And I did reread your posts, per your request. To an extent, you are right - luck IS involved. When a school has double or triple or quadruple the number of capable students applying, the admissions staff have to start looking at the incoming class as a WHOLE.
They are not there to reward the student for his/her performance in high school, they are there to create a class of young people with diverse talents, experiences, voices, points of view, etc. This diversity significantly improves the quality of the educational experience for every student, as being exposed to a wide range of talented, thoughtful and opinionated students for four years is a wonderful training ground to succeed as an adult.
So yes, you start getting into the question of “who among this group of capable students will add something unique to our incoming class?” and “unique” can often depend on outside factors, like the experiences and talents of those that are already going to be admitted. It’s a tough process to go through.
Those in-state students are still eligible to attend UC Merced. I would agree that some CSU’s might be preferable to Merced for a variety of reasons… but if the student waits untl admission results are in before applying to a CSU they could find themselves shut out from their preferred CSU’s as well.
@RedwoodForest - did your daughter receive a “Count Me In” email from UC Merced? That should have gone out to all students who met guaranteed eligibility standards but didn’t get admitted to another campus. See http://admissions.ucmerced.edu/cmifaq
@Undercrackers kid had an unweighted 4.0, which probably corresponds to a UC-weighted-capped GPA of 4.3-4.4 if it is in hard courses. “Over a 4.0” implies some sort of weighted calculation – what were her unweighted and UC-weighted-capped GPAs?
@websensation I think some of those kids who got into Harvard & Stanford might have made the mistake of being sloppy with their UC application.
I know a lot of kids just try to fit their common app essays into the UC application, when UC is asking for something entirely different — both my kids did that, years ago when perhaps admissions was more predictable – because in both cases they had the idea that the UC’s were a safety, and that they really wanted to attend one of the private schools they were applying to.
Obviously, UC admissions has changed and it can’t be viewed as a “safety” any more – but I wonder how many high stat kids still are filling out and submitting that UC application on November 30th without giving much thought to the essay prompts.
3.8 unweighted GPA in hard courses would likely get into some UCs (though the chance of being shut out of UCs is higher if the student does not include UCSC/UCR/UCM).
However, if a student thinks that his/her 3.8 GPA that is weighted using his/her high school’s exaggerated weighting system (so perhaps 2.8 unweighted and 3.1-3.2 UC-weighted-capped) is competitive may be deceiving himself/herself about the likelihood of admission to UCs. Or the student with a 4.5 GPA from an exaggerated weighting system may think that UCB and UCLA should be easy admits, not realizing that if it came from a 3.5 unweighted (3.8-3.9 UC-weighted-capped), UCB and UCLA are reaches.
UCs are very GPA sensitive in frosh admissions, but applicants must be careful to recalculate their GPAs to get GPAs that are comparable to those shown in UC admission stats. The UC-weighted-capped is the most commonly used one, but some campuses show unweighted and/or fully-weighted versions as well (but that should be noted when used).
No, that wouldn’t work in Calif. You’d have students/parents complaining that they don’t want their kids in a high school where there are too many uber-achieving students because then their kids would never have a chance. With UT and TAMU having req’ts of what, top 7 or 10%, don’t remember exact, you already have those parents complaining if their child attends a school with too many over-achievers. The ones attending private schools are already screwed.
Some of these Calif schools have so many over-achievers that they will have 25+ Vals and the senior class is only 500 students. My over-achieving nephew is at Berkeley EECS, perfect ACT and SAT, NMF, and Val. He attended a smaller magnet tech school, so who would be the top 1% when there’s only 100 seniors and nearly a quarter of them had perfect GPAs?
Its also a sign that it’s a highly competitive high school. High school ranking should be banned. It’s not a meaningful metric, especially at high schools with really smart students.
There are many high schools in the Bay Area with dozens of National Merit Scholars–many with over 50 and one (public) with 91…and CA has a very high bar.
This is what we are dealing with.
“Its also a sign that it’s a highly competitive high school. High school ranking should be banned. It’s not a meaningful metric, especially at high schools with really smart students.”
This. My kids go to a magnet school where every single student at the school would be in the top 5-10% of the local nonmagnet schools. But class rank still obviously plays a role in admissions for many colleges so parents of average excellent kids have to decide if they want their kid to go to the magnet school and be in the bottom half of the class and a lower GPA but get a great foundation education and be surrounded by peers who are all going to college or go to the local school where they’ll be in the top 5% of the class with perfect grades but not have access to the same classes, opportunities or peer group.
@milee30 I couldn’t agree more and it does not just impact the tippy top students, everyone is impacted whem class rank is used in highly competitive high schools.
Our district stopped reporting class rank quite a few years ago and at the time there was concern as to if this would negatively affect top admissions potential but as it has played out I see why they stopped reporting, it was to help everyone in the admissions game.
