[bearishgurl]

[quote=FlyerInHi]. . . Not sure what your problem is. Sounds like you drive over state lines a lot and you want a comprehensive national plan… If those are more expensive, then you need to pay. Sorry, life is not all about you.[/quote]I DID have a PPO with a National network of providers prior to obamacare, for 43% of the cost of my current plan. I didn’t need obamacare to come in and cause my carrier to leave the state and then double/triple my premiums for a chopped-up thinner-local-network plan. Everything was fine … much better than it is now because I had way more (local) providers to choose from and felt secure in the plan and not in fear of being “bumped off of it” involuntarily (which has now happened to me 3x with my exchange plan). In addition, while on my pre-ACA plan, I didn’t get “surprise” bills for out-of-network services which my providers chose for me (not knowing they were now out-of-network for me) i.e. lab/x-ray.

Lots of people prefer PPOs and we should have more than one carrier to choose with which to purchase them from. The ACA in CA has created a monopoly for PPO plans (by region).

[bearishgurl]

[quote=flyer]Also, to parents who are excited about their kids graduating from
college–many congratulations–but, as a parent who has been there, done that, be aware that, even though the hiring forecast has greatly improved, the competition out there is still fierce, and, although many of our kids will be very fortunate to land the careers they want in a location they would like to live–far more will not–so there may still be even greater challenges than education ahead for many grads.[/quote]Agree, flyer. I’m glad my kids are willing to live wherever they need to in order to have a reasonable commute to work everyday. I’ve got one kid now who is considering transferring from SF to LA with their company. My kids aren’t averse to living close to work to avoid a horrendous commute and if that means Carson, Baldwin Park or armpit Fullerton, so be it. My kids are also “experts” at “working the system” they set up for themselves. They’ve never had a problem getting a job or keeping a job in CA in their fields.

It seems you’ve still got a few college grads in your “sphere” who have returned “home” after graduation who are less than enchanted with where they’ll have to work and live in CA if they actually take real 8-5 job their field so they’re still “stuck” in their old bdrm in their parents’ spacious, well, appointed home in the covenant at the age of 22-30, lol …. You only have to look to their parents for your answer as to why their “kids” are still hanging around Mom and/or Dad at this late date :=0

[bearishgurl]

[quote=FlyerInHi]Haha, BG… I was right about Obama winning and winning again. In 2012, republicans were pretty convinced that Obama would be a 1 term president. Oh how wrong they were. But that’s besides the point.[/quote]

If you will recall, Obama won the Dem nomination in 2008 solely by successfully stealing (plucking off) “pledged” superdelegates from Hillary at the convention (the 11th hr) after winning the primaries by a razor-thin margin. This could most certainly happen to her again! Never say never, brian. Her campaign is currently embroiled in the same level of fierce competition for the nomination as they had against Barack Obama in 2008.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Party_presidential_candidates,_2008

Stranger things have happened. CA millenials LOVE Bernie and they, as a group, now outnumber the boomers, cuz we’re slowly dying off. Not only are college and university campuses helping students process their voter registrations in droves, this is also being done on CA military bases, outside exchange and commissary shopping areas, which are FULL of millenial active duty members and their spouses.

[quote=FlyerInHi]The ACA is now covering so many people that it would be political suicide to repeal it. Even if republicans win the presidency and congress, they may call for repeal, but there will have to be a transistion to something else. There cannot be status quo ante.
Republican know that obamacare is their own plan from the 1990s when Hillary was working on health care. All they can do is tweak it and call it repeal.[/quote]Umm, brian, there aren’t that many people in the US who signed up for “obamacare” in the form of “private” healthplans. There are many more millions of Americans who signed up for Medicaid/Medi-cal (either willingly or force-placed into it) since the passage of the ACA.

Actually, just ~12.7M Americans (~4% of the US population) had a marketplace plan as of January 2016. Those who are keeping their premiums current (and have not since been involuntarily “bumped” into Medicaid/Medi-Cal) are representative of the 12.7M who signed up for a marketplace plan for 2016:

http://time.com/money/4209255/obamacare-enrollment-2016/

However, >50M Americans are currently on Medicaid/Medi-Cal (17% of the US population) as a result of expanded Medicaid in 31 states:

https://www.medicaid.gov/medicaid-chip-program-information/program-information/downloads/updated-january-2016-enrollment-data.pdf

The ACA was actually designed to force as many people into Medicaid as possible as quickly as possible and 19 states have not agreed to participate in expanded Medicaid for this reason (and the cost, especially after the 93% Federal aid cutoff to the states in 2022).

