<p>“I have been told that at some admissions offices, asian applications literally go in one pile, whites in a second pile, and URMS in a third pile, and you are effectively competing against the other students placed in your pile. Is this the America we really want?”</p>
<p>I don’t think you would be too happy with the fair alternative, floridad, which would be that students compete strictly on GPA and test scores, completely race blind. I’d be OK with 90% of the student body at UCB and UCLA being Asian; would you?</p>
<p>longprime - I understand what you are saying but you did not say which schools are involved. </p>
<p>I am a bit curious - there is no FA for masters as far as I know. Either you are taking a loan or getting an assistantship. Getting an assistantship for CS masters is very rare. </p>
<p>The school I went to back in 86 took as many as 100 students at the master’s level for CS and so limited seats was not a factor since they funded zero applicants.</p>
<p>I had a friend (well off to do) that attended a UC school this way. So he asks his dad for money for a car. Dad wires the kind of money that a decent car would be including (I think) Hong Kong appropriate license plate/parking/whatever they call it fee that doubles or triples the price of the car; so my friend got like $50k or so for a car… He promptly bought an Acura NSX… Money galore.</p>
<p>The phenomenon described in the article has been going on for ever in a lot of schools… It may warrant more attention in California because of the Asian OOS vs Asian American aspect, but it’s been like this for ever…</p>
<p>Yes, the GPA inflation is that bad. I live in California but I go to a private school. Many students leave my school after 8th grade so that they can get an incredibly high GPA and still do well on the SAT because of the private school education they received before high school. </p>
<p>The UCs in particular weigh the GPA (the UCs have something called a UC GPA) more heavily than test scores. Last year, a senior at my school with over a 2300 and a 3.8 uw gpa (she was valedictorian) was rejected from Cal and UCLA while a family friend’s daughter at a local public school with a 4.0 uw and an 1850 was accepted. Neither student had a hook.</p>
<p>because the UC’s admissions offices have been told to cut the number of accepted Calif students back even further than last year, in order to bring in more OOS/ International $$$.
And that may be of interest to Calif seniors and their parents who weren’t aware of how many slots were being allocated to OOS students.</p>
<p>Why does the article say that Chinese-Americans are losing out to overseas students? Aren’t all Californians of all races losing out to out-of-state and foreign students?</p>
<p>^Who knows. The UCs can’t use race as a factor in admissions. However, my counselor said that although they can’t use that as a factor, sometimes your essay or your name will reveal your ethnicity and they may subconsciously use that information to make a decision. I don’t think that happens often though…</p>
<p>I don’t understand why state funded, as in money from the tax payers, should be admitting that many international students. State school’s mission should be providing education to its own residents, even if those international students were paying higher tuition, they are paying the same amount for room and board, and those dorms are subsidized by CA tax money. With so few spots for our own children, if I were a CA residents I think I would be very upset. </p>
<p>I gather international students are treated the same as OOS students, both in admission and fees? I personally think our colleges’ mission should be to educate American kids, not to admit who ever could afford to pay. Without a good education, it would be hard for our next generation to compete in this world. Why are we giving kids from other countries better opportunities than our own kids? Those government administrators are robbing our future generation with their short term band aid fixes.</p>
<p>@schmaltz: nothing. But floridad seemed to imply that non-Asians get the short end of the stick if race is factored in. Everything I’ve read indicates the opposite.</p>
<p>Because the taxpayers of California, through their elected representatives, have cut back funding, which makes the schools more dependent on tuition dollars. With less money from the taxpayers, the universities are faced with basically three options: cut themselves back (thus reducing the number of available seats for in-state as well as out-of-state students), increase in-state tuition - or do what they’re doing.</p>
<p>At most (not all) publics, yes. Also, the UC-weighted gpa adds honors/AP increments to those grades. At many publics, it is trivial to get permission to enroll in those advanced classes (vs. at some other publics & most privates). That’s how students end up with “14-19 Honors/AP classes” kind of thing, and a high UC-gpa. That phenomenon of multiple advanced class opportunities is not unique to CA, but the point is that CA is taking from a huge pool of such public school students, all competing with each other for admission.</p>
<p>An important factor for UC admission – given its mission – is the factor of personal challenge in the student’s life, especially for the more popular campuses. There are plenty of those students in CA, especially from the lower middle class, and to a less extent from those of more privileged origins. There are so many well-provided-for white and Asian students that it is difficult to stand out in such an applicant pool for UC, especially for Berkeley and UCLA. Further, these two campuses in particular look for significant leadership (not h.s. campus clubs) and sustained community service. Finally these two campuses especially are interested in in-state geographical breadth. </p>
<p>I counsel my high-performing students not to count on any particular UC campus, but to apply to a range of privates as well.</p>
<p>Obviously none of this directly addresses the OP’s thread topic, just responds to the boxed quote. However, combining the above with annasdad accurate analysis, the in-state, relatively privileged student is finding it quite competitive, vs., for example, an in-state student of Indian or Chinese or Vietnamese origins whose parents are blue-collar immigrants making a meager existence.</p>
<p>What exactly do people mean by grade inflation and does anyone have any actual statistics on grade inflation in California or anywhere at the high school level.? People repeatedly post this, but I am not sure exactly what they mean quantitatively. And I’ve searcehd the internet and found scarce public data on high school grade inflation - mainly a lot about university grade inflation.</p>
<p>Maybe I’m just not looking in the right place. I’d appreciate a source or two.</p>
<p>bovertine, I know there have been threads on grade inflation (and I believe with some sources). Let me just say, though, that for CA publics, especially within at least the last 6 years, classroom tests have been increasingly easy to pass with perfect scores, as more school districts have increased student load on teachers and (thus) indirectly encouraged ‘mechanized’ testing. What has taken the biggest hit is the writing of papers, both as separate assignments and as integrated into testing. For students who are not LD, it is not that hard to memorize data. Teachers who consider themselves overburdened merely recycle tests and (therefore) don’t allow families ever to take corrected tests home, which also compromises the learning opportunities of such testing. These are not practices I approve of or have ever engaged in, but it’s the reality. The fallout of that reality is that we are seeing, increasingly, high school graduates (from publics especially) not prepared for even community college work – and I don’t mean the previous standard phenomenon, which restricted that to students from poor families of very low literacy.</p>
<p>Grade inflation, in the context of this thread, can be both related to the public school standards and to the measurement of the UC-gpa, as ‘advanced’ weighted as it is. (See my post above.)</p>
<p>There is a very simple reason why the UC system is obliged to accept more full-pay OOS and International students= money. “In 1991, 47 percent of the [UC] operating budget was paid by the taxpayers, a share that dropped to 11 percent last year[2010].” Next year’s budget is set to be reduced another $500 million next year through trigger cuts because of lower estimated tax revenue. The money has to come from somewhere- if not the taxpayers, then the students have to pony up. The admission of international Chinese students doesn’t displace Asian-Americans, since the UCs can’t use race in admissions, so the displacement is across the board.
Nevertheless, I see International education as a vibrant growth business for the U.S.- it’s almost like an in-country export. Maybe this increase in overseas students will spur growth on the campuses- more dorms, more professors, more research dollars, etc. It can be a real positive- keeping state (and private) schools afloat, promoting global awareness, etc. We just want to make sure state residents are treated fairly. But these full-pay students actually are helping to keep the universities solvent during these dismal times.</p>