The cutthroat rank gaming stories from Texas seem like they produce their own sorts of rancor (and school/district politics about how class rank is determined). If UC were to theoretically go to that kind of system, it would be better to use “rank” as they currently determine ELC top 9% status, which is to use a high school’s recent previous class’s UC-recalculated GPAs to set benchmark UC-recalculated GPAs for each “rank” threshold, so that students in the current class are trying to hit the benchmark, rather than trying to cutthroat each other for class rank.
Of course, then there would also be issues like oversubscribed majors at each campus. Note that Texas has the same issue – top 6% auto-admits to UT Austin, but not necessarily to the CS major there, for example.
AT our school last year there were 12 NMSF, 11 were Asian. When my younger daughter was doing a competitive academic EC she was the only white kid on the team. She was told numerous times she was “pretty smart for a white kid”
So when my kids look around that is what they perceive. That Asians focus on academic achievement above all and that because we don’t, they will miss out on certain things.
Like any other college hierarchy or ranking in the general mindset, there is a feedback loop that tends to keep the hierarchy or ranking the way it is, possibly allowing for slow change. Those at the top attract more applications from stronger students, who in turn keep those schools at the top by boosting the enrolled student stats, which makes them attract stronger students the next year, etc…
“There is frustration. D was good enough for Harvard and Dartmouth, but not Berkeley?”
Really? Far more see the exact opposite (including my kids). The usual reaction to statements like this is “so what hook did you have that got you into Harvard, Stanford, etc.?”
Though there are also public flagships here in the boundless wilderness in the center of the continent where regular OOS costs aren’t much more than CA in-state costs and which are comparable to the UC’s (OK, generally not the very top ones, though some are very strong in specific subjects like chemistry). And some are generous with scholarships.
California did have a system in place to reward the very top ranked students when my kids were in high school – at that time a school rankng of top 4% gave the student preferred admission status-- but not to Berkeley or UCLA or UCSD. My daughter had that status, which meant that UCSB & UCSC were safeties for her – those top ranked students just didn’t get turned away.
And that rankng was based on individual schools, so it would be a lot harder to achieve that level at an academic magnet vs. a less competitive public high school. Not at all helpful to the high-achieving offspring of high-aspiring parents who end up clustered in more competitive schools. (Would that student from the top 10 independent school have been certifiably with the top 4% of her graduating class? And if not, would she have felt comfortable with a system that favored peers who had attended less demanding public high schools?)
And back to the question of who benefits – I see nothing wrong with the fact that my daughter’s high class rank put her at the head of the line at Santa Cruz but not Berkeley. The system wasn’t set up to benefit me and mine; it was set up to benefit the interests of the state and the state population as a whole. And if that meant sending more smart students to Santa Cruz and Merced and Riverside … fine.
I don’t know the particular policy reasons the system has moved away from that approach – though it could very well have been because of frustration from students at more competitive high schools. But a lot of things have changed since then – for example, when my kids applied to colleges many students were deterred from applying to the UC’s because of SAT subject testing requirements – those are no longer required.
The way I see it there are a set of rules and everyone has to play by the same rules. And I don’t see any particular public benefit in changing rules to somehow benefit students who already are within the most privileged demographic.
Sometimes I stumble on a thread like this at CC where I don’t know how to to contribute constructively. But here we go!
We’re instate, and our D is a high stat NMF student that has always dreamed of going to UCLA. In the end she was rejected by UCLA and UCB, waitlisted at SLO, and accepted at UCSD and UCSB. As a CA taxpayer I’m OK with this. We paid into the system, and our D has been given an opportunity to attend a top UC, so we’re satisfied.
Her opportunities out of state were greater, so I empathize with taxpayers in AZ, CO, TX, WA, NM, OK, AL, and FL; states that are aggressively recruiting high stat kids and offering them cheap or no cost educations at some of their top state universities.
Our plan all along was for our D to attend a UC, as my wife and I did long ago. My D did well in HS and has some good merit opportunities, so we will likely be leaving our “UC Equity” on the table and sending her to a private university where we think she has the best chance of succeeding.
