AHS is the other that it definitely affects
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That makes a lot of sense too
I wonder if the increased Letters of Rec requests to a targeted handful of high schools might be tied to some local initiative that UC Berkeley Admissions is (quietly) partnering with. For example, there’s an org called East Bay College Fund/Oakland Promise that is designed to increase college access in specific parts of the East Bay, and so schools like Berkeley High, Alameda High, Oakland Tech, etc., might be regarded as strong “feeder schools” where the LOR’s are being used to try to pinpoint applicants who have shone brightest in their context?
On the flipside, a school like SF’s Lowell High School, which usually has 400+ seniors apply to Berkeley every year, and about 80-100 accepted, might be a “known commodity” and Berkeley Admissions can lean more heavily on GPA-driven ELC to determine which 15-20% of Lowell applicants to accept in any given year, thereby not relying on LOR’s as much. Granted, this is idle speculation, just trying to come up with a paradigm that might fit what Berkeley’s doing.
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There’s another (unrelated) thread here on CC where I learned something interesting. Apparently, my daughter’s high school’s average unweighted GPA is 3.7. Which is obviously a bit problematic out of the gate. But given that fact, I’m now wondering if the LOCs are being used to differentiate between students who all have essentially the same grades and courses and all look pretty much alike on paper.
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I do think that’s some of it – but I don’t think BHS has an unweighted GPA that high. Lowell might, though! To @parent365 point, I do believe (per college counselors I’ve spoken with at the school) UCB in particular cares about supporting first-generation college students, and some of my son’s friends who were ultimately admitted fit that profile. Given the stats on who was admitted after submitting LOR in the 2021 cycle, they clearly like to admit first-generation students (I forget the exact stats – they are above somewhere – but something like 56% of the kids who were asked to submit LOR and did submit were admitted; 90% of them were first-generation students). Very few if any of the students we know from BHS who have been asked for letters this go-round are first-generation college students. But also, they can get the info about program participation like Oakland Promise without asking for LOR. It’s part of the application.
UCB does not evaluate based on unweighted GPA. They mainly look at Uncapped weighted UC GPA + # AP/honors courses for academic rigor.
Yes, I know that the UC do their own GPA calculation. However, what this would seem to indicate is that many students will essentially have the same grades and, since our school is pretty small, for the same classes. While the UC GPA might diverge somewhat, the difference between students taking mostly the same classes and getting mostly the same grades likely will not be significant. (Our school is very limited in the AP dept: no APs are allowed before junior year, then the max is 3 per year, out of about 15 offered; so most students will not have a ton of APs to affect the weighting).
I thought UCB looks at all three GPAs: unweighted, weighted capped, and weighted uncapped?
That is actually my point. Cal already uses mutiple criteria and GPA is just one of them. I really don’t think they need LOR to distinguish between students of the same school particularly since they have the PIQs. There may be some school specific or geography specific reason for mass LOR asks. In most cases, LORs will be very specific to the applicant and is not the basis of differentiation between students.
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That may be the case. I don’t really know. Which is why I am here trying to learn more 
Although the other thing that might be a consideration: many of the requests for LORs at our school came within 2 days of submitting the application. Is it really possible that they had time to sift through PIQs before initiating the request? Given the quick turnaround, seems like it would be more likely based solely on GPA and class stats? Well, or on location/school.
My high school in San Francisco is also quite small (around 560 students) and so far I know around 4 students from my school including myself who have received LOR requests from Berkeley. On average I would say that 50-60 people apply to CAL every year from my high school. My school also lacks AP classes and there is a strict limit on how many classes can be taken by students. AP Classes can only be taken in Junior and Senior years and with a limit of 2 AP classes per year. That could be a reason for triggering the LOR request as the school doesn’t provide enough AP Classes. I don’t know if that will become a disadvantage or not.
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Yeah, it’s really hard to say. As mentioned above, however, while my daughter’s school has had this AP policy for many years, this is the first year of mass LOR requests. So it apparently hasn’t been an issue in the past - we have always had a fairly high percentage of acceptances to UCB without the LORs and without a ton of APs. So it’s still a bit of mystery in terms what is going on this year.
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From UCB’s website regarding Freshman selection:
Since Berkeley is a competitive campus, satisfying the minimum requirements is often not enough to be competitive for selection. In addition to the basic admission requirements, the campus selects its freshman class through an assessment that includes a holistic review of your academic performance as measured primarily by: * Your weighted and unweighted UC grade point average (calculated using 10th and 11th grade UC-approved courses only)
All UC campuses will review the 3 UC GPA’s but for most campuses, the Capped weighted is used to determine minimum eligibility although that GPA is the most common GPA listed for statistical purposes on the UCOP website.
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Considering both the number of requests and the timing, it seems pretty clear that UCB is trying something different this year with LORs. So I am not sure we can learn much from looking at prior year request patterns and percentage admitted from the LOR pool. We will just have to wait and see what happens!
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Yeah, agreed. I’m one of those people who believes that if I think about a question long enough, I can find an answer to it. But when I think about this, I just end up with a headache. I imagine in the end we just have to wait and see what happens.
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Let’s hope for the best!
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Sorry for late reply. He took 2 of the 5 AP’s senior year so they never saw his final grades in those classes before making their admissions decision. Of course, scoring high on the tests was still helpful because it waive some of the required classes at Berkley.
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can we change major now?
thanks
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Was there a limit on AP Classes?
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