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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

#21

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#22

Post by lateforwork »

SilverElfin wrote: post #17
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?

Right, up until middle school send kids to the best school, then for high school move to an area with poor schools.

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

#23

Post by smelendez »

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.

Yeah, there’s really no way around it when you have more qualified students than slots, unless you just mark each applicant as qualified or not and run a lottery.

But they do have to “craft a class” to some extent. An obvious example is athletic recruiting, but some schools are consciously thinking about populating other extracurriculars, like marching bands or orchestras.

And you also don’t want a class that’s all computer science majors or zero philosophy majors. I imagine they consider other factors as well. The admissions staff may be liberal, but I’m guessing at most schools they deliberately admit some outspoken conservatives.

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

#24

Post by derektank »

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…

They should just make this explicit, like the UT system does. The top X% of students are admitted automatically from each school.

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

#25

Post by john-h-k »

derektank wrote: post #24
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…

They should just make this explicit, like the UT system does. The top X% of students are admitted automatically from each school.

This seems terrible incentives. You are now in a purely adversarial relationship with your peers and hurting them helps you

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

#26

Post by alephnerd »

Conversely, the correlation between university eliteness and occupational eliteness is weakening.

Who is more elite - a new grad who has founded a YC backed startup who attended UIUC (an elite and selective CS program at a university that is not viewed as prestigious by society at large) or a Yale grad working on the Hill earning $50k?

As of today, all UCs are viewed similarly from a tech hiring practice perspective, though there is a bit of a geographic bias helping UC Berkeley, but this same bias also helps much less selective and less socially prestigious SJSU.

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

#27

Post by cherryteastain »

Aurornis wrote: post #18
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.

UK caps applications to 5 to combat this exact problem.

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

#28

Post by crab_galaxy »

lateforwork wrote: post #22
SilverElfin wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Right, up until middle school send kids to the best school, then for high school move to an area with poor schools.

Maybe they can bring their resources with them too, and the poor schools can have things like lead paint remediation, honors classes, and extra curricular activities.

I like this idea!

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

#29

Post by School-Cotton »

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.

Maybe in the US, but not elsewhere. Lots of places just sort by grades or test scores. Part of the reason for the weird US system is the low ceiling: school is relatively easy compared to developed countries, so there are way too many people with identical scores at the top.

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

#30

Post by torginus »

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…

Honestly, I don't know how do you even compare students with different backgrounds against each other.

That's why standardized testing is good - it gives everyone the same chance to excel.

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