My perspective as a Dad of a college applicant in 2018 is that, more than OOS applicants taking spots or too many kids of one ethnic group being admitted, the process has become so competitive that kids are applying to way too many schools. My D applied to 14, which I think is typical. This clogs up the wait lists and keeps kids from finding the slots where they naturally fit.
That sounds like the predecessor to the current Eligibility in Local Context, where students whose UC-weighted GPAs meet a top 9% threshold GPA set by a recent previous class as their high school will get an offer from a UC that has space (i.e. Merced) if they get shut out of the UCs that they applied to. It is also noticed during UC admission reading.
While I can understand frustration, definitely, I disagree on what some folks mean by “merit only”. Scores alone are not going ensure success or a great all around student. And in the working world, you need so much more anyway to make it. You need teamwork, innovation, charisma, communication skills…if you have all that, it makes up for a lot of score points. If you have all that and the scores…watch out!
@ccprofandmomof2 my kids know that in their heads but when their high school is 20% Asian overall but 18 of the top 20.kids are Asian the kids start to believe that either Asian kids are naturally smarter or they are naturally inclined to work harder or their parents are making them work harder. My kids tend to think it is the latter based on what their friends tell them.
Come on, UCB. You well know that the mass of HS graduates are not eligible for UC. The correct pool is the demographics of the top ~8% of high school graduates.
@ucbalumnus – yes, it was – but at 4% was a harder bar to meet than 9% – so I don’t know if the current ELC confers as much of an advantage. At the time that my daughter applied I looked at admission states which did include admission rates for ELC students. But now between ELC and statewide, it is simply two variations on ways to calculate top 9%. Numerically it is a huge difference – that is, there are 2.25 times more kids in the top 9% of their high schools than in the top 4%, so I’d think that would tend to diminish the level of admission benefit conferred.
I really think that it would be just fine the UC’s completely overhauled their admissions system and simply had all students submit a single application listing preferred major and noting which campuses they are willing to attend, in order of preference. Then each would be admitted to one campus and the system would be more efficient in terms of managing enrollment for impacted or over-subscribed majors. Students who were undecided about major could still indicate general proferences - such as humanities vs. sciences.
@calmom, I think that’s the way it used to be! When I applied in the 80’s, I swear I submitted a single UC application and listed my schools in order preference. Why are we admitting kids to 3 schools, rejecting them from 2, and waitlisting them for another, when we could just be admitting them to their top choice? Crazy…
I applied to the UC system in 1969, but was applying from out of state and only selected one campus --so I really don’t remember. But I really don’t see much of a downside-- it would be a big cost savings for the students, because there would be one application fee to apply to all 10 campuses. It doesn’t mean that every student would be accepted to their top choice --but it would probably increase likelihood of students getting their desired major or field of study and in the end the students would simply be seeing acceptance notices with campus assignments.
I think application cost is a big problem under the current system – I encouraged my kids to apply to 3 campuses each – currently it is $70 per campus, so to apply to all 10 it would cost $700. If it were one application with a ranked choices then even if students didn’t get into their top choices it would increase likelihood that they would get into a campus that wasn’t dead last on their preference list.
@Twoin18 : No hooks, assuming that’s what you were asking. D was a national debater. Probably not in the top 50 but somewhere in the top 100. The coaches at Berkeley, Dartmouth, Georgetown, and Harvard all wanted her – maybe some more than others. As much as I was frustrated by Berkeley’s decision, it was probably for the best in the end, because she would definitely have gone to Berkeley, and, as much as I would have liked to have had her just down the hill rather than 3000 miles away, I think she got a much better education and had a far better experience at Dartmouth.
A ranked match system like Questbridge or medical residency could work in the narrow context of UCs, because they appear to have similar FA policies (though they can be a few thousand dollars different). A separate match system could also be run for CSUs.
But then it would require an early commitment to rank the campuses and majors/divisions instead of being able to decide later.