<p>I've been told that the UCs dont consider class rank during admisson, but why is it that on collegeboard, let's say for UCSD, has 97% of the students admitted in the top 10% of the graduating class. How do they know this if they dont consider class rank during admission??</p>
<p>Well, the information is still available whether or not they consider it...right?</p>
<p>the UC's cannot consider class rank bcos ~50% of Calif public HS's no longer rank. By definition (see "Master Plan"), the UC's are designed to only accept the top 12.5% of kids in the state, so..... [you do the math].....(ignores the fact that in the last couple of years, that number has approached to 14% with special admits, such as athletes) </p>
<p>However, it's always been unclear to me when they post those stats if they are using only the stats of the 50% publics + privates of schools that DO rank.</p>
<p>California high schools send the grades of all juniors who may be in the top 4% at the school and therefore eligible in the local context (ELC) for admission to UC the summer between junior and senior years, to allow UC to determine which students qualify under ELC. I assume that each school sends transcripts of every student who might conceivably qualify, as the ELC gpa is calculated differently than the UC/CSU gpa and just about every other gpa you could imagine. So from that data UC has the ability to determine fairly accurately what a given gpa at a given high school corresponds to in terms of class rank - at least in terms of top 10% or so...</p>
<p>UCB & UCLA: 99% of non-URM's are in top 10% of class. For UCSD 2 yrs ago, the figure was 90%. (Don't know the figure for the most recent cycle.) The "official" sites can talk about 12.5% all they want, but the reality is recently that the 2 top UC's are generally not accepting many non-URM's below 10% unless something very unusual is at play. Three cycles ago, there was a student from my D's high-profile private h.s. that was top 12% but did not get into any of the UC's to which she applied. Her test scores were mediocre, so possibly she did not make the combo formula cut-off for that year. She got accepted only into one not-terribly-selective East Coast school instead.</p>
<p>Rank is only one factor, but more importantly, rank is no guarantee. Public U notwithstanding, UC is under no obligation to accept any student respective to his or her rank. There have been highly qualified CA students who were not accepted during the last cycle, due to factors other than GPA's, tests, ranks, & demanding h.s. curriculum. The percentages that UC posts are public policy guidelines. An applicant must express in writing a convincing interest in attending a particular campus, & be able to support that interest in his or her essay. Comprehensive Review means just that.</p>
<p>As to high schools that "do not rank," many of them merely do not <em>publish</em> those ranks in files & on computers. My D's h.s. does not rank, yet the GC produced her rank for colleges which requested that, for the NMSF competition (h.s. has to fill out part of the form), for awards solicited by private institutions, etc. This (secretive ranking) is standard practice for many schools. Even in order to produce a quartile or quintile published ranking, the school must do the math privately to determine the order of the students in the top tier, including for ties. It's not difficult to recall that info for the purpose of reporting to colleges, whether public or private.</p>
<p>For UC, rank reporting really mostly comes into play for the ELC designation anyway. For non-ELC, it's not so much that a percentile is selected (no teacher recs, & apparently no GC report) as that it merely happens to be (as someone mentioned) that theoretically the UC admissions system is <em>designed</em> to accept an approx. rank of CA student. But whether recently it has really worked out to that in fact, is not necessarily true for the most competitive campuses.</p>
<p>Not all high schools in CA are included in the ELC pool. I was given that info by the ELC administrators when my D was notified as to her own eligibility.</p>
<p>This would actually make sense, given that some h.s.'s offer no advanced classes, & ELC is weighted for Honors & AP's. (This eliminates actually some very rigorous high schools -- who claim that "all" of their classes are "AP level," as well as schools on the opposite end without resources for extras.)</p>
<p>The high schools do not send lists of "all those who conceivably qualify." They are asked, literally, to send the names of the top 4% for the a-g weighted categories, including ties. It's up to the h.s. administration to get out the transcripts & the calculators. Those students are then notified by U.C. & actively recruited throughout the application period. They are given a user name & password which they use exclusively for further contact with UC.</p>
<p>"there was a student from my D's high-profile private h.s. that was top 12% but did not get into any of the UC's <strong><em>to which she applied</em></strong>."</p>
<p>Well, there's the rub, eh? There's no guarantee that the top 12.5% will get into Berkeley or UCLA. Riverside is usually the only campus which accepts every UC eligible applicant.</p>
