Exactly my perspective
4 Likes
I think the âtop 6% at each individual high schoolâ is fair criteria.
The top performers from each high school should have a choice of public school in their state.
- Define top 6% - how would you decide? Just based on GPA?
- What about difficulty of courseload?
- What about relevance of courseload to major?
- WHat about schools that do an excellent job academically? What about kids outside the top 6% but are more accomplished than the top 1% in another school?
- How do you account for the pressure resulting from a top x%? Would it lead to students sabotaging each other rather than collaborating?
I could go on and on. The UC system, flawed as it is, does a pretty good job of selecting students. I do agree with you that the UCs need to admit greater % of in-state students but I also think international enrollment needs to go up.
All in all, CA is a large state with a massive population and it would be impossible to stuff all qualified kids into just 2 schools - UCLA and UCB.
13 Likes
sure, but not at the expense of getting more out-of-state or international students, because then the UCâs are deviating from their fiduciary duty to California students.
But they really arenât, because both the top 9% within a school and the top 9% statewide are guaranteed admission to a UC.
Can you elaborate on why only UCLA and Cal (plus, oddly, UCSD but not the two even more-selective and slightly higher-ranked schools in UCI and UCSB) seem to âcountâ in your eyes?
6 Likes
itâd be based on weighted GPA - which takes difficulty of course load into account.
UT system makes 70% of their class from the top 6% students from each high school in TX. For the remaining 20% in-state admissions and 10% OOS/international admissions, they use a holistic admission process.
The percentages can be varied, but I think this is a good balanced approach that takes both academic achievements and holistic criteria into the admission process.
As @YoLo2 mentioned earlier in this thread, only a small percentage of UC funding comes from tax payers. Far less than the CSUâs for example.
Reducing OOS students reduces funding. Are you happy to pay higher taxes AND higher tuition to cover the shortfall?
Those full pay OOS students not only bring a rich diversity to each campus, they enable us as CA residents to pay a reduced tuition so we should welcome them, not try to exclude them.
Also, If we admit the top 6% and let them choose where they want to study, suddenly everyone wants to attend UCLA and UCB - where is the extra space on those two specific campuses coming from?
10 Likes
1- Californians pay the highest taxes in country and if itâs still not sufficient, then thereâs something fundamentally wrong with how CA and UCâs are managing their budgets.
2- No one is saying to exclude OOS/international students. 10% of undergraduate population is 25,000 - which is a lot of OOS/international students to provide rich diversity in the UC system.
3- In addition, thereâs 40% or so OOS/international students in graduate programs, which can continue to add significant diversity in the UC system.
4- As I said, we can vary the percentage of direct admits (5% or 6% or 7%) but the process should be a balanced approach that rewards high academic achievers in high school by using direct admits to fill xx% of their incoming class and rest is filled through holistic admission process.
5- If demand is low for some UCâs e.g. Merced and Riverside, admit more out-of-state and international students there.
6- UCâs were established to provide high quality education for CA students, and they should not deviate from their fiduciary goal.
And many, many in state students STILL wouldnât get their preferred campus because there simply isnât space. Imagine the outrage then - they raised our taxes and our kids still canât choose their campus!
And Iâm still not totally clear on whether the real issue being raised is the OOS percentage or the fact that the top 6% of students donât get their choice of campus? It would be tempting to assume that these are closely related issues, but even if you reduce OOS to, say, 10% that would still live a whole lotta top 6 percenters without their top choice. Again, there just isnât space at two campuses to accommodate all qualified California students which is whyâŠwait for itâŠthe UC system has 9 campuses. I bet in the next few years we even see a 10th campus. And opening UC campuses isnât just a hobby some academic planners have. They do it because we have a large state with a lot of students and the state is attempting to educate as many as possible within the budget constraints they face.
8 Likes
But California taxes only fund a small percentage of the UCâs budgets.
That does not add to the diversity of the undergraduate experience, however, Yes, some grad students may lend their perspective as GSIs, but this is not the same as exchanging perspectives with your peers. And while a lot of that takes place during class discussions, far more takes place informally in social situations. Grad students do not socialize with undergrad students (as a general rule - Iâm sure there are exceptions).
Which is exactly what they do by just about any measure you choose. (As do the CSUs and many of the CCCsâŠWe are actually very lucky to live in a state that has done such a great job with creating viable pathways to higher education for its students.)
6 Likes
No one is saying to exclude OOS/international students in undergraduate class.
10% of undergraduate population is 25,000 - which is a lot of OOS/international students to provide rich diversity in the UC system.
Are 25,000 OOS/international undergraduate students not enough to provide diversity of the undergraduate experience?
1 Like
Across all campusesâŠBut having a diverse student population at UC Irvine does not benefit students at UC Davis.
I am not opposed to 10 - 15% OOS/International students for each campus. I think 15% is the current target - no? So itâs the upper end of the range that I personally prefer. Of course, not all campuses have met this target, but hopefully are moving towards it. I am happy to see that trend.
As an out of stater, I would say that at some point (%) of OOS and International, the schools get objectively less interesting. That % can be debated I suppose. But be careful what you wish for.
