Parent of D22. Found this while looking up ELC and how do you determine if a student is ELC eligible etc. UC website says
If you are a California resident and rank in the top 9 percent of students in your California high school class — and your high school participates in our ELC program — you may be eligible for ELC designation.
How does one figure out if one is in the top 9% or not? The UC web site says the app process determines it.
I looked up some of the old threads on this topic but still not clear on this. Appreciate any thoughts on this topic.
Basically, your UC-recalculated GPA is compared with the top 9% threshold UC-recalculated GPA from a recent previous class at your high school (high school submits top 15% academic records for UC recalculation of GPAs and setting of the top 9% threshold).
You may want to ask your counselor if they know what the threshold GPA is for your high school.
Also, if your child receives that distinction, it means that if your child isn’t accepted into one of his or her UC selections, then he is eligible to be admitted to an alternate UC campus. Right now, that campus is Merced. Your child doesn’t get to pick and choose where he goes. It’s wherever there is space.
The letter, for our kids, came from their local high school, in the mail, telling them that they had received the “eligibility in the local context” distinction. The high school provides that data and information to the State.
I am not sure if it is the school, following the UC system’s formula, or the UC system, with the school data, who determines. All I know is that I was asked to sign a waiver to allow my school to share my child’s grades etc. with the UC system for this purpose.
We signed the waiver to release our child’s records, but I think her high school made the ELC determination. However, this determination is ONLY general since they do not have complete information for the students nor the exact number of students from their high school who will ultimately be eligible for ELC.
The waiver for the release of our child’s info to UC was for those students who were identified as potential ELC candidates by the high school. It looks like UC makes that final determination based on a larger pool of potential candidates (I just checked the letter and the waiver form).
We never received any notification. My daughter just emailed her counselor to ask if she qualified at the beginning of senior year and found out she had ELC status.
From past year reports, UC applicants get notified by UC after putting in their courses and grades into the UC application (which then recalculates GPA and compares it to the threshold GPA for their high school).
Since the determination is based on a known method, the high school can do this as well and inform students of their ELC status. However, if the student has taken courses outside of the high school but not reported to the high school, then the high school’s determination of ELC status may not match the actual UC determination of ELC status that includes all high school and college courses completed.
This is likely for the purpose of calculating the threshold GPA for the high school.