All that had to be done was to expand Medicaid voluntarily so that those who couldn’t obtain policies under the pre-ACA health insurance climate could be covered (either because they couldn’t afford it or couldn’t get a policy due to pre-existing conditions . . . or both). OR, in the alternative, create state insurance pools where carriers rotated to take on members with pre-existing conditions as a cost of being permitted to do business in the state (much like state auto insurance pools and the CA Earthquake Authority). Instead, everyone got screwed in the form of doubled and tripled premiums (so far) and a very thin choice of carriers (just one PPO carrier offered in almost all regions) to choose from. My own 2016 obamacare premium was going to be 296% of my 2013 (pre-ACA) premium but I dropped a metal level last fall for 2016 and it is now a mere 231% of my 2013 premium :=0

If the rest of us hadn’t been screwed out of our existing policies and all the carriers hadn’t been compelled to jump ship out of state individual markets, there wouldn’t be many complaints about the ACA, IMO.

The Federal mandate as well as the gubment constantly in your business when you’ve never taken a dime of “welfare” in your life is why millions of Americans who had no choice but to sign up for coverage on the ACA exchanges are up in arms and beyond fed up over the “obamacare” debacle. And rightly so . . . who could blame them?

YOU (brian/FIH) are not affected by the ACA because you posted that YOU have employer-provided coverage. You are ostensibly partly self-employed and believe me, if you applied on your exchange and were granted a “subsidy” to help pay your now exorbitant premiums of your “marketplace” plan, you would ALSO be vociferously complaining here about being treated like a “second-class citizen!”

As such, you are not in a position to see the damage the ACA bureaucracy has done to so many millions of people. Even many enrolled tax preparers didn’t know how to handle the Form 1095’s issued to taxpayers by employers, the military, retirement associations and the marketplace for tax year 2015. No less than 4 (out of 7) people I helped sign up on the exchange brought me their infamous “12C letters” from the IRS after an enrolled agent prepared and filed their taxes for them and didn’t fill out their Form 8962 correctly! I had to refill these forms out for them with my tax software, filling in all the correct boxes and change the figures on the second page of their 1040 to correspond with the new Form 8962 and fax both documents back to the IRS to a special fax number set up for this purpose under their own cover sheet. All four eventually got their (correct) refunds. This second debacle, (another byproduct of the obamacare subsidy confusion) held up these individuals’ tax refunds for an additional 1-3 months.

[quote=FlyerInHi]Be careful with Trump. I believe that a Trump administration would turn America into more of a Randian, Darwinian society where winners win and losers lose, huge. Try to make sure you’re on the winning side.[/quote]I’m not worried about “Darwinism” or “Randism.” Not only is it not going to happen but I’m all but out of the workforce and now completely out of the stock market so am essentially immune from being affected by any of it. I’m not expecting our president to create conditions which will take care of me for life or change SS (OASDI) and Medicare in a significant enough manner to affect me in any way, shape or form. I have a nearly $400 mo Medicare Part B/D allowance for life and could avail myself of off-exchange (expensive) healthplans offered by my retirement assn if I wish to. I also have other lower-cost medical-coverage choices which involve relocation. It doesn’t even matter to me if Bernie gets in and manages to successfully push a single-payor system through.

[bearishgurl]

[quote=carli]BG, when you wrote, “I can clearly see here you’re looking for a ‘scapegoat’ because you all fear your own kids might not be admitted to UC one day,” it made me chuckle. Too late for scapegoats and fear. I’ve already got one kid there. He’s at UCLA, but not for long. He’ll graduate June 10th after making it through in 4 years (woot woot).

And I don’t have fear that my other kids won’t go to UCs. I have a fair degree of confidence each kid will find his/her way regardless of which school they graduate from (or maybe don’t graduate from)!

