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How your high school affects your chances of UC Admission

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Re: How your high school affects your chances of UC Admission

#11

Post by kccqzy »

> The opaqueness of the whole process is what I find most objectionable.

I also find that objectionable. However, recalling my own college admission process, I think we have collectively determined that this opaqueness is basically working as intended. We are now treating it as a rite passage that qualified high school students can be mysteriously rejected.

I applied to 6 colleges (not counting those outside the United States), which would be considered an extremely low number today. I have colleagues who have kids applying to colleges right now so I know. Everyone is applying to more colleges just to counteract these seemingly random rejections.

Re: How your high school affects your chances of UC Admission

#12

Post by lateforwork »

See: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-04-12/covid-co...

Excerpts:

UC admissions directors stressed that they evaluated students in the context of their own schools and communities to assess how much they challenged themselves and took advantage of available opportunities. A student who took all six AP classes offered at her school might be more impressive than the one who took six at a school that offered twice as many.

A campus might admit a student with a 4.0 GPA who ranked at the top of an underserved school over one with a higher GPA but lower class rank at a more high-achieving school.

Re: How your high school affects your chances of UC Admission

#13

Post by flufluflufluffy »

renewiltord wrote: post #7

I read the book SAT Wars and came away with a horrifying takeaway: admissions programs in US universities are creative enterprises for the person involved. One of them talks about “crafting a class”. Getting into many of these places is a question of playing into your admissions officer’s biases. Knowing that they’re mostly liberal voters, often female, and nowadays more likely to be childless it’s presumably importa…

It’s always been this way; previously we just had to play to the old white men’s biases.

Re: How your high school affects your chances of UC Admission

#14

Post by [deleted] »

mikeryan wrote: post #10
SilverElfin wrote: post #8

I thought the UC system was supposed to admit students based strictly on their GPA and test scores to avoid weird types of admission discrimination? Is that not the case? The article mentions UCSD going “test blind” as a turning point for weighing the high school someone attended heavily.

No. They’re no longer allowed to use race but can, and still consider a wide range of factors. They have to - it’s likely they have far more applicants with near perfect GPA/Test score combos then they have spots. (Noting that your GPA gets fuzzy once it’s over a 4.0 since that “extra” is going to be somewhat school and school system dependent) Since each kid likely applies to multiple schools the process would also…

[deleted]

Re: How your high school affects your chances of UC Admission

#15

Post by Aurornis »

ssttoo wrote: post #6

There’s the weird incentive for schools to appear selective. That’s why UCSD would rather reject great candidates because chances are they’ll go to the likes of Harvard. Why accept candidates that will ultimately go elsewhere? Better to be the dumper than the dumpee and improve your rankings. It’s awful.

It’s not about dumpee or dumper or rankings games.

Admissions has to target a fixed number of students each year, plus or minus. Students have to decide where to attend in a narrow window. If you accept a lot of students who are unlikely to attend then you would undershoot your admissions target and have to try to convince students to attend in later rounds of admission, but that’s too late because they’ve already decided to go somewhere else.

Re: How your high school affects your chances of UC Admission

#16

Post by nine_k »

lateforwork wrote: post #12

See: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-04-12/covid-co... Excerpts: UC admissions directors stressed that they evaluated students in the context of their own schools and communities to assess how much they challenged themselves and took advantage of available opportunities. A student who took all six AP classes offered at her school might be more impressive than the one who took six at a school that offere…

That is, they are biased towards top performers, not just high performers, even if one student's "merely high" is formally higher than the ceiling the other student hit.

(The "winning" strategy then is to move to an underserved high school after an elite middle school, and hit the ceiling.)

Re: How your high school affects your chances of UC Admission

#17

Post by SilverElfin »

lateforwork wrote: post #12

See: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-04-12/covid-co... Excerpts: UC admissions directors stressed that they evaluated students in the context of their own schools and communities to assess how much they challenged themselves and took advantage of available opportunities. A student who took all six AP classes offered at her school might be more impressive than the one who took six at a school that offere…

This is a terrible system because it forces students and parents to start playing all kinds of games to navigate a non transparent process for admissions. What now? Are parents going to send their kids to good schools until it is time to apply to colleges? And then they are going to switch to the best school for applications?

Re: How your high school affects your chances of UC Admission

#18

Post by Aurornis »

kccqzy wrote: post #11

> The opaqueness of the whole process is what I find most objectionable. I also find that objectionable. However, recalling my own college admission process, I think we have collectively determined that this opaqueness is basically working as intended. We are now treating it as a rite passage that qualified high school students can be mysteriously rejected. I applied to 6 colleges (not counting those outside the Unit…

It’s an arms race. Now that students are encourage to apply to huge numbers of universities for safety, the universities are forced to accept a smaller percentage of applicants to avoid overcommitting.

So student, parents, and counselors see this and tell everyone to apply to even more colleges and the cycle continues.

Re: How your high school affects your chances of UC Admission

#19

Post by lateforwork »

kccqzy wrote: post #11

> The opaqueness of the whole process is what I find most objectionable. I also find that objectionable. However, recalling my own college admission process, I think we have collectively determined that this opaqueness is basically working as intended. We are now treating it as a rite passage that qualified high school students can be mysteriously rejected. I applied to 6 colleges (not counting those outside the Unit…

The opaqueness is unique to USA and is thanks to "holistic reviews", which is a highly questionable practice.

Elite-College Admissions Were Built to Protect Privilege https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2019/03/histor...

The new holistic admissions policy worked as intended, successfully suppressing Jewish admissions. https://www.economist.com/united-states/2018/06/23/a-lawsuit...

The 'holistic' admissions lie - The Daily Californian https://www.dailycal.org/2012/10/01/the-holistic-admissions-...

The False Promise of 'Holistic' College Admissions - The Atlantic https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/12/the-fa...

Lifting the Veil on the Holistic Process at the University of California, Berkeley https://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/04/education/edlife/lifting-...

Re: How your high school affects your chances of UC Admission

#20

Post by cyberax »

flufluflufluffy wrote: post #13
renewiltord wrote: post #7

I read the book SAT Wars and came away with a horrifying takeaway: admissions programs in US universities are creative enterprises for the person involved. One of them talks about “crafting a class”. Getting into many of these places is a question of playing into your admissions officer’s biases. Knowing that they’re mostly liberal voters, often female, and nowadays more likely to be childless it’s presumably importa…

It’s always been this way; previously we just had to play to the old white men’s biases.

Some other countries just use test scores and exam results.
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