you know, I hear about the cutthroat and grade deflation, but I don’t know, some of the classes seem pretty lenient to me lol. My kid just got through a midterm last Friday, where you got an A for 61% of maximum score, an A- for 55%. However, the median was 48.5%. (CS 70, BTW)
@Nhatrang I hear your concern about how honors classes are counted. Though, they may be counted differently for full weighted GPA for OOS?
Perhaps someone who knows can chime in. E.g., on the UCLA forum the champion is @10s4life. I believe that this person is also OOS, is currently a student there, and is a representative for admissions. May be worth asking there.
The reason I am thinking that honors classes may be counted for OOS is that on the UCLA link, the 25% admit has 22 units of honors and 75% has 36 for OOS. If honors are not counted, isn’t that 11 and 18 full year AP and Dual Enrollment classes? That seems like it would be rare for even the top 1% who are attending schools that offer anything anyone would ever want to take.
Switching topics, one reason that UCs admit a relatively high percentage of OOS is that the OOS yield is lower and they are trying to hit the allowed enrollment for OOS.
@ProfessorPlum168 is completely right. Every UC tries to fill their OOS allowance. It is as if OOS has their own separate pool and is not really compared to in-state. So your child will be compared to other OOS.
@Nhatrang Also note that GPA is calculated only for the a-g courses. Thus, some of the other classes, like physical education, etc., are not part of that GPA.
I am relatively new at posting here, i don’t know the rule around here. I posted something earlier about my experience at Cal about the grade deflation. I may have used a bad word, not directed at anyone, just the situation. 
The post didn’t get posted but it said something about someone will review my post. :"> I am so sorry.
@gkalman @Nhatrang For OOS only AP exams will count for honors extra gpa points. How a school structures a schedule can inflate or deflate gpas. Even for in state not all ca honors courses count as well. Also the UCs will Calc a capped gpa limited to 8 honors semesters. UCLA specifically also looks at the uncapped
@10s4life So, in the link below, where it has 36 for OOS 75th percentile admits, does that actually mean that the 75th percentile admitted OOS student has had 18 year long AP classes? Or am I doing my math wrong?
http://www.admission.ucla.edu/Prospect/Adm_fr/Frosh_Prof18.htm
@gkalman It would be 36 semester length AP classes. Or as you said 18 year long AP courses. Keep in mind that community college dual enrollment counts as “honors” both in state and abroad.
@10s4life that does not seem right. Is it?
At 4 units per semester (this is what AP is credited by UCs for a score of 3 or above; and a semester of dual enrollment may be credited even more), that would be 144 units or more. It seems weird that 25% of OOS students would have that much or more before arriving when 180 is needed for graduation.
@gkalman AP units and dual enrollment help towards graduation but do not count against you when going over the unit cap. They also don’t help for enrollment times. There is also very little actual course credit given at UCLA for AP exams.
http://admission.universityofcalifornia.edu/counselors/exam-credit/ap-credits/index.html indicates that high enough AP test scores give 4 or 8 quarter units (or 2.7 or 5.3 semester units for UCB and UCM).
Note, however, that duplicative content does not get double credit. For example, someone with both calculus AB and BC scores gets at most 8 quarter units.
@10s4life @ucbalumnus
My point was not whether or not it is useful credit at UCs. My point was that it is more than three years of college credit equivalent and I don’t think that so many students have an opportunity to accumulate so much.
I.e., it seems ludicrous and almost impossible that 25% of admitted OOS students would have 36+ semesters of AP+DE coursework and 75% would have 22+.
As an example, (though, this was many years ago):
- I graduated from one of the top public high schools (we had more in AP+DE opportunities than just about any school);
- I was not the top student in most subjects, but I had more AP + DE credit than others in my high school;
- I graduated from one of the top universities for EE in two years (+summers);
- I had 12 AP+DE semesters at the end of my senior year. (I also took two classes at a CC over the summer after HS, but that was not DE. Unlike UCs, at my university, back in those days, it all counted toward my major)
I could be wrong, but that is what seems weird to me. Yes, there are more AP classes offered now than it used to be. However, it still seems like there is too much of a discrepancy. That is why I think that they are counting OOS honors classes in that published statistic.
@gkalman Yep, that is a total mystery to me too.
My D will have a total of 8 APs by the time she graduates: US History, English, Calculus, Statistic, Physic1, Physic2, Chemistry, and Government. She took all honors in 9th and 10 grades b/c they didn’t offer AP until 11th grade. She wanted to do 5 APs each in Junior and Senior year but her GC recommended against saying that she already has the heaviest AP course work at the school (no one else has 8 APs). And that science courses are tough, blah blah blah. Then I come here people has astronomical number of AP courses, 12 – 18 APs, or so it seems.
