We’ve seen a number of incongruous outcomes based upon the perceived/actual UC hierarchy. I do think that if your numbers are above the medians, yield protection might be at play. Another possibility is whether the applicant’s essay convincingly conveys that the school is actually the student’s first choice.
I’m not sure if those are the best conclusions. For the first - about yield - if that were the case, then no super star students would be accepted by “lower” UCs and that’s not the case. It seems there is a mix at ALL UCs - some super high achievers, some less high achievers - but nothing that defnitely speaks to yield protections (such as “middle tier” UCs accepting more “middle” students than high students - that doesn’t seem to be the case at all.).
And I don’t think most students address UC choice in their PIQs. In fact, almost ALL advice is to NOT talk about any specific UC campus. My daughter actually only applied to one UC campus and even she was told (by multiple people, including her school counselor and a UC admissions rep) to NOT tailor her PIQs to a specific campus. So how would one convey campus choice?
I think it really is about “fit.” Whether academic background, interests, special skills or experiences - I think the campuses know what they are looking for including and beyond stats. I have no idea what those things are, but I don’t think it’s as simple as yield protection or guessing whether an applicant likes them best.
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Seconded to all this. We’ve gone round and round about the idea of yield protection at UCs and it’s trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. As you point out, there is no way to demonstrate interest like there is at schools that (allegedly) do this. However schools do have in mind certain profiles of kids they are looking for (UC Davis apparently really cares a lot about collaboration, so that is maybe what they are looking for wrt to “fit.”) I know that UCB cares deeply about first-generation students, so maybe that comes into play. For sure the UCs use waitlists to MANAGE yield, especially if they over admitted the year before or have housing drama or something, but there is no admissions reader (given a rubric! and checked for interrater reliability!) sitting there thinking “this kid is probably going to UC Berkeley so I’m going to rate them lower at UCSC.” Believe me, if that was happening we would have read about it.
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Yeah, I think either those high priced college consultants would have already let this cat out of the bag, or even the counselors at competitive high schools would also tip students off. You couldn’t realistically hide it from everyone, especially when some people are making a living off of keeping their eyes on it.
Although, I don’t really have experience with college consultants. Are there any who guide their students to strategically apply to campuses based on yield protection speculation? Maybe there are, but I have not heard of that - and I suspect someone would let that “secret” out, if there were a secret.
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Thirded - is that a word?
If YP is the explanation, then UC Merced should be rejecting almost every applicant since they know the applicant is likely to choose another UC based on perception of “eliteness”.
Generally, if you apply to a competitive/capped/restricted major then there will be wide variability in admit decisions across the UCs. You see this a lot with CS and Engineering, where a student would be rejected by UC Davis but will given Regents at UCB.
If you move away from these types of majors, I think there would probably a fair amount of correlation in the admit decisions with most schools either uniformly accepting or rejecting more consistently.
Also, remember that even if the application is the same, the institutional priorities and review factors could be different in meaningful ways. UCB looks for leadership, UCD might look for collaboration; UCB looks for uncapped weighted GPA while UCSB might be focused on weighted capped.
Yield protection is almost never the explanation.
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If you spend time on each website, you get a feel for what they are looking for. Many times, they will define themselves. UCLA used to say, “We are optimists” and had videos showing how optimism is state of mind at UCLA. They spoke about working across disciplines and respecting differences in thought so that we can succeed together. There is more, but this is the Berkeley thread. To @GoldRush2 's point, you can get a feel for what type of person (student, faculty, admin) they feel would be a good fit at UCLA.
A few quotes from the Berkeley admission site:
“Holistic review” refers to the process of evaluating Freshman applications where no one piece of information is weighted more heavily over another.
We expect the reported grades, test scores, extracurricular activities, personal insight questions, and additional comments to give us the full picture of a student’s experience and aspirations. This is why it is so important to answer each section of the application thoughtfully and thoroughly.
Look at your application. Did you give Berkeley the “full picture” and tell/show them that you have the following?
