@ProfessorPlum168 I actually got the feeling that the history and context of the school was very important in combination with the GPA. So if a school didn’t offer honors the student was being compared against students at their school, or maybe similar schools without honors. Although that can be a negative thing as well. If UCLA has a history of a school’s quality classes, a good performance might not mean as much.
I think bottom line, for many competitive schools like UCLA, you can do as much as you can and in the end, there is a bit of a lottery feeling…