As much as I hate holistic review in admission process, I must agree with you 100% here.
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Before a student applies to a school, they should look at the criteria that the school is going to use to evaluate them. If they feel that the evaluation process will not work in their favor or that it has room for fraud, the student can choose not to apply to the school.
The UC system evaluates 13 factors when reviewing applications. These 13 factors are posted on the University of California website as well as on each individual UC campus website.
This is the UC Davis Freshman Class of 2026 Discussion thread. It is not a thread to debate the UC admissions process.
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I am a CA resident, my preference is for my kid to go to a UC. Folks may not have a choice because of their circumstances. Asking someone to not apply to a school is not correct. There are many other factors besides fraud. My kid wanted to 4 APs for his senior year. But his school allotted him only two. One of the 13 factors quoted above is senior year strength courses etc. Because of the school not allotting the requested courses, that negatively affects my kid for no fault of his. Like some others mentioned, courses and gpa are heavily influenced by the kid, the teachers, the school’s location, etc. Test scores normalize some of these influences. It was a good data-point which has been unnecessarily removed in my opinion.
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No one said that. I recommended that if their kid’s strength is test scores (and not the other factors that the UCs evaluate) then perhaps other schools would be a better choice.
And I totally disagree.
At the end of the day, every parent on here will have an opinion on admissions that benefits THEIR kid. And everyone has an opinion.
The UCs have made it clear what they’re looking for. We all knew what they’re looking for BEFORE our kids applied. It’s clear they’re looking for more than stats. We know they removed the SAT/ACT. It just makes no sense that after kids are denied people go back to being angry about things they knew before applying.
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There is additional comment section where schedule issues such as not having access to the AP classes can be addressed. Notes from the UC conference encourage applicants to utilize this section to let the application readers know important and pertinent facts to aid in reviewing their application. Again as stated by @lkganswers
This is the UC Davis Freshman Class of 2026 Discussion thread. It is not a thread to debate the UC admissions process.
There are several discussion threads here on CC where you can appropriately discuss NOT DEBATE what you feel are issues with the admission process.
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What does “if you don’t like the criteria, don’t apply” mean? As I mentioned, folks sometimes don’t have the choice if they should apply or not and that statement was insensitive.
You can disagree all you want. The decision to remove test scores was done in haste without proper study. UCs own study was inconclusive.
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You always have a choice. No one is forcing anyone to apply to a UC. And again, I don’t think the removal of test scores is a bad thing in the slightest. The UCs have indicated that the students they’re accepting now without scores are equally or more academically capable compared to years past with test scores.
You clearly equate intelligence quantitatively with test scores. I do not.
Leaving aside the merits of including or excluding SAT, I think we have to acknowledge that there are equally grave inequities in the other aspects of the holistic process. Essays and ECs are all subject to the same issues. I know several kids in my son’s high school who got internships because their parent was either an executive at the company or an investor in it (we live in a fairly affluent neighborhood). Many of them spent thousands attending summer courses or elite engineering camps at OOS schools. Is it fair to so many other kids who worked hard and lined up stellar ECs through their own efforts. Only as fair as it is to kids who worked hard to get great SAT scores but didn’t have the opportunities to shore up other areas.
As an example, there is a private company that promised my son the opportunity to do research and publish for a small fee of $4500. We refused to play the game and chose to rely on his own merits.
The process is flawed. I think we can all agree to that.
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In case anyone thought that compliance with @Gumbymom 's directive is optional, it’s not. Leave posts debating UC testing policies on more appropriate thread. E.g.
Any further posts not in compliance may be deleted without notice.
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Did he not ED to a school. It’s so much harder with regular decision
My daughter was not with identical gpa for psychology. Go figure - congrats!