You are parroting a tired old stereotype of the uber-driven tiger mom who is pushing her kids in to a UC or the most competitive college they can get into. Sure, they’re out there, but most parents I know these days are doing their best to avoid (or at least minimize) the stress fest that is the college admissions process.[/quote]Congrats to your kid, carli, and I mean that sincerely. Your kid had to be savvy and on top of things (as well as have a good GPA) to be able to get all their needed classes in a timely manner to graduate in four years from this “flagship” school with the largest student body in the state!

I wasn’t really referring to “tiger parents” per se, but so many on this board who, in the past, posted here that they were essentially prostrating themselves for their kids in the name of eventual admission to a top university. A good example of this is paying $200K++ more for a home (which they could have gotten for $200K++ LESS elsewhere) which is located in a particular public school attendance area. Also, over-scheduling a young kid and paying for numerous private “enrichment” programs (to compete with Asian foreign university applicants?) Whatever happened to swinging on an old tire hung from their big backyard tree after their homework was done?? (Oh, I forgot, these parents are living in homes with postage-stamp lots with no trees … by choice :=0)

In my mind, all of this furious pre-planning of your kid’s life is for naught, for all the reasons outlined in the state auditor’s report re: UC (admitting non-residents with lower admission criteria than they expect of in-state residents in order to get their tuition premium) and the fact that at least half the CSU campuses (located in urban areas) actually honor their commitments they made to local school districts to ease up a little on their preferred admission criteria (admit a HS graduate with a 3.1 GPA instead of the 3.6 GPA they would prefer to admit). This is done so these students who grew up within a ~38 mile radius of the campus have the opportunity to commute from their family homes to classes instead of lease pricey on-campus or off-campus housing. As it stands, the traffic is so bad in LA County that many of these freshmen who grew up 15+ miles from campus end up staying on campus their first year, anyway, and renting nearby off-campus housing after that.

The biggest complaint today about college being inaccessible to the masses, IMO, is that it is too expensive. If you take the room and board expense out of that equation, it becomes exponentially more affordable to many, many more families.

CA needs to endeavor to do that for its resident students … to place them a top admission priority. Whatever slots are leftover after qualified residents accept their admission offers could be offered to non-residents. This is how it is in other states (many of whom only have 1-3 public university campuses) and this is how it should be in highly populous CA with a multitude of its public university campuses located in highly desirable areas.

A HS senior from Indiana with a family that has enough $$ to send them to an OOS university isn’t going to choose to apply as a freshman to campuses in Merced, Fresno, Chico or Bakersfield. What’s the point? They have plenty of schools to choose from in their home state. They’re going to apply to coveted UCSB, UCI, UCLA, CSULB, UCSD and SDSU for very obvious reasons to us all. Hence, SDSU’s 80-90K freshman apps they now receive by the end of every single November. The deserving and qualified HS graduate who grew up 0-15 miles from SDSU (and who may have been “promised” admission by them in writing) is turned down for admission while SDSU admits non-resident students in droves. It’s not the fault of SD local freshman applicants that a kid from MO wants to apply to their local university and expects to get accepted by virtue of the higher tuition they will pay. If these flyover-country applicants were so dead-set on attending university near a CA beach, then their parents should have thought about that when their kid was in 7th grade and moved here and got situated so their kid could be a “resident” and “local-area applicant.” Of course, they didn’t. They kept their $680 mo PITI on their $110K home and saved up for college, instead, while the parents in SD County made great and even onerous sacrifices to raise their kids in coastal CA, most paying $4K and up annual property taxes or now exorbitant rent as well feeding the bloodsucking FTB beast.

I will not apologize for my opinion that CA public university systems owe non-resident freshman and junior applicants nothing. Eff ’em as far a I am concerned. If they want to go to college OOS/OOC, they have many choices to apply for admission in states which don’t have enough qualified resident population to fill their public colleges and universities. CA is well past overflowing with qualified resident applicants for theirs, thank you.

[bearishgurl]

[quote=FlyerInHi]BG, the federal court decision will likely be appealed and overturned.
ACA is here to stay so better get used to It; otherwise, the disappointment will be yours.

