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How your high school affects your chances of UC Admission

sfeducation.substack.com

121–130 of 199 posts

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

#121
Are Universities still good? They're good socially but for education in the age of AI I can't imagine university even being worth it anymore outside of the absolutely most prestigious ones there are.

Certainly not your run-of-the-mill UC school except maybe UCLA or Berkeley and only then for very specific majors.

I went to a UC and graduated 14 years ago. I basically had to teach myself everything with the other students once I got into my major. And this school has done notable research in my field. But the quality of education was just terrible. Nobody could teach us multi-threading, compilers, theory of computation, networking, or algorithms properly. Like not at all. The students had to help each other the best they can and the most experienced or smartest individuals were just the ones that actually were able to do those subjects competently. But everyone else was pretty much shorted on their education, just like the poor math education throughout the country. It's pretty irritating how much it costs versus the quality you get. No way is it worth it.

And since I've graduated I learned that none of these topics is IQ-limited at all whatsoever. Math is completely intuitively if taught properly. ANYONE can learn it to a high level with good analogies and demonstrations and applicative knowledge. I developed competence with linear algebra and vector math not in school but doing game programming after I graduated. That's what actually made it "make sense".

I tutored several students since I graduated and I think I helped them for $30 an hour learning fundamentals and how to program and I think I did a significantly better job one-on-one for these students at a way cheaper rate than they would have to pay in school. It's sad.

I imagine LLMs could do a better job for many things than research professors that just throw slides on the board and barely elaborate on anything. The only way you learn in those courses is by really struggling on your own and going to as many office hours and TA hours as possible.

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

#122
post #119

A lot of commenters seem to think this is purely a DEI thing, but doesn't it match how the best companies hire? Couldn't it be that the colleges are genuinely trying to select who they think will end up at the top of their fields? Common hiring advice for startups (my game) is to look for slope and drive, not deep expertise or experience. The top kid at a bad high school seems like a better bet to me than the median…

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

#123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes. Well off schools raise hundreds of thousands of dollars from parent donations.

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

#124
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don’t think the GP is joking, but they may not have realized that this strategy is already well known. A lot of families won’t uproot themselves for it, though.

They have local magnet/specialized programs in CA public schools that they use to attract good students to poorly performing schools for help goose up test schools.

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

#125
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

This is the new meta, in SF at least. Despite the "what are secondary effects?" school admins trying to "fix inequality" by creating school lotteries, ending gifted programs and focusing on "equality of outcomes not equality of opportunity", the only thing that has actually improved troubled schools is that smart kids with involved parents now actively seek out lower rated schools like Mission High so they can more e…

Has this not always been "the meta" everywhere for all of human history (and nature)? It's the fundamental driving force in favor of "diversity" always winning out over time. It's diffusion.

It's definitely there in sports teams, jobs, politics, etc.

There's a natural limit to this effect. The downside is that being a big fish in a small pond means you may not leave the pond without a longer term goal beyond it, and there's a saturation point of talent beyond which any competitive advantage is minimal.

This ultimately does not really impact the lesser schools much unless they were starved for talent for too long and needed to raise the bar. Migration patterns have an ebb and flow.

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

#126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was a transfer to UCSD - the transfer community itself is pretty large and one college (Sixth) houses a significant percentage, with dorms specifically for transfers. IMO there was far higher interesting diversity of folks there compared to rest of campus: veterans, addicts who got their shit together, tons of immigrants who couldn't afford going straight to UC (as well as your standard mostly 20-22 year old SoCal…

Sure, there's a community either way. But how does the CC -> UCSD transfer community stack up against either (1) four years at UCSD (which OP would say not to go to without a full ride) or (2) two years at UCI and two years at UCSC or UCLA? My guess is that there are hardworking people in both groups, but the ones who start out at a four year institution are more likely to be tip-top, and to have family/friends who w…

I give a lot of credit to the GP… I’m not familiar with the UCSD demographic, but in general I would expect the 4 year applicants to be much more homogeneous. They’re all 18 years old, how much interesting life experience do they have? Some yes, lots no.

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

#127

>> Incidentally, San Francisco public schools had a combined admission rate of just under 20%, well below the state average. Mission had the highest rate (26.5%) and Balboa the lowest (15.4%). It may or may not be a coincidence that 90% (the most of any SF school) of the applicants from Balboa were Asian whereas only 25% (the fewest of any SF school) of the applicants from Mission were Asian. In order to promote dive…

Universities and basically every major company, including all the big tech companies, have been openly and publicly doing this for years.

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

#128
post #119

A lot of commenters seem to think this is purely a DEI thing, but doesn't it match how the best companies hire? Couldn't it be that the colleges are genuinely trying to select who they think will end up at the top of their fields? Common hiring advice for startups (my game) is to look for slope and drive, not deep expertise or experience. The top kid at a bad high school seems like a better bet to me than the median…

No, at FAANG I was coached to strictly evaluate based on individual merit, defined by some fixed rubric. We certainly would not penalize an applicant for attending a school with "too many" qualified graduates.

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

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's all publicly funded universities in Texas, not just the UT system. In other words: you've just pissed off a lot of Aggies grouping them in with, ahem, tu.

No one in Texas calls it “TU”. Rather, UT.

"tu" is a term of disrespect used by the students at Texas A&M University (Aggies).

A&M is the other very large public university system in Texas. So there is a small intra-state rivalry there.

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

#130
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

No one cares what high school you went to in college, unless maybe you went to the same high school yourself.
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