New revelations emerge about attempts to get students into Berkeley.

[Twoin18]

@MWolf

Ouch! I still think that there is a difference between students who were accepted based on fraudulent applications materials, and those who were accepted, despite not really qualifying, because they had a LoR from somebody big.

Moreover, the fact that, evidently, athletes are being accepted with this same ratings, means that the ratings are meaningless.

If they thought that ratings this low means that these students cannot succeed at the college, then athletes are being recruited to play and fail, or they are being allowed to stay in college and to graduate through fraudulent practices.

If, on the other hand, they think that students with such low ratings can succeed as well as any other student, these rating mean absolutely nothing.

The main educational mission of the University of California campuses is to provide education to students from California. They can only justify rating students if those ratings indicate the suitability of these students to the college. If “suitability” is not primarily “the chances that the students will succeed”, that means that they are failing their main mission, and doing so miserably.

Sorry but this makes no sense. There are far more applicants who can pass the courses and graduate (“succeed” by your definition) than there are places available at a college like Berkeley. This is not an open access community college.

So there has to be some basis for selecting between them. The (holistic) academic ratings appear to be about estimating the future level of success of prospective students. So (simplifying hugely) a prospective student who has the potential to get a 4.0 GPA in college should be rated more highly than one who is only thought like to get a 2.5 GPA, even thought that latter score is “success” in terms of gaining a degree.

Inevitably such predictions about future success are often inaccurate, but that doesn’t imply that they “mean absolutely nothing”. If I hire someone to do a job, then I’m trying to determine who I think will be most successful in that job. I may be wrong, but it would be crazy not to try and exercise some judgment in choosing between applicants. I’m certainly not going to conduct a lottery amongst everyone who could do the job.