BTW, what do you think of Hillary’s Medicare buy in proposal for those over 50?[/quote]FIH, we don’t yet know who will be replacing Scalia on the Supreme Court …. OR any of the octogenarians who are currently sitting on it (if the decision takes several years to get heard). You are leaping to conclusions here as to who will be “running the show” from 2017 forward.

I’ll take a look at it but I’m not really interested in Hillary’s proposals at this point in time, especially if it involves taking a hit on my SS (OASDI) formula later. I’ve already been offered by my retirement assn to take some SS now and take a hit on my benefit formula later and I declined as it’s not in my best interest.

If the ACA has no chance of being repealed, I personally have other choices for health coverage in life and will pull plan B and C out of my sleeve for further examination. I haven’t considered them too closely thus far as they both involve relocation.

I would consider Bernie’s single-payer plan before I would consider anything Hillary has to offer. You are also leaping to conclusions about her certain candidacy, as well. You fail to take into account that superdelegates have been successfully “stolen” by one Dem candidate from another in the past … from their convention to the general election. When push comes to shove, superdelegates, first and foremost, represent their party and have never voted against the will of their voters and thus are subject to flip-flop on their allegiances in a NY minute.

The truth is … nothing is off the table in this election.

Keep in mind that all is fair and love and politics and the “fat lady” hasn’t even stepped onto the stage, yet.

Certainly at some level, you must be aware of all this but are choosing not to discuss it here so I’m happy to bring it out in the open with a bright flashlight shining on it. Your insistence that Hill is a shoe-in for the nomination is just another instance of you continuing to put your hands over your ears and humming. Carry on …. :=]

[bearishgurl]

Again, I don’t agree with shoveler on this issue. SD County has no housing shortage. There are plenty of current available rental units and for-sale listings all over the county. In the case of NCC, it’s always been the same (esp west of I-5). There are too many deep-pocketed all-cash and huge-downpayment purchasers from all over the country and world who are making offers along the coast. This makes it impossible for Joe and Jane 6p worker-bee (who need large mortgages) to compete with them and this will never change. This is true along the entire coast of the state (within 5 miles). Too many 1st and 2nd time homebuyers who need large mortgages in order to consummate a deal are attempting to gravitate their search towards the coast when, in reality, it isn’t “their turn,” yet. That’s the way it’s always been, except in decades past, there weren’t all the subdivisions there are now within 5 miles of the coast (ex: NCC). The vast majority of boomers didn’t buy their 1st (or 2nd or even 3rd) homes along the coast (west of I-5 in SD).

Again, I feel that today’s 1st and 2nd time homebuyers in SD have wildly unrealistic expectations. If they would shop in areas they can actually afford, they would much more easily find homes which suit their families’ needs in which they can realistically get their offer accepted. Many (most) of them find that distasteful, hence they are still renters as sold prices (slowly or more rapidly, depending on zip code/micro area) inch up into the stratosphere.

I find this phenomenon kind of strange because Gen Y’s “brethren” shopping for a home in LA, Ventura, OC, SF, and other bay area counties are willing to be more realistic and make offers on what is available in their price range. Not so in SD. SD 1st and 2nd time homebuyers want it all right now! I feel the only way this collective mindset will ever correct itself is if SD County becomes more like those other CA urban coastal counties …. that is, the dearth of inventory is so pronounced everywhere that they have no choice but to face reality and shop where they can afford, rent indefinitely or leave.

Not sure how long this is all going to take because SD city and county officials have sold its longtime constituencies’ lifestyles down the river for well over 20 years now by approving wa-a-a-ay too many subdivisions all over the county. This didn’t happen in the above counties (except Alameda, but to a much lesser degree than SD County).

[bearishgurl]

This just in and I am ecstatic (even though it will likely be appealed):

https://www.yahoo.com/news/republicans-score-court-victory-against-obamacare-194221366.html?nhp=1

It’s a GREAT start on doing away with the ACA! Obamacare’s APTCs and copay assistance are very problematic for so many (incompetent and overwhelmed) state and Federal agencies AND a huge portion of the poor slobs (like myself) who are caught in the dragnet of this mess due to all our choices being taken away.

