Audit shows UC admission standards relaxed for out-of-staters

Parents Forum
821

However, the relatively lower importance of SAT and ACT scores in UC admissions does reduce the usefulness of such comparisons. It also results in unpleasant surprises for test score heavy applicants who incorrectly assume that very high test scores make up for lower GPA in UC admissions.

Test scores also strongly correlate to family income. Since OOS enrollees are generally high income (cannot afford the price otherwise), it is to be expected that their scores will be higher.

So we have OOS students with much higher test scores but marginally lower GPA than IS students. In UC admissions, this is probably in the same ballpark, unlike at many other schools that will prefer the much higher test scores at the cost of marginally lower GPA.

822

@ucalumnus @al2simon

The make up of the scores can be debated - although there are a lot of charts out there claiming the nonres scores across the board are lower than resident and much less hard evidence from the UCs.

One thing neither side would question is that nonresident scores have dropped and resident scores have risen.

You simply can’t add 20,000 nonres students to the system in 6 years and expect any other outcome.

And if you are going to not admit any number of resident kids with 2150 + sats to any campus but Merced, Riverside or SC the kind of statistical parsing al2simon wants to do might be legally important but it will not be politically very convincing.

823

@cheeryParent

I haven’t seen a good breakdown for UCB COE. UCLA publishes good stats that break out international not OOS. For Samueli (UCLA engineering) undergrad using INTERNATIONAL ONLY - not OOS included
2012 - 15% international (484 students)
2013 - 17% international (533 students)
2014 - 19% international (592 students)

Have not seen 2015 numbers yet. But 2014 is nearly 20% international only.

Replacing 200 of those students with resident applicants would be easy as pie if the funds were there.

(this was all well laid out in the audit by the way - but with numbers for more UC campuses. Most popular majors for nonresidents etc. It’s really worth a read.)

824

With regard to resident vs. nonresident credentials, it’s also important to remember that the UC system tries to take in students from across the state. I’m not making a judgment about the practice but it means that there are quite a few high scoring, high GPA students in more affluent towns that do not gain admission to their chosen UC campuses. It’s not strictly a matter of comparing enrollment stats; you have to look at the in state group that was denied as well.

825

You're refusing to think critically.

I wrote my posts only to try to correct some misinformation and help those who are silently reading the thread understand what is going on. Life is too short to do more. Oh well.

Personally, I’m not going to have a heart attack worrying about what the politicians and voters of California do. I do think Berkeley and UCLA are wonderful, world-class research universities that also provide high quality college education for many students. They’re great examples of the best of public higher education. I hope the politicians and the voters of California do not hurt them too badly. Cooler heads should stop and think for a bit about what is the wisest thing to do.

If it were me, I would take the $67 billion that California is wasting on the high speed rail project (which IMO is clearly going to cost more and do less than everyone is being promised) and use the money to subsidize the college education of a few million young people. But that’s just me being all silly.

826

@al2simon

As far as the honors courses and UCB, I have not seen the numbers, but I bet it’s a bit of smoke screen. Most kids I know that are applying to Berkeley are AP kids. Honors courses have to be UC approved and most schools that offer AP courses don’t have a lot of AP competing with honors courses. And for that do have both, if the honors course didn’t exist the student would likely take the AP instead.

Probably more applicable to some other campuses, but there are a limited number of honors courses that give you extra GPA points, It is important to realize that a school calling a course “honors” means squat, the UCs need to certify them. (I’d love to know how many schools have UC certified honors pottery - I’d bet it’s not very many if any. That sounds like BS.)

At my D’s school, for instance, there are only 5 honors classes - and 3 of those are language. The rest of the subject have AP or regular track.

You can search a course here: https://hs-articulation.ucop.edu/agcourselist#/list/search/institution

In any regard, this is all BS that misses the main point. The UC’s added thousands of new nonresident students each year since 2007. Right after they were allowed to keep that money and spend themselves.

I don’t know what part of the admissions you think I don’t understand, but that part is clear as day - and a huge contributor to this problem. If that money were to go into the general allotment like the resident student monies, it would be a different landscape.

827

It seems that you do not know how UC GPA’s work for both in-state and out-of-state students. It is not too hard to understand. There are probably millions of former high school students who could explain this issue to you. Just ask one of them … maybe another poster has the time to explain it.

828

@al2simon

I understand completely. Who offers that honors pottery course you mentioned?

829

@CaliDad2020

“Who offers that honors pottery course you mentioned?”
I think @al2simon was being exaggerated.

“At my D’s school, for instance, there are only 5 honors classes - and 3 of those are language. The rest of the subject have AP or regular track.”
In this case, your D had 3 honors classes where she could gain extra credit than OOS students (the 2 non-languages + 1 language). And you will be surprised as to what the kids would do in order to maximize their weighted GPA.

