Despite increasing tuition, UCLA sees spike in nonresident applications

A Bruin sticker on her laptop, a Bruin binder, Bruin sweatpants and a sweater remind the Shanghai student of the school across the world she has wanted to attend since she was a child.

“It’s always been a subconscious thing that you want to be a Bruin, I guess,” said Dorothy Chow, a high school senior at Shanghai American School at Puxi. “It was always my dream school.”

Chow is one of more than 25,000 out-of-state and international students who applied to UCLA this past fall for a spot in the freshman class. Nonresident applicants for the 2013-2014 year jumped by 25 percent, while California resident applications increased by 5 percent to almost 55,000 students, according to applicant data released last month.

UCLA tuition for nonresident students has grown substantially over the years. Nonresident students now pay around $36,000, almost three times more than California students.

Nonresidents submitted their UCLA applications the same month Proposition 30, which raised taxes for high-income earners and increased the state sales tax, was approved in the state elections. University of California officials had said there would have been double-digit tuition increases if the measure failed.

Heena Somani, a Texas high school senior, was not aware of Proposition 30 nor of the possibility of fee hikes. Still, she would have applied to UCLA because she could make her decision later if she were accepted, she said.

Somani said she would like to go to UCLA because she thinks it provides an active campus life, in addition to high-quality academics.

“I think there’s a pretty good trade-off in the sense that I’d have (more) opportunities at UCLA … than I would have in my own state,” she said.

Ho Yun Cheon, a high school senior from Shanghai American School at Puxi who did not know about Proposition 30 either, said the fee hike would not have mattered to him because he probably would not qualify for state financial aid. Private schools would have been just as expensive, he added.

Students have increasingly enrolled in universities outside their home countries in recent years. According to the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, there were 3.6 million international students across the globe in 2010, 78 percent more than in 2000.

The increase in international applicants may have resulted from several factors, including a growing world population, greater economic and legal mobility, and governments looking to attract students from other countries, said John Douglass, a senior research fellow at the Center for Studies in Higher Education at UC Berkeley.

The UC has looked to increase nonresident enrollment in the past few years as a way to raise more revenue for its budget, which has seen significant drops in state funding.

UCLA, however, lags behind other public universities in enrolling nonresident students, said Youlonda Copeland-Morgan, associate vice chancellor of enrollment management. Colleges like the University of Michigan have more than 40 percent out-of-state freshmen, while UCLA currently enrolls about 15 percent in nonresident undergraduate students.

UCLA recruitment officers now visit regions like New England and the Southwest as well as well as countries like Thailand, Mexico, Vietnam, China and France – places they did not go to two years ago, Copeland-Morgan said.

“Our primary focus has been to provide access … to students who are residents of the state of California,” she said. “But as the demographics of college-bound students change, and as the budget situation in the state of California has changed … we found it necessary to expand our recruitment to include students from out of state.”

Kevin Eagan, assistant director for research at UCLA’s Higher Education Research Institute, said he thinks the UC focus on increasing nonresident enrollment might have encouraged more nonresidents to apply to UCLA.

“That sends a message to out-of-state students that maybe (their) chance of getting into UCLA or one of the UCs is now going to be increased,” Eagan said.

But Copeland-Morgan said that the policies set by the UC Board of Regents require that nonresident applicants be held at a higher standard than resident students when being considered for admission.

“Our primary purpose is to serve the students of the state of California,” Copeland-Morgan said. “We have no desire to change that.”

Admissions decisions will be released in late March, according to the UCLA Admissions website. In the meantime, Chow will have to wait for a decision about her dream school.

Email Taketa at [email protected].