That’s my point. Any other year and having high SAT/ACT would have helped lots of kids.
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Indeed, it’s a painful experience.
The other aspect is that students with high GPA and lower SAT scores would probably not even apply to some of the UCs.
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My 35 ACT kid was waitlisted. I am pretty sure test blind hurt him.
Exactly!!!
Thanks,I realized that now, I also realized that taking Honors don’t matter either. The funny thing is there are many honor classes that are harder than AP classes in our school, for example, you can only take honor computer seminar after AP CS, you take honor writing after completed AP Lit, you take honor multi variable cal after AP cal BC… College application is a bit tricky to me. I learned a lot.
Wow- that’s wonderful. I found that my identical twin boys got similar results to all the privates but not UC schools thus far. Did your daughters get into the same UC schools?
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My 34 ACT daughter was outright rejected with a 3.92 unweighted and 4.31 UC capped/weighted GPA. Solid ECs and essays. So yes, I think we’re now seeing the downside to the new test blind policy.
The crazy thing is that we see now she’ll likely be rejected from all the UCs she applied to, but she’s still very competitive for USC, where she also applied. Her 9th-12th grade “USC” unweighted GPA is 3.95 and weighted is 4.47. And at USC her 34 ACT will be considered. That puts her in very good stead for USC (yet to hear from USC), or most other selective private and non-UC schools for that matter.
It’s clear from the sheer numbers that lots of applicants who weren’t competitive before with low test scores and didn’t bother applying now think they have a shot at the top tier UCs for the first time ever. … and they’re right.
If UC wanted to do away with the effects of standardized testing, looks like they sure succeeded.
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So maddening.
And my 34 ACT kid was rejected at UCSB, UCI, and waiting on rejection from Cal Poly SLO. So, yeah . . . 
So wrong. 
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Son into CS program
3 of 400 at pretty good Silicon Valley HS
Passionate Chef
Environmentalist
Track & X Country
Speech/Debate
Solid cohesive essays
Banquet waiter
300+ Warriors and Giants games
Intact family
Many other advantages and privileges that he rarely wasted…
and he was still lucky to get in.
My heart goes out to all not accepted or waiting.
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I’m so sorry. We are in a similar situation and scratching our heads.
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And hurt a lot of others. (I know I’m stating the obvious.)
Would a letter of continued interest be helpful in order for me to get off the waitlist and if so how would i go about that? Or does ucsb not accept those?
I’m sorry to hear your about your daughter’s rejection but I wouldn’t blame the UC’s test blind policy for the rejection. There were many people who were not able to take ACTs or SATs safely this past year and colleges looking at test scores disproportionately affect students who could not afford to fly to another state to take a test, so I think UCs had good reason to implement that policy. Also, each UC has different things they are looking for in their applicants and I’ve heard of many people getting rejected from UCSB and UCSD but getting into Cal, UCLA, and USC so there’s no reason your daughter would automatically be rejected from these other schools as she is clearly a smart and hardworking student.
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S21 Accepted
Oos 4.0 Uw/4.3 W no idea of California gpa
National Merit Finalist
1510 SAT. First attempt and could not re take due to COVID
Varsity Baseball (Captain); and Varsity Basketball at large school
Additional EC’s but nothing special
I really think test blind/test optional hurts many students this year. Good luck everyone
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Yes, ucb (w/ regents invites) & uci (w/regents).
Actually, the UCs didn’t implement the policy. They wanted to be test optional, but there was a court case and a judge mandated the UCs go test blind.
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I am pretty sure that they do not accept any additional info unless requested.