<p>For the poster who keeps begging to stop using the word “marginal”, sorry. For the applicants to highly selective schools, the students are marginal.</p>
<p>" Marginal: close to the lower limit of qualification, acceptability, or function : barely exceeding the minimum requirements"</p>
<p>Once you get your knickers untwisted, you’ll realize that these poor, unnamed, down-trodden applicants haven’t been condemned as human beings. Just their scores.</p>
<p>I was just struck about the talk about how hard it was to gain admission to the UC system contrasted with how low some of the SAT scores were.</p>
<p>Take UC Irvine. A well-respected school, considered very selective. However, its SAT lower quartile is in the 62nd percentile. Without getting into an argument over US News’ rankings, UCI is a top 50 school. Ranked right about Tulane. </p>
<p>No applicant to Tulane would be admitted with an SAT score of 1070. However, 25% of the population of UCI has a score that low.</p>
<p>So for marginal students, most of the selective public universities are attainable. </p>
<p>For marginal students, the same can’t be said of like-ranked private schools.</p>
<p>I see and understand your point. It’s interesting: maybe it’s telling you that SATs are not everything and that rankings are not absolutely correlated with SAT scores, which they shouldn’t be, which most high school kids on cc believe and therefore get all strung up about. USNWR rankings are nonsense anyway.</p>
<p>“Once you get your knickers untwisted, you’ll realize that these poor, unnamed, down-trodden applicants haven’t been condemned as human beings. Just their scores.”</p>
<p>But don’t you understand: it sure sounds that way to the kids reading this. It is a tremendous source of anxiety being perpetuated. Kid’s define themselves by their scores.</p>
<p>It could be that the CA colleges are still ranked so high based on past performance that really doesn’t show the reality of their current situation. I think you will see a slip in their ranking in the next couple of years.</p>
<p>^Not likely for three reasons: 1) UC is now actively recruiting wealth OOS kids, and they bring with them higher test scores. 2) The #1 competition in the race for best public is UVa, and UVa just recently realized that they don’t have a lot of poor kids. As they recruit the Pell Grantees instates, their test score growth with have to slow. (Rankings are all relative.) 3) It is the Peer Assessment scores that drive the lofty UC rankings, and cutting back undergrad classes does not impact the grad programs’ prestige by much.</p>
<p>Sorry, mom, but “indepth” it is not. It is pure opinion/speculation, and it misses the obvious points: pubic Uni, wealth and language ability. UC gives huge admission tips to low income kids, and to English Language Learners. Each UC campus is comprised of ~33% Pell Grantees – egalitarian system. Few other top Unis approach 20%. The other factor is that UC is built to educate the top 12% of the state’s high school graduating class, and gurantees acceptance to anyone with a ~3 gpa, regardless of test scores. It is part of the public mission (which Tulane doesn’t have jim).</p>
<p>The article mentions Tufts as having high test scores…sure, and Tufts is need-aware for admissions. :)</p>
<p>The author also compares private tech schools with public Unis, including the liberal arts colleges. Don’t make sense to me. Apples and oranges. (A more fair comparison is RIT vs. Cal’s Engineering College.)</p>
<p>I think everyone would prefer an ambitious,hard working, and well rounded student than a student who only succeed in merely academics. College acceptance is not solely determined with academics and test scores. Colleges can care less about your scores. They want motivated people ready to succeed in all aspects of life. One who can battle adversity and can build resilience. One who has “marginal or low scores” but works sedulously can indubitably have more achievement in life than one with high grades without work ethic or other qualities.</p>
<p>Also, many schools have federally funded supportive programs for people who don’t meet the normal admissions profile but still exhibit the potential to succeed at the college. Admission into those programs are typically mathematically more competitive than through normal admissions channels. I think they are usually called EOP or HEOP programs.</p>
<p>Why would you expect a school that’s basically unknown outside of California to be any higher than Tulane? Californians tend to exaggerate the impact / knowledge / reputation of all of the myriad UC campuses, when in truth few people outside CA know or care about them beyond Berkeley and UCLA. UC Irvine might as well be Western Illinois University for all anyone outside CA knows!</p>
<p>I was just struck about the talk about how hard it was to gain admission to the UC system contrasted with how low some of the SAT scores were.</p>
<p>Because it is HARD to get into these schools. Admissions are highly unpredictable. It’s not like a student within the top quartile can view many of these schools as safeties. </p>
<p>People complain because 10 kids from the same school with the same high stats can get wildly different results…2 can get accepted to UCLA and rejected by Cal and SD. 3 can get accepted SD and rejected by Cal and UCLA. 4 can get rejected by all 3 top UCs and also get rejected by the lower tiers. 1 might get accepted to all. </p>
<p>Since I have a very large extended family in Calif, I see these odd results every year. One relative rejected by UCLA, accepted by Cal…while another with better stats gets rejected by both, another gets accepted to both. There is no logical explanation for the acceptances or rejections. </p>
<p>I think the mistake that you’re making is thinking that if UCs are accepting kids with 1800 SATs, then that means that they’re not rejecting a bunch with 2100+ SATs…but they are.</p>
<p>I don’t believe that to be true. Most Californians that I know are not too enamored with UC Irvine. :)</p>
