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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

#61

Post by alephnerd »

blindriver wrote: post #55
alephnerd wrote: post #26

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,…

UC Riverside, UC Merced etc are not viewed similarly to UCLA or UCB.

It's treated as "good enough", and now the the second generation of SWEs, PMs, and AEs are getting hired I've seen their parents (a large number of whom are now mid-level leadership in most tech companies here in the Bay) increasingly lobby to include these "lower tier" UCs to the recruiting pool.

My point is, for the younger generation a university's societal eliteness just isn't a strong predictor for success, and I strongly believe data will back up this observation within the next decade (there's usually a 5-7 year delay on data gathering in the social sciences, eg. Data from 2018-22 is only now starting to be analyzed).

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

#62

Post by crab_galaxy »

Mountain_Skies wrote: post #38
crab_galaxy wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

Resources are mainly property taxes. Unless they're building a new house whose value is significantly greater than the median for the area, families gaming the system aren't likely to have much of a lasting impact on the district.

Yeah you’re right. However, resource gaps can be filled by things like volunteer librarians, teacher wishlists/donations, field trips, strong PTAs, etc..

This is common in my city. It’s a big underfunded school district with a handful of coveted, well supported schools. I’m assuming it happens elsewhere in America with the success of platforms like donors choose.

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

#63

Post by apparent »

999900000999 wrote: post #56

Community colleges are the real heroes of California's higher education. Unless you get a full ride you probably should start at community college. You can then transfer later and generally you'll have a better variety to choose from. The UC system is sorta weird though. Maybe the top 2 , UCLA and Berkeley compete nationally. After that you're paying UC tuition for an average school. Out of state that's around 50k, 1…

> Unless you get a full ride you probably should start at community college. You can then transfer later and generally you'll have a better variety to choose from.

This does not make sense if you (like most UC students) are in-state. You're right that it's easier to get in as a CC transfer, but you'll miss out on a lot of the bonding experience that happens as freshmen. And if you want, you could always transfer from one UC to another, if you're looking to upgrade your diploma from Irvine to LA, for example. It's probably worth it to have the better network of the freshmen you met at Irvine rather than going to a CC in LA for two years. It would be cheaper, but networks can be incredibly valuable.

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

#64

Post by lostmsu »

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.

Ear plugs are under $5. If you could not think of that over years, you're not gonna be able to score well in SAT for different reasons.

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

#65

Post by pepperball »

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.

Most likely the people living somewhere continuously with gunfire wasn’t ever going to succeed academically either way. There are exceptions of course.

You’d have to basically rebirth and resocialize them in a different culture entirely.

Far too many people already have been educated past their natural state and it’s going to get ugly.

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

#66

Post by apparent »

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.)

One of the charts in TFA shows a discontinuity in admissions rate around 75% UPP. This means that if you send your kid to a HS that is underserved when you enroll, but drops below the critical 75% threshold because too many other families are doing the same, then the school could fall out of the strong-benefit category.

The kid would still have a better chance than if he applied from a high-performing school, but it wouldn't be as much of an advantage.

Socially, I'm guessing the kid could face some challenges because (1) other high performing students might not like him because he's a curve-breaker, (2) teachers would know what the family was up to and could view it as distasteful, and (3) if the student went to UCSD or another school where this is a well-known hack, there could be stigma for having gamed the system/being less-smart.

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

#67

Post by apparent »

lostmsu wrote: post #57
john-h-k wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It is hard to hurt someone when their score is a standardized test.

UCs don't consider standardized tests.

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

#68

Post by apparent »

danans wrote: post #50

> 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…

You seem to be falsely equating private schools with "the wealthy" and public schools with "the working class". Plenty of people are wealthy and send their kids to public schools. They fund them via property taxes rather than tuition payments.

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

#69

Post by resumenext »

999900000999 wrote: post #56

Community colleges are the real heroes of California's higher education. Unless you get a full ride you probably should start at community college. You can then transfer later and generally you'll have a better variety to choose from. The UC system is sorta weird though. Maybe the top 2 , UCLA and Berkeley compete nationally. After that you're paying UC tuition for an average school. Out of state that's around 50k, 1…

Excellent point about CC’s. The downside is that instructor quality varies considerable both within and between CCs, and many students drop out or are not provided with adequate guidance in terms of GE requirements and transferability.

In terms of costs of UC other than Berkeley, (Davis, Cal Poly, UCLA, etc…) 16k in current times is a great bargain especially given the pipeline to grad school which is great even at non-Berkeley UCs.

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

#70

Post by apparent »

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.

UC is indeed "test blind" and until this changes, their admissions system will remain fucked.
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