This, in combination with the RNC deciding to support “whoever their nominee will be” back in March (which I posted here a few weeks ago) and now the Speaker of the House gesturing that he and Trump are coming to an understanding supports my view that a lot of the “rhetoric” Trump used when he had up to 16 contenders to compete with is not really who he is, deep down. It’s been almost 3 months since I’ve been paying attention to politics again and in that short time frame, I’ve come to the conclusion that Trump does have the ability to lead this country.

And this is coming from someone who has voted Dem since the mid-late ’80’s and supported SD area Dems for ~10 years in the form of precinct walking, phone banking, distributing yard signs and hosting fund raisers both in the general and midterm elections. So I KNOW what it takes to get elected … even to just a municipal or county post.

All you folks who were saving up your stash of microwave popcorn to watch the dogfight and fireworks at the RNC this July will now likely be treated to a very “Trumpesque” star-studded entertainment gala of epic proportions (big names in music, etc). You may as well break out the champagne or crack open your fav bottle of wine, instead.

Regardless of how long it takes the US Supreme court to nail the coffin shut on the ACA, I predict it won’t last through 2017 if the “right” person is elected President. Good Riddance!!

[bearishgurl]

Awww, scaredy, I thought you will still have one kid left at home when your second kid leaves for college this fall.

It will all be okay. Why don’t you start gearing up to join a gym or a meetup group to bike and hike on weekends …. with your spouse if she’s not too busy?

[bearishgurl]

[quote=FlyerInHi]BG, haha.. you call Costa Mesa/Irvine a megalopolis! That’s a sleepy suburb outside of Seoul, Korea.[/quote]

Compared to what this area was in the ’70’s, yeah, it is a “megalopolis” today. It was a bit shocking to me as I hadn’t been down there since about 1980. Their (expensive) toll roads are what actually put this remotish section of the OC on the map, IMO.

[quote=FlyerInHi]And you don’t want that in San Diego so local kids can find jobs when they grow up? You want to limit growth so young adults have to move away. Way to go.[/quote]

SD County already has enough growth and 3 out of 4 corners of it are absolutely infiltrated with subdivisions, as well as any empty swaths of land in between (excepting that which belongs to the Federal Government). We already HAVE enough housing for everyone and then some for years down the road. SD County DOESN’T have enough living wage jobs and those which are ARE present here (non-govm’t) tend to be mostly situated in North City or North County, an arduous daily commute from South County. South County has had plenty of acreage/parcels (with utilities brought in) in Otay Mesa for companies to move into for at least 25 years yet none seem to be doing so (unless they are a wrecking yard or other heavy industrial-type biz). Ask yourselves why. And longtime employer Goodrich (fka Rohr and Rohr Industries) moved out of here in 2012 after they got bought out. And as we all know, the Dynergy Power Plant on SD Bay in Chula Vista (which employed hundreds of union workers for decades) was blown up back in 2013.

South County is NOT the place for millenials to settle down and start families in unless they work no further than Kearny Mesa and their job is very, very secure. And KM might be challenging to get to some/most mornings in less than 45 minutes. If a south county dwelling worker-bee works further than that and commutes four or more days/week during regular rush hours, their daily lifestyle is going to be seriously adversely affected, IMO.

It didn’t used to be nearly this bad. The South County commute really took a turn for the worse after 91915 was annexed into CV and the first phases of new subdivisions down there were built out and sold (~2003).

I really feel that South County is going to find a way to bill itself as a tourist destination. But that isn’t going to bring any “living wage” jobs down here to any significant degree.

[bearishgurl]

[quote=scaredyclassic]The competition is brutal. My kid was wait listed at Irvine with a 97th percentile sat and over a,4.0 GPA.[/quote]I’m so sorry, scaredy. I drove past the entrance to that campus (just north of the beautiful Newport coast) on Sunday and it is beautiful and classy. I spoke at length to a young man who was a junior there (software engineering) while we were walking our dogs in one of the local dog parks in town. He and his girlfriend (who was with him and the dog) had already purchased a condo in Costa Mesa and were saving up for a house. He said he already had an internship lined up and planned to graduate on time one year from now and stay in the local area for work (now a virtual megalopolis and far from the sleepy rolling sprinklers I remember). They seemed really upbeat and happy that he got in when he did and they are able to start their life out ahead of the game and that his GF was making great $$ working FT locally.