<p>Moreover, the fact is that the national academics themselves rank UCI higher than Tulane, at least based on Peer Assessment scores. And those higher scores factored into USNews ranking puts UC Irvine (and Davis and Santa Barbara) above Tulane.</p>
<p>bluebayou,
Do you think this is going to work? I can’t imagine paying $55K for a state school, even when I can afford it, if it doesn’t offer me a “reach” acceptance. Why would an OOS applicant with 50% and above stats pay $50K+ for UCB or UCLA when they certainly must have been admitted to equal or better private or cheaper in-state colleges? Unless of course, they have a black mark on their credentials somewhere or are “zeroes” in the EC department, which would not be detected by the UC’s because they don’t accept LORs or care much about ECs.</p>
<p>^ The answer gets back to the OP’s question. UC’s provide a high national ranking/perceived prestige with a RELATIVELY low hurdle (SAT score average) compared to other schools with similar ranking. So Johnny has a much higher chance of being accepted to UCLA/Berkeley than to a similarly ranked private national university. I don’t know of other state flagships with the prestige factor of UC’s top two (e.g. 22 Nobel laureates at Berkeley)</p>
<p>Cal’s Engineering is generally considered #3 in the country (after MIT & Stanford). Cal’s College of Chemistry is LAC-like for chem geeks. So yes, there are programs worth paying top dollar for. (But those two programs also have higher than average SAT scores.)</p>
<p>As shown below, BME is the only “weak” engineering program, but then UCSD is top ~3 in BME.</p>
<p>I’m not sure if 260 student general chemistry (4A) and 230 student organic chemistry (112A) classes are really seen as LAC-like (note that these are courses for chemistry and chemical engineering majors; most biology majors and pre-meds are in less rigorous courses which have larger class sizes).</p>
<p>OOS students interested in a highly regarded chemical engineering major probably should have University of Minnesota - Twin Cities on their application lists, as its OOS price is much lower than Berkeley’s OOS price.</p>
<p>No applicant to Tulane would be admitted with an SAT score of 1070. However, 25% of the population of UCI has a score that low.</p>
<p>First of all, the UCs don’t super-score, so that can be meaningless when comparing with schools that do. </p>
<p>Secondly, the UCs have a lot of minority students who may not speak English in their homes and/or English isn’t their first language. When I look at the CR vs M scores, these kids have better Math SAT scores, but lowish CR scores (only 11% have a M score below 500…maybe athletes, int’ls, or students with higher CR scores?). …and UCI feels that it can work with that. (I think UCI is about 80% minority)</p>
<p>Thirdly, (again), the UCs count GPA more than SAT (unlike Tulane), because if they didn’t, few of the kids from the weaker K-12 systems (often inner-cities) or non-native speakers would get admitted. </p>
<p>The above policy is typical of state schools. They know that there are pockets within their states that have lousy K-12 systems. If these state schools weighted SATs more heavily, those kids would never gain admittance with their lowish test scores. The mission is to take the best of those kids, provide them an opportunity. Don’t you think a state school should have such a mission?</p>
<p>Cal’s College of Chemistry totals ~750 undergrads. Great student-faculty interaction. Yes, the Frosh classes can be large, but they get small really fast. And yes, there are plenty of grad students wandering the halls, even more than the number of undergrads.</p>
<p>In Chem, Cal is ranked #1 followed by Harvard, Illinois, Caltech and MIT. In Chemical and Biomedical Engineering, Cal is ranked #3 (MIT is #1). (grad programs ranked by nrc.)</p>
<p>IMO Cal’s CoC is one of the few UC programs worth paying OOS prices for.</p>
<p>Don’t the UC schools use some formula to calculate their own GPA they use in admissions? I’ve come to the conclusion that much of the admissions process is arbitrary and/or luck. My OOS D was rejected by UCLA and UCB with 2120 SAT, 31 ACT, 3.8 unweighted GPA and 4.8 weighted. She had quality EC’s and volunteer work. She was admitted to UCSD and UCI (honors with scholarship) but we would rather pay $50K at USC than either of those 2 schools. Even if she had gotten into UCLA or UCB, she probably would have still picked USC because why pay the same for a “public” school where classes might be harder to get. (She applied undecided/liberal arts to all schools but is going to do International relations/global business at USC)</p>
<p>The CSU and UC methods are the same, except that CSU includes 12th grade course grades when available (in practice, this makes no difference for “traditional” high school applicants who submit CSU and UC applications by a deadline before any 12th grade course grades are available).</p>
<p>Looking at SAT 25/75 admission rates can be misleading because colleges generally do not publish the 25/75 of their rejected applicants. I suspect there is a lot of overlap between these two subsets with the admitted applicants being higher by just a few percentage points (less than 10% difference). Just because you are within this margin (even comfortable) does not mean you will automatically get admitted. </p>
<p>Also, for many of the most selective public schools like UVA, UMich, and UNC, the 25/75 is misleading because those schools take between 18 (UNC) and 30 to 35% (UVA and UM) OOS and those students SAT scores are usually MUCH higher on average than the 25/75 would suggest.</p>
<p>“Cal’s College of Chemistry totals ~750 undergrads. Great student-faculty interaction. Yes, the Frosh classes can be large, but they get small really fast.”</p>
<p>And that is a huge disadvantage for Cal compared to other physics schools notwithstanding its great ranking. Cal weeds out a lot more applicants in the sciences than the private schools who are much more invested in keeping students in their chosen fields (with the exception of some pre-med programs) to justify the private advantage.</p>