The UC’s use criterion #13 to determine if your home or school is in an underserved area. They want to identify low SES schools where an applicant may have had to deal with increased challenges to access your education.
1 Like
OK, so safe to assume the higher acceptance rates for OC (and Irvine district, in particular) is NOT because UCI sees them as underserved 
1 Like
There are parts of OC that are considered underserved. Santa Ana comes to mind.
4 Likes
Of course, as there are parts of SCC. Is the Irvine district underserved?
I hear that, but know of too many high performing students that would have preferred to go UCI to believe that is the primary cause. If I must speculate, I’d guess there is some program that Irvine and some other OC schools use that AOs really like… worth looking into if Irvine schools and Sacto schools have some of the same programs given the high acceptance rates in both counties… is UCI a PLTW partner?
Someone else probably knows Irvine Unified better than me. I tried to look up if maybe Portola was considered Title 1. It looks like 15 elementary and middle schools in Irvine Unified are listed but I don’t see any high schools. * Fiscal Year 2021-22(XLSX; Revised 07-Feb-2023)
1 Like
Well what do you know, the Irvine schools with high acceptance rates, as well as some of the Sacto schools with high acceptance rates both have the PLTW program. Maybe AOs REALLY like that program? Gives me hope my son has a chance even without PLTW at his HS, as he HAS taken advantage of what the school offers in engineering tech and has supplemented that with a few CC&online engineering courses. If the high rates for Irvine and Sacto schools are due to AO’s value in the PLTW curriculum, it would be nice to know that for kids out of the area that REALLY like UCI… might be able to fill gaps knowing what AOs are looking for in applicants.
1 Like
And also–as the UC Irvine AO on the recent podcast stated, UC (or at least UCI as he was speaking for UCI only) wants to see representation from every county–maybe even every high school, public and private. He specifically joked about how UCI got no apps this year from Alpine county so he said UCI reps were going to have to make a trip there to do some recruiting up there to stir up some interest. So maybe criterion #13 is used for that too–not just for underserved schools and counties, but to get representation from all (maybe that’s the same thing) regardless of whether underserved or not.
1 Like
PLTW also provides a lot of biomedicine courses. UCI may be a great engineering/CS school, but a big part of its reputation has always come primarily from its excellent pre-med/bio programs. I’m from a Sacramento school that offers PLTW’s biomed program and we’ve always been really successful with Irvine, especially when sending pre-med hopefuls that participated in that program down there. Overall, being part of the PLTW curriculum is huge for demonstrating interest in a premed aligned major like Bio. I’m sure that demonstrated interest is a big factor in determining admissions too.
The SF Chronicle put together this fascinating database this year. The data is from 2020-2021. It shows admission rates, including by GPA and ethnicity for every public high school in California. Charts show UC admissions rates for every California public high school
Except the UCs explicitly say they do not consider demonstrated interest in their official CDS filings.
2 Likes
I meant demonstrated interest within the major/field. That is most definitely considered, in the form of relevant ECs/experiences, like enrolling in a specialized biomedical program in high school if you hope to go into a typical pre-med major like Bio in college.
Most UCs are not admitting to Bio by major. Other than for COE and some specific high demand majors there is really no need to demonstrate anything major specific.
Just trying to find a reason for the other guys’ previous point that Sacramento schools, where the PLTW programs are very popular, seem to be favored by UCI. I’m sure that as part of the holistic application review, having something like PLTW is most definitely a boon to the application since there’s no harm in having an application that all flows together well. PLTW can especially benefit an application since they are now designated as 5.0 GPA Honors courses by the UC system.
Does anyone think UCB Letter of Recommendation requests have anything to do with regional preference? Just wondering.
I once saw someone say that it seemed like UCB sent more LoR requests to applicants that came from schools they were not familiar with (so probably, schools that are less competitive and further away from Berkeley)
That did not seem to be the case this year. Students reported that UCB applicants at Berkeley High and Albany High received a large number of LOR requests.
1 Like
PLTW courses are UC-approved (non-honors) a-g courses. I seriously doubt they are considered ECs. They DO count toward # of A-G courses and toward course rigor (within context of major/school), so I suspect the AOs consider them to be more rigorous than the thousands of other engineering a-g electives offered at other schools throughout CA. If that is the case, then I believe UCI is not being true to the ‘rigor within applicant’s context, including courses offered at applicant’s high school’ given the acceptance rates from schools with the PLTW curriculum vs excellent schools without. My son was rejected from UCI having taken all engineering electives available to him at an excellent NorCal HS (plus a few outside school, but not DE), as well as the other somewhat expected courses for UC engineering applicants from the area (MultiVarCalc, AP PhysicsC, AP Stats, etc.). Not that his application was perfect, but I suspect many similar applicants were accepted from OC (and Sacto?) schools given the >30% acceptance rates at some of those schools (indicating many students accepted without ELC designation). It is what it is, I just wish all the UC schools would publish the admit data by major with summary academic statistics according to the 13 criteria. The lack of transparency with such disparities very rightly invites criticism.
2 Likes
Sorry to hear of your son’s rejection from UCI (my DD was rejected too). Looks like you/this board solved the mystery of the Sacramento admits to UCI. How are your son’s other college results going? Was UCI a top choice for him? Any other UC or Cal State admissions?
2 Likes
Sorry to hear about your DD’s UCI denial as well. It’s not so much that he doesn’t have really good options (UW-Seattle, CU-Boulder, VaTech and UF OOS, SDSU and LBSU IS), but loved the UCI campus when he visited and suspect that may have been his choice when the dust settled… it just felt right. Got deferred from a few reach/lottery schools as well, waitlisted UCD. It’s a hard pill to swallow as 30yr (exorbitant) tax payers with a highly qualified kid to likely go 0 for UC with aero programs. Going out of state is likely an extra $150k all-in. It stinks, and I do know in-state students rejected from the schools DS was accepted to feel exactly the same way.
2 Likes