<p>Bluebayou,
I have no qualms with weighting AP classes more for admissions purposes, but it begs the question "is this practice skewing the numbers in favor of the UCs for rankings purposes?"</p>
<p>You don't really see other schools claiming that all their incoming freshman have over a 4.0 and 99% of them were in the top 10% of their class.</p>
<p>Hmm...do you think that OOS students affect anything...or is that too small a percentage to count?</p>
<p>hawkette,</p>
<p>i said that there are 2 general assumptions made. the one where athletes make a difference doesn't make sense...</p>
<p>Sorry. I misunderstand your comment. </p>
<p>Did you look at the transfer thread? The numbers for the UCs were truly huge. I knew they'd be large, but nothing like that.</p>
<p>
[quote]
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.
[/quote]
</p>
<p><em>chuckle</em> You make me feel ancient. But no, this was last year (class of 2010).</p>
<p>It could have been some other criteria used as well--I'm not entirely aware of how Irvine's policies work. National merit, perhaps? Though what they wrote on their letter is "ELC", specifically, which is what led me to assume it was due to ELC that I got the automatic acceptance.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Bluebayou,
I have no qualms with weighting AP classes more for admissions purposes, but it begs the question "is this practice skewing the numbers in favor of the UCs for rankings purposes?"</p>
<p>You don't really see other schools claiming that all their incoming freshman have over a 4.0 and 99% of them were in the top 10% of their class.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I don't understand how it would. The UC system (and UC Berkeley included) is mostly composed of California students. Out of state and international are by far a minority on all the campuses--this would be by far the greater determiner rather than simply weighing APs, which wouldn't make much difference across the board.</p>
<p>Given that there isn't this disparity between other states somehow lacking APs (and even if there is, it's mostly CA anyhow), and they're accepting these students consistently on the same basis (the reweighted UC GPA--including AP and certain honors weights), how is it skewing the numbers in UC's favor?</p>
<p>On top of all of this, just statistically, if the maximum GPA achievable slides up or down, how does it affect the percentiles of the students?</p>
<p>Overall, many people posting seem incredulous, but as I explained in my previous post, it really isn't that hard to achieve such a class when you are deliberately trying to do it. Also, too much significance is being put on that particular statistic--if you're trying to measure overall student quality comparatively to the entire nation, it doesn't tell you much.</p>
<p>It tells you that the UC Berkeley and whatnot have 99% of their student body composed of the top 10% of CA high schools, which might or might not be impressive (most of this forum would probably assert to the latter).</p>
<p>
[quote]
Did you look at the transfer thread? The numbers for the UCs were truly huge. I knew they'd be large, but nothing like that.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>The UCs are publicly (and in actuality, as you've noted) committed to admitting eligible students from California community colleges.</p>
<p>Although I'm not aware of it being much of a controversial issue in the UCs themselves, it does seem to be on these forums as a "backdoor" into the UC system.</p>
<p>since Irvine is a growing campus, it has accepted 100% of ELC students over the past few years under its holistic admissions, so, its essentially automatic, even tho Irvine is not the ELC 'guarantee' school, which last year were SB, Merced and R.</p>
<p>The methodology was explained to me by an adcom (but not at a UC). This question has been raised before, and she explained it to me in that way.</p>
<p>Can someone explain what exactly constitutes an ELC student? Is it top 12% or something?</p>
<p>ELC is the top 4% of a participating high school class as determined by UC, not your HS. UC counts a-g courses for Soph & Jr year, and awards bonus points (uncapped) for UC-approved honors and AP/IB courses. ELC students are notified in early Sept of their senior year.</p>
<p>ELC guarantees you admission to a UC campus, but not necessarily your choice.</p>
<p>Umm.... wouldn't that make the ELC pointless? As I understand, as long as you meet the UCs' minimum requirement, you are guaranteed a space in a UC campus.</p>
<p>
[Quote]
I met the UC eligibility criteria, but I wasn't admitted. Why is that?</p>
<p>Meeting the UC eligibility criteria qualifies you for admission to a UC campus, but does not guarantee admission to any specific UC campus. UC Davis uses a comprehensive review process to select students from its applicant pool. Due to limited enrollment space, applicants who were admitted generally exceeded UC eligibility criteria.</p>
<p>Qualified California residents who are not admitted by any UC campus to which they have applied may be offered freshman admission by another UC campus.
[/Quote]
</p>
<p>excellent question, but the difference is in which campus is offered to the student. A student who meets the bare minimum for UC eligibility purposes might only be offered a place at Merced or Riverside, whereas an ELC candidate can matriculate at one of the 'guarantee' schools. I think ELC is also a plus factor for UCSD & Davis and, as I mentioned earlier, Irvine.</p>
<p>ELC candidates also have a ~60% acceptance rate at UCLA and Cal, but that is bcos of their strong transcript, not necessarily elc status.</p>
<p>so they only look at GPA then? Not test scores, when determining who gets ELC?</p>
<p>yes, weighted gpa only since some apps haven't tested yet. The ELC letter that arrives just says that one has to take the SAT + subject tests (implying that the score does not matter for the elc guarantee schools).</p>