We review students using a Holistic Review process. This means that we not only look at academic factors, but also non-academic factors. Using a broad concept of merit, readers employ the following criteria which carry no pre-assigned weights:
- The applicant’s full record of achievement in college preparatory work in high school, including the number and rigor of courses taken and grades earned in those courses.
- Personal qualities of the applicant, including leadership ability, character, motivation, insight, tenacity, initiative, originality, intellectual independence, responsibility, maturity, and demonstrated concern for others and for the community are considered.
- Likely contributions to the intellectual and cultural vitality of the campus. In addition to a broad range of intellectual interests and achievements, admission readers seek diversity in personal background and experience.
- Achievement in academic enrichment programs, including but not limited to those sponsored by the University of California. This criterion is measured by time and depth of participation, by the academic progress made by the applicant during that participation, and by the intellectual rigor of the particular program.
- Other evidence of achievement. This criterion recognizes exemplary, sustained achievement in any field of intellectual or creative endeavor; accomplishments in extracurricular activities such as the performing arts or athletics; leadership in school or community organizations; employment; and volunteer service.
- Race, ethnicity, gender, and religion are excluded from the criteria.
We look for persistence, passion, and a desire to give back. It doesn’t matter whether you’re the first in your family to attend college or you’re the latest in a long tradition of educational excellence: You stand up and you stand out.
What we look for in Berkeley students
we conduct what is known as holistic review. That means, we review each application in its entirety, word by word, page by page. We literally hug your application!
While grades and test scores are important and our applicant pool is highly competitive, we read each application individually—looking beyond the numbers—for students who can add to the extraordinary educational atmosphere at Berkeley.
Start your application early and distinguish yourself by writing about your own experience in a way that sets you apart from other applicants.
What we look for:
Initiative, motivation, leadership, persistence, service to others, special potential and substantial experience with other cultures
All achievement in light of the opportunities available to you
Any unusual circumstances or hardships you have faced and the ways in which you have overcome or responded to them. Having a hardship is no guarantee of admission. If you choose to write about difficulties you have experienced, you should describe: How you confronted and overcame your challenges, rather than describing a hardship just for the sake of including it in your application. What you learned from or achieved in spite of these circumstances
Academic accomplishments, beyond those shown in your transcript
Keep in mind
You can use the Additional Comments box to convey any information that will help us understand the context of your achievement; to list any additional honors awards, activities, leadership elements, volunteer activities, etc.; to share information regarding a nontraditional school environment or unusual circumstances that has not been included in any other area of the application. And, finally, after we read your personal insight questions, we will ask the question, “What do we know about this individual?” If we have learned very little about you, your answers were not successful.
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Bingo. That last point speaks to your earlier note about your experience being a scholarship essay reader for a school. If there is too much exposition and storytelling around something other than who you are, what you have done/learned, and how it impacted you (and will therefore enhance a UC community), the essay is probably not doing its job.
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The very very pricey ones near me are not doing that at all, they are guiding students to craft the best PIQ and applying widely to most of the UCs so there is the best chance at landing one.
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I don’t have a private college consultant but last cycle I saw a huge majority of students in my community get waitlisted/rejected at UCI, even though they were qualified, and later ended up getting into UCLA/Berkeley/SD and whatnot, and sometimes even with Regents. Truly I’m against the idea that UCs yield protect, but I seriously feel like Irvine is doing something wonky.
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While my experience is neither wide nor deep, my impression is that PIQs are really one of the deciding factors - when you have so many kids who look very similar on paper - especially at the “higher tier” UCs - my sense is that it can come down to the PIQs. And the consultants know that and put a lot of emphasis on it. I’m not sure a lot applicants really appreciate that - I think there may be many who rest on their high stats, and that’s not always a winning strategy in these high competition UCs.
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Or there are many who don’t really understand how to write the PIQs. That almost happened to D. She had drafted 5 or 6 PIQs several weeks in advance of the deadline, then attended an admissions info session at UCB and asked about what they look for in PIQs, and realized that she had written them all wrong. She had to scrap all her drafts and start over from scratch - while stressful, it’s a good thing she did. Her admissions results likely would have been very different if she had submitted her original responses.
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Agree. I worry that many kids don’t know how to put together the PIQs so that they work with one another and with the Activities section to tell your story.
