One thing that is fascinating (frightening?!) in looking at the GPA data by school: there was a huge jump in average GPA at most campuses in terms of both the students who applied and the students who were admitted (I’m assuming it’s the capped/weighted GPA that they are citing). I looked up one other local school and saw the same. Makes me think that there may have been something going on with grade inflation during that 2020-2021 COVID year, which would have been Junior year for those students. I’m hoping to see those admitted GPAs go down a little bit in 2023 because…sheesh.
This is the data for my daughter’s school – note the GPA jump between 2021 and 2022 admissions cycle:
I think lower weighted grades for Fall 2021 applicants and admits probably have more to do with the lack of weighted grades (Honors/AP/etc) during Spring 2020, when our local schools went to P/NP. Applicants for Fall 2021 would have been expected to have lower weighted grades, because they would have been missing grades for a whole semester of 11th grade.
Most Berkeley High students (for example) have very few weighted grades in 10th grade; it’s only 11th grade where they get to fill their schedule with AP and Honors courses.
My D22 was admitted to UCLA and UCSB last year, and rejected at Berkeley. Her capped and weighted UC GPA was 4.22.
Her school doesn’t offer many honors courses (a couple of math classes, a physics class, a drama class). They have a good number of APs, which you are allowed to take 0 freshman year, 1 sophomore year, and then it’s up to the student for 11/12. She took 1 honors class freshman year, 1 AP sophomore year, 1 AP online over the summer of sophomore year, and 3 junior year, and another online after her junior year. She took 5 APs senior year but the UCs don’t count anything but 10/11 grades, so I imagine that the summer APs did a decent job of showing interest and rigor.
Maybe – but if you dig into the data 2021 looks much more like 2020 and 2019 than it does 2022. 2022 really feels like an outlier. Or maybe the start of a trend (in which case I’m nervous as heck for D23 who looks almost exactly like S21 did…he did well at UC admissions; but based on 2022, maybe she won’t!)
I just looked at my daughter’s public school. 283 applications, 151 admits, 70 enrolled. Systemwide, the admitted GPAs are pretty similar between 2021 and 2022. But for UCLA, 2022 is quite a bit higher (4.27 vs 4.19 in 2021). But going back several years, the admitted GPA is usually 4.27-28. So, it appears 2021 was an outlier for our school at UCLA.
My S25’s private Jesuit HS went from a universitywide 60% to 52% admit rate. GPA’s did increase across all campuses. I had heard the rumor that our class of '22 had a rough year with the UC’s - yikes.
I wouldn’t mind so much if it were that at our school – but I’m over here with teeth chattering looking at an average admitted student GPA of 4.36 at San Diego? That’s a little nerve-wracking. I’m seeing the same pattern across the Bay from us at Lowell HS, so I’ll take it our school is not alone (but maybe not representative overall!). Nothing to do but wait at this point!
The lower admit rates are not obvious when comparing the campus / GPA-range table of admission rates with the previous year table using the previous year GPA ranges. However, https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/about-us/information-center/freshman-admissions-summary (selecting “admit rate”, “HS weighted, capped GPA”, and a campus) will show the general lower admit rates, since the graphs have been remade with previous years using the new GPA ranges.
Note that the new GPA ranges are not equal size, since 3.30-3.69 is larger than 3.00-3.29 or 3.70-3.99.
I think the reason you are seeing the higher GPA (at least at Lowell where there is a huge bump in 2022 and the 2021 numbers are more in line with past years) is that grades their sophomore spring were pass/fail. Since so many of the students take so many APs and the UC AP bonus points are capped, the more classes they take, the less the APs will have an impact. So, if you take out a whole semester of classes, the APs they take (which are almost definitely still maxed out between Sophomore fall and Junior year) will have more of an impact.
For example: take a typical Lowell student who takes 7 classes sophomore year with 3 APs and 6 classes junior year with 4 APs. That’s a total of 26 semesters. If they get a 4.0 plus the 8 point bonus of the APs, their UC GPA is a 4.3. Now, remove all the classes from spring of sophomore year. Now, they only have a total of 19 semesters and with a 4.0 plus the 8 point bonus, their UC GPA is 4.42.
You could argue that we should be seeing a similar bump in class of 2021 since they would be missing a semester also, but I think there would be enough students who didn’t take APs sophomore year and then took them (and lost some of the bonus points) Junior year to bring the average down a bit.
Yes, that’s what I think we are seeing with Berkeley High as well. Kids at Berkeley High (depending on their program) are typically allowed to take only one or two AP / Honors in 10th grade; the ambitious kids then pack a whole bunch of AP / Honors into 11th grade. So the kids that had the pandemic P/NP semester in 10th grade would be expected to have a higher weighted UC GPA than normal, and kids that had the pandemic P/NP semester in 11th grade would have a lower weighted UC GPA than normal.
It bothers me that UC considers data of 1 or 2 insignificant, but 3 shows up. My kid is a data point of 1 or 2. For people without very detailed local info, it appears that no one from a class was accepted or enrolled at certain campuses, and that’s not always true.
OK that all makes sense! And would explain the difference between 2021 and 2022. My S21 lost that second semester of his Junior year to P/F, and you are right that it would have looked different if instead he had lost his second semester of Sophomore year instead. This makes me think that our current Seniors will drop back down a little bit to pre-2022 since their 10th and 11th were intact and followed a normal pattern.
@tamagotchi I do really wonder about the ELC cutoffs for our school since it’s last year’s class that the GPA was based on (if BHS even still bothers – I don’t know). I think they recalculate the cutoffs every three years, and summer of 2021 is when they last did it using Class of 22’s grades.
Sorry, one more question. So when looking at rigor, the Freshman Fall Admissions Summary talks about the number of Honors “courses” taken. Is a course a semester or a full year?
