[bushbaba]

Generally state colleges will take any applicant who meets the pre-set bar. Where as tier 1 universities are more a zero sum game.

[KRAKRISMOTT]

University of California, Washington, and Texas are hardly uncompetitive. Their admission rates are very low for the good programs.

[johnnyanmac]

UC's are a huge exception, yes. The better equivalent is the CSU system and even then it's relatively competitive comared to other public unis.

[JumpCrisscross]

> UC's are a huge exception

UNC Chapel Hill, UVA, Virginia Tech, College of William & Mary, Georgia Tech, UT Austin, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, University of Wisconsin Madison, Purdue...

America has a solid stable of top-tier public universities.

[johnnyanmac]

yes that is a good list of 20+ universities (if I throw in the prestigious UC's) out of... 1700 public institutions.

Pareto heuristics suggest there will be about 300 "good" universities that people compete over compared to the other 1300 we can't name.

[bushbaba]

Those are universities and not colleges. Cãnada College, Foothills college, De Anza College are examples of “community colleges”.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Those are universities and not colleges. Cãnada College, Foothills college, De Anza College are examples of “community colleges”.

Community colleges are rarely described as "state colleges." The latter refers to state-backed higher education institutions, from De Anza College to the University of Pennsylvania.

The delineation between colleges and universities varies regionally. Nowhere does it solely signify exclusivity. In America, there is an accreditation difference that largely pertains to graduate school.