<p>@lookingforward,</p>
<p>I didn’t select these 5 applications. The producers of Frontline did.</p>
<p>But you summarized in the post. You focused on what you feel are relevant details. You could have left that out, let others pick up with their own reactions. </p>
<p>And the instruction is: The only thing you cannot take into consideration, according to the law, is the race of each applicant. </p>
<p>But that’s in your digests, too. Who speaks Spanish at home or is African-American.</p>
<p>But isn’t that why Frontline deliberately chose these particular applications?</p>
<p>The admitted student profile at Berkeley, today. </p>
<p>[Student</a> Profile | UC Berkeley Office of Undergraduate Admissions](<a href=“http://admissions.berkeley.edu/studentprofile]Student”>Student Profile - Office of Undergraduate Admissions)</p>
<p>GPA 3.90 (unweighted)
4.37 (weighted)
ACT (25th & 75th percentiles) 29-34
SAT Math (25th & 75th percentiles) 660-770
SAT Reading (25th & 75th percentiles) 630-740
SAT Writing (25th & 75th percentiles) 640-760</p>
<p>Wow, why does your meter display so many posts?</p>
<p>By today’s UCB standards, 4 out of 5 of the Frontline applicants would have been in the bottom 25%. Ironic that the one applicant that would have landed in the top 25% got rejected.</p>
<p>If I had been on the admissions committee I would have made the same choices the Berkeley adcoms did. I was actually impressed by their assessment of each student. The third one, in particular–the one with the highest scores–seems like the typical kid who did everything “by the book” but is a dime a dozen in applicant pools. His essay reads like a defense of his “right” to go to Berkeley, not an insight into a unique, interesting individual who passionately wants and needs the opportunities Berkeley might provide so he or she can help achieve personal goals and make the world a better place.</p>
<p>“you’ll see a lot of THEM”…</p>
<p>Adcoms are not gods. Like students, some of them have good reasoning, some have average or low thinking skills. Like workers in other job areas, some of them are good performers, some don’t deserve the pay raise and should be fired.</p>
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<p>Maybe, but we’re not talking about Harvard here with ~2000 admitted per class drawing upon the entire country. Berkeley is a gigantic school. </p>
<p>Seriously, it made me LOL that the one guy who seemed like the type to study a lot was rejected. In fact, they thought UC Irvine was a better choice for him.</p>
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<p>So…obviously the essay was not by the book then, right?</p>
<p>Frankly, I don’t think their own view on how they approached classes is irrelevant. I would never put that in an essay because I know that is not what they want. And the essay was about how his interest in the major developed.</p>
<p>I would like to know what the essay prompt was. This student’s writing was completely unoriginal compared with the others’ (except for the drivers’ license one–that was pretty lame) and offered little insight into who he was or what he wanted to do. Someone with a PhD for a parent should know better than to write stuff like “That A, coupled with my high performance on various standardized math tests, boosted my confidence in math and the result is a continuation of good grades in math, as well as a renewed sense of satisfaction after math class” in a college admissions essay.</p>
<p>Also, looking at his course record, he wasn’t especially advanced in math. His course sequence would be considered “grade-level” at my kids’ school. I would imagine most UCB engineering majors had a more rigorous transcript in high school. Yes, he had impressive SAT scores but that may have been due to a lot of taking/retaking and coaching.</p>
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<p>There are elements of this in other essays, too.</p>
<p>From another essay that was a no-brainer admit:
“Mathematics presents the greatest challenge to me but nevertheless I have continued to challenge myself by taking honors and AP math classes. I am proud of my mathematics grades and I am currently in Advanced Placement Calculus AB.”</p>
<p>LOL–I’d never put “I’m proud of my math grades” into a college essay either. But I guess that’s ok for a different student. </p>
<p>Honestly, some of the essays could be boiled down to saying, “I’m so amazing” over and over.</p>
<p>Bill Gates could have been rejected by the same thinking if he applied to the University of Washington because nothing in his high school life could indicate that he would become a leader and contributor for Washington state.</p>
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??? The kid had a C in Calculus and a C in Trig</p>
<p>The Cal story has been discussed several times on CC, with the expected result that people presented vastly different conclusions. Some agreed; others saw yet another example of a clueless admission office. I was hardly surprised by whom got admitted considering the open door transfer policies at that august school. </p>
<p>Fwiw, one comment above was about illiterate athletes in college. Yes, they do exist, but it would be a mistake to confine the illiterate quip to solely athletes. Our public universities enroll quasi illiterate in vast numbers, if you consider the basic inability to write a correct sentence or express a cogent argument as a sign of illiteracy. </p>
<p>I was also surprised that Beliavsky decided to bring up literacy as a trolling argument. Not sure why he wanted to denigrate his favorite group of recent immigrant STEM superior minds.</p>
<p>@xiggi,
I don’t think RECENT non-Anglophone immigrants are expected to have the same level of literacy in English as they do in their mother-tongue. </p>
<p>But I agree w you that it is a scandal that many Americans aren’t literate in their one and only tongue…</p>
<p>GMT, I don’t see that Frontline was addressing race or ethnicity. I think the point was how difficult it is to make decisions on behalf of the U. And that’s what it is, * on behalf of the U.*</p>
<p>Coolweather, the difference is that they don’t pull ordinary folks off the street to review- well, I don’t know how the author got picked. The adcoms I know are very savvy to what kids do, can do and what shows motivation vs self-satisfaction.</p>
<p>Remember, that’s for the 1999 freshman class, before the widespread use of the internet for interest groups such as CC. We’re now 10+ cycles past that, with all that brings.</p>
<p>@lookingforward,</p>
<p>That episode of Frontline addressed the history of UCB admissions, and how the school switched entirely a holistic admissions scheme in 1998, because the school was unhappy about the demographic outcome after prop209 was implemented. </p>
<p>Frontline chose those applications deliberately to illustrate the subjectivity of admissions selection.</p>
<p>History of admissions at UC Berkeley
<a href=“http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/sats/etc/ucb.html[/url]”>http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/sats/etc/ucb.html</a>
</p>
<p>I am trying to figure out why some of you are upset to see the Black and Latino enrollment rise. Are you racists or what?</p>
<p>The third and fourth applicants say NOTHING that conveys compassion for others or concern about making the world a better place. The others do. The most revealing line of the high-stats kid (#3) was this, his closing statement:</p>
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<p>Seriously…people would suggest this kid belongs at a place like Berkeley?</p>