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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

#181

Post by lateforwork »

wahern wrote: post #164
nine_k wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I'm usually not a fan of ending gifted programs and such, I do believe that the kids in the lower-rated schools must feel a positive effect, mingling with highly-motivated, better-educated kids. It may do away with the whole "study is uncool, real kids hate school" vibe that holds many "bad neighborhood" schools back.

> I do believe that the kids in the lower-rated schools must feel a positive effect, mingling with highly-motivated, better-educated kids. It may do away with the whole "study is uncool, real kids hate school" vibe that holds many "bad neighborhood" schools back. That's the logic, but it doesn't pan out. IMO it's because 1) by high school it's too late--kids already segregate themselves and the ones with strong study…

> I'm onboard with the idea that diversity and breaking the structures of inequality are laudable goals

It is not OK to manipulate college admissions to achieve those goals. A student who worked hard in high school should get into the college he deserves based on merit alone.

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

#182

Post by john-h-k »

terribleidea wrote: post #37
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

How much control can your classmates have over your own GPA? What percentage of 'control' over your GPA is up to you vs. your teachers, parents, classmates, and everyone else? I put those in order intentionally, as I think your classmates are below teachers and parents on the hierarchy.

Disincentives group learning, collaboration, teaching each other.

Many good cases to have a strict zero sum competition but you won’t see collaboration in these (eg olympiads, competitions). That’s fine for a short term event but for long term learning in a persistent social group it seems good to encourage collaboration

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

#183

Post by john-h-k »

derektank wrote: post #162
wyldfire wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This kind of competition happens in other areas of academic pursuits too. Is that strictly a bad thing? The bad thing about UT's policy is that it encourages well-off students to move to a less-competitive school district (usually rural) in order to improve their chances.

This seems like a good thing to me actually, lower performing students generally benefit from having high performers in their social circles

If we were really optimising for this, we’d ban colleges using anything other than geographic area. Keeping all the high performers at high performing unis will hurt the lower performers

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

#184

Post by kccqzy »

sokoloff wrote: post #174
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…

> We are now treating it as a rite passage that qualified high school students can be mysteriously rejected. How could it realistically work any other way? Each year, Harvard gets nearly 50K applications for 2K acceptances and 1.6K enrollments. It’s not hard to see that tens of thousands of qualified high school students will unavoidably be rejected from just this one university.

> How could it realistically work any other way?

Well for one, what if universities like Harvard publish clear and transparent criteria for their students? For example it could say that the minimum required SAT score is 1580, and students with a lower score will simply not bother to apply, instead of sending in their application in the hope that other parts of their application will stand out enough.

For two, university admissions officers have internal adjustment algorithms to adjust the GPA from different high schools. They could publish that together with a minimum adjusted GPA.

The 50k application problem only exists because under the holistic process, everyone thinks they have a chance.

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

#185

Post by dmoy »

torginus wrote: post #170
dmoy wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

This is like saying all furniture must be made waterproof because some people have leaky roofs. No, you fix the roof. I know my proposition sounds absurd, but it kind of point out the issue with this kind of thinking is that applying some patchwork fixes to complex issues rather than treating the root cause is a bad idea. It's a bad idea in CS and a bad idea in planning social systems. Neighborhoods should be made sa…

Fixing the root problems sounds good to me.

But that doesn't mean that as it currently stands you can say that standardized tests gives everyone the same chance in the US. It would in some hypothetical future maybe yes, but not now.

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

#186

Post by terminalshort »

lateforwork wrote: post #181
wahern wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I do believe that the kids in the lower-rated schools must feel a positive effect, mingling with highly-motivated, better-educated kids. It may do away with the whole "study is uncool, real kids hate school" vibe that holds many "bad neighborhood" schools back. That's the logic, but it doesn't pan out. IMO it's because 1) by high school it's too late--kids already segregate themselves and the ones with strong study…

> I'm onboard with the idea that diversity and breaking the structures of inequality are laudable goals It is not OK to manipulate college admissions to achieve those goals. A student who worked hard in high school should get into the college he deserves based on merit alone.

Yes, but it should have nothing to do with how hard you worked, only what your performance is.

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

#187

Post by terminalshort »

dmoy wrote: post #155
alex43578 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does the existence of a standard hoop height in the NBA give everyone the same chance to play? Shorter players should get lower hoops, and slower runners should get electric scooters. That way, everyone can appear to be equally capable.

I would say that the NBA is explicitly not about giving everyone the same chance. Not everything has to be about giving everyone the same chance. A totally equitable NBA would probably be less entertaining to watch. But that doesn't mean we can say that standardized testing gives everyone the same chance either...

Which is exactly the point of testing

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

#188

Post by its_ethan »

School-Cotton wrote: post #82
its_ethan wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That feels like a fairly narrow view of what the purpose of a university is. Look at the charter of any university and they do not just say: "create students who excel in their academic subject of choice". The vast, vast majority of higher education mission statements/charters include goals like: "helping students develop their identity", "pursuing meaning", "strengthening community", "sharing perspectives", "helping…

> Look at the charter of any university Any university in the world? Or any university in the very idiosyncratic US system? Again, nobody else does stuff like this, and their universities seem to be working fine.

Yea I'd say any university. Here's the results of maybe 3 minutes of quick googling for universities around the world:

University of Mumbai: "The Fruit of Learning is Character and Righteous Conduct" - highlights character and behavior as key to learning

University of Tokyo: "The University of Tokyo aims to be a world-class platform for research and education [and] ... nurture global leaders with a strong sense of public responsibility and a pioneering spirit [and] ... to expand the boundaries of human knowledge in partnership with society." - yes it's academically focussed, but again highlights strong civic duty and partnerships

University of Sydney: "We make lives better by producing leaders of society and equipping our people with leadership qualities so they can serve our communities at every level." - pretty focussed on creating leaders who serve communitities

Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia has a listed value: "AAU pursues innovation, research, and development through team spirit and partnership within the institution, with the communities it serves and with its global partners."

So.. yea most universities? Are there exceptions that are just ultra focussed on being exclusively robot-generating education factories? Sure. I'm not sure where you live that they are so common, but a quick survey of Africa, Asia, and Australia I was able to find universities that check the box for what I claimed.

But again, sorry for being so US-centric on the US website focussed on discussion (mostly) US news (and in this case discussing literally only US universities????), and the goings on of US tech start ups where most everyone speaks English and is active during the US timezones peak hours.

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

#189

Post by lern_too_spel »

There is no analysis of selective majors. Students from Lynbrook and Bellarmine are more likely to apply to majors like CSE and ECE, which have lower admissions rates than general admission. https://undergrad.ucsd.edu/academics/selective-major-process...

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

#190

Post by next_xibalba »

huhkerrf wrote: post #180
next_xibalba wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live 45 minutes from A&M. I’ll repeat myself. No one in Texas calls it tu. ;) There may be some disenfranchised barbarians out in the wilderness that do. But likely only due to their extremely tenuous grasp of the fundamentals of English. Primarily they communicate through grunts and hand signs.

I'm not sure why you insist on doubling down. It's not hard to find info about it: https://www.reddit.com/r/aggies/comments/v54bu/why_do_you_sa... Hell, it's on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_University

> Texas A&M

> There may be some disenfranchised barbarians out in the wilderness that do. But likely only due to their extremely tenuous grasp of the fundamentals of English. Primarily they communicate through grunts and hand signs.

;)

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