By the time D applied, and Senior grade is NOT included, she would only have 4 APs (or 8 unit honors per UC scale). The bump she gets for her GPA could only come from the 8 unit honors. How on earth someone would have 18 APs (36 unit honors) by 11th grade??? How is it physically possible? My hubby’s theory is that those students might not actually take the actual courses from their HS, but they learned the material else where and then take the AP exams. That makes sense to me. But then how would it contribute to GPAs if they don’t actually do the courses at the school? AP exams alone can’t count toward GPA…
I think that’s why @gkalman thinks that the 36 unit honors (18 APs) must not only come from APs alone, but also comes from the Honor courses that the students took during their HS years, even for OOS.
But I read somewhere, and confirmed by @10s4life, that Honors are not awarded for OOS students. Hence the mystery.
The GPA bump in the calculation of the UC weighted GPA is not awarded for OOS honors courses. That doesn’t mean that OOS Honors courses are not counted in a category that specifically says Honors courses. 36 units is 6 full year courses per year for grades 10-12 (which is what is counted). I agree that almost no one would have 6 AP or DE courses per year for 3 years. In fact 6 AP and Honors courses per year is quite a lot, though it seems a lot of schools outside CA have more than our standard of 6 courses per semester.
It’s less clear if the “fully weighted” GPA is calculated including Honors or just AP courses. But given how high those OOS numbers are, it may well do.
@Twoin18 thanks. This does make sense and explained a lot!
The GPA bump in the calculation of the UC weighted GPA is not awarded for OOS honors courses. That doesn’t mean that OOS Honors courses are not counted in a category that specifically says Honors courses
Based on your calculations, D would have 26 Honors Courses, still no where near 36, though.
18 full-year courses that are honors seems pretty far-fetched, considering that the average student will have 24 courses total in their 4 years of HS (6 full courses per year). The 18 probably includes Honors classes that are not designated as Honors by UC. That has to be it.
My kid did actually had more than 36 semesters that counted as UC weighted, but it’s only because he had a ton of DE/CC classes. If we use my kid as an example:
10.5 APs = 21
1 Honors class that is recognized by UC (Pre-Calc) = 2
5 DE classes (3 years of Chinese, 2 years of Symphonic Band/Wind Ensemble) = 10
7 CC classes = 7
That’s a total of 40
If you include his “Honors” classes that weren’t designated as Honors by UC, I come up with 11 more. In his case, Alg 2/Trig, World History, English 9, English 10, Biology, and Economics (1/2 year).
Note that a 3+ semester credit unit college course is counted like a full year high school course. You can see this by putting community college names into https://hs-articulation.ucop.edu/agcourselist . The college courses are listed as “full year” for high school a-g purposes when applying to UC. Presumably, this means that the grade counts twice, and two honors points are given, for such a college course.
@ProfessorPlum168 The Honors course description says “Honors Courses included in the totals below are taken in grades 10–12”, so only 3 years of courses. So if your total is for the whole of HS then it might not be that high.
A system with only 6 classes like most CA high schools would have a maximum of 36 semesters unless there is out of school dual enrollment. My kids had 2-3 UC Honors/AP courses sophomore year, then 4 APs in each of junior and senior year (i.e. 20-22 total). Even if you counted non-weighted AS/Honors classes you would only get to 24-26 in those 3 years. But from what I can tell, having 7-8 classes in a schedule (presumably therefore not an A/B day block with 3 x 1.75 hour classes per day) is more common elsewhere.
@Hamurtle : there’s a lot of parents in san francisco that are encouraging their children to not attend Lowell, a historically very high API school. Not sure when the UC system changed admissions to give more benefits to schools with low API, but Mission fits the bill and when percentage is taken into account, a child from Mission has a better chance getting into Cal than a Lowell grad. The question I’m curious is how these students from low API schools perform at Cal? Do they stick with their intended major or change and/or drop out.
BTW, my household is predominantly Lowell grads and Cal attendees and graduates.
I don’t believe the UC’s consider the high school’s API scores in evaluating a student. UC’s look at the child’s GPA, SAT scores, rigor of the high school curriculum taken, EC’s, etc. A high school student can still attain a high GPA, high SAT scores and a rigorous curriculum, even at a lower API school like Mission or Balboa High in SF. These high schools do offer AP calculus, Spanish, Chemistry, etc. There, the competition is probably not as keen as at Lowell High.
I don’t know how these kids performed at Cal, but many students change majors all the time, even ones from Mission or low API ranking schools.
A couple of my friends’ kids, though accepted to Lowell, chose not to attend and instead attended the private school, University High, where they felt the competition for grades was not as intense as at Lowell.
Subsequently, these kids were also accepted to UCB and instead chose private schools like Georgetown, Claremont College, etc. One who went to Georgetown later went on to an Ivy League dental school.
@UCBUSCalum: you may be correct that UC does not use API in evaluating students but there are many UC documents with regards to admissions that use the term “low API”. I have no problem if UC uses API or not, I realize it’s a public institution. Here’s an analysis about Cal’s admissions in July 2016:
https://eml.berkeley.edu/~jrothst/otherwriting/rothstein_report_july122016.pdf