<p>I think all public high schools are eligible to be included in the ELC program, but they're not required to do so. Obviously, there's little purpose to a very top ranked high school doing so, as their top 4% will be eligible to attend UC (and probably more than one campus) in any event. But the system is actually designed to identify the top 4% from each school, regardless of the resources or comparative rigor of the school. (In fact, I think that was the idea behind ELC.) For that reason, the ELC gpa is calculated differently than the UC admissions gpa. (ELC gpa is not capped.) </p>
<p>At my kids' school we were told they sent more than 4% because UC performs the calculation itself. The UC ELC website reports that they requested 66 transcripts from the school (and recived 56) - the junior class is about 500 students. So it looks as though UC asks for about the top 13% and figures it out from there.</p>
<p>Oh - here you go, from the UCOP ELC website:</p>
<p>"UC takes into consideration school growth and historical graduation rates to calculate how many transcripts to request of each high school.</p>
<p>The number of transcripts each school should submit is on the first page of the School Information Sheet of the school submission packets.</p>
<p>This year, UC has requested a number of transcripts equal to the top 12.5% of the expected graduating class. The number of ELC students will still be the top 4% of the expected graduating class, or approximately 32% of the number of transcripts requested."</p>
<p>Berkelely's common data set states that class rank is "not considered"</p>
<p><"I think all public schools are eligible to be included." ></p>
<p>You can "think" that all you want, but they are not all eligible. In fact, further, your understanding of the reasons for ELC creation is also not accurate: it was not about getting the top 4% from each CA school -- not then, not now. It was, & is, about attracting the truly outstanding CA students that UC was losing to highly selective private colleges & U's. In response, UC developed a way to try to identify those students in order to improve the quality of the UC student body on every campus. They need the Honors & AP categories labeled as such in order to make the calculations meaningful. In addition, any high school who is eligible may choose to opt out of the process for whatever reason. </p>
<p>"Your kids' school" way of handling ELC is not a blueprint for the way it's done everywhere. At my D's high school, UC did not determine the top 4%. They specifically asked the h.s. for that, & gave them the guidelines for the calculation. They did not ask for the top 13%, top 5%, or anything like that. They asked for exactly the top 4% including ties, & they received that.</p>
<p>Certain public high schools & certain private high schools participate in the ELC identification & recruitment process. Many schools from the 2 categories are not included. It is an attempt to capture at least some of the State's top producers & ambitious students.</p>
<p>Top 4% of a low-performing school with no advanced classes may be worlds apart from top 4% of an elite school with 15 students tied for Val. The goal of ELC is not about rigid or blind percentages.</p>
<p>bluebayou (Post #9),</p>
<p>Yes, rank is "not considered" in terms of the Comprehensive Review process. I think the percentages (other than ELC) that we're all throwing around are <em>results</em> percentages, not qualification percentages, if you will.</p>
<p>But when it comes to ELC, it is not only considered, it is a separate admissions track.</p>
<p>Please, folks, don't believe everything a website claims, including those operated by public entities. The UCSB website also contains inaccuracies.</p>
<p>You are 100% correct, right?</p>
<p>For those morons like me, you can find the official ELC lies at
the UC official web site here:</p>
<p><a href="http://www.ucop.edu/sas/elc/%5B/url%5D">http://www.ucop.edu/sas/elc/</a></p>
<p>Epiphany - you're right about some public high schools not being included in ELC. Only <strong>accredited</strong> public high schools are eligible, and it appears that there are a couple dozen high schools in California (out of 900+ schools statewide) which are not accredited. You're not correct about the other things, though. As you can see from the UCOP ELC website I cut & pasted above, UC asked each high school for the top 12.5% students, and picks the top 4% from that sample. And ELC absolutely <strong>is</strong> about qualifying the top 4% of students from <strong>every</strong> high school, particularly the ones which otherwise wouldn't send that many students to UC. Again, from the UCOP ELC website:</p>
<p>"ELC stands for Eligibility in the Local Context and is one of three paths to freshman eligibility to the University of California, along with Eligibility in the Statewide Context and Eligibility by Examination Alone. Under ELC, the top 4 percent of students in each California high school class will be designated UC-eligible based on the coursework taken at the high school. </p>
<p>The University implemented the ELC program to advance several long-held goals. </p>
<p>The ELC program increases the pool of eligible students and is expected to return UC to the guideline set by the California Master Plan for Higher Education, which is that the top 12.5% of public high school graduates will meet the UC eligibility criteria.</p>
<p>The ELC program gives UC a presence in each California high school and serves to stimulate a college-going culture at those schools that typically do not send many graduates to the University.</p>
