Were you referring to the Source school data? The one who put together this data was lazy as seen in it being very inconsistent in reporting. I understand that some admits and enrollees were low at some high schools, and they’re consequently hiding their gpas, but it’s not a good gauge to determine what UCgpa would get someone into a particular UC.
The “they” you seem to be referring to is the UC System itself. This is the data they are reporting — as of this year they are not providing a differentiation above 4.0 weighted/capped. I think it’s fair to assume there is a reason they don’t want to get more granular than that.
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I just mentioned it being “bogus” because, again, students could use the more narrow range to chance him/herself. That’s why I believe they should print ranges as follows with AR rates:
4.30-4.40 (or above, per what ucbalumnus stated)
4.20-4.29
4.10-4.19
etc…
Again, they must have printed the probability of acceptance for the more narrow ranges so students could judge their chance to be accepted to a UC with a particular UCgpa. Now, they seem to be trying to protect UCM and a few other UCs. There will be a day when M admits a higher tiered student – that’s why the regents should fund a medical school and at least initially, like Riverside, take a proportion of its own native (undergrad) students to prop up the university.
To make narrower GPA ranges more useful, they probably need to distinguish by division or major, not just by campus. Otherwise, students with top-end GPAs applying to the most competitive majors may be misled into overestimating their chances.
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Great point… I know that last year for the incoming class of 2021 at some point, I was looking at high schools from the city of Fremont, which is as you know a real tech hotbed, and I noticed that for those feeding UCLA, Irvington had an enroll/admit/applied of 7/16/313 which is a yield/acceptance of 43.8%/5.1%, when UCLA had an overall acceptance rate of 10.8% – it didn’t seem to be fair. I complained about this on social media, then I realized, that many of the students were applying to CS which is in engineering at UCLA. So I’ve been on sm telling persons to avoid applying to CS directly and apply instead to Math of Computation, or Ling/CS, or do Applied Math and take the Computing Specialization, or take the Data Science Engineering minor with, say, Stats. This year (2022) at UCLA, it’s a little better for that high school – I don’t have any connections to it – and it was 14/26/341 or 53.8%/7.6%. UCB knows what it’s doing and takes upwards to ~ 15%. SD also knows and [admits] 15-20% of Irvington students.
Absolutely… The provided data is not nearly sufficient to gauge probability of admissions. The only UC I’m aware of that provides admissions data at the ‘major’ level is Irvine, but does not do so while coupling that data to GPA. I suspect that majors with very high acceptance rates at UCI (e.g., Earth System Sciences) has lower GPA than those with low acceptance (e.g., CS and engineering majors), but the data simply isn’t available to confirm that. Also, with so few accepted from a given HS to some UCs, one ‘hooked’ admit can skew results and give false hope (e.g., recruited athlete with a few tenths lower GPA). I think the safest approach is to expect the worst and be pleasantly surprised if you are wrong. Lastly, the past two years admit/accept GPAs are inflated at any high-performing HS that had pass/fail semester(s) during the pandemic, as the 8 honors/AP pts formed a larger portion of the 10/11th courses and increased the max possible capped GPA. It really is difficult to estimate admission probability… I just assume it is very low for impacted majors at all UCs.
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Given how GPA-driven admission to UC schools appears to be, it seems like the rationale for the change to the GPA bands reported in the “Freshman Fall admissions summary” that Gumbymom linked above could have been explained in a quick footnote to the new chart. Some posters have speculated that perhaps the former GPA band of 4.20+ was giving a bit too much assurance to the applicants in that tier, such that the new 4.00+ highest tier resets admissions expectations to a more realistic level. Maybe so, but as another poster has pointed out, the much wider upper GPA tier of 4.00+ arguably has now made it even tougher on students to get a gauge for their relative chance of admission. That seems to be a bit counterproductive and unhelpful.
The UC system publishes a lot of great data, and the individual campuses also publish some very helpful admissions and enrollment data, but it’s pretty clear that aside from UCI, most campuses regard freshman admissions by major as a closely-guarded secret. Berkeley publishes some nifty institutional research showing admit rates by its various colleges, but if you want to drill in to get a tighter range on GPA by college (for example), that data is only available as a 3-year trailing average, not the GPA for just the most recent Fall 2022 admissions cycle. For a system whose admissions is so heavily reliant on the UC GPA, you’d think UC could be a bit more forthcoming on the GPA ranges by campus.
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Which seems strange, compared to what is published for transfer admission.
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So maybe the opposite conclusion would be more correct. Maybe by making the larger GPA bucket, they are signaling that, yes, you do need a high GPA, but after a certain threshold GPA becomes less relevant to the overall package vis-a-vis holistic review? Maybe they are trying to de-emphasize GPA (not entirely, of course, but after a certain cut off point that puts an applicant in range) to remind people about all the other stuff beyond GPA that they want to see.
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It could also be that since weighted-capped GPA has oddities at the top of the range (e.g. where a straight-A student taking fewer total a-g courses with at least 8 semesters of honors has a higher weighted-capped GPA than one taking more total a-g courses) that they do not want people to be misled by such oddities, or try to game the weighted-capped GPA at the expense of rigor. This type of thing was probably less of a concern in the past when high school GPAs were lower generally, and is less of a concern for the less selective UC campuses and for most majors at most CSUs*, where there is not a huge crowd of applicants near the top of the weighted-capped GPA range.
*With some exceptions like CS at SJSU.
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Yes, agreed. The transfer admissions data is more “transparent,” at least it appears that way to me. As noted earlier, UC already publishes a lot of great data, it’s just sometimes there are gaps when you’re really trying to drill down a bit more or trying to get the latest year only ranges, etc.
For frosh admission, probably the most significant thing UC can do to improve transparency is to offer admission stats by division (or major if applicable) within each campus. For example, at UCB, admission stats by division, and for each CoE major and high demand L&S major, would help applicants get a more realistic idea of how realistic UCB is for them.
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That’s an interesting thought, thanks for sharing that perspective. Who really knows? But again, I think a quick blurb footnoted to the chart could have noted that the GPA tiers/bands have changed from prior years due to an emphasis on [whatever].
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I think that given the fact that many/most transfers are coming in from the CC system and often the TAG (guaranteed transfer) program, it’s not that surprising that GPA bands are very specific when it comes to admissions. My sense is that it’s more variable for first-year admissions and they are indeed pointing us more in the direction of considering how they view rigor (as well as all the other elements of holistic admissions—I think some people forget how important the PIQs and activities sections are).
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It might be counter productive if UC’s provided per major acceptance numbers. Many students would try and game the system by applying to the easier admits with hopes of changing later. This would not improve the UC or the students experience. As a transfer student, you have to take the pre-requisites and I would guess transfer students are much less likely to change majors.
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Apparently already happening with the help of some of those private college consultants.
I think this is on target. They don’t want to be more transparent because they don’t want admissions to be all about gpa. Beyond a certain threshold, what’s the tangible difference? The student is qualified, now what else do they bring to the table?
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If it helps UCLA already does this with Engineering majors (see: https://www.seasoasa.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/seasoasa/2022-UCEE-Report.pdf)
I believe Berkeley also does something like this, but it might only be available to Berkeley students. UCI does it as well
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There is this page OPA – University of California Berkeley (go to the Academic Indicators tab) where you can see applied, admitted, and SIRed numbers by division (CoC, CoE, CED, L&S, CNR), though not by major where that matters within a division. From those numbers, you can derive admission and yield rates by weighted (not capped) GPA bands listed there for the last three admission cycles up to the date listed.
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Thanks for that… hadn’t seen that before. No GPA data, but by major certainty is better than by college or university!