Preppedparent: UCs specifically do not consider race when admitting students.
In any case…40% students at UCB are Asian American (24% White). About 37% at UC Irvine, 44% at UCSD. This roughly reflects the demographic make up of the state - o don’t think you’d get the same numbers in New Hampshire.
For UCs what matters is being the best in your high school or what you achieved within your high school.
UIowa, UMaine look at your stats only.
At other Universities, there are various components to admissions. There has to be balance between all groups the university wants to see represented.
In addition, there are many highly ranked, highly selective universities where being Asian means being an underrepresented applicant (Carleton, Colby Grinnell…)
Did OP reveal his/her demographic ? I wouldn’t be surprised if OP is Asian male. All schools will fight for you if OP is in one of URM group. There is something wrong with the system when race is the main factor.
It is not a factor at all at California public universities.
It is not the main factor in other schools either. It is A factor.
And Harvard is being investigated for even making it a factor.
In terms of race/ethnicity, while California demographics differ considerably from those of New Hampshire, the demographics of UC do not exactly match the demographics of California public high school graduates, due to different rates of reaching baseline eligibility.
https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/infocenter/ca-hs-pipeline shows that about half of California public high school graduates are Latino these days, but only about a third of Latino high school graduates complete the baseline subject requirements for UC frosh admission (“CA A-G Completers”; 'a-g" subject requirements are described at http://admission.universityofcalifornia.edu/freshman/requirements/a-g-requirements/index.html ), resulting in considerable underrepresentation of Latino students in applicants, admits, and enrollees at UC.
In contrast, about half of white and two thirds of Asian public high school graduates in California complete the baseline subject requirements for UC frosh admission.
@uclaparent9 pointed out the issue OP had.
Please read OP lines carefully
“My stats are as follows: 2350 SAT, 35 ACT, 800s on SAT Math II, Biology E, Physics, Chemistry, 5s on all AP tests I have taken (Calculus BC, Statistics, Chemistry, Biology, Computer Science, English Literature and Composition, European History), a 4.4 GPA.”
OP did not show a transcript or unweighted GPA here.
(OP took at least 7 AP courses + honor courses,
OP got 4.4 weighted GPA.)
4.4 weighted GPA is the issue, isn’t it ?
Yes, weighted GPA without any information on what weighting system is used is meaningless.
(However, if the OP got into UCB with a Regents’ scholarship, GPA must have been good, since UCs tend to favor GPA heavily.)
@ucbalumnus , I was surprised when I watched a YouTube video by a UCB professor who was analyzing the UCB admission process. According to the professor, although they don’t consider race, they consider some other factors, such as “low-income” or “parents didn’t finish high school”. Although they track it as separate factors, these factors are not an independent variable from race; some of them may be considered a proxy of race. (The professor did analyze how much of “low-income” and “first generation” overlap with URM. I forgot the exact number, but it’s pretty significant.)
URMs are overrepresented among LI and 1G, but LI and 1G are not exclusively URM. Indeed, 1G is very common across all races/ethnicities, although many 1G students do not apply to college in the first place. 1G is also probably the strongest correlate of disadvantage with respect to attending and graduating college, and other correlates like race/ethnicity and LI are probably mostly due to their overlap with 1G.
But then just about any admission criterion will have correlation to race/ethnicity to some extent.
@MYOS1634 You made my point. That’s why OP is at Cal and not at the ivies which discriminate against Asians. UCs can’t.
Err no. He got in because it’s his state flagship and the university’s population is relatively similar to the state’s population, moderately over representing Asians. The same is true for, say, Harvard - nationally, there are 6% Asian Americans (or, if you want to look at New England only, 3%). I don’t think you can argue Asians are under represented at Harvard or Ivies. If you look at Stanford, Asian Americans represent about 25% - reflecting the region more than the national average.
In addition, there ARE colleges where Asian Americans are under-represented and these actively try to recruit Asian American students, through minority fly-ins for instance.
I also understand nothing will convince you since you are using this kid’s thread to make that point.
Realistically, the only way you can increase Asian representation at Harvard is by decreasing legacy advantage, which currently tends to favor advantaged white applicants, but doing so would also undo the legacy advantage for future Asian American legacies.
CBS News just aired that Harvard is being sued due to discrimination against asians in college admissions. The rest of the world just doesn’t agree with you I guess.
^ A group you agree with is suing Harvard. That group is not “the rest of the world”.
@OnlyBerkeley2020 : how is it going? When you look back, what do you think happened?
I think the big takeaway here, more than ever, is that colleges admissions in this country is a capricious business. Readjust what you consider to be “matches” and “safeties” and make sure a few of each (that you would actually consider attending) are on your list. As many people have said, you can only attend one school at a time, and UCB is NOT a step down from those others (plus, Regents! Chancellors!). If OP’s heart is still set on going to one of these other schools, there’s always graduate school…
There’s widespread concern about discrimination against Asians. Of course, this affects Asian students most, but we should all be concerned, because the next time it could be you. Let’s wipe out all discrimination and quotas in college admission.
If they’re secret, how do you know they exist?
I don’t think capricious is the right word. First of all, in the OPs case, we don’t have the unweighted GPA, which could easily include some Bs. Secondly, if you do the math and science national competitions and don’t rank highly nationally, it means there probably hundreds of students who did better than you. You can take the top few hundred math students, spread them around the top schools, and you have all the math majors those schools need. Harvard does not want a whole class of future math professors, they want a handful. Same for the sciences, and there you also have people who have published research.
It is a clear as can be you need something to stand out to even start to say you should have gotten in (OP doesn’t but other people have) - if it isn’t nationally ranked in something along with everything else being strong, you can do it with service, or essays or letters that really hit the mark. And you can get in to an excellent school, but it might be your strong state flagship instead of some big name private.
When a member of the international math olympiad team with the same scores in other stuff gets turned down by all of places listed, then capricious might be the right word. I’m not aware of that happening.
Berkeley’s Asian admitted students are over 40%. California is only 15% Asian. If Berkeley’s discriminating against Asians they’re doing a very bad job
Uh, California public schools are prohibited from considering race in its admissions process.
I know that. Sarcasm.