Actually, many of the UCs are on the lists of top public universities. Especially the mid-tier UCs (UCSB, UCSD, UCI etc) I believe have gone up in rankings.
Also, as I mentioned. If other California students were getting in over my daughter I would be OK with it. Also I don’t think just because other schools admit more out of state students makes it right. Plus I am not sure what percent of students are non-residents at those schools. I have come across a lot of parents that are upset about this. Maybe it’s just the area that I live in but I think if state tax dollars are being used the people should vote on it. Also, things don’t add up. The numbers everyone is mentioning don’t seem to match what the schools show on their web site as far as student profile. In addion, I wish my daughter would have applied to USC. One of her friends who had a 3.5 GPA and no extra carricular activities was accepted. Another friend with less credentials was accepted to Rice and given merit based aid. By the way, thank you for being civil.
Have you considered taking a gap year, getting some work experience, and re-applying?
When I was at UCLA years ago many people who had children rejected from Berkeley or UCLA were convinced it was because an underrepresented minority took the spot to which their child was “entitled.” It was a hugely hot topic when I was an undergrad. Then Prop. 209 was passed, race is not a factor and lo and behold now parents are convinced that their child would have been admitted if there were not as many OOS or international students. The reality is that, as others have pointed out with data, there are many more qualified students than available spots.
No wonder nobody wants to go to UCM, they make it sound like a “dumping ground.”
Actually, based on both schools’ published frosh profiles, USC has higher frosh test scores, but UCLA has higher frosh unweighted HS GPA. This reflects the tendency of UC to weight HS GPA more than test scores, relative to the weighting of these factors by many other schools.
Note that the emphasis on HS GPA means that those applicants who are stronger in test scores are more likely to be disappointed in UC admission results. Also, those who compare their high school’s weighted GPA to the UC GPA ranges may be misleading themselves due to differences in weighting (UC should really link to the GPA recalculation whenever it shows HS GPA information).
@parent90278, how did the other students at your daughter’s school make out for admissions? Even though her gpa is high, if everyone at her school had a higher gpa, more EC’s, the same or better recommendations, it may be a case that she’s from a high school that turned out a lot of high stats kids and they took those kids.
I think you should talk to the GC about why her results weren’t what you expected. The GC might see a pattern you don’t.
@Parent90278 what was your kid’s unweighted GPA and UC capped GPA? Do a Google search on “Rogerhub UC GPA” to find the calculator that can determine this. Stating a “GPA of 4.3” could mean an unweighted of 3.0 or 3.5 or 4.0. UC Capped GPA is the normalized GPA that UCs look at, and I’m going to guess that your kid’s UC uncapped GPA is somewhere around 3.9 to 4.0. At that level, the acceptance rate for UCD is anywhere between 15% to <50% which is far from a slam dunk in terms of acceptance rate.
If your kid was dead set on Davis, you can always go to CCC and TAG to Davis. That would save you $50-60K of money as well assuming there is a commutable CCC. After all, future employers only care about where you graduated, not where you got accepted to out of HS.
The only student profiles that matter in this case are the ones for Fall 2018. But no one (including you) knows what those are, because the UCs haven’t released them yet. Without that info, no one (including you) can say whether any given Fall 2018 applicant’s stats were above or below average.
Now, you can make a comparison to last year’s class profile, or the one before that. But it’s well known that the number of UC applicants is rising every year – we know, for example, that freshman applications to UCD were up 10% from Fall 2017 – and the average class stats are rising every year as well. As the saying goes, past performance is no guarantee of future results.
The UCs aren’t psychic. They can’t tell you in advance what the statistical profile for the Class of 2022 is going to look like. The best they can do is to present the stats for the Class of 2021 – but in an environment where application numbers are soaring every year, they can’t possibly guarantee that those numbers will remain static.
Everyone knows that the UCs strongly favor California Community College students in transfer admissions. In practice, this means a strong bias towards CA residents, because few non-residents move to California for community college.
Some CCCs are increasingly serving as “back doors” into UCs. Sacramento City College, for example, now has a large satellite center that is located right on the UCD campus. So it’s possible to enroll at SCC, then start immediately taking classes on the Davis campus, then get a TAG that ensures you get official UCD status as a junior.
In effect, UCD is expanding access for CA residents by “outsourcing” lower-level undergraduate instruction on the Davis campus to SCC. This may not be a bad idea, given that lower-level undergraduate instruction isn’t one of the strongest points of the UC system anyway.
@parent90278…UC Riverside is a very good school! 3.8 average GPA, 1190 SAT, 27 ACT, and a 48% student acceptance rate and getting tougher every year! Out of staters are noticing this in a big way… Will never happen what you are suggesting however. Great people and programs (most in Top 100 US News Rank) and flying up higher every year! Is the fastest growing UC of ANY location at 25,000 students projected at 40,000 students in the future (as big as UCLA/Berkeley). Yes, it is not by the “big city” or beach for those entitled souls that are “perfect location” based and not open to anything else. Just send your kid to ASU or University of Arizona (much hotter than UCR) for double the cost of a similar education you can receive at UC Riverside. As a Highlander Alumnus…Attending UC Riverside was one of the best decisions of my life!! If you can’t take the heat though stay out of the kitchen!!
