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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

#41

Post by xnyan »

nine_k wrote: post #16
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.)

You may be joking, but I have several high achieving peers whose families did this with good results. The choice was: did they want to be in the best high school with the highest level of competition, or did they want to go to an OK school that had good magnet programs and less competition. my sample size is only about three, but it worked out well for them.

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

#42

Post by anon291 »

cyberax wrote: post #20
flufluflufluffy wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I mean contrary to the comment above this is how American universities used to be. They had standing exams... Show up on admission day, take a test, highest scores get admission. Easy

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

#44

Post by nerdsniper »

Aurornis wrote: post #15
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 de…

If the acceptance rate wasn’t being gamed, they could accept a lot more of the top candidates - they would have years of statistical data knowing that only x% of those top students will commit.

It’s not really a risk to overaccept if you know what % will commit.

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

#45

Post by Mountain_Skies »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #3

This is super interesting because I have kids who are trying to apply for the UC system. However nothing in this series mentioned anything about out-of-state admission so I’m curious if there’s any data about that.

Not relevant for UC schools but flagship tier state schools love being able to say they have students from all 50 states so if you're from Wyoming, getting a scholarship to somewhere like South Carolina or Maine is going to be relatively easy.

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

#46

Post by blindriver »

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.

UCs already guarantee this to the top % of students in every school.

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

#47

Post by tzs »

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.

California has that. The top 9% from each high school and the top 9% statewide are guaranteed UC admission. This does not guarantee admission to any specific campus, so if you are only interested in say Berkeley or UCLA you might get admitted but UC will find you a place at some campus.

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

#48

Post by LarsDu88 »

john-h-k wrote: post #25
derektank wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Not only that, but high performers are incentivised to move to worse schools.

It may actually improve mean outcomes, but harm societal outcomes, as the scientific impact of educated individuals may tend to be power law distributed (e.g. the most important breakthroughs come from a small sector of the population with wildly disproportionate impact)

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

#49

Post by blindriver »

dmoy wrote: post #35
torginus wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> it gives everyone the same chance to excel. How does the existence of standardized testing give everyone the same chance? As an extremely over-exaggerated example example, someone whose home study time is disrupted frequently by gunfire outside is probably not getting the same chance as someone who lives on a 20 acre estate with private tutors for every subject.

The schools that went test-optional already have switched back because this actually gives lower income students the best chance to distinguish themselves. The narrative that lower income students with less opportunities would benefit from not submitting SATs turned out to be false.

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

#50

Post by danans »

> Nevertheless, the average private school applicant had only a 18.3% chance of admission, well below the 25.8% average for public school applicants.

As a parent of a student in a private school, this is how it should be. For the amount of support and resources that private school students receive vs their public school peers, the standards should be higher. My child understands this, and knows that they will have to achieve more to get admission to a UC than a kid at a low income public school.

There should be exceptions, for example: very low SES student attending a private school on scholarship - although such students are usually exceptional or else they would not have qualified for private school scholarship.

The working class shouldn't be subsidizing the higher education of the wealthy.

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