My comment was more to compare last year's results and note why they were so different. The criteria changed, that's worth paying attention to. To a student,

My comment was more to compare last year's results and note why they were so different. The criteria changed, that's worth paying attention to. To a student, though, graduation rate is a very important number. There's some interesting info here on graduation rates at the UCs, broken down by pell and non-pell over 4, 5, and 6 years: http://accountability.universityofcalifornia.edu/2015/chapters/chapter-3.html#3.1.1 http://accountability.universityofcalifornia.edu/2015/chapte... Basically, there's a sizable but variable difference in 4-year graduation rate between pell and non-pell, but that all but vanishes in the 5- and 6-year rates. To your second point, of course. Harvard/Yale/Princeton/Stanford have over a million USD per student, no public school can compare to private on those ends.