830

Oh, you mean “lying?” Or just “denigrating?” Oh… just “exaggerating.”

See, that is exactly the problem - “pretending” that resident kids are getting extra GPA points for BS pottery courses is BS. And insulting. And shows the mentality of the poster and their attitude to CA kids, I believe.

Also, you cannot take an Honors Latin AND an Honors Spanish and Honors something else (along with AP Calc AB, AP Cac BC, AP CS, AP Eng, AP Physics, AP Chem, AP Bio, AP Studio Art) unless you are a native Spanish speaker and an amazing Latin student and don’t do some other AP. There are only so many courses a HS kid can take in a year. If most are AP there is little room for honors. And you can’t take honors Physics if you are taking AP Physics.

Some schools cap AP (like my D’s - they limit how many you can take without petition.) Schools all over the world and CA schools all have different numbers of APs, IBs, and honors courses. The UCs whining about those numbers prove they lost the rest of the argument.

MOST of the students applying to UCB are taking the toughest courses out there. And even those that opt to take an honors Calc when AP is offered, would, if they were legit UCB candidates, take AP Calc if the honors were not available.

I await the study that comes out that show what the GPA difference is from the policy, but I bet it would be close to non-existent across the thousands of students.

And is not the real problem - not even close.

831

I thought it was clear that I was being flippant when I mentioned Honors Pottery Making. I will make it clearer next time.

But if you must know, there are a few dozen CA schools that give UC Honors credit for visual art courses. The most extreme example is Sierra Canyon high school in Chatsworth. The following courses are UC Honors credit eligible -

Honors Ceramics III

Honors Ceramics IV

Honors Sculpture III
Honors Sculpture IV

I have no interest in insulting CA kids. However, I do think it's a bit strange that for CA residents Honors Ceramics III gets the same GPA bump as AP Calculus, etc. (I guess for students applying as an arts major it would make some sense, but not in general). Meanwhile, an OOS kid taking Differential Equations doesn't get any bump.

If you want a more typical and more serious example, here’s one. My nephew got into Berkeley this past year as an OOS applicant to EECS (don’t worry, he turned down the offer & will be attending elsewhere). Suppose instead that he’d gone to the CA public high school that my son’s freshman roommate went to -
[ul]
[]My nephew took Honors Chemistry & Honors Physics, then AP Chemistry and AP Physics. As an OOS, he gets extra GPA credit for 2 years of classes. If he’d gone to this CA school, he’d get 4 years.
[]My nephew took Multivariate Calculus / Linear Algebra (after AP Calculus BC). As an OOS, he gets 0 extra GPA credit for this class. But at this CA school, he’d get 1 year of GPA credit for Honors Pre-Calculus even though it’s a less advanced HS class.
[li]My nephew took Spanish IV honors, then AP Spanish. He gets 1 year of extra GPA credit, but if he went to this CA school he gets 2 years.[/li][/ul]
I don’t think anyone cares that the rules are different. I believe the weighted GPA is just a number that the schools use as an initial hurdle. I’m sure the admissions people at Berkeley are smart and experienced enough to know that the GPA rules can get screwy in situations like this. But examples like this show that comparing weighted GPAs for in-state and OOS applicants is misleading since it’s always biased in favor of in-state students.

832

Given the length of this thread and the passion with which arguments have been made, I’m skeptical that any proposal is enough to salve the disappointment of those who do not gain admission. The function of a “public university” and how we define “public” are forever changed, and I don’t think it can revert back. The days when every Californian who qualified was admitted to UCLA and Berkeley are over. And as long as the admissions process involves rejecting a number of the taxpaying public, you’re going to get complaints.

833

@PragmaticMom There was never a day when “every Californian who qualified as admitted to UCLA and Berkeley…” At least not in a long time. And that is not the issue - at least for me.

That some people don’t want to acknowledge the huge shift in the admission and enrollment picture that came immediately after - and as a result of - the change in how nonresident tuition was handled at the individual campuses is strange.

The difference from 2005 to 20015 is larger, more dramatic and more persistent than at any other time in modern UC history.

That may have to be the “new normal” due to financial issues. But it should not become the “new normal” without overt public and legislative approval. That is just wrong.

And even with increased funding from the taxpayer - which they have already got, btw, I don’t think the UCs will go back to status quo without a fight. I think they want this to be the “new normal.”

