There are resources for students as well. The admissions departments post it on their website, hold virtual info sessions and, as I mentioned, have You Tube Channels. They also share a lot of tips and pointers on social media (Instagram, Tik Tok, Twitter).
My personal opinion is that students are applying to so many schools that they don’t pay attention to these resources. Or, they hear it so much that it becomes background noise to them.
I also think that people lose perspective of the fact that the UCs are 9 independent admissions offices. Even though they share the same application, each UC looks for different attributes in the students they admit. While it is easy to throw down $70 and send your application to an additional school, it takes effort to make sure your application is what that school is looking for. The same can be said for the Common App but it is a little more obvious that Northeastern and The Ohio State are different universities and are looking for a different type of student.
Below are examples of some of the admissions resources available to students
It was a Twitter thread, and the person was studiously avoiding the type of analysis that would demonstrate whether this practice was actually affecting the Racial makeup of the incoming class. He specifically mentioned three schools that were high in Hispanics with higher acceptance rates. However he neglected to mention that the kids who had the highest increase in admission rates were Asians from these schools. Most had rates that changed from below 50% to 100%.
The UC were looking at income, and were giving preference to high schools which served low income families. Low Income Asian-American families received the same advantage as low income families of other racial and ethnic groups.
He was, essentially, claiming that providing support for low income kids is racist because most low income kids in California are Hispanic, which is completely ludicrous.
UC admissions seem to be much more random now. I got admitted to more competitive programs such as CMU SCS, Duke, WashU CS+BA, and others but couldn’t even get into a single one of UCLA, UCB, or UCSD for CS.
It hurts a lot, as these are my state schools and would have been full rides for me with 0 EFC. Don’t know what these schools are looking for at this point.
100% concur and I’d add that they simply don’t pay enough attention to the prompts themselves. It’s difficult enough to apply well to any given school. Applying well to 10, 15, or 20 schools is off the charts challenging. Kids reuse/recycle written responses way too much and it shows in areas like PIQs.
BTW re: ChatGPT/AI in general, it’s only a matter of time before a school runs a parallel process whereby they let AI pick an incoming class and compare the results to the class admitted by the AO. Train/hone the AI and repeat the following year. Eventually, the Venn diagram becomes a circle. In fact it would surprise me to learn that no school is already doing this. Research and all
The more highly qualified applicants there are, the more difficult it is to figure out the reasons behind why one is selected over the other. UCs also care less about Extracurriculars and Talent/Ability than the colleges to which your were accepted.
So your ECs and such could very well have given you an edge at CMU (Extracurriculars - Very Important, Talent/abilities - Important, Character/Personal qualities - Very Important), Duke ( Extracurriculars - Very Important, Talent/abilities - Very Important, Character/Personal qualities - Very Important), and WashU (Extracurriculars - Important, Talent/abilities - Very Important, Character/Personal qualities - Very Important).
However, they may not have had the same impact at Berkeley (Extracurriculars - Important, Talent/abilities - Considered, Character/Personal qualities - Important), UCLA (Extracurriculars - Important, Talent/abilities - Important, Character/Personal qualities - Important), and UCSD (Extracurriculars - Important, Talent/abilities - Important, Character/Personal qualities - Important).
There are also things like Interview and Class rank that the UCs either just “consider” or don’t even consider, while the others consider them important or very important.
You were accepted to CMU, Duke, and WashU because their admissions are more holistic than those of the UCs, and this allowed you to stand out in many more ways than you would have at the UCs.
Bottom line, you were an outstanding applicant, but the UCs were not able to see it.
I agree- I believe they helped my oos daughter as well. Graduating with an AA in general science from high school. Even if she doesn’t use those credits I think they helped her get in (UCLA, UCSD, UCSB acceptances- rejected from Berkeley)
I do think DE helped my son with UC admissions. He’s graduating high school with his AA degree as well. From the previous graduates at our high school, it seems the UCs are very generous in accepting that credit, easily shaving a year or two off undergrad.