Unlike past decades, there are tons of good jobs in that area now and I think the toll roads built in the past ~15 years connecting it with the OC/LA “mainland” had a lot to do with major companies deciding to set up shop there.

Where did your kid end up accepting admission to?

[bearishgurl]

I’m so-o-o-o glad we had the foresight to push our kids out of dodge right out of HS. One of them was only 17 when we pushed them into “Gritty City” to start a new life on their own at SFSU.

There is absolutely nothing for them here in South County, SD . . . not then, not now and likely not ever.

[bearishgurl]

[quote=no_such_reality]My kid is five. I’m not sure I want my kid to go to the UC system as it is today.

It’s not because I don’t value education or appreciate how incredibly good the UC schools really are.

It’s because of how insanely competitive admission has become. . . .[/quote]NSR, have you considered making plans for getting your kid situated out-of-state (relative’s houses, etc) for purposes of university attendance when the time comes? What are you leaning towards counseling your kid to do after HS?

[bearishgurl]

flu, carli, NSR. I can clearly see here you’re looking for a “scapegoat” because you all fear your own kids might not be admitted to UC one day. It’s crystal clear to me that NONE of you have read the state auditor’s report on the problem and I understand it’s lengthy and it was only late last night that I posted it here.

Why don’t you tell all your concerns to the State Auditor’s Office . . . that you feel the so-called “best and brightest around the world” SHOULD continue to be admitted to the UC and you don’t care if there isn’t any room for your kid(s)? The State Auditor is the entity who found the UC admissions practices to be “unfair” to CA resident-applicants and has hurt them and their families and I agree.

But it doesn’t matter what I think. I don’t make policy. My kids graduated from one of the top HS’s in the county and back in the nineties, well over half the graduating classes in that school ended up graduating from college (the vast majority from UC/CSU). That is NOT the case today. The school’s college graduation rate is now much lower because their college admissions rate is much lower yet their CAHSEE scores (which weren’t in place in the ’90’s) as well as other exam(s) the students took to “grade” the school’s performance were consistently in the top 8-12 HS’s in the county! We have to ask ourselves why this is happening and I think the state auditor did just that in her report (in which it has become clear to me that none on you have taken the time to read yet).

Changing the discussion to the CSU (which has similar admission issues), like so many other parents around me, I feel it is immoral, unethical and grossly unfair for SDSU to renege on their Compact for Success (CFS) agreement they made with our District (Sweetwater) back in 2000, 6+ years AFTER the affected students complied with all the requirements beginning in 7th grade when SDSU gave busloads of them a “grand tour” of campus (what amounted to nothing more than a “dog and pony show”) with President Weber laying out all the rules for “guaranteed admission” before the affected students, teachers, counselors, administrators and parents.

When you bestow a HS student with a certificate stating that they have met all the requirements for a “guaranteed admission” to SDSU at the end of their junior year in a special ceremony set up just for them and these students apply for admission to SDSU that fall (in their senior year) and are subsequently turned down for admission, what kind of message does that send to them? In my youngest kid’s HS class, 275 students (out of approx 535) received those certificates at the end of their junior year (incl my kid). Yet, SDSU admitted only 75 of them! Granted, not all of the students who were guaranteed admission actually applied to SDSU but certainly 150-200 of them likely did! There are 13 HS’s in the Sweeetwater District. According to the CFS website, SDSU has only admitted 2100 Sweetwater “Compact” students since 2006 (10 yrs ago).

Outcome

The Compact for Success began its work in the fall of 2000 with the seventh-grade class (high school graduating class of 2006). As of 2012 there has been a 124% increase in the number of applications to SDSU; a 70% increase in the number of students admitted to SDSU; a 87% increase in the number of students from Sweetwater enrolled for the fall semester; a 493% increase in the number of Sweetwater students without the need for remediation in math and English. Since the first class was admitted to SDSU in 2006, more than 2,100 students have been awarded the guaranteed admission to SDSU.

