Javier Perez, a senior at Benjamin Franklin Senior High School in Highland Park, dreams of studying computer science at Dartmouth College.
“For me, it’s really important to be surrounded by the right people,” said Perez, who earlier this year spent two days on the New Hampshire campus during a spring college tour and said he felt a “genuine connection” with the people he met. Plus, he likes cold weather.
He’s hardly alone. A Public Policy Institute of California report released this month found that the share of college-bound California high school graduates enrolling in out-of-state colleges has nearly doubled in the last two decades, rising from 8.5% in 2002 to 14.6% in 2022.
West Coast and Southwest colleges in particular seek out students in population-rich California in their recruitment efforts. Making the move more enticing is that many public universities participate in a program offering Californians discounted tuition at public colleges in the West.
In 2022, nearly 40,000 California high school grads enrolled in out-of-state colleges, roughly a third of whom flocked to Arizona, Oregon or New York, the researchers found in their analysis of enrollment data from the National Center for Education Statistics. In 2002, the number was closer to 15,000.
In Arizona, the most popular universities included Arizona State University, Grand Canyon University — known for its online programs — and the University of Arizona. Oregon State University drew the highest number of Californians in that state.
California grads who moved to New York for college were drawn to smaller, competitive private liberal arts colleges, usually with heftier tuitions than California’s public universities. Because of limitations in national enrollment data, the study couldn’t account for scholarships, making it hard to determine whether the California students were choosing out-of-state options because of financial aid incentives.
The researchers found that most students leaving California attend colleges less selective on average than the competitive University of California system. About half attend colleges more selective than the California State University system, which will soon automatically admit students who meet requirements at 16 of its campuses.
Lynda McGee, a recently retired Los Angeles Unified School District college counselor who spent more than two decades at Downtown Magnets High School, said she sees the trend as a positive development. She said she often urged students to look beyond California, as she felt out-of-state campuses would expose them to a more diverse range of people and experiences.
Arizona State, the University of Arizona and Oregon State have strong name recognition, actively recruit in California and feel less intimidating to students because they’re relatively close to home, she said. Oregon State’s athletics programs are a particular draw.
Under the right conditions, and after taking into account financial aid or merit-based scholarships, private colleges can sometimes end up costing less than a California public university, said Erica Rosales, executive director of College Match, a mentoring program for low-income students in Los Angeles.
“For a low-income, first-generation student, a private institution that meets full need without loans is often the most affordable and most supportive option available,” Rosales said in an email.
Rosales, who has spent nearly two decades helping students navigate the college admissions process, noted that Cal Grant income ceilings leave out some middle-class families unable to afford to send their children to a UC or CSU campus. Financial aid at CSU campuses typically covers tuition, not room and board, according to Rosales.
The promise of full financial-need coverage is why Perez, who grew up in Guatemala and immigrated to the U.S. three years ago, is aiming to attend a private liberal arts college. He learned about his options through College Match. The program funded a two-week East Coast college tour this year and provided him with a laptop for his applications.
Perez said leaving California would enable him to experience life in a small college town surrounded by nature. He’d like to spend his days focusing on his studies instead of commuting to school. His current commute from his Koreatown home to his Highland Park campus takes three hours round-trip, and involves a bike ride, two trains and a bus.
Perez, an ambitious programmer who leads his school’s competitive robotics team, intends to apply to 22 colleges, including Stanford University, Caltech and a handful of UCs and CSUs.
But his hopes are set on moving to the East Coast, as reflected by many of the schools on his list: Middlebury College, Boston College, Bowdoin College, Columbia University, Brown University and his dream school, Dartmouth College.
“I just want to explore as much as I can in my college life,” Perez said.
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