We have been told numerous times that UC admissions officers take into account the high school an applicant is matriculating from when evaluating an application. If this is still true, my question really revolves around how the high school’s standardized testing trends impact the application of a student.
For instance, our daughter is applying to the UC system from a high school that struggles on the whole with mathematics. In the latest available numbers for the ‘Smarter Balanced…’ standardized tests, only 15% of tested students were in the ‘Proficient’ or ‘Advanced’ categories, while the remainder were below proficient.
Several of the students in the top 25 overall out of a class of 200 have SAT math scores below the range listed on even the UC Merced Freshman Admission Profile (highest admission rate for the UC system) available through the UC website. At least a couple of them, our daughter included, are hard set on attending UC Merced and worry their math scores through the SAT are going to be a huge obstacle to overcome.
With that in mind, does it make sense that admissions offices evaluate these applicants, who don’t have ideal SAT math scores, in comparison to their collective student body?
I don’t know much about CA schools but I would think the information would be on the high school profile that your GC will send to each college. That information will be considered, but honestly if you child wants to pursue a STEM major, that would be a huge red flag. Colleges admit kids they think will succeed.
I think for CA high schools, the HS does matter. If you look at the UC stats by HS for admits each year, you might notice that for the percentage of admits/applicants each year for a given university->given HS, the numbers do not vary that much from year to year. So in essence there is kind of a quota. Note that this is just my random observation on a few HSs, and not necessarily factual.
I hadn’t thought to look at that info, @ProfessorPlum168 , so thank you. In looking at the information on the UC database, our local HS isn’t even on the list, which I guess means nobody from this HS applied in 2017, which seems weird. Maybe our HS isn’t reporting?
UC admissions is aware of the High performing and Under performing High schools in the state. An applicant will be evaluated within the context of their High school.
Although your daughter’s High school under performs on the standardized testing in the area of Mathematics, low SAT scores are not always correlated with teacher peformance. For many schools, the lack of resources such as tutoring, free/low cost test prep can also lead to lower SAT scores.
Also the SAT Math section does not really test fundamental math skills, but reasoning and logic. Has any of these top students at your daughters high school tried the ACT instead? If so, are the Math scores equally low in comparison to the SAT scores.
The UC system guarantees that if a student is in the top 9% of their High school class, they will be guaranteed admission to a UC (default campus Merced) if they are not accepted into their choice UC. This is ELC eligibility so I would assume that several students at your daughter’s high school would fall into this category and would be given a chance for an acceptance at UC Merced.
@momofsenior1: UC’s do not require HS transcripts until the applicant is accepted and enrolled and the school profile is usually sent with the HS transcript. As I stated above, UC admissions has information on all California High schools and their profiles.
@Gumbymom thank you for the detailed post. I fully understand the issues aren’t teacher related at our HS. They’ve all been great. I think the problems are generally originating at the K-8 levels. Our community is rural, with several really small feeder schools. Our daughter, for example, came from a K-8 school with a total of 32 students. The class she was in from 5th-8th grade was taught by one teacher for all four grades (students from all four grades in same class learning together). The students don’t arrive at HS prepared for the curriculum, in my opinion. And that’s funding and home life based, to some degree.
With all that said, we’ve encouraged our daughter and her classmate to rethink the ‘biggest challenge’ PIQ essay and consider focusing on those circumstances as their biggest challenge. It helps explain the scenario and is a good reflection of their challenges.
Hopefully this helps. Both have solid GPA’s, are four year athletes in two sports, as well as four year members of dance/drill team, and both are shooting for reasonable UCs: Merced & Santa Cruz. I’m pretty confident after hearing from you all.
@Flournoy_Parent; Thank you for the clarification on your daughter’s situation. I wish her and all her friends that are applying to colleges the best of luck.
My only concern is if these student’s are not prepared for their HS curriculum, how prepared will they be for their college curriculum? Competition at the UC’s can be fierce even for UC Merced, Riverside and Santa Cruz
My older son whom had over a 4.0 UC GPA was challenged in many of his college courses Freshman year. His roommate from a low income/first generation family along with a low performing school spent his 1st quarter taking several remedial classes at UCD, barely passing then eventually dropped out 2nd quarter since he felt you could not keep up.
This is an extreme case so hopefully if these students are accepted they will make use of all the available resources on campus to help them succeed.
This would be my concern too. College is much more rigorous and faster paced than HS. Take advantage of all resources and consider a tutor from day 1 if there is a required math course.