Super interesting article from 1988 describing how difficult UCs are to get into, and how valedictorians and others with perfect GPAs are getting rejected at Berkeley and UCLA. Sometimes it feels like its all just happening right now, but the reality is that this has been the reality for over 30 years.
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1988-02-12-mn-28540-story.html
Article was written in February 1988…
That suggests that UCR was not hard to get into if it had an extended application period lasting until February, versus the usual end-of-November deadline. And the even later deadlines mentioned as existing just a few years before suggests that some campuses had plenty of space to admit anyone meeting baseline UC eligibility at the time.
In other words, it was nowhere near as hard to get into the UCs in 1988 as it is now, even though it was harder in 1988 than it was before then.
I’ll bet it was really hard to get into UC-Merced back then haha…
I got into UCSD back in 1984 with a 3.4 GPA and only one AP class in Physics. I had a decent SAT around the 92% percentile I think. And I went in as Computer Science (later switched to Applied Math). I would never have gotten in today…lol.
So, GPAs were much lower back in the 80’s as there were waaaay less AP classes available. When I went to high school in the 90’s my school actually suggested to students that they take a MAX of two AP classes their Junior and Senior years, as anything more would be too much of a work load. COuld you imagine a school telling that to kids today? HA! I think “AP” classes have gotten easier in order to allow kids to take 5 at a time to boost thier GPAs. Also, the SAT is on a totally different scale and the scores look higher now than they did back then.
End of the day, this article is talking about how many valedictorians don’t get accepted to top UCs. I don’t think it can be much more clear.
(Also remember, back in the 80’s there was no common app, so people generally only applied to 3-6 schools. Not the 20+ that is common today. That’s largely why acceptance rates were so much higher.)
Side note: am I trying to say that UCs haven’t gotten ANY harder to get in to? Absolutely not. I AM trying to point out, however, that UCs like Cal and UCLA have ALWAYS frustrated top students, and have never been a guarantee for amazingly competitive students like valedictorians. This board and others often refer to “the old days” as though anyone with a heartbeat would get auto admitted to these schools, and that’s just obviously not the case.
If historical standardized scoring profiles are of interest, this Life article from 1960 includes a snapshot of Berkeley in the context of other prominent colleges:
This thread offers easier viewing as well as comments from CC users:
Not that it wasn’t hard. But in the early 80s UCLA has an admissions rate north of 65 percent. I do understand the process has changed quite a bit, but I don’t believe outside of Cal it was quite as daunting as it is today.
I posted about this a few days ago with a link to that article in response to a post about the high admit rates back then. http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/22350349/#Comment_22350349
Students could only apply to one campus prior to 1986, although they could list back-up preferences where their applications would be forwarded if they were rejected. As a result, most campuses had very high admit rates because it created a huge disincentive to use their one best shot on a “reach” campus unless they were OK with going to Riverside or UCSC by default, as those might be the only campus left with available space.
Once applicants were allowed to apply to multiple campuses in 1986, the # of applications rose drastically, causing admit rates to drop in relatively proportionate numbers to what would still be high by today’s standards, but about what you might expect for that (pre-USNWR) era where admit rates were much higher everywhere.
Here’s a 1985 article on the changes to come in 1986 and the reasons for it. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1985-05-20-mn-16535-story.html
I thought this (below) was a bit funny to read this, because now we know what actually happened, and it wasn’t what they were expecting.
What’s fascinating to me from the article was that admissions decisions were SAT score (20%); GPA (30%) and other subjective factors were 50%! They also mention the fact that being an athlete is very important at most of these colleges.
1960 Life Magazine on Berkeley: “The Berkeley kids are poor but bright, long-haired proletarians who are deeply involved in current events.”
I can’t decide if I’m offended by how blunt and over-broad that generalization is, or if I’m shocked by how accurate that description remains 60 years later!
They should write a similar article providing the statistics for transferring into a UC back then vs now.
The *Preppy Handbook/i appears to have converged on, or borrowed, the essence of the Life description in its UCB caption:
When I went to high school, there were only about 7 AP courses offered, and 3 of them were foreign languages. So someone who took one foreign language AP course and all of the others would take 5 AP courses.
The older ones (e.g. calculus, English, US history) are probably about the same as they were before. But newer ones include some known to be easier (e.g. human geography, statistics, environmental science, psychology).
https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED563025.pdf contains the conversion used in the 1995 SAT recentering (intended to put the median at around 500 per section instead of 420/470 that it was previously). This appears to have raised scores by up to 110 points (mostly in the verbal section; math scores changed less, and there was a range where old math scores converted to lower instead of higher new math scores).
https://collegereadiness.collegeboard.org/pdf/higher-ed-brief-sat-concordance.pdf contains the conversion used in the 2016 redesign.
Decades ago when the UCs were less competitive, GPAs were lower, probably due to less grade inflation, less applicants and less competition to get into the top UC. There were not much prep or review courses for the SAT and many took the SAT cold and accepted that score. This past couple of decades, the bar has increased tremendously with much higher GPAs, SAT scores and ECs than prior to 2000 and the 1990’s. Now, SAT review courses, college application counseling are huge business and money makers that did not exist many decades ago.
While I believe the top UCs have always been fairly competitive, over the last decade, they have become extremely competitive. Take UCLA, they have significantly increased the number of enrollees (Freshman class size) and acceptances and YET the acceptance rates have dropped almost 40%:
2008
23% acceptance rate
55,000 applied
12,660 accepted
4,736 enrolled
2018
14% acceptance rate
113,000 applied
15,970 accepted
6,240 enrolled
I imagine that, broadly speaking, the kids that were at the top of their class with just a 4.0 back in 1988 would have been at their top of their class with a 4.6 today, and the kids that were scoring a top 5% SAT with little to no prep back in 1988 (then a 1310!) would still be the same kids that score a top 5% SAT today (1380) when everyone preps for it.
I don’t disagree, but consider these points as well on UCLA historical data:
1998 Average weighted applicant GPA: 3.79 (admit GPA 4.17)
2008: Average weighted applicant GPA: 3.86 (admit GPA 4.33)
2018: Average weighted applicant GPA: 4.06 (admit GPA 4.48)
An article I found states over the last 30 years average high school GPAs have inflated about .3 pts, so that 1998 admit GPA of 4.17 would be equal to a 2018 GPA of 4.47 (Almost identical to UCLA 2018 admit GPA of 4.48.)
I think the difference is that with so many kids applying to UCLA (50K more in kids in 2018 than in 2008) that the average excellent kid has less than 50% chance to get in. For example, my in-state D20 has a 4.0 / 4.4 capped weighted GPA in rigorous courses and a 32 ACT (97th percentile, will take one more time) and its more likely than not that she will be rejected. There are just too many kids (1,000s) with a similar profile as hers. With her profile in 1998 she had a greater than 50% chance to be admitted.
I’m just hoping that the Year of the Dragon population boom in 2000 was real and the number of applicants to the UCs go down a little bit for the class of 2020? Cross fingers…
Me too! 