California Dreaming

Have you gotten tired of Midwest winters? Are you thinking four years of shorts and flip-flops at a California college is sounding like more your style?

Get in line.

California universities have long attracted young women and men, but we have just passed a significant milestone—a number as relevant as 61 was to baseball—before steroids helped shatter the single-season home-run record.

UCLA has received 102,177 applications for the Class of 2021, the first time an American university has received more than 100,000 freshman applications--each with a $70 application fee unless waived.

Do the math. That's a staggering amount of competition for what will be somewhere around 6,500 acceptances.

Cal State-Long Beach, home of mascot Prospector Pete, got nearly 62,000 freshman applications, and USC received almost 52,000 from prospective Trojan freshmen.

And this is in a state cutting back on education budgets.

So while you and your parents are preparing your college app packages and thinking about going West, have you assembled all the details, filled out the questionnaires, answered all the "optional" interrogatories, checked all your spelling and grammar and written a 1-in-100,000 college essay?

If not, get cracking! Those California beaches require more than a little legwork.

--Mike Ryan