I’m curious what it is she learned at the UCB session that you think set her on the right track?
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Basically all the things that gumbymom has posted about here and in other UC threads. She had originally approached the PIQs like the common app personal statement - with creativity, metaphors, stories, etc. But then at the info session they said they didn’t want any of that but, instead, to answer the questions like you would at a job interview. Just give the facts and explain relevant context and leave all the “literary” style stuff out.
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Well, and the PIQs are probably where “fit” really comes through, more than other place in the application - both in terms of what you choose to write about, and how you describe it (and yourself).
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(I think there is another CC topic about UC PIQs where this should be?). This is a tough topic because some 17 yrs olds are just better writers than others. Some research well and are good at crafting essays that are like the examples given online (there are tons) that the UCs are supposedly looking for and others just wing it (which may be more authentic, but could be less desired or informative about the applicant). And, of course, applicants have varying degrees of “help” with their essays.
Scares me to think so much weight could be put on these PIQs and they could be used to determine “fit” for a particular university. Also not sure how that jives with diversity. IMHO, putting so much weight on such a subjective and unverified component should be balanced by a more objective and verified component such as the SATs. Just offering a different POV.
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Yes! I saw a video a UC admissions officer made, I think directed towards counselors, and it talked about precisely this.
A good common app essay is likely not a good UC PIQ.
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Fair points. I do know that UC Berkeley has said that they aren’t expecting the essays to be professional — they do want them to authentically sound like a 17 or 18 year old answering the kinds of questions they might get asked in an interview. But for sure UCB really, really cares about first generation and low-income students and pays eye to all the programs students have done in HS that are devoted to helping such students get to college. I think of all the UCs, Berkeley ends up caring about diversity and equity one of the most, and they have ways of getting those students through the holistic process.
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This reminds me of another thing my D said she was told at the UCB info session: they are NOT judging writing skill. They do not care how well you write - they are looking at content alone.
Of course, to develop good content is a writing skill and some will do better than others at that, but I do think that they are looking for a straightforward description of facts, which sets the “writing” bar a bit lower than, say, the common app.
Yeah, that’s always going to be the case but again, I think the UC PIQ is also better in this sense than the Common App personal statement because it is more of a statement of facts. If you have strong facts to talk about, you will do well. If you do not have much to talk about, then you will not be able to gloss over that with fancy writing “help.” They are after all judging content rather than style.
Yes, of course, it is not a perfect system - no argument there. And there is no such thing as true fairness in any aspect of the process - there will always be kids with various advantages and those advantages will doubtlessly help them. But I do personally find PIQs at least a little closer to a level playing field for the reasons above.
But no more subjective and unverified than the activities section. And I have no doubt some students stretch the truth on those and some might outright lie. And that really sucks for those students who might lose a spot to those who were less than honest about their experiences. But isn’t that always life? After college, those same people will lie on their resumes and in their job interviews - they may get caught, or they may get away with it. It’s unfair, we all know it happens, but hopefully it doesn’t happen as often as we fear. I see this as a similar thing.
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Agree with all your points!
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Besides the 4 PIQ, applicants have 20 opportunities to tell/show Berkeley that they have the attributes that Berkeley is looking for. In each of those 20 A&A, applicants have a space to describe the organization/activity and another space to go into detail about what they did.
Applicants should spend as much time crafting the A&A section as they do the PIQ. Every character/word should add value and help paint a picture of the student. Students should consider what the colleges are looking for and think about what activities and extracurriculars demonstrate those attributes. “What activity have I done that shows character? What shows motivation? What shows responsibility? What shows initiative?” Include those words in your descriptions of what you did. For example, “I took the initiative to…” or “I was responsible for…”
Just about every UC info session advises students to use the additional comments box to add more context to your application. The quote I listed above gives students permission to “list additional honors awards, activities, leadership elements, volunteer activities, etc.” in those additional comment boxes.
There are opportunities for applicants to include a ton of information beyond grades and PIQ. Students who take advantage of those opportunities are more likely to give the reader a “full picture.” Those that do not, often leave the reader wondering.
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