I also did not receive the instructions. Just used “Forgot Password” yesterday to setup the portal.
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Check the email spam/junk folder.
Checked with my son and he said UCB does this every year. 2% of all applicants receive it apparently.
Yes, the difference this year for my daughter’s school is that the vast majority of applicants received the request. This hasn’t happened before.
But it seems from another poster above that the percentage of applicants receiving the requests is significantly higher for schools local to UCB for some reason. Although that still doesn’t explain the change this year compared to all previous years.
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Our high school is 30 minutes from CAL and we have on average 150-200 students apply every year (an average of 30 accepted each year). Both my seniors did not receive any request and neither did any of their friends (approximately 30 students who applied). My daughter is also top 9% and did not receive a request.
From what I’ve been told by our high school counselor and private counselor (who went to CAL and has been doing this for 10 years) typically those who get the request, are applicants that they need more clarification on. More of a back story to fill in gaps that they are seeing (whatever those gaps are).
It is possible that the triggers for LOR requests have changed this year. It sounds like a lot of students at Berkeley High reported receiving these requests, including high stat students who probably have strong applications, judging from some of the schools that accepted these students in the ED/EA round.
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My daughter’s speculation (based on absolutely nothing) is that they have tracked previously admitted students from her high school and that those students have underperformed in some way at Cal, so now they are getting more thorough in their review of students from her school.
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It is difficult to guess what is triggering the LOR requests, but there may be multiple types of triggers based on the individual application and the school.
In any case, my son’s observation was that the LOR request seemed to benefit those students who had applied to private schools in the ED/EA round, and therefore already had good LORs lined up (and written). Students who had only applied to UCs/CSUs had to scramble around making last minute requests, and some had difficulty finding teachers because the popular LOR writers had all their LOR slots filled up.
Yeah, I feel sorry for the teachers - my daughter had one that had over 50 LOR requests from students this year. Not sure if that is an average load, but it seems pretty overwhelming to me, especially if you try to personalize each one, as you should.
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I didn’t apply ED/EA, but I know students who have been admitted ED/EA to MIT and Stanford who were also asked to submit LORs for UCB. Obviously, those are high STAT students and I am sure they are not borderline for UCB.
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Oh wow, that’s nuts. Makes me feel a bit more optimistic, though.
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I am sure there are some, but I don’t know of anybody at my school who has not been asked to submit LORs. I don’t think it has anything to do with high or low STATs.
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Please remind me (you may have already mentioned above), are you local-ish to UCB?
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yes, I am local ( within 30 miles of UCB).
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Gotcha. So that would support the idea that local-ish schools are the most likely affected by…whatever exactly it is going on this year.
Not necessarily just the local schools. According to the BOARS report, Regents Policy 2110 allows UCB to request LORs for up to 15% of freshman applicants. Given the way applicant numbers have been increasing each year, this might mean that about 20,000 applicants could have received LOR requests this year.
You know what’s interesting - a bit tangential to the UCB convo - I look at my daughter’s accomplishments and I look at the accomplishments of the many ambitious, talented, smart, hardworking high school students who post to this forum, and I am just amazed by them all. I have a PhD (from UCB, incidentally, so it is a little bit related!) and I don’t think I was half as accomplished when applying to grad school as many of these high school juniors and seniors are today. There are so many impressive young people. Although, at the same time, it also makes me a bit sad that things have become so competitive that teens need to push themselves so hard just to get into a decent undergrad program. It is crazy competitive. Unbelievably so. But what great kids we have with so much potential to change the world.
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Yes, although looking at my daughter’s school, for example, it is way over 15% of this year’s applicants. It’s more like 90%. So if it has to average out to 15% overall, that would push the percentage at other schools lower than 15%. But of course I don’t actually know the distribution of that. I’m just speculating that the burden has been placed more on local-ish schools from the anecdotal evidence here. Obviously that might not be accurate.
@Gumbymom, my son’s research just got published in a journey. Is there a way we can share this new information with all the UCs?
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The UC’s do not accept updates for awards, EC’s etc…
If he is waitlisted, then UCB will ask to submit a waitlist essay where he can update with any new accomplishments.
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