University of California freshmen applications hit new high

[ucbalumnus]

@twoinanddone

That article states what I said - the applications are NOT handled by the regular admissions officers on the regular time table. A special committee reviews the applications much earlier than a regular applicant, makes sure they meet the minimum UC qualifications, and approves them earlier than a regular applicant.

On page 5, the steps are shown.

Step 1 is the determination at the recruiting stage where the athlete is estimated for admissibility, but the footnote 3 states that this does not guarantee admission.

Step 2 has the athletic applicant go through the normal admission process.

Step 3 through 6 involve the special athlete admission process if the athletic applicant is not admitted through the normal admission process.

@twoinanddone

The UC admissions office isn’t looking at two applications, one from Missy Franklin and one from Joe Schmoe and deciding that Joe beats out Missy because his SAT is 50 points higher and he was president of his robotics team, has 20 other really good EC’s and his essay was pretty good while Missy’s only EC is swimming and she seems so one dimensional compared to Joe The admissions office is looking at the file of an athlete the coach wants, who has been rated as ‘regular’ (meets the standards UC set for all students, had the required gpa and high school courses) or ‘special’ by the athletic admissions board, and processing the admission as requested, without regard to Joe’s application at all. Joe and Missy aren’t in the same admissions pool.

The described process has Joe and Missy in the normal admission pool (step 2 above). The difference is that, if Joe is rejected, he is rejected. If Missy the recruited athlete is rejected, she may be admitted into the athletic admissions pool (steps 3 through 6 above). If Missy is admitted in the normal admission pool, she does not count against the limited number of spots in the athletic admissions pool.

Granted, this is probably different from how many other schools handle recruited athlete admissions. But UCs often do things differently.