Its not a reflection of your kid. That why I used the “average” and “typical” characterization. Hustle can pay off but the odds are low and the effort needed for a payoff is very high.
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There are 7 UCs beyond UCLA and UC Berkeley, 4 of which are also ranked in the top 50 for national universities. So I guess I would quibble with the notion that “the UCs didn’t want him.” The top two now have acceptance rates at or below 10%. At that point all schools are a high reach for everyone. If this student had applied to other schools within the system, where by all accounts the educational programming is very similar and resources and support is comparable (and actually sometimes better!), I’m certain they could be attending a UC. The message is always to apply broadly within the system. My daughter was desperately hoping to join her brother at UCLA, but it was her sole rejection out of 17 applications. She was waitlisted at Cal and not terribly disappointed since it’s a school she could walk to from our house, and she’s ready to spread her wings a little. But she was admitted to 4 other campuses and will happily attend UCSD this fall.
There are more schools than Cal and UCLA!
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And if the student was in the top 9% then the UCs explicitly DO want him, hence the admissions guarantee…(But obviously this issue is about specific campuses.)
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Better option? To some, Cal and UCLA are better options than the other schools listed.
They are all very good schools and some will fit some students, and some will fit other students.
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Very true! But allowing for the possibility that this student is an out of state applicant, that wouldn’t be the case. If kids outside of CA really want to have UCs to consider at the end of a cycle, they are going to have to get acclimated to applying to other campuses. (I mean, I get that the reason most only apply to Cal and LA are that they consider them the campuses most worthy of the attempt, but my main point I hope people will takeaway is that you can’t broadly generalize about “the UCs” if you are only talking about 2 of 9 schools. 
)
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Precisely. And UCs are well known to care individually about “fit.”
Plus to the point to which you were replying, UCs don’t consider the interest level of an applicant. They don’t have time or personnel to game out whether or not a particular student will or will not attend.
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Ah, I missed the out of the state part. In that case, it’s a different ball game and admission rates at some campuses are super, super low so no matter how smart and accomplished you are, it is a bit of a crapshoot. It can be hard enough for Cali students, but OOS it really is amazingly difficult at some campuses.
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I don’t know for sure that they are out of state. But yes. Even two years ago it was actually much easier to get admitted to some of the mid-tier UCs from OOS than in state. But that gap has narrowed quickly since the 2021 cycle, and at the top-2 it really wasn’t a gap to start.
And will only get harder in the coming years with the mandate to increase in state enrollment across the UCs (which is tied to needed funding).
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I would be surprised if a lot of research that is done in the STEM field by high school students is not fluff, or is not due to some very favorable circumstances of proximity etc. I would also say that not just UCs but CalTech and MIT as well are not impressed by those “research” articles. Also, UCB and UCLA are selecting a lot of very affluent kids who have had all the opportunities of summer programs, extracurriculars and volunteering. I don’t think those kids have ever had to overcome any adversity.
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But yield protection is a real thing. And nobody is entitled to admission into anything.
Of course, there are more schools than Cal and UCLA, no one ever implied otherwise.
I was just sharing an interesting situation. We were surprised at the results, but not disappointed. It’s the school’s loss, not the other way around. I feel bad for the UCs, not for the kid, he has many better options for HIM and many would agree. I am sure many think otherwise. But for us, although UCLA/CAL are on my kids’ list, Cal is definitely not on mine. That’s another story for another time.
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And most kids we know who have done research managed it because they had connections to make it happen.
I know there are some very well established selective programs for scientific research for high schoolers and those programs would be very highly regarded.
But overall yes, it’s hard to compete with money and connections. I am saying this as a parent of a musician who will be attending a summer program that costs close to $10k and to be able to get into that program he has had years of $$$$$& training.
Life is unfair.
But obviously that kid was amazing to get into all of those private schools.
His spot went to another equally qualified kid. These things are never the “school’s loss” although all of us use this language quite freely. Schools care about institutional priorities, and there are 100,000s of very accomplished and smart kids wanting to go to Cal/UCLA.
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It is, but is there any evidence the UC’s practice it?
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Hard to know what they do really.
I have heard of many stories when kids are denied at Santa Cruz and Davis and get into UCB and UCLA. Also many sorties of kids not getting into UCLA and UCB and marching into Stanford and Harvard. Makes you wonder, but impossible to know for sure what happens.
Whenever a kid did something amazing, why people tend to assume that it’s b/c of the kid is “privileged”?
In this case, the professors reached out to this student and invited him to work with them, he didn’t have to pay a dime to spend his summers at Stanford, and they didn’t just work with him during the summers. He worked with them through out the years. Anyone with a little knowledge of research would be impressed by the work. Obviously MIT, Harvard and the likes were impressed with his work.
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They assume privilege because in most cases it it. Every single kid we know who worked in a lab and had published research worked with their parent’s friend and family friend.
If you attend our local science competition, it’s really shameful. Most projects are done by parents and these parents are competing against other parents. You can track the topic of projects directly related to their parents’ occupation.
This is the reason I support tests. At least kids need to sit down and learn and take those tests on their own. I don’t support tests because I think they are an answer to everything I think they are better than this sort of insane alternative.
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I’ve mentioned many times about companies that offered to get us research opportunities for a cool 4k finder’s fee.
My son had internships throughout high school, with great start-ups. Did he do a great job and learned a ton during those stints? You bet! BUT he also got those opportunities because there a lot of my B-school friends who run successful start-ups and it was easy for him to tap into that network.
This is the biggest reason I am a proponent of SAT/ACT. Its a flawed metric but a FAR better metric than these soft “holistic” parameters.
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And how many of them actually got into Havard/MIT? I think the schools see through the quality of the research, right?
But I agreed with you about the testing. I don’t trust the grades alone due to grade inflation issue. I don’t trust “holistic” review either because well, forgive my synical view, but it’s more like…may the best b…sh…ters win…
I want test, but then someone will complain that only privileged kids get high scores b/c they have tutors…You can’t win really 