There’s no fixed number, but clearly everyone knows that even if 70 highly qualified kids from a school apply and the freshman class has 700 or 1,000 freshmen, a highly selective college will not admit all 70 but rather will compare them based on academics and institutional priorities, so that only some will be admitted. If the school is well-known to the university, there may be more than average who are admitted, but a couple schools alone won’t “hog” a large percentage of the places in the way it was done 50-60 years ago. I think intuitively all students who apply to very selective schools know that. 
Students know they’re compared to their classmates and/or their “region”, not to the whole pool.
In addition, most public flagships have a public responsibility toward the whole state, whereby they will admit students from all the counties in the state (even if it’s not in equal numbers). Kids from San Jose and kids from Bakersfield don’t compete on the same field, nor do kids from Mecklenburg and Watauga counties… that’s why applications are judged “in context”.
CSUs use a non-holistic process that could be done fully (or mostly) by a computer program (although some campuses may need front end human work to assign points to things like ECs). Here is an example from one of the more transparent campuses: Impaction | Admissions (criteria do vary by campus, and some campuses are less transparent about it)
UCs differ significantly from this process. The “big discussion for the remaining applicants” largely does not exist and is replaced by just rank ordering the applicants by their initial reading scores (human review here is done to tie-break a group of identical scoring applicants crossing the cutoff boundary for the size of the admit pool). “Crafting a class” at this stage is only done through admitting by division or major.
Again, this is significantly different from how UC does it, at least based on the Hout report and other documents.
It’s been eye opening to me to work in an average public school because I graduated from a very good one with one year at a rich top private (we weren’t home that year). Over the years I’ve mused about it, so nothing here is official or backed by stats - just personal experience.
The expected content to be mastered where I work is vastly different than the one I went to - esp in reading and math. We read oodles of books and more. Here they were reading a couple per year when I started teaching - it’s up to about 7 now for the highest level classes, 4 of those are summer reads. In math, tests are pretty easy, but if there’s a question most kids get wrong that question is scrapped rather than adjusting the content of the classes to cover it better.
It was really, really frustrating for me TBH. One of our talented NMF students and I talked often. She was frustrated too telling me she took a practice SAT Math subject test and wondered why she hadn’t ever seen so much of the material - yet she easily had all As in our school.
I mentioned things to other teachers and was told, “Oh, we don’t get students who are capable of that here.” That, of course, is not true. Kids are kids and the bell curve of what’s typical happens all over - esp since my own school was a small city public complete with farm kids, factory worker kids, and only a few white collar kids - yet regularly sent our top students to good colleges (including top schools on cc).
At some point the thought occurred to me that most (not all) of our teachers grew up in this system or one similar to it. They went to local colleges and student taught nearby. They don’t know any differently so are repeating what they grew up with. It’s normal to them. A few have outside experience more similar to mine and they tend to be our “toughest” teachers (not mean, but higher expectations). Interestingly enough, the results are better from their classes, but woe the teacher who fails an athlete or school board’s child. Parents often don’t like those teachers either. “They’re too hard!”
I took the issue to a middle school principal as a parent when our oldest was starting 7th grade. I was told, “Public schools aren’t here to teach the very good student. They’ll do well wherever they go. Public school is here to teach the average student and around us the average student works at (company), joins the military, or goes to community college. Then we have to do more for the below average student because it’s the law.” It’s true. When we had extra help scheduled in to pass English state tests those students getting As or Bs were told to go read quietly. They certainly didn’t need to improve if they could already pass. No thought was given to helping them get better starting at their level - no need. (The question did come up from one of the English teachers - she was frustrated that her class had to read a 4th grade level book in 8th grade. Why? Because those students not up to 8th grade level would feel left out. It was important to have no one feel left out.)
By ninth grade we opted to homeschool our older two so they could have the academic foundation I wanted and they were capable of. My youngest opted to return to ps, but even he will tell you his actual education wasn’t as good. On the flip side he loved being called “genius” in his classes. A good foundation can do wonders. (His homeschooling years were 4-8).
I could go on, but this is definitely long enough. A’s are in our school because students hit the bar for them. It’s not their fault the bar is low. Most who get them can, indeed, compete with other top students - they just haven’t had the opportunity. Some will flounder when they get to college. It all depends upon how they handle learning everything they missed along with the new material. (I mentioned before that we once cut circles from geometry due to not having time for them and Powers That Be determining they weren’t really useful.)
The good thing is we’ve been improving. We have admin in that wants to improve (teachers sure tend to not like it - I stay quiet). Keystones have actually helped TBH. Some folks say it’s not good to “teach to the test.” It’s good when that stuff wasn’t being covered before and is foundational…
To the best of my knowledge, UCs do have buckets: regions/counties/HS; D1 sports; first gen… “race”/ethnic background does not factor in but it doesn’t mean there are no institutional priorities nor that the “pool” is just “state-wide”.
