correcting the false information they are apparently promoting through their own websites.

You picked a number of schools known for their commitment to four years of on campus residential living and tried to claim they don’t “guarantee” four years of housing. Just admit you know nothing about these schools and move on.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Cornell, USC, NYU, BU (larger privates)
Vs
UCLA, Michigan, Berkeley (extremely large, but highly ranked Publix that are comparable in cost)

Hmmm. I don’t think I would go to any of the California schools to be honest

DP

The cross-admit data that I’ve seen doesn’t seem to align at all with any of the anecdotal noise here …

UCLA 63% vs. Cornell 37%

UCLA 56% vs. USC 44%

UCLA 83% vs. NYU 17%

UCLA 93% vs. BU 7%

Due to instate price

The data isn’t confined to CA applicants. Cross-admitted applicants simply choose UCLA by a significant margin.

Head in palm. You’re a moron bc you do not understand the raw data behind the numbers you’re throwing out.

Really? Let’s use the last one: 93% of applicants admitted to both UCLA and BU, regardless of their residency status, choose to attend UCLA. Go ahead and read the methodology on your own time when you come down off your high of calling others moron in an anonymous forum like DCUM.

But rather than prolong this and pretend you know anything about some imagined insight arising from the raw data, let’s just agree that any kid choosing BU over UCLA - regardless their home state - is an anomaly anyway because they somehow managed a UCLA acceptance, yet couldn’t even secure an acceptance to the 12-15 colleges and universities in the greater New England area that are superior to BU.

You mean the methodology that is pasted at the bottom of the website? This one??
the denominator includes all members who were admitted to both of these schools. The numerator includes those students who chose a given school. In other words, students who were admitted to both schools reveal their preference for one over the other by attending that school.

And you do not recognize nor understand the importance of California residency in this number? Maybe you were student #2001 in your stats class at ucla, and couldn’t see the screen from the doorway. Residency and thus cost of attendance absolutely matters in the calculation. The only way to represent the data you are spewing is to correct for it. But I bet you don’t know how to do that, huh.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:every single school

No. If looking at the top tier colleges, it's only a problem at the publics - Berkeley, UCLA, and Michigan. Which is another reason why the USNews rankings became so bogus last year. The UCs are plagued by this problem and have no business being so highly ranked for undergrad. There's classes with 1200 students. And graduating in four years is a real challenge for a lot of students.

Do you have a student at UCLA and Berkeley? I do and she has NEVER had a class with 1200 students, is graduating next week in 4 years with a double major and could’ve graduated last December. Oh and she studied abroad for a quarter too. All her friends are also graduating in four years. In so-called impacted majors too.

Real life experience.

+1
This thread is full of the same "elite private school" parents who love to sniff about public schools. Makes me so very grateful my kids don't go to school with people like that. They attend large state schools which haven't had overcrowding issues and they will have no trouble graduating in four years.

For most MC families, private universities are far more affordable than OOS at Berkeley or UCLA, which are only accessible for the wealthy if not from California.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All of them, including Cornell, are lower rated than Berkeley and UCLA .. ?

Are people seriously choosing schools that are lower rated, and in places like Ithaca, NY, over higher rated schools in California?

USC is fine as a proxy (but without the NM pricing, more than 2x the cost), but anybody choosing NYU or especially BU over Berkeley or UCLA really isn't suitable for either of the latter schools anyway.

Consider that decision a test-out ...

Many people no longer care about the U.S. news rankings now that they are concerned mostly with first gen and Pell grant eligible students. UCLA does some important research but I have zero doubt that the quality of the undergraduate experience (size of classes, degrees held by professors, percentage of classes taught by TAs, and housing) is better at Cornell.

FWIW, no connection to either of these schools.

DP - also no connection to either of those schools. Just wanted to say, other than here in DCUM-land, most people care very much about USNWR rankings. It's only here that certain posters (obviously those whose favored schools went down in the rankings) parse and dismiss them. The vast majority of Americans use those rankings to help them choose colleges.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All of them, including Cornell, are lower rated than Berkeley and UCLA .. ?

Are people seriously choosing schools that are lower rated, and in places like Ithaca, NY, over higher rated schools in California?

USC is fine as a proxy (but without the NM pricing, more than 2x the cost), but anybody choosing NYU or especially BU over Berkeley or UCLA really isn't suitable for either of the latter schools anyway.

Consider that decision a test-out ...

Many people no longer care about the U.S. news rankings now that they are concerned mostly with first gen and Pell grant eligible students. UCLA does some important research but I have zero doubt that the quality of the undergraduate experience (size of classes, degrees held by professors, percentage of classes taught by TAs, and housing) is better at Cornell.

FWIW, no connection to either of these schools.

DP - also no connection to either of those schools. Just wanted to say, other than here in DCUM-land, most people care very much about USNWR rankings. It's only here that certain posters (obviously those whose favored schools went down in the rankings) parse and dismiss them. The vast majority of Americans use those rankings to help them choose colleges.

The vast majority of people don’t use U.S. news rankings, they send their kids to the in state school that accepts them. Nice try though.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All of them, including Cornell, are lower rated than Berkeley and UCLA .. ?

Are people seriously choosing schools that are lower rated, and in places like Ithaca, NY, over higher rated schools in California?

USC is fine as a proxy (but without the NM pricing, more than 2x the cost), but anybody choosing NYU or especially BU over Berkeley or UCLA really isn't suitable for either of the latter schools anyway.

Consider that decision a test-out ...

Many people no longer care about the U.S. news rankings now that they are concerned mostly with first gen and Pell grant eligible students. UCLA does some important research but I have zero doubt that the quality of the undergraduate experience (size of classes, degrees held by professors, percentage of classes taught by TAs, and housing) is better at Cornell.

FWIW, no connection to either of these schools.

DP - also no connection to either of those schools. Just wanted to say, other than here in DCUM-land, most people care very much about USNWR rankings. It's only here that certain posters (obviously those whose favored schools went down in the rankings) parse and dismiss them. The vast majority of Americans use those rankings to help them choose colleges.

Oh sure - everyone here cares about them too. They just like to pretend that they don't!