While they do not report class rank, the school profile (or whatever it is called) does breakdown the grade point by class percentage. When my son graduated, in order to be in the top 75% of the class, you needed to have better than a 3.0. I can only imagine that back when they were reporting class rank someone with a high 29 ACT and a 2.9 GPA showed up in the lower fifth of the class and as a result many applications were torpedoed. Granted not super high stats but obviously a kid that could reach higher than no name U. Class rank is a completely misleading statistic (good or bad) and as such really should not play a role in admissions.
@KTJordan78 writes, “They are not there to reward the student for his/her performance in high school, they are there to create a class of young people with diverse talents, experiences, voices, points of view, etc. This diversity significantly improves the quality of the educational experience for every student, as being exposed to a wide range of talented, thoughtful and opinionated students for four years is a wonderful training ground to succeed as an adult.”
^^ I wish this could be posted at the top of every thread in the admissions forum and every college forum. The sooner parents and students accept this reality, the sooner they can better adjust their expectations at the start of the application season and/or move on from their disappointments at the end of the application season. Sometimes, you’re unlucky because the school already has too many robotics club presidents who aspire to be computer programmers. It’s not a reflection of your hard work at all.
I’d add one more hard truth: Not only are the UCs not there to reward high school performance, but they are also not there to reward you for being a California taxpayer.
I think only 7% of UCLA’s budget is from state funding. The remaining budget is supported by entities not called the state of California. If that’s the case, Californians should rightfully get preferential consideration for the first 7% of the class. The remaining 93% should be up for grabs for anyone in and out of state.
The flaw in the “7% state funding” argument is that the UC, CSU and CCC systems in California are owned and operated by the state of California… hence California residents/taxpayers own 100% of the system. Based on that logic, we should get 100% of the seats.
I haven’t read the whole thread but I think there needs to be a bigger investment into the CSUs so that they’re a comparable option for high achieving students.
@calmom It definitely is an issue if the desired major isn’t offered. My daughter (HS '20, college '24) would consider Riverside — not so long ago the overflow campus — except civil engineering isn’t offered. I have far more frustration w/CSU, where impaction is rampant.
Re post 857
Yes. All those simplistically suggesting CSU’s as an acceptable alternative to UC are not quite in touch with campus realities. For that matter, the UC campuses are to some degree impacted as well. The entire public system in the state is not in a position at the moment to serve adequately the number of capable students. It will only continue or worsen until business lures potential employees OOS by moving their own facilities there. This is the Gold Rush of the 21st century, but most Californians are in massive denial about this particular supply and demand.
Given that your daughter is still only a high school sophomore, it might be good for her to broaden her horizons as to potential major-- as well as to work to maximize her GPA and increase chance of admission at a preferred school. Both Riverside and Merced have engineering schools, even though civil engineering is one area of specialization that is not offered. But many students do end up having to adjust their expectations as to college major based on where they have been accepted and/or where they can afford. It’s also very possible to get a bachelor’s degree in one field of engineering, followed by a civil engineering master’s
Majors become “impacted” when there are more students applying than spaces available – while from the perspective of the student the solution would be to expand facilities and create more spaces — the state needs to determine how to best allocate resources. More student entering the pipeline for in-demand majors could simply result in an “impacted” employment market. How many entry-level jobs are there in a specific career-oriented major? Are California employers having to look to students from out-of-state colleges to fill those jobs? Or are there students in California graduating with those majors that have difficulty finding employment because of a glut of student graduating with similar credentials.
I don’t know the answer to that question for any specific major – but I do know that undergrads often change their major, and plenty of students wash out of more difficult majors — plus the popularity of various majors shifts over time. So when the state is looking at how to allocate space and hire faculty, it really does have to balance all sorts of disparate needs.
All students really need a Plan B. Of course everyone should be able to aspire to their top choice goals, but students (and parents) also need to understand that we can’t always get what we want – at least not alway by a direct route. And even for students who do get what they hope for, life often throws up unexpected hurdles. So I’ve always been a “hope for the best, plan for the worst” type of person and in the context of college admissions, it meant that even with limited financial resources, my kids had plenty of options.
I do agree that it is frustrating when the level of competition for college admisions shifts the Plan B to alternatives that wouldn’t have needed to be considered a decade ago. For example, my kids never considered applying to CSU’s because acceptance into at least UCSC or USCB was virtually guaranteed to them.
Then again, my son who turned down a spot at Berkeley and went out of state to college ended up graduating from CSU Humboldt. So the end of the journey for him wasn’t necessarily much different than it would have been if he had set his sights somewhat lower at the beginning (though perhaps life lessons learned along the way were far more important than the name of the college on his diploma).