In state preference

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kaim10

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Why do some school's websites say they have "no state preference" for applicants, but they clearly do? UCLA's website says "No preference is given to state of residence." But UCLA is 85% people from California. UCLA also interviewed about 4% of OOS apps and 13% of IS apps. Am I missing something??

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There's another side to things too. 85% of people who applied and got in and decided to go there are from California. Maybe a bunch of east coasters got in but didn't decide to go.

And there may be many, many more OOSers applying, so that even if they interviewed similar numbers of OOS vs IS people, the percentages will be off (e.g. 500 OOS out of 6,000 and 500 IS out of 1,000 - these are random numbers, nothing to do with UCLA)

Lastly, I suspect even though schools say they have "no state preference", they still have to practice yield protection. At the end of the day, people from the state are generally more likely to there for many reasons.
 
Lastly, I suspect even though schools say they have "no state preference", they still have to practice yield protection. At the end of the day, people from the state are generally more likely to there for many reasons.
That's resource management. If the school knows that everything else being equal, they have to interview 5 OOS to one IS there is a reason to save everybody the expense. This is especially true in CA where we have a huge surplus of overqualified candidates.
 
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Why do some school's websites say they have "no state preference" for applicants, but they clearly do? UCLA's website says "No preference is given to state of residence." But UCLA is 85% people from California. UCLA also interviewed about 4% of OOS apps and 13% of IS apps. Am I missing something??

Yup, they claim no preference for IS students but in reality they do in a way due to yield protection. They know the student from the home state is more likely to matriculate. If you look at most private schools you'll see that the majority of their students are from in state as well. It's the same deal. Even if there is no official preference for IS there kinda is due to yield. The private schools also know the students from their own state are more likely to matriculate. Hope that makes sense.
 
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Tbh, I am not a ca resident and I would matriculate to a California school over anything in my home state. Hey, I would take Stanford/Ucsf over Harvard any day :)

Please consider oos people California schools
 
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Tbh, I am not a ca resident and I would matriculate to a California school over anything in my home state. Hey, I would take Stanford/Ucsf over Harvard any day :)

Please consider oos people California schools

Samesies. But even if I wrote that in a LOI they would never believe us!
 
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Samesies. But even if I wrote that in a LOI they would never believe us!

There is always residency! (Actually, I am not going to pretend like I know if state preference exists at that level).
 
Samesies. But even if I wrote that in a LOI they would never believe us!
Do you think that writing in a secondary (or anywhere on my app) that I have a lot of family and a finance in California would help (this is actually true)? Or does anyone have any knowledge on whether they might take this into account?
 
Do you think that writing in a secondary (or anywhere on my app) that I have a lot of family and a finance in California would help (this is actually true)? Or does anyone have any knowledge on whether they might take this into account?

I think if you had the stats and type of profile they look for in applicants to begin with it could help convince them to give you an interview because they know you'd be likely to matriculate.

I have heard for other schools that claim a strong in-state bias that mentioning strong ties to the area in secondaries helps so that sort of strategy is recommended for those schools. YMMV with CA schools.
 
Do you think that writing in a secondary (or anywhere on my app) that I have a lot of family and a finance in California would help (this is actually true)? Or does anyone have any knowledge on whether they might take this into account?
If the tuition at your state school is really low, you'll have to be very persuasive that the ties are strong.
 
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