(emphasis mine)

http://www.edexcelencia.org/program/compact-success

Where did this 124% increase in SDSU applicants (since 2012) come from? And how did they get the stats of a 70% increase in admissions and an 87% increase in fall semester (2015?) enrollments? 70% and 87% of what numbers? (They must have been really low numbers prior to 2012. How many actual Sweetwater grads were accepted to SDSU in 2011 and prior? That (extremely low) number is likely very telling.

How can SDSU give out hundreds of “guaranteed admission” certificates each and every year since 2006 to students in 13 high schools and only admit an average of 210 of them per year (district-wide) with a straight face and in good conscience? And then continue to ask Sweetwater to send busloads of 7th graders to SDSU for their annual “rah rah” meeting to gear them up for following the steps to “earn” a (near worthless) CFS certificate of their own? In my mind (and I’m not alone … not by a long shot), that’s toying with kids’ and their families’ minds … leading them down the garden path when these families could have made other, more certain arrangements early on (i.e. WUE in AZ, CO, NM, occupational school, working with relatives elsewhere in CA or even MX to put up their student in their homes for college attendance purposes, etc), had they known that SDSU would likely renege on its promises to their student.

We all know that out-of-county student room and board is a big financial hurdle for thousands of CA families and the cost of on-campus housing (required for freshmen living 39+ miles away) has gone thru the stratosphere in recent years. The affected families with Sweetwater graduates relied on their student’s CFS agreement to “guarantee” them admission to their local CSU, SDSU … and rightly so, only to have their student be denied admission. Many of these students ONLY applied to SDSU (and UCSD, if they were qualified) because there wasn’t any feasible way they could swing room and board in another county without taking out student loans. CSU campuses in other CA counties have similar agreements with nearby school districts and strive to admit these students so they can stay in the family home for “free” while earning a bachelor degree. This is the case with the CSU my youngest kid attends and it is as it should be.

Now, what has become particularly disgusting to me (and should be to ALL CA parents of HS students who are considering enrolling in CC for two years) is the “Degree with a Guarantee” program trotted out by the CA CC system just 2.5 years ago.

http://adegreewithaguarantee.com/AboutTheProgram.aspx

Essentially, here the CA CC’s (in cooperation with the CSU) will “guarantee” admission to a CSU as a “transferring-in junior” if the CC student earns an AS-T or AA-T degree which meets all the core-class requirements of a Bachelor of Science or Bachelor of Arts. Here, in the Sweetwater District, we now have a portion of HS graduates from the classes of 2013 forward who glommed onto this “go-nowhere” track only because SDSU reneged on their CFS “guaranteed admission” promise to them when they were a senior in HS! These students opted to follow the *new* rules and lived at home and attended CC FT for 2+ years to meet all the requirements of an AS-T or AA-T degree and are now being turned down for transfer to SDSU as a junior because their CC GPA in the mid-3’s is “too low,” yet those in their HS graduating class who were admitted to SDSU or another CSU as a freshman were admitted with GPA’s as low as 3.1!

If the CC GPA needed for admission as a junior into SDSU (or CSULB or other CSU campus with a “desirable” location) is now a ~4.0, why isn’t this mentioned on the Degree with a Guarantee website? Maybe if it was and also repeated by HS and CC academic advisors, and the prospective CC student knew they wouldn’t be able to attend university out-of-county due to high housing costs, they could have made other arrangements in the spring of their senior year. Instead, the CC’s have now led these students down a second garden path, wasting 2+ years of their young lives and in doing so are fvcking with they and their families’ lives, who relied on the (non-occupational) CC degree they earned to be worth something. It’s a double-whammy and this group of recent Sweetwater HS grads have now been lied to and effed over twice by the official “educational machine” that they were cranked out of.

In short, the reality of actual chances for admission into UC/CSU is being covertly hidden from well-qualified CA high school seniors who have blindly followed all the rules laid out before them to have what they believe will be “guaranteed admission” to their local public university. This is so because SDSU is stating that they have too many freshman (and transfer) apps to consider. They “have too many apps to consider” because a HUGE portion of those apps are from OOS and OOC and these groups are given admission preference over state residents (thousands of whom were already promised admission) solely because of the much higher tuition they pay.

