<p>So this kid at my school has been accepted to Berkeley already, and he has apparently already submitted his positive SIR. Yes, yes, I know, decisions don't come out until 3/26, but here's the story: one or both of his parents are in the video production/editing business, and he has a job of taking videos of football practices for a Cal Football employee. According to the student, this employee pulled some strings and got him admitted about two weeks ago. I know this sounds outrageous, but as far as I can tell it is legit. My college counselor certainly thinks so.</p>
<p>The kicker: he is absolutely unqualified for Berkeley. I don't know what he wants to major in, but his GPA, test scores, courseload, and EC's are certainly not UCB material. He isn't a (total) druggie with a 2.5 and no activities, but he still is nowhere near the average Berkeley student.</p>
<p>Can we all agree that this is unfair and reprehensible, especially to us CCers who have worked so hard for so long to earn our college opportunities the way they are supposed to be earned? So far I've been alone in my grumpiness; I'm just looking for some people to agree with me ; )</p>
<p>Does he have any physical evidence to prove it? Do you know his stats? how can you instantly judge thaht they are “nowhere near the average Berkeley student”?</p>
<p>yeah, if his grades and academic abilities are what you say they are, he’ll probably graduate with a very low berkeley gpa, if he doesn’t drop out first.</p>
<p>I know this doesn’t sound plausible, but my senior class is small and this is well known. Our college counselor and other teachers are totally on board with it.</p>
<p>Thanks to some reading between the lines on our online counseling website, I have managed to infer his stats from various graphs the site supplies. His weighted GPA is 3.4 (alright), his SAT Reasoning is between 1300 and 1350 (!!!) and his ACT is 15 (!!!).</p>
<p>Do we need any more justification as to his (un)qualification? The real question is how does this pulling of strings happen and why is it allowed to happen.</p>
<p>I do have hard data based on our website. It tracks anonymous statistics such as GPA, SAT, and ACT, as well as each person’s admission decision to each school they applied to. It also gives us access to a list of last year’s seniors, their acceptances, and their stats. The system only has data for this year and last year, and I can directly correlate all the other, much more qualified admissions to the respective last year seniors. That leaves only one admit, with the not-so-hot statistics I mentioned above.</p>
<p>They’re working the system, I suppose. I don’t like it, but that’s how the world works. Don’t try to tell me that if you had lackluster stats and a chance for a guarenteed spot at BERKELEY you wouldn’t take it…</p>
<p>some people rise to the occasion for college, others dont</p>
<p>i wouldnt worry about. my sophomore year this dude was bragging about how he got connections into stanford, and all the teachers and students believed him. I found him on facebook, and hes just an persian with a little too much money and too much free time (ie. living off oil money without a job kinda thing).</p>
<p>Give me a break. Anybody would take it. Just take a cream puff major. With a 3.4 gpa, he’ll be fine unless he just slacks all the way/all the time.
And SATs don’t mean jack. Got a 1700 and then a 2120. Just depends how lucky you are on that specific day (particularly for people like me who didn’t bother to study except take a few practice exams). Hell my friend smoked weed, took SAT 2 math 2c and got an 800 while I studied my ass off and only got 720. Awesomeness huh?</p>