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How your high school affects your chances of UC Admission

sfeducation.substack.com

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

#141

Post by buckle8017 »

cuttothechase wrote: post #107

>> 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…

That is literally what Affirmative Action (DEI in school admissions) means.

Ignore merit, consider race.

These programs have only succeeded in making a large number of people accept that race is a valid way to screen people, at which point your goal is to win.

Racism resets.

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

#142

Post by jgalt212 »

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.

I think U of Florida used to give full rides to the top n of each high school's graduating class. I think n was something around 5.

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

#143

Post by lightedman »

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.

UCR is where you want to go if you're going for Geology or Ag/Hort, you aren't really trying to go there for SWE or EE, it isn't exactly known for those sorts of programs.

Source: I live right next to their citrus and asparagus test fields and often visit their geology building to use their XRD and XRF systems.

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

#144

Post by cweld510 »

qwerpy wrote: post #84
kccqzy wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Colleges should be prioritizing strong students I agree with this, but I think you didn’t get the point. The point is, the way we measure strength has to be considered in light of the environment. If a student is in a high school where the average strength is 100, and the student has achieved a strength of 200, it shows that the student has tenacity and grit and drive. Whereas another student might be in a high sch…

I understand that point and I still disagree with it. There are objective, direct measurements of strength (standardized tests, performance at state/nation-wide academic competitions, admissions essays), and we don't need to resort to this more flimsy chain of subjective comparisons that use "relative strength of student within school" and "relative strength of school across all schools".

You said above that our country “needs the best engineers and doctors.” Are the tests you mention really objective, direct measures of which student is likely to be the best engineer or doctor in the future? What does it even mean to be the best engineer, and how do you test that?

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

#145

Post by renewiltord »

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.

I can’t say I’m the kind of guy who faces bootlicking with a gastronomic interest. The taste of the boot doesn’t change what’s being done.

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

#146

Post by technothrasher »

qwerpy wrote: post #84
kccqzy wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Colleges should be prioritizing strong students I agree with this, but I think you didn’t get the point. The point is, the way we measure strength has to be considered in light of the environment. If a student is in a high school where the average strength is 100, and the student has achieved a strength of 200, it shows that the student has tenacity and grit and drive. Whereas another student might be in a high sch…

I understand that point and I still disagree with it. There are objective, direct measurements of strength (standardized tests, performance at state/nation-wide academic competitions, admissions essays), and we don't need to resort to this more flimsy chain of subjective comparisons that use "relative strength of student within school" and "relative strength of school across all schools".

> There are objective, direct measurements of strength (standardized tests, performance at state/nation-wide academic competitions, admissions essays)

You are begging the question, especially with standardized testing, by presuming these things are measuring what you think they are measuring.

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

#147

Post by technothrasher »

Not exactly the same scenario, but I definitely wondered whether something unsaid was going on last year when my child applied for colleges. He attended a special education high school and was accepted at all nine colleges he applied for, while most of his friends at non-special education schools were averaging about 33% acceptance at similarly competitive, and often the exact same, colleges. I mean, I think my kid is great, but that seemed like a pretty wide discrepancy.

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

#148

Post by 999900000999 »

toast0 wrote: post #99
resumenext wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 n…

> many students drop out I'm pretty sure that's the case at UC too. I don't know UC, but at my 4 year engineering school it felt like 25% attrition every year; if you only do a year and drop out, better to not be paying enormous student loans for probably the rest of your life for that. If you do two or three years and drop out, better to have a degree, even if it's just an Associates. If you know you'll make it all…

Community College has no real acceptance criteria. .I think you might need to take a placement test, but even if you place low you can still enroll in most classes.

For me I literally didn't have much else going on, so why not.

Very VERY easy way to date girls from all over the world. Nothing like studying with a Japanese girl on your 20th birthday.

The thing with life is you can never *know* about tomorrow. You can do well in college, parents don't have a spare 15k for next year and have to drop out.

A lot of kids in CC are also working full time. If you have to drop out, it's fine, can always go back.

By the time I finished at a Cal State I was working a full time software engineering job.

I have issues with the current system in general. You should have to work at less one job for a few months before taking out any type of loan. You need to understand how difficult money is to earn.

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

#149

Post by apparent »

kelipso wrote: post #130
apparent wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Most of the time, no one knows. But if you're from a nice part of LA or SD but you went to a HS in a bad part of town, people might wonder why you went there, or figure it out for themselves.

I think in most cases fellow undergrads would see it as just playing the game, but some might see it as "cheating" or like you didn't earn your spot as much as they did (if they were from a HS that was from a good part of town).

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

#150

Post by apparent »

sfblah wrote: post #91

This is just doing DEI in a different way because it's technically illegal. It's obvious what's going on here.

The current administration is looking to go after AA workarounds. There are probably some smoking guns in email discussions among UC administrators/admissions officials.
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