How your high school affects your chances of UC Admission • Hacker News Board

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

#51

Post by blindriver » Sat, Jan 10, 2026, 8:23 PM UTC

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…

Every school has increased tuition without substantially increasing the number of students. What you are seeing is that schools are getting thousands of students that are exactly the same which is why admissions is turning into a lottery system. It's basically like a CPU maxed out at 100%. There's nothing you can do except build more schools and increase the number of students otherwise it will continue to be a lottery.

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

#52

Post by SR2Z » Sat, Jan 10, 2026, 8:23 PM UTC

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.)

Once upon a time, the SAT an IQ test, and it was a real achievement to score a 1600. That achievement has been hollowed out in tandem with the value of most college degrees.

We know how to test for merit. The greatest tragedy in this college admissions racket isn't the shadowy affirmative action policies, the mountains of student loan debt, or the entire college admission-industrial complex that's sprung up.

It's that even the tools we've used to use to measure if someone was _ready_ for college have been annihilated.

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

#53

Post by RobRivera » Sat, Jan 10, 2026, 8:24 PM UTC

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…

From School Ties' Brendan Frasiers character "Youre going to use me for football, Im going to use you to get into Harvard"

Competitive admission hasn't really changed by nature

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

#54

Post by gopher_space » Sat, Jan 10, 2026, 8:25 PM UTC

galkk wrote: post #36

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…

> 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 offered twice as many. Damn, this is as stupid as it gets.

The students operating at this level are identical. There’s no practical difference between a 4.0 and a 4.5 GPA when comparing students from different schools.

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

#55

Post by blindriver » Sat, Jan 10, 2026, 8:25 PM UTC

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.

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

#56

Post by 999900000999 » Sat, Jan 10, 2026, 8:28 PM UTC

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, 16k in state.

You then get an unholy fraken monster patch work of different financial aid programs. Make over 160k as a family ? No aid for you!

It's a different welfare cliff. Parents get a paper divorce, live with the less affluent one, college is going to be free.

I'm still very very pissed I couldn't get my parents income info and had to drop out. I was making around 100k when I came back to finish. I paid out if pocket at a Cal State.

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

#57

Post by lostmsu » Sat, Jan 10, 2026, 8:30 PM UTC

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

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

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

#58

Post by smelendez » Sat, Jan 10, 2026, 8:30 PM UTC

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.

That’s not unbiased though. You still have the question of what’s tested and how it’s graded.

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

#59

Post by ajoseps » Sat, Jan 10, 2026, 8:31 PM UTC

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,…

idk man, I’ve always thought UIUC was pretty selective, especially for their EE and CS programs. I’m also 10+ years out from college applications so maybe things have changed.

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

#60

Post by qwerpy » Sat, Jan 10, 2026, 8:31 PM UTC

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…

This seems backwards to me. Colleges should be prioritizing strong students for admission and nothing else. Our country needs the best engineers and doctors. Colleges are a scarce, valuable resource and should be reserved for the best students, regardless of why they are the best students.