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"Anyone arguing that UCLA, Berkeley, and Michigan are anything but the clear-cut, undisputed Top 3 public institutions"
I love waking up to comedy in the morning. |
You are basing your ranking on admissions rates? You know how those are calculated, right? Oh my. I suspect this is a teenager from California. |
| You can't rank or compare test required top publics to UC schools anymore when they are test blind. Defies logic and is worthless. |
I am a huge fan of the UC schools. It is an amazing system with a surplus of excellent offerings top to bottom. I think the only other state that rivals the sheer number of appealing schools is Virginia. Of course other states envy California. But your way of assessing is just not adequate. Admissions rates of course tell us a lot about the appeal and popularity of a school, and to an extent these often correlate with high stats and highly driven students as well as excellent course offerings as well as excellent advising and so on - but not always. The numbers can also be very misleading. California is the most populated state in the country--there is a HUGE demand for seats at these affordable schools. California is test-blind, not even test-optional, so ALL students can feel like they have a shot. The number of applicants is enormous and that drives the admissions rate way, way down. California is committed to the upward mobility of its population which, again, decreases the seats for the more typical high-achieving population and thus driving down admission rate numbers. When you try to make a list of top ten schools, admissions rate is only one indicator, it is not even a factor. We are all going to have different metrics and I, for one, just totally disagree with the ones used by US News. Do you agree with their metrics? Which ones? No one, from CA or the rest of the country, who has any real familiarity with UC Merced would pretend that the student body is statistically in the top 25. So if you are looking for high achieving peers, this is not the place for you. |
Another reason admissions rates are so low at CA schools have one application. Just one. Most selective schools that use that common app have supplemental essays, sometimes multiple, so you do the common app and then address each school separately. But the CA App is one and done. You can get waivers to add more schools and so on. They make it very easy to apply to many schools. |
I am a Californian. And, again, my kid is graduating from Berkeley (after getting in as a senior in high school, though I think the CC-transfer system is great). There's no "resentment" or "jealousy" here. You just don't have a compelling argument. |
DP This isn’t an argument. It actually seems like one side promoting the consensus best publics and the other side downplaying them without any semblance of defense for the alternatives they apparently think are better. Where’s the case for Virginia over Cal? Where’s the case for Texas over UCLA? Where’s the case for UNC over Michigan? At one point, someone even argued that ANY of the Top 50 LACs would be a better choice for an OOS applicant than Cal or UCLA (or any other UC)! Macalester or Occidental or Grinnell or Lafayette, all costing $10 - $15K more per year, would be better choices? This sure seems like individual(s) irrationally attacking the UC system without presenting any objective arguments - just their feelings. |
No one is presenting arguments because they are immature kids incapable of doing so. They have been flooding this forum the past few days. |
The academic peer group at the UCs is pretty bad right now. The kids might be interesting but they are not really that smart. |
Tell me you didn't attend a selective school without telling me. |
Cal and Wisconsin should be on that list. |
UMD is great in a few specific programs, but not as great across the board as the other schools being listed. |
DP It's not symmetrical Michigan in particular has a lot of OOS |
Because they are test blind and if I can pay the application fee I have a chance to end up at a school that is waaaaay better than I have any right to attend. |
Application rates are much higher at test optional schools. Test blind schools invite even more applications. Add that UC application process that pretty much invites everyone applying to any UC to throw their hat in the ring for cal and UCLA. |