<p>According to the College Board, they all have 94% (Riverside is the only one with 94%) or higher (up to 99%, for UCB). How could this be possible? Are they fake?</p>
<p>Good question. I wouldn't go far as to say they are "fake". But I'm not sure they are the same "metric" that other schools use....it may be that they are a hypothetically computed score based upon things besides GPA in a given high school. </p>
<p>It is odd the UC's have such high %top-ten stats, which do not correlate well with other things...like SATs, for instance. At other schools with 95%+ in the top-ten, you would expect SAT averages in the Ivy-league range, which the UC's don't have. The data is also not consistent with other top-publics throughout the country.</p>
<p>This question has been raised before, and I've never seen a clear explanation for it.</p>
<p>there are 2 explanations given, 1 doesn't make sense.</p>
<p>1) they don't include athletes in this calculation (which is likely). Berkeley for example has a freshman class of about 4000 students every year. I doubt they get 40 athletes who are dumb as rocks <em>every year</em>. They only get i bet about 10 or 12 football players a year, and what...3 or 4 basketball players? You tend to find most people who excel in other sports arn't given as much leeway in admissions--those 2 sports make probably all the money to support the other athletic teams.</p>
<p>2) many public schools get students in the top 10% of their class. California happens to be a very large state, and the UCs get a very large number of applications. Berkeley admits only 20% of its students, so its likely that they can admit only students in the top 10%--especially considering the qualifications required for a nonathlete to apply to a UC, none of the applicants are really 'throw aways'. When you limit the people who can apply to students with at least a B+ GPA, you're likely to find a bunch of people in the top 10%.</p>
<p>However, lets not get over zealous here. Berkeley (and UCLA) only admit about 2/3s of their student bodies through freshman admissions (i don't know about the other UCs). the other 1/3 comes almost entirely from california community colleges. You can rest assured that most--of course not all, but I'd wager the vast majority--of those students either were not in the top 10% of their high school class or had worse SATs than UCBs and UCLAs interquartile range. The most likely candidate was neither.</p>
<p>So what it REALLY comes down to is that Berkeley and UCLA may admit 99% of students in the top 10% of their high school class, the overall student body may only be about 70% in the top 10%.</p>
<p>jags861,
1) In the context of student populations of 20,000+, the admittance of athletes is not going to have that great an effect</p>
<p>2) the admit rates for the California schools in the USNWR Top 50 are:
24% UC Berkeley (99% Top 10%, Avg SAT of 1325)
26% UCLA (97%, 1295)
46% UCSD (99%, 1185)
60% UC Irvine (96%, )
68% UC Davis (95%, 1155))
53% UC Santa Barbara (96%, 1190)</p>
<p>There does seem to be a disconnect between these admit rates and the % of students that are considered Top 10% achievers.</p>
<p>3) In response to some very good comments that you have previously made on transfers at UCB and other schools, I am working on some transfer analysis right now. The numbers are pretty huge-first for California publics, next for most publics, third and on a much smaller scale for privates.</p>
<p>Most UC students come from public schools in California.</p>
<p>Being in the top 10% of a public school in California is considerably easy...for obvious reasons.</p>
<p>Seiken,
Most UC students come from public schools, yet this is not unique to California and yet their Top 10% are significantly higher than nearly every other public university in America. Consider the following % of students from public schools (taken from collegeboard.com):</p>
<p>85% UC Berkeley (99% Top 10%, Avg SAT of 1325, 24% Admit Rate)
80% UCLA (97%, 1295, 26%)
na UCSD (99%, 1250, 46%)</p>
<p>84% UC Irvine (96%, 1185, 60%)
85% UC Davis (95%, 1155, 68%)
85% UC Santa Barbara (96%, 1190, 53%)</p>
<p>Note: I made an error in my earlier post on SAT scores for UCSD. The average is 1250. </p>
<p>77% U Virginia (88% Top 10%, Avg SAT of 1325, 37% Admit Rate)
80% U Michigan (90%, 1315, 47%)
84% U North Carolina (76%, 1295, 34%)
na William & Mary (79%, 1350, 32%)
na U Wisconsin (58%, 1275, 58%)
na Georgia Tech (54%, 1315, 69%)
75% U Illinois (55%, 1285, 65%)</p>
<p>The numbers for UCB, UCLA, and UCSD look relatively in-line with the other top publics, but the numbers for UCI, UCD, and UCSB look considerably different. I suspect that the large California population could be causing this</p>
<p>More than one poster has raised the possibility that some games are being played by the California UCs. I would guess that the extraordinary numbers of transfer students, if they were included, would significantly alter the Top 10% numbers, but the Top 10% calculation is only made for first-year, first-time entering students.</p>