<p>The ELC program recognizes and rewards individual academic accomplishments in the context of the student's high school and the opportunities available to the student."</p>
<p>In fact, ELC was criticized when implemented as being a stalking horse for affirmative action, on the theory that many students in the top 4% from schools serving primarily minority populations would not otherwise qualify for UC admission, and those students would crowd out white kids from the suburbs. I honestly don't know where you got the idea that ELC was about recruiting top students from highly competitive schools. The top 4% from those schools were already eligible under the statewide standards. ELC was always about getting more kids from the low-performing high schools into UC.</p>
<p>UCLA's common data set also says that Rank is "not considered" (in comp review which I thought was the OP's question, but perhaps I misunderstood). </p>
<p>Re: ELC
if I recall, the Calif 4% program followed Texas's 10% program, which was intended to expand University opportunity for students from inner city, and low income, poor performing high schools. </p>
<p>Since the ELC caculation is by individual HS, the number of AP/honors courses offered at that HS are not relevant. A high school could theoretically offer only college prep classes (zero honors/ap) and the top 4% of its graduating class would be guaranteed a spot somewhere in the UC system (as long as the student meets the other eligibility critera). </p>
<p>btw: While it has not been the designated 'guarantee' campus, UCI does use elc in its comp review, and has accepted all elc students in prior years.</p>
<p>I thought the OP's question was "How do they know that 97% of admitees were in the top 10% if they don't consider rank in admissions?" If that's the question, I think the answer is that you can know the rank (or be able to calculate it) and still not use it in admissions. And I think you're right about UC campuses using ELC in their comp review. Both UCSD and Davis (which publish their review formulas) assign a specific weight to being ELC. So while "rank" might not be a factor, being in the top 4% is. (5% does nothing for you.)</p>
<p>I saw UCSD's review formula... althought i have no idea how they came up with the certain numbers...</p>
<p>GPA - 4500
ELC - 300
First Generation -300
Low Income - 300</p>
<p>Does this really mean that being an ELC (top 4%) is actually weighted the same as being a First Generation/Low Income student??? Does anyone know how other campuses weight ELC in comparison to other admission factors?</p>
<p>At Davis ELC is 1,000 points out of a possible 14,250. But remember - the largest single factor is always GPA. So ELC is just sort of doubling up that factor in the first place.</p>
<p><"I honestly don't know where you got the idea that ELC was about recruiting top students from competitive high schools..." etc.></p>
<p>I "got the idea" from a UC doc that I don't happen to have in front of me at the moment. As a matter of fact, I stumbled upon that when investigating ELC, since I hadn't heard of it before my D was contacted. I did some research about it, and also contacted the ELC office, etc. The specific rationale behind it was to improve the overall caliber of student that U.C. felt it was getting prior to the institution of ELC. In that document there was nothing about "getting kids from low-performing schools." By implication, however, if the student was performing highly, but from a lower-performing school, UC was & is interested in recruiting such a student. It's the higher performers they're interested in: some would be from "competitive high schools," some from not-so-competitive h.s's. </p>
<p>I was told that there are a variety of reasons that a school would not be an ELC participant, & that would not be limited to accreditation vs. non-accreditation.</p>
<p>In response to a different replier.... yes, the info I have is correct not because other people are "morons," (you called yourself that, poster, not me), but because UC will reveal info to ELC families that they don't reveal publicly. I'm sure the same differences occur with other situations, too -- say, for example, recruitment for other reasons (athletics but other situations, as well).</p>
<p>There is information on other college websites, not to mention governmental websites, that, while not "lies," per se, are part of the story, just not the full story. </p>
<p>kluge, regarding your last post (I think #15, or thereabouts), your statement is exactly correct.</p>
<p>I'll refrain from responding in kind to lamgeo's insults. (Perhaps he has every older document from a year ago or more near him handily at the computer; my reply was a quick one to kluge. The replier can find the same info I can, & did; the replier just doesn't want to go through that work, or to find that info.)</p>
<p>Green_apple, I've PM'ed you regarding the mechanics of how it works. (Logic, fact.) Not really mysterious - the process -- but your questions are valid & I can see why you ask them..</p>
<p>If class rank is not used during admission process, then how can top UCs not "accept" students under the top 10%, then doesn't that mean they DO know the class rank of the students applying and are using them during admission process?</p>
<p>It really doesn't make sense to me when people say that the top UCs wouldnt accept anyone under the top 10% while the UCs claim that class rank is not considered...</p>