@al2simon But why would you be glib about that except to suggest that CA kids are getting bogus extra point bumps FROM CLASSES THE UC’S CERTIFY?? Not all Honors classes in CA get GPA bumps. One reason the UC’s give the GPA point for APPROVED honors is AP courses are not universally available at the same rate (and cost money btw.) And, as the audit chart shows, resident GPAs have been rising at nearly every campus while more nonresident kids have been admitted.

There really is no reason for the UCs to look at total weighted GPA anyway. Most schools don’t. The general rule in colleges these days is to create a college specific GPA - usually tossing out courses they think are bogus, dropping + and - if a school uses that, then looking at what APs/Honors a kid took out of what is available. And they have the UC GPA as well. How much grade scrutiny really tells them anything new?

But again, this kind of micro-parsing is missing the forest for the trees. The game changed in 2007 because of how schools could use nonres tuition.

If we change that rule back the whole conversation flips. But I don’t see much chance of that happening soon.

How would your nephew get 4 years of credit? Did he take two science courses in one year? The UC’s (and few colleges actually) use senior year grades in admission GPA. So he must have taken Honors Chem in 9th grade (doesn’t count to UC GPA of course, but Berkeley can count to unweighted GPA if they want. Then Honors Physics and AP Chem in 10th and AP physics in 11th? (And as an admit officer I’d have to ask why he’s taking honors Physics and then AP physics. They cover the same ground. He should have taken AP Physics Mech and AP Physics EE, That’s odd. Same for Chem. Why waste two courses? That sounds like a really poor instance of chasing the GPA. He’s probably a guy that should have taken an AP or Honors art course. BTW, nearly every engineering hiring person we talked to said they wish more Engineering kids took design and art more seriously… But that’s another discussion. And I don’t understand the honors pre-calc. Why didn’t he just take AP AB calc?

But at the end of the day, to me, this is a distraction. The point is WHERE the increased admits are getting admission. With 20% international enrollment Samueli could easily be 40% nonresident. That’s insane. Same with COE. These are schools that already have entrenched resident gender and URM imbalances that the UCs have vowed to address - and they do that by oversubscribing nonresident admits? It’s so cynical and hypocritical as to not be believed.

834

Honestly I think art classes like ceramics, painting, drama,… are as valuable as science and math classes.
My daughter concentrated too much on AP classes in HS (she had more than 13 APs) took those art classes later in colleges and found them very rewarding to her life and career.

835

Not sure if this is a typo, but UC rarely uses senior grades in decisions for admissions.

Huh? UC admissions officers receive a report of all three GPA’s: unweighted, weighted-capped, and weighted-uncapped. All are used in holistic admissions.

Most colleges use whatever is on the transcript, or in the case of UC/Cal State, whatever is self-reported. They don’t have the staff to go back and recalc GPA’s. (Think about what that would require, when senior transcripts don’t arrive until Feb.)

836

Same thing with my son in CA. He took MV Calc, DEQ, and LA in a UC college but they were not counted for HS GPA.
If he wanted them to be included in HS GPA, his GPA would be dropped because anything taken outside of his HS is count as 4, not 5 like an AP class taken in HS.

AP Calc is dime a dozen in a relatively competitive CA HS. 40% of kids in my kids’ HS completed Calc AB by 10th grade.

837

^^nevertheless, cw, those college classes do count for a bonus point in the uncapped ‘UC GPA’.

838

@bluebayou Yes, typo. my bad.

On the GPA front, most competitive privates at least (that’s the only place I have experience) recalculate all GPAs by their own scale. They drop “gut” courses, etc.

They also look at school’s “degree of difficulty” etc.

Agree for the UC’s that is difficult. In fact, with 100,000 applications the entire “holistic” idea is a bit of a joke.Most applications get a very quick look.

839

c-dad:

can you list which privates recalculate GPA’s?

Think about it…Harvard, for example, receives thousands of applications, some Early in November, with a decision due in 6 weeks, and others in early Jan.

Think about the work effort to go thru each and every transcript, some with a 4.0 scale, some with a 4, 6 or 100 point scale. How much time – and proofing – would it require to go thru just one transcript, much less thousands, and then give Adcoms the time to make decisions. It is just inconceivable that they would take the time and put in the effort.

Sure, they have the money to hire a dozens of staff members to do it, but why? Much easier to let the Regional Rep get to know the local schools, and eyeball a transcript for rigor and grades.

OTOH, the UC’s can do that – well, actually, the students self-repot all grades and let the computers do the recalc. Of course they are still subject to typos.

840

Pretty sure that a super selective school like Harvard can have its admissions readers check (a) whether the counselor marked “most demanding” course selection, and (b) that every or almost every grade an A to see if the applicant’s high school courses and grades make the cut (of course, lots of other things also have to make the cut for admission). No need for such schools to recalculate GPAs.