I think the UC Holistic approach is what makes rejection seem even more personal. I know as a parent I took the rejection hard - my daughter not so much - thankfully - as our approach to all UC’s was you don’t know what they are looking for all you can do is tried to explain who you are. I think my daughter did that - she had the grades, the ECs, ELC, the volunteer the work, I thought she would be the perfect Davis kid, but she was not what they were looking for this year. I will say things have changed drastically since her sister applied in 2018 and was waitlisted for CS (with lower stats). She can not compete with the kids that are now taking AP and college classes in the summer, and spending their summers in other countries or Ivy league session for high schoolers and I personally do not feel that should be a requirement to go to a state funded school. However - it does seem that is where we are now. My daughter is lucky - she did get into every CSU school she applied. We know the UCs are all different and her preference is a coastal school - so who knows, when sooooooo many very very qualified people apply there will be a lot of very very qualified people that don’t get in - it’s just the way it goes. Good luck to all.
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My son was waitlisted at Davis last year and then accepted into every other UC. He got into UCLA for aerospace engineering and Berkeley for mechanical engineering. All of his aerospace friends at UCLA got waitlisted at Davis. Good luck to your son! Congrats on Caltech.
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Can you please share his stats. My daughter got waitlisted at UCD. Hoping she still has a shot at the other UC’s.
UC’s review independently. Being waitlisted or denied at one UC does not predict her outcomes at the other UC’s.
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Here you go… Good luck to your daughter. I know how stressful this time can be.
Major: Aerospace or Mechanical Engineering
UC Unweighted GPA: 4.0 UC Capped Weighted GPA: 4.27 UC Fully Weighted GPA: 4.63 ELC (top 9%): Yes
Comments about course load (including senior year): 17 AP/IB/CC Classes, IB Diploma
SAT Subject Tests (if any): Math 2: 790, Bio: 770
AP exams (scores in parentheses): Human Geography (5),
Biology (5), Computer Science (5), Lang (5), Calc BC (5) and Physics (5)
IB exams (score in parentheses): World Religion (6) Taking HL Physics, HL Math, HL English, SL Spanish and Music now.
Major Awards (USAMO, Intel etc.): PSAT Commended
Extracurriculars: Robosub Team (Semi-Finalist), Math Club (UCSD Math Competition Team won first place), Track (JV Athlete of the Year), Youth Entrepreneur Award (city competition) second place
Job/Work Experience: TutorVolunteer/Community service: Church High School Youth Group Leadership (3 Years),
Worship Team-Plays guitar and cajon in band (4 years)
Music- Piano, Guitar, drums (from 4 years old)
Church Middle School Group Leader (3 years)
Lots of volunteer hours helping community (activities at church, food bank)
Youth Court Juror (4 years)
Trained for, raised money and ran the LA Half Marathon as part of a group to bring clean water to children in Africa. Group raised over $100,000.
Summer Activities: Summer school every summer
Personal Insight essays (details): Spent lots of time on them.
State (if domestic applicant): California
High school type: Public
Gender: Male
Where else were you accepted/waitlisted/rejected: Accepted: SDSU, CPP, Cal Poly Slo, UCR, UCI (Regents), UCSD (Undeclared),UCSB, UCLA, Berkeley, UCD (Waitlisted)
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Thank you
First, I want to say that I understand your frustration. My daughter was waitlisted and deferred at a couple schools she thought were matches. The college admissions process is frustrating and confusing and trying to figure out why the decisions are what they are can be mind boggling.
But there are plenty of kids who don’t take APs in the summer, study abroad in HS or do Ivy League summer sessions. Our HS has many AP course options but they absolutely limit the number kids can take - AP classes are not available to sophomores. Most are only allowed to take 2 APs in junior year. According to the UC stats, we don’t have kids apply to the UCs every year but when they do apply, they do fairly well. It looks like 7 of 9 were accepted last year, including 3 to Berkeley.
(We do have exceptions to the AP limit every once in awhile with a super advanced kid but invariably they go to schools like MIT or CMU, not the UCs.)
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My son got accepted into Data science.
Asian Male OOS (WA), UW GPA: 3.867, 7 APs: 4.5 Avg, ECs are ok with an internship.
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Does anyone know what the actual acceptance rate was for the 2022 cycle? I’m just curious
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