“Outsourcing” much of frosh/soph level college to community colleges is actually an old idea promoted by the California Master Plan for Higher Education in 1960.
In practice, it can work well as a low cost option (or option for those whose high school academic records were insufficient for admission to a desired four year school) for many students studying common majors with common frosh/soph level courses, and who are not highly advanced in their course work. The students who benefit most from starting at a four year school as frosh would be those who are already highly advanced in their course work (so that they will take junior/senior level courses in their frosh/soph years) or who intend majors that require more specialized frosh/soph course work, especially where such course work differs at the different four year schools (making it harder for a community college to cover it for students aiming for that major at various four year schools).
This is all technically true. My subjective bias, however, is towards test scores as the more meaningful measure of selectivity, and so I am more impressed by USC’s lead in test scores than by UCLA’s lead in GPA. Of course, others may see it differently.
So for example, suppose there were two schools with the following class profiles:
4.08 Average high school GPA of enrolled freshmen, School A
3.89 Average high school GPA of enrolled freshmen, School B
26-32 ACT Composite range of enrolled freshmen, School A
32-35 ACT Composite range of enrolled freshmen, School B
Just based on those stats, I would consider School B to be significantly more selective, despite the higher GPA at School A.
Coincidentally, these stats match those in the latest Common Data Sets of UC Santa Barbara (School A) and Princeton (School B).|
True, but I said:
The idea of constructing extensive CCC facilities – with classrooms, a study center, academic and career counselors, dedicated parking, etc – directly on UC campuses was not envisioned in the Master Plan. But that’s what SCC has done with their “Davis Center”. For me, this really seems to go farther in terms of “blurring the line”
The difference is due to policy differences. UCs favor HS GPA because its own previous research indicates that it is a better predictor of college GPA than SAT/ACT scores. USC favors test scores probably because it made a conscious effort to climb USNWR rankings over the past two decades, which heavily favor test scores as a measure of selectivity.
These CDS GPAs are not really comparable, since UCSB appears to be reporting some type of weighted GPA, while Princeton is presumably reporting an unweighted GPA. If UCSB is reporting the weighted-capped GPA that UCs commonly use, the unweighted version is probably around 3.75 or so.
For USC and UCLA:
https://about.usc.edu/files/2017/10/USCFreshmanProfile.pdf
http://www.admission.ucla.edu/Prospect/Adm_fr/Frosh_Prof17.htm
25th-75th percentiles of enrolled frosh:
Unweighted GPA: USC 3.64-3.96, UCLA 3.81-4.00
ACT composite: USC 30-34, UCLA 27-33
Obviously, an applicant whose academic credentials are somewhat “unbalanced” one way or the other (GPA versus test scores) may want to adjust his/her reach/match/likely/safety expectations at the UCs and USC in accordance with their apparent policy choices. Many of the “UC disappointment” stories around these forums are for students who are somewhat “unbalanced” in favor of test scores – disadvantageous at UCs, but perhaps advantageous at USC and some other schools.
While SCC’s Davis Center may be technically on the UC Davis campus, Google Maps suggests that it is further from the main classroom buildings of UC Davis than Berkeley City College is to the main classroom buildings of UC Berkeley, even though BCC is not technically on the UC Berkeley campus.
Are the uc gpas they report for all four years or the two year sample they look at for admissions. If not apples to apples with UCLA vs USC it’s probably not a great comparison.
But both schools have great students.
True enough. However, the current BCC campus was not opened until 2006. So it is – like the SCC “Davis Center” – a relatively recent development, long postdating the “Master Plan”.
I don’t have any objections to locating CCC facilities on or near UC campuses. On the contrary, I think the UCs and CSUs need to find ways to increase their capacities, and that the CCCs are an important part of the answer. This will mean likely closer cooperation between the CCCs and UCs/CSUs than was originally foreseen in the “Master Plan”. The recent construction of CCC facilities on or near UC campuses, as at BCC or SCC-Davis, are steps along this path.
I could see UC freshman applicants being conditionally accepted with the requirement to satisfactorily complete two years at a CCC first – in effect, issuing a TAG to high school seniors. Schools like Texas A&M and Cornell already do this. Many well-qualified students are reluctant to attend CCCs, but they might think differently if the CCC was (1) located on or near their UC campus of choice, and (2) transfer admission to that UC campus of choice was guaranteed.
You have a good point. Many students in my daughters highschool are going to Santa Barbara Community College. They get the experience of being away from home and can transfer.
So how does that effect the student profile USC shows. My daughter’s friend had a 3.5 GPA and very little extra carricular activities. I thought USC and UCLA were comparable as far as difficulty to get In.