Yep, understood and agree. I was specifically focused on the fact that the UCs use a computer program to score the academics and if anyone has insight on how rigor is scored that would be helpful.
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I understand, but I don’t think there is any kind of one size fits all calculation that can be applied for rigor, because high schools can vary a lot. For any high school in CA, the UCs do have a tremendous amount of information about the courses offered at that high school, and which ones are approved for UC honors. Even 9th grade classes are evaluated for honors or non-honors, so UC honors classes taken in 9th grade would contribute positively to rigor. I expect that they also have detailed information about HS curriculum for a lot of schools, such as how many honors or AP classes are allowed at each grade level, typical honors courseload for strong students at that school, etc.
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I think there is initial computer sccoring - when you fill out the classes on the application, a computer does caculate the number of A- F classes and the grades for those…That’s why when you submit the application, it immediately tells you if you have landed in the top 9%. I am not sure if and how rigor is reflected in that - it might be, if based on number of AP courses listed on the application. So I do think the initial screen for that is by computer, but then a real human reviews it all.
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I’m really hoping there is a human involved in the ultimate academic scoring.
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There absolutely is. My understanding is that every application is read by two (human!) readers.
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Definitely for the PIQs. My concern is on the academic scoring. In the UCSB thread a current student did a FERPA and then posted about the process. Separate scores are assigned to academics v. PIQs/ECs. The former, he said, is generated by a computer. The latter is done by readers (usually 2). My concern is with the former - how is OOS applicants’ rigor scored?
My understanding is that a human reviews all the information. @Gumbymom is the expert, so you can double check with her, but I do think as a general rule two human readers review the entire application.
For OOS rigor, likely the high school has submitted a school profile to UC? That will help them gauge local context, including rigor (number of AP classes taken vs. how many offered by the school, average school GPA, etc.). It’s an imperfect system, but I think they do their best to ensure a fair evaluation of all applicants.
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There are definitely humans involved in the process, and each UC is also looking for different things. Decisions are unpredictable and can be very different from one UC to the next. No one can tell you in advance exactly how your application will be viewed by the UCs. This can be seen as a good or bad thing depending on your perspective…
Here’s hoping that everyone here is smiled upon by the holistic process, and ends up with at least one great fit that they are happy with 
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Each campus is determines how they will use the 13 areas of criteria so as noted can be unpredictable. Also each campus at their discretion can have 1, 2 or even 3 reviewers look at the UC application.
All UC’s consider UC GPA, PIQ’s and HS course rigor (in context of what each HS offers) Very Important. PIQ’s along with EC’s can help distinguish applicants with similar academic accomplishments.
There are multiple people involved in reviewing and making admission decisions along with checks and balances in place (anti-bias training). No system is perfect nor completely transparent since this is where the holistic/comprehensive piece of the puzzle comes into play.
I say this every year but where you go for Undergrad will not define you. It was what you do with the resources that are available to you, that will make you successful.
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That was specific to UCSB and is no longer the criteria/weighting that they use. Each UC evaluates applications differently. PIQ are a significant portion of the application so it makes sense that Merced would weigh them at 30%.
The PIQ are not read independently of the rest of the application. The admissions team knows quite a bit about the student, their school, etc. and the PIQs add context.
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The GPAs, PIQs and the 13 criteria (institution preferences) are being considered and the scoring are combined. The non-holistic would be using just one i.e using the GPA only for admission.
Thanks.
- Are there any such universities though? Even the ones without essay/PIQs like cal states have institutional preferences.
- Not sure how you can combine these scores without fixed weights. Maybe the admission committee can vote on candidates without combining the sub scores.
1.) The Cal States admission (as far as we know) uses scoring with points for courses, grades, awards and local address. It is not clear to me how the ECs are being scored since you cannot explain about the ECs in the app other than listing them.
2.) I personally think that with the amount of application for the UCs there had to be a system set up for efficiency. So, assigning the scores for each of the categories made sense. What @Gumbymom said about no fixed score could have been intepreted as each of the UC has a decretion to assign their scoring system which could be different for each UC. But I think that the AO would put students in same score range in the same bin (which are likely many more applications than the available seats). The institutional preference would have kicked in then, may be with additional scoring or committee voting. But that is probably after they admit the cream of the crops and have to decide on many more applicants that were equally qualified (but unfortunately not enough spots for all of them).
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Do UCs have admissions committees that meet to make decisions like private colleges? I’m not sure they do.
Hello! I was the current student who did a FERPA review. I’m currently a first year Computer Engineering student at UCSB 
I did ask the admissions office about this during the FERPA review session and yes, academic scoring is done purely by a computer. I was told this was because the UCs receive so many applications. Readers are purely for the ECs/essays.
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My application was only read by 1 reader! The 2 readers minimum rule unfortunately no longer exists, due to the high number of applicants.
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I don’t think so either. But for example, UCSD admit to university first, then to the major. There must be some form of the decision making at the major/department admit. But who’s know.
I do know that the scoring was done by computer except the PIQs. But after the reader assigned the scores to the PIQs, what happened after the AO received all the scores and have to decide who to admit out of ten thousands of the applicants? If the 3 sets of scoring are very high like Edward it’s easy, so I am not talking about his case. I am curious about the students with lower scores but still had the eligibility.
To clarify. Did they make a blanket statement about UCs or were they referring to how UCSB reviews applications? I’ve seen AO from other UCs make statements to the contrary.
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This is what was stated at the UC Counselor Conference 2022:
All applications are reviewed regardless of whether the student meets all minimum admissions requirements.
Multiple reads often occur as part of various quality control measures instituted by the campuses. Each campus may have different requirements on the number of times an application is read.
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Do the UCs take race/ethnicity into consideration when reading an application? I know that they claim they don’t, but they are always saying how they are trying to become more diverse racially and ethnically, accept more underrepresented students, etc. I’m curious about this because I’m a White Latina of South American descent, and there are not many Latinos from South America in California.