Thank you very much for your quick response
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Some of those schools do select for different things than Berkeley though. Last year I personally knew of 2 students accepted to Stanford but not Berkeley. It’s crazy out there for our high schoolers!
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The primary explanation that most people have regarding Berkeley LORs is that borderline applicants receive them but even that is not guaranteed. In the past, I think they have mostly asked underrepresented or disadvantaged students to submit LORs but that seems to have changed in recent years given the growing cutthroat competition.
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i’m an intl student from Canada, so i don’t think i’ll be getting a LOR request, unless…
but even if an applicant is borderline, how would ucb know that in < 2 days, if that’s the criteria for sending out a LOR request? or do you think they automatically target high schools in the past that they’ve accepted more students from?
I think most students that get LOR requests get them in late November to December. If you didn’t get it by then I don’t think you’ll receive the LOR request. The deadline they have for students to submit LORs is January 15 so any students who would receive the request probably already got it in December. They either have a computer scan the applications or a reader look at the applications before they send out the requests, but that’s not clear either.
I do not believe this is the case. Everyone I know who has received a LOR request over the past several years did not fall into either of those categories.
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i’m from a canadian high school taking the IB program. my school doesn’t calculate GPA (unweighted or weighted) or class rank, so i left both fields blank. would this put me at a disadvantage?
after all, the ucs do have my transcript witih all the grades/100% on there.
thanks!
Our school doesn’t do class rank, either. From what I’ve been told, it’s not a problem. As for GPA, that should not be a problem, either as UC recalculates the GPA of all applicants using their own formula - so even if you high school gave a GPA, UC would redo it and it would likely be different, anyway.
I obviously do not work for the university nor do I have any insider knowledge. It seems as if the increase in early (within days of submitting the application) requests could have been triggered by zip code. Did fewer students outside of the local area also received LOR requests to net 15% or was there an increase locally in addition to 15% outside of the local area?
Thinking out loud, I wonder if Berkeley is considering expanding the number of LOR they request and are testing the demand on the (local) schools as well as their ability to read an increased volume of letters in a timely fashion. Or maybe they want to evaluate if multiple letters from the same school make a significant impact in differentiating students.
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Thanks. This really useful.
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Have LORs been requested from OOS applicants?
Although I don’t know the answer for sure, I can say that the LOR request we received has a deadline on January 15th. If that is the deadline across the board for LORs, doesn’t seem likely that they would send more requests this late in the game. (Of course, it might be possible that they would have a second deadline for OOS students? Not sure there.)
According to the timeline for the LOR’s posted by UCB, the deadline for all LOR’s is January 15. I have not seen any OOS applicants post they received an LOR request on CC but only a select few will post on CC or other sites so difficult to determine. Also for 2021 based on the BOARS report, only 29% of the applicants asked for LOR’s submitted them.
Request for Letters Sent to Students
First three weeks of December
Letters of Recommendation Due
January 15
Exactly – more kids than not from my daughter’s Berkeley High friend group (including my daughter herself) have received the LOR request; it feels almost automated. Definitely a higher percentage than in her brother’s class two years earlier (when he got the LOR request but only a few of his friends did as well). I’m guessing there is something specific to very, very local schools that is triggering them wanting to see letters from virtually all applicants. A school that is 30 minutes away might be different than BHS which is just a 5 minute walk from campus.
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That’s a really interesting thought and makes good sense! It has actually helped to know that my kid was not alone in getting the request since it was driving us crazy trying to “read” into why she might have been asked by running it through the traditional filter of reasons UCB suggests might trigger a request. Just feels like the group of kids from BHS (and maybe other very local schools) really don’t fit the profile of kids who normally get asked to elaborate. It’s helped me sort of put it out of mind to move onto other worries (like making sure she finishes up her last applications this week and next lol). I appreciate you and many others weighing in on this thread!
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Yes, I am also somewhat reassured to hear that it is also happening at BHS. We had initially thought that it was something specific to just our school which was worrisome (we’re basically the next high school over from Cal. I can see the Campanile from my balcony 
).
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There is absolutely no comparison.
BTW we are about 50ish miles from UCB and none of the kids rx. LORs. I think it may be targeted for specific schools.
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Curiouser and curiouser…
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This is really interesting. My three kids went to/are still at Lowell HS in San Francisco. If you look at the Berkeley stats there, there are more Cal-accepted students from Lowell than from any other school in the state over the last 3 years (from what I can tell, also most likely the most applicants.).
None of my kids ever received LOR requests, nor do they know anyone that has, nor have any parents we talked to ever mentioned it. My oldest son is a Jr. at Cal, got in from the WL. His grades were below the average Cal admitted student GPA. My middle son is a Cal Freshman whose grades were above the average admitted student. My daughter is a senior. Same grades as my middle son. No LOR
Very interesting! I do think it’s pretty targeted/local. My daughter does a regular extracurricular in SF and has lots of friends who attend Lowell, and agree – none of them (similar academic profile as her) seem to have the LOR request. I wonder if it’s mainly BHS and maybe Oakland Tech or something.
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