Come here to give an update that my son actually was waitlisted at UCSB for CS (I thought he was rejected), but last week they sent him and email admitting him to the CS program. Our family is UC people (hubby, D, and I went/go to UCB) even though we have lived in NJ for over 25 years now. But UCSB is a little too late, he has his heart set for Purdue and that is that. We are 100K richer and Purdue is an excellent school for CS so no complaint here.
Reading here exceptional students got rejected from the UCs, I can’t help but worried for the future of the UCs. I know I know, my people have the proverb of something like…without you the market still has plenty of people. But if this is happening over a long period of time, what would be the consequences. Maybe the consequences are good for some portion of the population, if that is the goal, then so be it.
My son has excellent stats and ECs, but not as good as this one kid, my son’s classmate. In any way you look at it, holistic or pure stats, he should be at the top of ANYONE’s list. But nope, he got rejected at UCLA and UCB, and got accepted to MIT, Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Duke, and Cornell. This kid has published papers in bioengineering with professors from Stanford, has done real world impactful humanitarian work, a real geek with a heart of gold and a brain of no equal. The UCs didn’t want him, what gives?
This might not be very uncommon. Two kids from my daughter’s high school were accepted to MIT and CalTech this year, but were rejected by UCB (EECS) and waitlisted by UCLA (CSE). Those are bright kids with both academic and non-academic accomplishments.
I am told that after a certain academic criteria are met, the PIQs become very important in the selection. I am not sure, but my guess is that with approx. 150K applications (each with 4 PIQs and up to 20 Activities and Awards), it is difficult for the application readers to do a good evaluation in such a short amount of time. May be somebody with more knowledge of UC admission process can comment on this.
I’m not surprised with the results. Clearly this kid had economic advantages because middle and lower class kids won’t have the connections to reel in a research opportunity with a Stanford prof. The UCs are not necessarily impressed with this stuff - often they are looking for people who have overcome adversity, demonstrated leadership etc. A place like Cal would over index on hardworking kids with a track record of influencing and motivating others vs. doing individual research.
I am sure it is true that UCs prioritize students who overcome adversity, but I don’t think this explains the issue here. I have seen plenty of kids with very affluent parents who are selected at UCB. These are also the kids who have had the resources to attend summer programs and engage in extracurriculars.
Um, my kid has published research with a Stanford professor and we are lower middle class (at least in terms of the Bay Area, the emphasis is on the lower) and have exactly ZERO impressive connections (I work in a non-management position in the nonprofit sector, my husband is self employed - we are not big wig movers and shakers lol). So weird assumption to me. And my kid got into a UC, so also not sure if this assumption holds up, either. (And we are not particularly disadvantaged either, so this does not demonstrate “overcoming adversity” in any conceivable way.)
Those are the highest demand, most selective majors at those UC campuses. MIT by comparison doesn’t admit by major. Probably comparable odds factoring that in. So not surprising.
It’s pretty common at the T20+ level that kids get rejected from some and not others with no correlation to specific admit rate within that already tippy top selective school cohort. My son this year was accepted to schools with admit rates that included 3%, 5.5% and 8%, but not accepted at some that had higher admit rates, and most of these examples were outside of the UCs.
I am talking about the average person who does this type of research. Opportunities like this typically come from being in proximity of such people, or having connections, or having the money to pay to companies that then scan and find research opps.
In the context of UC admission, I am specifically talking about UC institutional priorities. Cal clearly values leadership and community orientation way more than other schools and in your students case she clearly demonstrated those aspects in some other way outside of her research.
With holistic admissions, there is never one clear reason but back to the OPs post - the results seem pretty normal for the profile described and not due to some fault in the UC admissions process.
This makes sense to me - there is a degree of uncertainty that comes with holistic review and uncertainty is very high when you are dealing with T20+ schools and selective majors.
This where I disagree. Yes, sometimes this is the case. We all know there are students who buy their opportunities. But, to me, it is still an unfair assumption - unfair to those students who get these opportunities not through wealth and connections, but through hustle. They exist, too, and hopefully there are AOs who are able to spot the difference (although how they would do this, I don’t really know).
