That’s great that your son didn’t have trouble at Berkeley! And I certainly don’t have stats on how many students are having trouble getting classes and at which UCs. I brought this up after reading an article about UCSB’s trouble and how it’s been going on for years, and there are similar stories about UCLA and UCSD.
And just as a side note, maybe we should take this conversation to a new thread, so we don’t bore everyone else who doesn’t care about UC drama. Sorry @DramaMama2021 
Believe me he will have better options 
No need for snark
The “not being able to get a required course” problem (at any college) is often (though not always) self-inflicted by students who do not solve the operations research problem of making an 8-semester college schedule very well. Solving that problem requires accounting for all of the following:
In general, it is best to prioritize completing prerequisites and requirements as early as possible, particularly those where there is only one course option and/or the course(s) are not offered every semester. Students who leave requirements to the last semester could run into trouble if the needed course is not offered, is full, or has a time conflict with another required course they also left to the last semester.
Well, Williams, for example, reported that 99% of its students originated from the top quarter of their HS classes (to the extent that information is available). I would be reluctant to draw any conclusions based on the 1% who did not.
No snark intended! I wish him all the luck.
I hear you @DramaMama2021. I’m out of here!
What percentage of Williams’ acceptances attend elite boarding schools or prep day schools that do not rank students?
8 out of 17 of those at Harvard Westlake with 3.3 to 3.9 weighted GPA got into Williams. I presume HW doesn’t rank but they provide GPAs. Hooked?
I haven’t ventured into that analysis. Nonetheless, the CDS data on high school class standing may be valid for homogeneous comparisons (e.g., NESCAC to NESCAC), especially when tracked for several years.
A summary of my earlier reply below. Do you disagree with the 2nd point that entering students who did not submit rank are more likely to have lower rank than entering students who did submit rank?
While we may not have information on the kids who did not submit rank, we do know that highly selective HSs where stellar kids often have lower ranks are far less likely to submit rank to colleges than average, resulting in a higher expected average rank among submitters than non-submitters. We also know that if class rank is considered in admission (Bates says it is “very important” in CDS), then a lower ranked kid who does not submit his low rank is less likely severely penalized and more likely to make it through admissions than a lower ranked kid who does submit his low rank, again leading to a higher expected rank among submitter entering students than non-submitters.
I did a quick Google search and may have used a different data set. In any case, the point is it’s clear that the vast majority of entering students are not submitting rank at all of the listed colleges… as well as nearly all similarly selective private colleges. If Wesleyan or other college has ~70% of kids not submitting rank instead of ~80% not submitting rank like at Bates, the vast majority of kids are still not submitting rank.
Williams is within its rights to really like the brains and/or bank accounts of HW kids… but assuming a normal distribution one could speculate those 3.6 and above got in, which could be explained by perceived rigor vs nonelite high schools.
Honestly, I don’t care. We chose Michigan over the UC’s for D18. And we chose SLO over the UC’s for D21.
We don’t like the mess at the UC’s right now. Good luck to your son. I hope he can make it out in 4 years, let alone 3. 
I’ll let an experienced SLO parent answer that one. @eyemgh or @Gumbymom
What years are the UC data from? Because last performance isn’t always the best predictor of future performance.
I agree and suspect that HW grads have been quite successful at a wide variety of discriminating private, and OOS public, universities.
I’m WAY too far behind on this long thread to catch up and understand the context.
Cal Poly’s graduation rates for 4, 5 and 6 years were 60%, 82% and 85% for years 16, 15 and 14 all respectively. That’s not that different from the average of all the UCs, with the exception of the 4 year rate. Exclude UCB, UCLA and UCM, and they’re all about the same.
Poly is a quarter school and any time, even a single class, beyond Spring, automatically gets counted as an additional full year.
Some curricula are longer too. For example, ME is 200 hours, whereas most degrees are 180 hours. ME at Berkeley is 120 hours, like nearly every other major.
Cal Poly also has a 5 year Architecture program, so I’m not sure how that fits in.
I’ve been told that it’s a function of a few longer curricula, dodging times and professors, and, historically, it was harder to get classes. That was rectified before '14 though.
I can say, with a sample size of 1 that it isn’t hard to get out on time. My son walked with a funded, thesis based MS in 5 years and took a relatively leisurely pace near the end because his research was keeping him there the full 5 years anyway.
He went to CP from OOS and had no interest in any of the UCs. Had he been in state, Cal Poly would have still been his first choice based on the class sizes and teaching style. It’s hard not to see all of the CA schools as a pretty good value from in state though, both UCs and CSUs.
Maybe someone can summarize why I’m answering this. 
Thanks @eyemgh you’re better than me at answering those SLO “grad rate” questions, which @ucbalumnus mentioned in his post above.
All UCs except UCB and UCM are also on the quarter system. At any school, any student who takes just one more semester or quarter after the fourth spring after fall entry is counted as taking more than 4 years.
I would not expect any strong student who has enough money to afford school to have difficulty finishing on time.
Again, still not quite following the context here. Anyhoo, I just grabbed UCB and errantly assumed they were all semester schools. My mistake.
Looking at ME, it’s 181 hours at UCLA and 180 at Irvine. At Cal Poly it’s 196-202. Most do right at 200. There isn’t an engineering major that’s less than 190 hours at Cal Poly and quite a few go over 195. Since the CENG accounts for 25% of the school, maybe that’s part of the answer. Not sure.
Architecture is 225 hours.
The data I grabbed for the whole school is below.
Is Payscale (“PS”), from which Forbes cites median salaries for each of its ranked colleges, still only using baccalaureate degree holders for its salary reporting? They weigh this variable at 20%, which is pretty significant.
If they are, It’s a hard question to resolve, because obviously which college would PS credit for salary reporting of those with two or three degrees from different universities, and also too because PS wants to see how a grad’s success with respect to attaining a higher salary is attributable a specific college - though it doesn’t factor in the wide-ranging geographic differences in earnings, and the higher COL of specific regions that drives up salaries.
However, Forbes reporting PS’s median salary at 10-years into grads jobs for each college would undoubtedly hurt those that send a great/greater proportion of its baccalaureate degree-holders to grad and professional schools. So PS’s survey undoubtedly attributes salary from a minority of graduates from numerous colleges.
Of the private colleges, I’m sure that most of the elite colleges would have significantly < 50% reportage of graduates’ salaries in the PS surveys. Of the publics, UCLA’s and then UCB’s baccalaureate degree holders as a pretty distinct majority attend grad school, with the former college sending more to professional programs and the latter more to academically related programs. And Forbes in its recent rankings seems to be trying to draw attention to itself, but congrats to UCB nonetheless.
I think that Payscale if indeed they are still only surveying baccalaureates could have another survey in which they rank colleges as feeders into grad programs, irrespective of the placement of grads into “elite” grad schools.
The students at UCs are brilliant and resilient. They deserve better than impacted majors, over crowded classes, and limited career/grad school advising.
I’m reluctant to draw any conclusions based on the 1, 2 and 3% who did not at any of them.
At any rate, we have digressed.