<p>I can't speak for other schools, but I know that UC-B took a pretty firm stance on favoring grades over test scores, particularly for candidates with special circumstances. That's why I don't find their high "Top 10% rank" statistics incongruous with test scores (which are, as another poster pointed out, not in the Ivy range). When Berkeley posted the profiles of those "notorious" low-scoring students (that a few Regents were so steamed about) I seem to recall most of them having very good grades.</p>
<p>I realize the UC's "de-emphasize" SATs....but so do plenty of other state schools (despite popular wisdom) U Florida, for instance, only weights SATs about 10% of the admission criteria. But UF has only about 85% of the enrolled freshman class in the top-10%, yet has higher SAT averages than most of the UC's. This is true of most all the top publics as well.</p>
<p>If the top-10% stats reported for the UC's are the "same" metric used by other schools (namely, it is based on class-ranking from GPA standings within a given high school), it suggests that it is somehow "easier" to be a top-10 student in California than in other states. The implication of that statement is pretty profound. On the other hand, the UC's may use a "formula" based ranking system that accounts for things like EC's..diversity, test scores, etc....something which should not be compared with other states top-10 stats.</p>
<p>Still looking for a rational explanation.</p>
<p>the UC top 10 is definitely calculated, since only ~50% of Calif public high schools actually rank students....</p>
<p>Not all schools rank, and the way that the UC's calculate from what I've heard is rather sly. Rather than look at what percentage of ranked students were in the top tenth of their class, they look at the percentage of all students that were ranked in high school, AND below the 90 percentile. Sound confusing? It is. I'll try and demonstrate with made up numbers.</p>
<p>Lets say there are 5000 matriculating students, and 1000 of them went to high schools that rank, and of those 1000, 900 of them were in the top tenth. There are several ways to report this data, and no specified way of doing it. Most schools would give the statistic of 90% in the top tenth of their class, considering only the students who were ranked in high school. The way that UC's do it, is they take the 100 which were not in the top tenth of their class, and divide that out of the entire entering class of 5000, giving them a 98% statistic. </p>
<p>The reason that this is sly; let's say that of the 1000 ranked students, only 50 of them are in the top tenth of their class. That would be calculated as 950/5000, and UC's would still publish a "Top Tenth" statistic of 81%.</p>
<p>Another way of looking at mathematically: Assume all unranked students are in the top tenth. Obviously, the greater the number of unranked students, the higher your statistic will be. If 90% of your student body is unranked, there is no way (under their metric) that they would report anything less than 90% in the top tenth (Even if all of the ranked students were outside the top tenth). With more an more schools (especially in CA) opting to discard student ranks, this further inflates the UC's metric.</p>
<p>Add this to a very high transfer population, and a massive amount of Californians graduating in the top tenth of their class purely based on the size of the state, and its easy to see where such high numbers come from.</p>
<p>brassmonkey,
That's a pretty incredible methodology that you describe. Is there any "evidence" that you can point to that explains how the UCs do their 10% calculations?</p>
<p>Isn't there some minimum numbers where you auto qualify to at least one UC?</p>
<p>I believe it involves being top 10%, and that could inflate the numbers of the lower UC's.</p>
<p>Also, there are less 'premier'(top 30 private, or just private) schools out west, so they do keep more of their top students at state schools.</p>
<p>If I'm not mistaken, top 12% or 4%, not sure which, of CA high school students get something called ELC.</p>
<p>For UC Riverside and UC Irvine, at least in my experience, that's an automatic acceptance (they inform you of acceptance before you apply).</p>
<p>As for Berkeley, there's some "guestimation" involved, but I wouldn't be surprised if the statistic is correct.</p>
<p>The admissions committee seems to pride itself on "collecting" students from every area of California, and in many high schools will only take the top student that applied from there--usually the strongest student anyhow in many of the weaker public schools.</p>
<p>Then, UC Berkeley draws about 30-70 students from feeder schools (Diamond Bar is a notorious one in Southern CA, but there are many of them, including my own public high school), well-defined and predetermined, to fill up a good deal of its class. Almost all of these feeder schools rank, and Berkeley doesn't accept under top 10% very often.</p>
<p>With the weaker public schools, the top student is by no means necessarily correlated with high standardized test scores--usually they aren't. Thus, drawing from all of these schools significantly drops the SAT statistic.