From what I understand, UCs do not issue applications to readers based on any of that, nor do they have admission quotas based any of that (except for recruited athletes as explained below). Institutional priorities certainly matter when setting the criteria and process beforehand, though.
Recruited athlete admission at UCB works like this: the athletes go through the normal admission process (with the sport as just an EC); only if they are not admitted normally do they compete for a limited number of recruited-athlete admissions (presumably to give coaches incentive to recruit athletes who can be admitted without recruited-athlete consideration).
@Creekland Thank you for the very interesting slice-of-life reply that you shared. It raises a lot of issues about the state of education in our country overall. I attended a very “typical” HS growing up and it was by no means a given that you would attend college. Many joined the military, went to CC or started working after HS.
I’ve never been a big proponent of standard tests, but over time, my position has evolved. There’s a lot that standardized tests don’t measure, but they do provide a data point regarding the student’s knowledge of the material on the test. As you said, in preparing for such tests (SAT/ACT, AP exams, subject tests, etc.), students have to refresh (or learn) the material, much of which should be part of any good HS curriculum. I also believe that scores provide a more “objective” data point in a very subjective process. Your post speaks to variability regarding course rigor and expectations, and your point about teachers “setting the bar” based on the student population is an important one. Setting the bar low means more As (which parents and students like), but it doesn’t necessarily indicate academic preparedness for college.
I think you’re right that the top students at your HS will do fine at top colleges, but as you said, they will have a longer uphill road because many of them are starting from behind (in terms of needing to learn what their HS didn’t teach while also staying on top of new, advanced material).
In my own case, my scores were very mediocre as a HSer and my grades were so-so. I was a first-gen college student and I started at a state school on probation, got my grades up and transferred. My college GPA was much higher than my HS grades/scores would have predicted. However, I was not prepared for college level work and had to completely dedicate myself to the task of developing effective study skills to keep my head above water (especially freshman and sophomore year of college). I’m glad my state university took a chance on me, but I wouldn’t have been ready for the school I transferred to directly out of HS.
I may have attended “your average public school.” I got into a good college, struggled freshman year, figured it out, graduated with strong grades and got a good job. I attribute some of my accomplishments to graduating from “your average public school.” I like to think I developed more grit than those other kids in better schools. I think I got more out of my social and even academic experience.
But… I wanted something better for my own kids. I sometimes question whether better is truly better.
I dont know for sure and after your post I tried to figure out something but I don’t see how UCs could do without buckets/batches/pools
I have no info on this specifically but based on what I do know, it’d be impossible for readers not to be regionalized since they’d be expected to be able to read in context and compare within HS cohorts.
Or perhaps the assigning process is totally random BUT each application is precoded according to the institutional priorities and criteria so that the reader may end up with random numbers of preceded applications - 120 green dots, 7 blue, 34 yellow, and 49 red dots, while another has 18 blue, 32 green, 100 red, and 50 yellow, rather than 200 all red or 200 all green- but the reader would know green, blue, yellow, and red candidates dont have access to the same types of academic and other opportunities.
In addition, all regions need to be represented at puic universities.
I dont know how the process could be totally random.
Several readers may split the same cohorts but the individual students couldn’t be assigned any random reader.
Or perhaps the cohorts from Bakersfield and San Bernardino are treated by one group of readers s
Who split them.
Trying to think how it’d work, there’s no way the same reader has random applications from all over the state and uses context/holistic review.
This may be my failure in puzzling it out, but what do you think?
This is an excellent point. There is a huge gap between students at different schools. There is an eye opening documentary on Amazon Prime called “Most Likely to Succeed.” It follows the lives of 4 teens who graduated near or at the top of their high school class from different high schools. The gap between them is breathtaking, in terms of what colleges they go to, what their life possibilities are, what is defined as “success.” We are in a well funded suburban public school district that sent 87/396 students to Michigan (our state flagship) in 2017. Many kids also went to Ivys and other privates. Just a few miles away, in a lower income high school, only 3/222 went to Michigan.
It is very unfair that such a huge gap exists. Now there are some kids who due to a combination of grit and ability can overcome such handicaps. But there also may be some kids who have done well in a setting of lower expectations who may really struggle to keep up with other kids who have had a superior education once they get to college. My D had a superb AP Calc teacher who could teach at a high level (there were 30 NMSFs in her grade) so she felt that Calc in college was fine. By contrast, in my role as an alumni interviewer, I interviewed one kid from a low resourced high school who told me that she really had a hard time learning anything in math classes because it was a policy of the school to automatically promote kids to the next class regardless of their level of understanding. So the teacher really could not teach pre calc when many of the students did not understand algebra.
So test optional could be a two edged sword. It could give a chance to some kids who had poor educations to apply without a lower test score. I think also in some cases it could allow some kids to end up in a place where they have trouble keeping up due to no fault of their own.
