More applicants than ever trying to get into a UC campus

By Nanette Asimov

A record number of people have applied to the University of California as freshmen or transfer students — about 194,000 — including a surge in the state’s high school students who are clamoring to enroll.

Nearly 103,000 California seniors hope to enroll at UC next fall, according to new application figures released Monday. That’s 3,233 more applications for UC to read than last year, a boost five times higher than the previous year’s increase of 632 applications. And for the first time, more than a third of all California students applying for a freshman spot are Latino.

UC officials credit themselves with doing a better job getting out the word about the public university’s offer of free tuition for families earning below $80,000. About 45 percent of California undergraduates pay no tuition.

“So many students didn’t know about the financial aid,” said Dianne Klein, a UC spokeswoman who said that university President Janet Napolitano has visited high schools around the state to talk about the tuition deal since she arrived in 2013.

UC spent $20 million last year on programs to cultivate California students for higher education and recruit them for UC, records show. By contrast, it spent nearly $4 million to recruit out-of-state students, who pay three times the price and don’t qualify for the free tuition deal.

“We haven’t done studies on how this (surge) happened,” Klein said. “But we’re not mystified at all. Once people understand, and you get the message out, that this university is a homegrown jewel and a bargain when you compare it to like institutions, this is really the best thing going in California.”

UC is generally more expensive than other public universities, but Klein and other officials compare it to “like institutions,” or similarly top-ranked schools that include private campuses, such as Stanford, and Harvard in the Ivy League.

The UC regents also voted to raise tuition 10 days before the Nov. 30 deadline for applying to UC. Tuition is set to rise up to 28 percent over five years, which Napolitano has said would allow UC to enroll 5,000 additional California residents. Annual tuition could rise up to 5 percent a year, which would bring the basic annual price to $12,802 next fall, not including mandatory campus fees, room, board and books. Including tuition, the price tops $33,000.

In his just-released budget proposal for the 2015-16 fiscal year, Gov. Jerry Brown put pressure on UC to rescind the tuition increase or forfeit a funding increase of about $120 million from the state.

State lawmakers won’t approve a final state budget until June, so UC’s tuition will be up in the air even after students receive their acceptance letters and make their college choices in the spring.

Also in flux is the future of the “middle-class scholarship,” a new state program to help students pay tuition when their families earn too much to qualify for financial aid. Democratic leaders in the state Legislature want to end the program and use the money to buy out UC’s tuition hike.

Despite the uncertainties, UC is more popular than ever. Here are highlights of the latest report on applications:

• Total: 193,873, nearly 6 percent more than last year.

• From California: 132,383, including 29,389 (22 percent) hoping to transfer in.

• California freshmen ethnicity: Latinos (34 percent); Asian American (32 percent); white (25 percent); black (6 percent).

• From out of state: 61,490, including 29,839 (49 percent) from other countries.

• Campus with the biggest surge: UC Merced, with a 15 percent jump to 17,611 applications.

Merced, just 10 years old, draws a third of its students from the Bay Area, said Charles Nies, vice chancellor for student affairs. Merced is sometimes offered to applicants who are eligible for UC but don’t get into the campus of their choice. Yet Nies credited Merced’s counseling, tutoring and other supportive services for its growing popularity.

[Source]: SF Gate