Yes, I believe first and foremost, that CA’s public universities should exist to serve its OWN residents first. If there are few to no “billets” left over after that for OOS and OOC apps, then so be it. And in no case should an OOS or OOC applicant get a “choice” as to which campus they will be admitted to. If CA took away the choice of campus (beach, coastal, etc), then certainly the OOS applicant group would drop away like flies.

It’s not about race, people, so you can drop your race cards, now.

I never expected that me or my kid(s) should be able to apply to public university in another state/country and get an admissions preference over their OWN natives and/or residents so why should these non-resident groups expect admission to CA public universities when tens of thousands of its own resident highly-qualified HS seniors are cast adrift because they can’t get admitted to their OWN public university in their OWN city and state, even after “following all the rules” for 4-10 years to do so! It’s a travesty and I’m happy to see that the state has decided to audit the admission stats of the UC and publicly call them out on their back-room admissions dealings. It’s a good start on reform and I hope the CSU is next in line for an audit. I feel a “study” or “audit” of this nature would be very revealing, especially for those campuses situated near popular beaches, such as SDSU.

[bearishgurl]

[quote=enron_by_the_sea][quote=bearishgurl]Mostly Asians are representing foreign public university students in CA BUT my beef applies to out of state of all races as well. It really isn’t a “race issue.” It’s a “resident issue.” These groups SHOULD be held to higher admission standards than in-state students and they used to be but their admission criteria was apparently “dumbed down” around 2008 in order for the UC to get their money.
[/quote]

If your beef is with out of state students of all races, then why your original message only talks about preventing “Chinese” students? Were you also expecting those English essays to stop enrollment of students from other states? or prevent someone applying from Canada or Western Europe?

I don’t think your concerns (about UCs admitting too many out of state/foreign students) are not valid, but you need to recognize that your motivation behind designing a system that only screen out applicants from China, strikes some of us as insensitive. (And it would not work any way because foreign students have excellent English skills too. You need to travel abroad some time!)

Asians are already very suspicious of college admissions processes, which many feel are covertly discriminatory against them. Your proposal unfortunately only feeds into that narrative of hidden/unwritten biases against asians in the system of college admissions….[/quote]Enron, I didn’t design that essay portion of the SAT/ACT. It’s been there along along and the UC/CSU haven’t used it in a number of years to factor into the admission tests composite scores (not sure if they both stopped using it at the same time or different years).

We have to ask ourselves what would be a good reason NOT to use the essay portion if the UC/CSU truly wanted the best candidates for admission. Wouldn’t they WANT to see if an applicant can write a coherent paragraph and spell and punctuate? Why did they remove it from consideration in the application process? Could it possibly be that they wanted to make it easier for applicants to get admitted for whom English was not their first language? As in a foreign student, who will pay the full tuition rate to attend?

The truth is that Chinese students are the biggest group of foreign students that the UC admits and their parents come here in droves for the sole purpose of buying condos near certain UC campuses when their child is just five years old! The unit is purchased solely for the purpose of using it for student housing for that kid WHEN, not IF he/she will finally attend university there. The parents are that certain their child will be admitted into THAT campus. The presence of the essay on the ACT/SAT could slow down admissions of OOC students from all countries where English is not the spoken language. Hence, it is now gone.

Yes, OOC and OOS students pay the same out-of-state tuition and so the UC is at fault for admitting way too many of BOTH groups at the expense of the thousands of qualified in-state resident-applicants who are CA HS graduates. Especially when the vast majority of them cannot afford to attend an out-of-state or private college themselves.

I don’t understand why bringing back the essay would sound “insensitive” to an Asian American who was born in the US and schooled in the US. Their kid(s) will want to one day apply to UC/CSU as well. Every resident-parent and their student of every race in CA is in the same boat. Most of us want our kids to be admitted to a UC/CSU. Why should we support the UC “gumming up the works” by handing out seats right and left to non-residents, causing our own kids to be turned down for admission … even if they have stellar qualifications?

Who does this to this degree? Certainly, no other state that I’m aware of. Why does CA “owe” the rest of the country and world admission into its universities when it can’t even serve anywhere near enough of its own thousands of highly-qualified in-state applicants by doing so?

[bearishgurl]

[quote=AN]You quoted the wrong person.[/quote]How so?

[Author]

Posts