I don’t understand what you mean by this? The UCs are the most-applied to system in the country. Is the thought that the holistic admissions process leads to extra administrators or something? Otherwise, I agree about graduate student instructors. They should be treated and compensated better, but that’s hardly limited to the UCs. It’s a public university crisis more broadly (see most recently Rutgers).
If you are a strong candidate and you apply broadly to UCs (and you follow the very clear information out there as to what they are looking for and how they want you to present your candidacy), you have a good chance to earn admission to a UC. And as a SYSTEM – not just at UC Berkeley and UCLA – the outcomes are pretty darn compelling. The system does place a high value on meeting their objective to foster social mobility for students within the state of California. That’s what the mission of a public university that pulls in tax dollars state-wide SHOULD include. There’s no need for UCs to replicate what other private institutions already do.
We were surprised too. I wouldn’t expect to hear from them until late May or June. Had he gotten the acceptance the first round, I am 70% sure he would have picked UCSB.
Perhaps the capped weighted average can hurt applicants with lots of rigor beyond that. Or at least, they re not fully advantaged for all their higher rigor classes. No similar detriment at the private colleges
UC computes and uses three GPAs: unweighted, capped weighted, and uncapped weighted. Each campus may use these averages differently in decision making. Uncapped weighted GPA is probably the most important average for the highly selective UCs.
Rigor, as expressed in a high uncapped weighted GPA, isn’t a disadvantage for applicants.
It’s interesting the psychological power of “love the school that loves you back.” (Not that I believe any school actually LOVES anyone.) So as the months have dragged on your son gradually became fonder of the school that “loved” him upfront and without reservation. It will be interesting to see if the same happens to my DD. Her “dream school” (I don’t like that term and discourage it) was UCLA but she was waitlisted. She’s now SIR’d to UCSB. If (extremely unlikely) she’s admitted off the UCLA waitlist in say late August (they don’t close the waitlist until then some years!), after potentially choosing a UCSB dorm, finding a roommate from Insta, attending their orientation, registering for classes, attending their early freshman summer session maybe–will she STILL turn on a dime and accept UCLA? (Major is the same.) We will see.
UCs like Cal and UCLA consider weighted, uncapped GPA as well. Based on the data that UCOP put out this fall, there are two categories I think applicants need to try to be in the top category for if they want to be competitive for the more selective campuses: 1) total # of A-G classes (ideally 25+); 2) number of AP/H/IB/DE weighted honors classes (10+ if possible).
You are absolutely correct. Other public universities are perhaps just as bad as UCs in their treatment of GSIs, post-docs, adjunct and teaching faculties, while handsomely rewarding their bureaucrats, sports coaches etc. who don’t serve the mission of education and research.
Is there a compelling evidence that controlling for public funding and size UCs are promoting social mobility more than institutions like MIT, CalTech? Harvard/Princeton also try to promote social mobility despite having legacy admission. Perhaps CSUs are more effective in promoting social mobility.
At the very least, it may lead to better outcomes for “under-privileged students… who can ‘articulate’ their story better,” which would be a step toward the UC’s intent.
In this case, I am assuming “under-privileged” means First Gen and/or low SES.
And again, pointing out that “under-privileged” is not one monolithic bucket. These students have lots of other attributes on their college app and are not just checking a box for that one bucket.
Well I’m not sure that the data is publicly available at the level where we could access and evaluate for ourselves, but I do know that since social mobility was added to the USNWR criteria a few years ago, the campuses like Merced and Riverside have cracked the top 100 in no small part due to their success with that mission. The scale at which that is happening through the UCs would be hard to compare to a particular Ivy.
As an alum, I am very familiar with the fact that legacy admissions at Harvard are widespread. I see it in the data and with the kids of classmates. If Harvard truly cared more about social mobility, it would end legacy admissions immediately.
Sure, Harvard has legacy admission and it is disgusting. But I have seen plenty of under-privileged students get admission at Harvard/Stanford/MIT/CalTech. All I am saying is that I am not convinced UCs (particularly UCB and UCLA) are more effective than Ivy league, Stanford, MIT, CalTech in promoting social mobility despite being primarily funded by taxpayers money.