Though realize that the SAT statistic has a huge gap--because that "low" SAT seen in the rankings is an average between the high and the low. Thus, the feeders have extremely high scores, usually, pulling up the overall statistic from the top performers at less rigorous high schools.</p>
<p>This is, at least, what I've gathered from my discussions with Berkeley administrators. The disparity is largely a function of the massive gap between the few best, well-funded public and private high schools, and most of the rest of California's not-as-strong public high school system.</p>
<p>Allorion
i wouldnt say uci is automatic acceptance...</p>
<p>I don't know what the general policies are--it was for me though with one of those mailed, "You're already accepted!" letters.</p>
<p>For Irvine, it amused me so much that I ended up check-boxing it to apply in my UC application though I had little intension of attending so I still have a relatively clear recollection for UCI at least.</p>
<p>I'm not from California, but I always thought that California public school students must be in the top 12% of their class to apply to the UCs. Can someone from California confirm this?</p>
<p>Allorion, it must have been a while ago, UC Irvine is now a middle-tier UC. Today's lower-tiers are UC Riverside, UC Santa Cruz, and UC Merced.</p>
<p>danas, requirements for UCs are the same as CSU's, but with a minimum 3.0 GPA.</p>
<p>some very interesting theories here, keep them coming.</p>
<p>This is purely conjecture but I have the feeling that the UCs' method of giving extra GPA weight to AP courses allows the UCs to claim that almost all of their students are top 10% of their high school class.</p>
<p>For example, let's say a student had a 3.6 in high school and was top 20% but had various As in AP courses. UCs will give a 4.3 grade to all the AP As which often will raise a students weighted cumulative GPA to over a 4.0. See the average GPA of incoming Berkeley and UCLA freshman. Now that hypothetical student is not only a perfect student but clearly in the top 10% of his/her class.</p>
<p>Just a guess.</p>
<p>Originally, the California Master Plan deemed that the Univ of Calif was designed to "select from the one-eighth (12.5%) of the high school graduating class." Subsequently, that charter was broadened to include "the top one-eighth....of the statewide high school graduating class." </p>
<p>The UCs use three measures for eligibility. GPA+test scores eligibility index; gpa-alone (top 4% per HS class, aka ELC); and, testing alone (average 690+ on all CB tests). Thus, gpa's and SAT/ACT scores are used to estimate (for lack of a better word) the top 12.5%.</p>
<p>A study a couple of years ago found that the UCs were accepting the top ~14% of HS grads, so the minimum Frosh gpa was raised, from 2.8 to 3.0.</p>
<p>tranandy:</p>
<p>no conjecture needed, the UCs definitely DO weight gpa's (which is as it should be, IMO, since a grade in an AP or UC-approved honors course should count more than a grade in basketweaving).</p>