That is indeed a problem. Among the 4 top schools in Ontario for Engineering, 1 is direct admit to the stream, 1 has a general first year for all with guaranteed admit to the stream for 2nd year, and 2 have general first years and competitive admit to 2nd year streams with a small percentage of students being given guaranteed choice (based on entering high school admissions average). The next tier of school’s down offer a mix of guaranteed/direct admit and competitive 2nd year admit.
At S19’s school the most popular engineering streams (software & computer) generally require a minimum GPA of around 3.7 across all first year courses for 2nd year admit. It’s a gamble. Still many students are willing to take that gamble rather than choose a program at a less “prestigious” school.
Yes this is exactly how it works at S19’s school. Students who have an entering high school average of 95%+ get guaranteed choice. Everyone else goes through a competitive admit process for 2nd year based on first year GPA.
Actually, the GPAs I mentioned above are college GPAs earned by first year engineering students. I.e. a first year engineering student at Virginia Tech who earns a 3.0 college GPA (with specified courses) gets automatic admission to any engineering major, but those below 3.0 go to competitive admission.
What you are describing seems to be more like a situation where the top high school applicants get direct admission to the major based on high school records, while others are admitted to the school but not the major, enter as undeclared or in another major, and must apply to the major later based on college record. This arrangement can be found at UIUC, UCSD, and CS at Washington and Purdue.
But how many kids from really under resourced schools are applying to top 20 schools just because they are TO? I’d guess, relatively few. At these super elite schools they aren’t just looking at gpa, but also at the rigor of the course work in high school. If anything, TO is bringing in more kids from good schools who have everything (strong rigor, high gpa, strong ECs) except a super high SAT/ACT score (and just how “low” their scores are is up to debate).
Yes, it’s not so much a gap as a chasm. When kids move into college the gap continues. And even if the kids go to HYPS or similar, the kids from under resourced/under taught schools will struggle to jump the gap and then learn from that point forward. Often they’ll change majors into something easier.
I get so upset by the idea that good enough is fine for public schools. There are so many kids whose needs aren’t being met. And in many cases, it’s not a matter of $ but mindset. If you think everyone should get to a base level but the kids who go beyond aren’t your problem, they you might share that mindset. We bumped up against this in public school so often. Likewise with testing. They only cared about the mean. The kids on the top never got their needs met. And, the kids on the bottom often had to have parents going to bat for them to get their IEP etc even though it’s mandated by law.
I believe the 45% figure is from a study sponsored by the College Board (makers of SAT) that bases GPA on the SAT question in which students asked to check a box for whether they are an A student, B student, C student, etc. Other stats suggest lower numbers, including things like the HS grade distribution among students at not super selective colleges.
As has been pointed out numerous times in this thread, HS GPA is not standardized. I also expect few HSs are instructing teachers to inflate/deflate their grading in order to match SAT scores. Instead they are measuring different things ,which often do not track well with one another. As such, it is best to look at the specific HSs that interest you, rather than make assumptions. You can usually find information about both GPA and SAT distribution in the HS profile.
Regarding SAT distribution, national distribution information is well available, including estimates for various subgroups. For example, CollegBoard’s 2020 percentile report is at https://collegereadiness.collegeboard.org/pdf/understanding-sat-scores.pdf . It looks like the median score among the national sample was 1010, and the median score among the test taking sample was 1050.
The driven kids in wealthy districts at least have a chance of getting their needs met since they have parents who advocate for them and have a cohort of high performing kids who push the teachers to present higher level material. In a lower resourced place, no chance.
We were told exactly the same thing by our middle school principal. We moved our D to private school for HS. She was really challenged in HS, had amazing teachers, super guidance, and was extremely well prepared for college.
The small size of many elementary and middle schools may mean that the students at the tails of the distribution of academic strength are not numerous enough to devote resources to. Larger schools (particularly high schools, which tend to be larger than elementary or middle schools) may have enough students in the tails of the distribution to offer suitable courses for them (e.g. honors courses for the strongest students). The common elementary school model of an entire class staying together with the same teacher all day also limits what can be offered to students at the tails of the distribution.
If the strong students whose parents have money move to academically-oriented private schools, then that can worsen the problem by keeping the right tail of academic strength in the regular public schools too small to devote resources to. Of course, these remaining strong students would be the strong students whose parents do not have the money to put them in academically-oriented private schools.
Yes you are correct. Except for those whose choice is guaranteed based on high school GPA, the rest go through the competitive admissions process for specific streams based on their first year university GPA. According to the most recent data, about 10% of high school admits get guaranteed first choice for Engineering.
We agonized with the decision to pull our D out of public schools for those very reasons but with multiple levy failures and the removal of AP courses, music, art, busing, etc… we made the decision to pull her out.
Those things eventually came back to our home district but many many students did leave, which in the end definitely make the divide wider.
There was no easy answer.