2 Likes
One of the issues with your plan to copy UT Austin is your insistence that the students with the highest weighted GPA are âhigher academic achieversâ and more deserving of admission to âtopâ UCs than other students.
Any non-holistic single measure of âhigh academic achievementâ is going to result in a lot of gaming the system. For example, @Brissie reports the following problem in TX:
There are a lot of things that students can do to âartificiallyâ increase weighted GPA that may actually decrease the genuine rigor and academic depth and breadth in their high school course schedule.
Holistic admission as practiced by the UCs may be unpredictable and imperfect, and frustrating for some students and families (particularly for those who feel that they âdeserveâ a spot at a âtopâ UC because of their GPAâŠ)
However, when holistic admission works well, it can serve to:
- evaluate students within the context of their school and community
- allow students to take a variety of paths during high school instead of focusing primarily on min-maxed GPA optimization
- admit a diverse student body with a variety of interests and strengths
- select students that are a good match for a particular major or program based on their interests and preparation
Weighted GPA is definitely a factor in UC admissions, but it is less relevant at the high end when distinguishing between top students. For example, if you look at the UC Berkeley admission rates by weighted GPA, you will see rates start to plateau (and in some cases start to drop off) around weighted GPA 4.4-4.5: Admission and yield rates by college (L&S, CoE, CoC, CNE, CED) and HS GPA - #3 by LionsTigersAndBears
Why arenât all the students with the highest weighted GPA being accepted? It is because a weighted GPA of 4.8-5.0 doesnât necessarily mean that the student is academically stronger than a student with weighted GPA of 4.4. They may have achieved that high GPA number at the expense of other things.
Switching to a non-holistic X% admission system would be expected to encourage more âgaming the systemâ behavior (ugh!), and could also eliminate many genuinely high academic achievers from consideration at UCs that might be a great fit for them, because their achievement didnât happen to contribute to a high weighted GPA number.
9 Likes
I am pretty sympathetic to keeping a robust % of slots open for OOS and International but this notion that UC prestige or level of interest in them will reduce if OOS %s decrease in the future is frankly not in sync with historical trends.
Pre-2007, the OOS % of admits at Cal was just 6%. It jumped up to 19% post the 2007 crash fundamentally in response to the economic situation. Even when the OOS admits were 6% of the pool, they still made up 12%-15% of the applicant pool. The top UCs were prestigious pre-2007 so % of OOS isnât going to have any meaningful impact on perceived eliteness.
Now, I am not saying we go back to the 6% days but CA parents who complain about OOS admits have a very good case to make.
My read on this whole issue is:
- Cal and UCLA get way more demand than they can supply even if we increase budgets dramatically
- Test optional has exacerbated this issue by driving up applicant volumes massively
- In this context, a 10%ish cap on OOS makes sense given the historical levels of <7% pre-2007 but the cap limit is debatable and the state has already tried addressing it
- A top x% model will not work in a state as diverse as CA, and
- While the admissions model is flawed, the holistic admissions model is an excellent approach to ensure equity, and upward mobility
- CA needs to build new campuses, and invest a lot more in the tier 2 campuses
- Parents need to understand that every UC offers excellent value and a Cal/UCLA admit is not the be all or end all
5 Likes
And the other factor is majorâŠIf a high number of high achievers choose, say CS or EngineeringâŠCampuses do not have the capacity to accommodate that. So what do you do then? Either admit them because they are the top percent but deny them their choice of major, or decline them because their interests can not be accommodated?
6 Likes
If Iâm an international student from say, the continents of Europe, Asia, Africa, etc., why would I travel all this way to attend Merced or Riverside? Thatâs just not realistic. They wonât come.
As an alternative, more in-state students could choose Merced and Riverside.
2 Likes
UT offers direct admission to high achievers (top 6% from each high school) but does not guarantee major.
I believe UCâs could offer the same, i.e. offer them direct admission, but major is not guaranteed.
Many high achievers are honest with their interests and choose CS or Engineering and UCâs decline many of them because of lack of space, while many students game the system by putting a non-cap major in application despite their intention to transfer into the cap majors at some point of time. This is not fair!
UCLA does not even consider studentsâ alternate choice of major in their admission process. Why even ask the alternate choice then?
Donât the honest high-achieving students deserve the campus of their choice even if they may not get the major of their choice? Shouldnât the admission decisions be first made to the campus and then the major?
No student deserves any campus.
9 Likes
In general I agree with your post, but this makes it sound a bit like the benefits of holistic admission are limited to ensuring âequity and social mobility.â (as though holistic admission means admitting some lower achieving students in the interests of equity and social mobility?)
Holistic admission is also needed because academic achievement simply isnât the same thing as high weighted GPA. A student might be an academic superstar, but it wonât be reflected in their weighted GPA if they didnât have access to weighted courses throughout high school (or if the best / most rigorous options available to them werenât weighted courses). Part of the purpose of a holistic admission system is to allow for other ways in which a studentâs excellence and achievement may be demonstrated.
Much of the unhappiness on this venting thread and across CC comes from the idea that a high number on a particular measure (GPA, SAT, etc) means that the student is more âdeservingâ of admission to a particular school or campus than other students who were admitted with a lower number on that measure. Maybe the other students were actually higher achievers in other, more important ways?
10 Likes