I do not know the rationale behind the UC’s not considering demonstrated interest but the CSU’s also do not consider an applicants level of interest as part of their application review.
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UCs should be thinking about how to decrease volume of applications to each univ while increasing the apps to the entire UC system overall.
For Example: 93.1% of enrolled students at UCLA had 3.75 GPA (Unweighted High School) or higher last year. If they just recommended 3.75 GPA to begin with and asked anyone with lower GPA to write a 300w essay as part of the holistic review, it would decrease this high volume of applicants. Admission rate will go up but we should not really worry about that.
UW Madison has a 3.5 GPA recommendation and applicants below could apply but will need to address it as part of the essays. Every UC could pick their recommended GPA based on their enrollment data.
From UCLA 2022 CDS:
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Is this UC GPA? Capped? Weighted? Unweighted? 10th-11th? All four years? (Which they could have, after the students enroll.)
I understand the point, though I wouldn’t punish the students under the target range with another essay, but that could be how they use one of their essays, sure.
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I hear you on many more qualified applicants than seats. But I am baffled as to why that’s the case.
Fact 1: the number of California high school graduates has stayed fairly stable over the past decade;
Fact 2: state mandatory standard assessments show little improvement in student performance. In fact, both CAASPP and ELPAC results have been declining statewide;
Fact 3: the number of UC applicants with a GPA >= 4.0 almost tripled during the same period – from 38,000 in 2012 to 111,000 in 2022.
Something does not add up.
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The CDS GPA is on 4.0 scale so unweighted. The data below is more accurate.
GPA statistics for admitted freshman students
UC Uncapped Weighted GPA Median: 4.58.
Middle 25-75% 4.40-4.73
UC Unweighted GPA Median: 4.00
Middle 25-75% 3.95-4.00
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Is that based on all four years then since they have a chance to collect the data of enrolled students? Thanks!
Last 2 years, bunch of high schools had students with Credit/NoCredit instead of grade for a spring semester of 2020. This boosted the UC GPA by 0.15-0.20 (estimate) but UCs evaluate based on your high school context. The GPAs should fall back this year to 2020 levels.
This higher GPA also increased expectations of students/parents as to which UC they might get into.
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UCLA GPA has always been high. You can check the 2018 numbers below:
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Unfortunately the CDS data does not indicate if it is 4 years or not. Also enrolled GPA numbers are always lower than the admitted GPA numbers.
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True. But GPAs had been rising dramatically even before the pandemic.
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Yeah, I think it’s a combination of some grade inflation combined with a vicious cycle of increased applications leads to lower percentage admitted, leads to students the following year applying to more colleges (in the case of UC’s more campuses) to try to make sure they get into one they like, which then leads to more applications per college/campus, and the cycle continues. Seems like the most selective (highly rejective) colleges may have largely leveled out this year, but still increasing for the less (only in a relative sense) selective colleges/campuses.
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Yep. This ^^^
But overall more students are going to 4 year college (and more careers require it) than was the case decades ago.
My theory on part of reason GPA has risen so much is that parents have immediate feedback on grades via school loop and can get on their kids about it. I feel like teachers are also more lenient on late work, accommodating students who are behind, etc. all good for other reasons but certainly makes it look like all 100,000 applicants are highly motivated and similar academically when there is much variation. High schools love graduating everyone and claiming 100 percent are college ready with great GPAs so parents are happy and they look better.
I work for the schools, I see kids with perfect GPA, they are not all the same but the UC can’t see that and essays are easy to coach. No good solutions but I sure would love to see a recommendation thrown in, even better if the principal gets to pick which teacher writes the letter so the student can’t game it.
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Actually it brings down the GPA on the high end. For instance, S22’s school district went to Pass/No Pass and that meant his 2 As in tough AP classes couldn’t count towards honors points. This was a 0.12 downgrade on the fully weighted GPA (down from 4.67 to 4.55).
Pass/No Pass has an inflationary effect only on the UW GPA which is not as important as the uncapped weighted GPA for the top UCs.
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You are forgetting the athletic recruits. 
Their admission process is quite different. But I’m sure you have a plan for those and could incorporate them too. . .I do like your ideas to improve the entire UC admission situation; it seems a bit broken at best.
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Grade inflation (?)
Does anyone know for major specific admissions like engineering, do the PIQs get scored/evaluated within the major, or within the college? Or are PIQs scored/evaluated across colleges within the university?
Each school is different. For Berkeley, they spell it out on their website.
If you are applying…
- to a professional college (such as the College of Engineering or Chemistry), it is important that you discuss:
- Your intended field of study
- Your interest in your specific major
- Any school or work-related experience
- for a scholarship, we recommend that you elaborate on the academic and extracurricular information in the application that demonstrates your motivation, achievement, leadership, and commitment.
- to the Educational Opportunity Program (EOP)—the support program for students from low-income families in which neither parent is a college graduate:
- Discuss how the program might benefit you
- Tell us about your determination to succeed even though you may have lacked academic or financial support
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Here is some information from UC Davis: How to Answer UC Application PIQs Like an Aggie | UC Davis
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