In 2017 noted Stanford (now Harvard) economist Raj Chetty (among others) released a comprehensive academic study of economic diversity and social mobility in higher education, based on millions of anonymous tax records and tuition payments. Among the 65 “elite” institutions, UCLA students had the lowest median family income, and UCLA had the highest share of students from the bottom fifth of incomes. UCLA was first in “Overall Mobility Index,” a measure reflecting “both access and outcomes, representing the likelihood that a student at U.C.L.A. moved up two or more income quintiles.”
We shouldn’t be discussing a friend or a classmate. From the perspective of the parent of a peer, the kid may appear amazing, but you really don’t know what he included in his application(s).
My initial thought was that this student put more time and effort into the other schools. The UC application is unique and it isn’t easy to re-use essays or A&A from other applications.
First and foremost, a school is looking for students who will be a good fit at their institution. If he were accepted to a UC, would he have attended?
I would be interested to see what other applicant’s experiences are. At our school, the kids with tons of leadership, super well rounded, great grades, class president, started a club, sports captain, etc… have a better shot at UCLA and the pointier kids with strong demonstrated passion in one area, great grades, not as well rounded, tend to have better luck at Cal. Obviously ymmv. My kid had no leadership, but a lot of passion, major related ECs, published research, etc…
I believe you mentioned being out of state. UCLA’s out of state admit rate was 3.3%. UCB was 3.6% . These are the overall admit rates. Selective majors would be lower, so UCLA and UCB may be the lowest admit rate colleges on your list for your subgroup, if you are applying to selective majors.
Even if the UCs were not the lowest admit rate colleges on your list, you should not assume if highly selective college A admitted me, highly selective college B should as well. Different colleges emphasize different criteria to different degrees and give different degrees of preference for different special groups. For example, different colleges will focus more/less on the published papers you mentioned. Different colleges are expected to make different admission decisions for a particular student.
Thanks for the link. Assuming the USNEWS (not particularly a standard bearer of objectivity) list is correct, I would say that the record of UCB is pretty deplorable and while UCLA is not so bad, it is not really impressive. These two UC schools are doing even worse than state schools in the states whose governments may not even want social mobility. And what about the amount of taxpayer money? Certainly these two UCs receive far more taxpayer funding for education than those large state schools in FL and TX who are doing better in social mobility index.
Let’s compare with Ivys/MIT/CalTech/Stanford. Sure they have different mission, and they are not funded by taxpayers money in the same way as UCs. So we should control for taxpayer funding and size of the undergraduate student body before comparing them on social mobility index.
None of this reply makes any sense to me, particularly given the points you made above, but I’m not going to belabor the point other than to say that it’s pretty clear that private institutions and public institutions have different objectives, and given the objective of social mobility, I personally consider it pretty darn good to have all of the universities within a system at around 100 and above. Add to that the data from @mtmind above, and I’m feeling quite good about where I’m sending my kids! YMMV.
There are 12 UC or Cal State schools in the top 50.
I agree. The list in question includes all national universities, including those that aren’t considered competitive. If one filters the list based on competitiveness using the tool on the left, the UC and Cal State schools perform even better on social mobility, especially when compared to the schools @rota32 lists. Even if one doesn’t filter the list for competitiveness, the combined CA systems are by far the tops compared to any other state in terms of Social Mobility.
Fingers crossed for your DD to get off the UCLA waitlist even though she might not attend.
My kid is too funny, turned out he is waitlisted at UCLA and UCB as well. He told me he “didn’t get in” I thought he meant he was rejected, never bothered to tell me he was waitlisted, until today. This is the kid who didn’t even tell me he applied to UMich and a couple of others, until he got admitted.
I am praying he doesn’t get off the UCB waitlist, getting off UCLA waitlist would be very interesting, but i am not sure if he would choose it at this point. And his brilliant friend didn’t even get waitlisted, go figure! Any way you look at it, my son isn’t “better” than this kid in any way, shape, or form, except for maybe “fit”, I will agree to that one.