@CU123 I do know that state’s have constitutions but I also know that no state constitution can contradict or override the Federal constitution. The Supplemental Questionnaires now in use also seem to be using various factors as proxies for race, and the open ended nature of some of the questions asked seem to invite discussions of how race, socio-economic dislocations etc., have affected the student. Moreover, there is nothing in California or federal law to stop universities from looking at geography (where the student lives or goes to school) in reviewing applications and taking this into consideration. I’ve see lots of data to suggest that these factors are now very important.
@TTdd16 UC now does solicit letters of recommendations from some applicants.
It doesn’t contradict anything, it further restricts admissions from considering race (nothing in the US constitution restricts this, the US constitution protects against discrimination). Federal courts have ruled that you can use race in consideration for admissions, in California, public schools CANNOT use race for admissions. Not a hard game…
In my experience, @bluebayou is correct about the pathos appeal and the credulity factor. Not having met success stories does not mean they haven’t happened over the last 10 years; they have. Other posters have just not encountered them yet.
One challenge in debating these issues is that, as far as I can tell, good data (and shared definitions) aren’t easily available to help us determine the scope of this problem. There are a lot of “other schools”. The B+/A- kid who can’t get into Berkeley (if that’s who we’re talking about) usually has many other options, I would think.
We can see the percentage of white/AA/Asian/Hispanic students at various colleges, or the percentage of students who enter with various HS rank/GPA/scores. However, we can’t … as far as I can tell … see comprehensive, multi-year statistics profiling the qualifications of applicants as well as admitted students, broken down in enough detail to clearly determine how many “high achieving” students are “shut out”. How high is “high achieving”? What constitutes a “shut out”?
Exactly - what is the definition of “high achieving”?
There are other factors to consider…academic rigor, quality/competitiveness of high school program, extracurriculars, and unique aspects to the individual’s experience/application…which are all important once the applicants meet GPA/SAT or ACT hurdles. For instance, one student could have grown up in Nigeria, immigrated to US as a child, now speaks 5 languages, has unique ideas to solve world hunger, is a champion ukelele player with national awards, etc.
UCLA: 14.13% in 2018. 16.14% in 2017.
UCB: 15.2% in 2018. 17.43% in 2017.
UCI: 28.8% in 2018. 36.57% in 2017.
UCSD: 30.29% in 2018. 34.15% in 2017.
UCSB: 32.37% in 2018. 32.86% in 2017.
UCD: 41.4% in 2018. 43.64% in 2017.
UCSC: 48.18% in 2018. 51.83% in 2017.
UCR: 51.26% in 2018. 57.70% in 2017.
UCM: 70.74% in 2018. 74.68 in 2017.
The biggest surprise to me is the huge jump at UCI in terms of selectivity, surpassing both UCSD and UCSB. (Although I assume last year’s fiasco on revoking admissions when their yield was so high must have played into it.) And once again, UCLA is more selective than UCB, at least in sheer numbers/percentages.
@TTdd16…thanks for those current admission stats. Impressive UCI drop there to top the list. I thought my alma mater of UC Riverside could have dropped even more than those numbers…still a sizable decrease, taking second place on the list. Still the fastest growing UC location currently in major expansion mode as well. Interesting that UCSB is last on that list…wondering if it has peaked out in selectivity and now on the downswing?
I am not sure if you live in California despite your screen name. I do live in California. I assume you are not familiar with SCA 5 which was blocked by three members of the legislature.
From Wikipedia
"The lead author of the bill, Senator Hernandez, argued that due to Proposition 209, “there has been a precipitous drop in the percentage of Latino, African American, and Native American students at California public universities, despite the fact that those same groups have seen steady increases in their percentages of college-eligible high school graduates.”[5]
The same arguments for support were summarized as follows in the bill analysis:[6]
“According to the author’s office, immediately following the November 1996 passage of Proposition 209, there was a significant drop in the percentage of enrolled minority students at both the UC and the CSU. The author’s office is concerned that, in spite of new eligibility requirements and admissions initiative which have helped to restore the numbers of some underrepresented students, the proportion of underrepresented students eligible for UC and CSU has not kept pace with the proportion of the high school graduating class that they now represent.”
On February 24, 2014, Gene D. Block, Chancellor of UCLA, sent an open letter to all students and faculties expressing his strong opposition to Proposition 209"
Simply put prop 209 is awful and seeks to protect small groups of financially well off people.
However, https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/infocenter/freshman-admissions-summary does not yet have 2018 information, which would be more useful in that it allows seeing frosh admission rates banded by HS GPA, which would give a better idea of admission selectivity than just overall admission rate. Unfortunately, they do not have separate reports by major or division for frosh admissions.
Here are the 2017 frosh admission rates by HS GPA band (HS GPA is UC-recalculated weighted-capped, which is often lower than the weighted GPAs calculated by high schools):
I’m so glad I live in Michigan, with 2 great public universities (Umich and MSU) and a lot less competition than California. The population of high school graduates in Michigan is actually decreasing so Umich is basically half out of state students now. Only 12,000 out of the 65,000 applications received this year at Umich were from Michigan. The umich in state acceptance rate is 41% and out of state acceptance rate is 19.5%. It’s definitely the opposite in California and keeps getting more competitive. I’m attending Umich now in state but also got into UC Berkeley and ucla. There are a lot of California students (most represented state after Michigan, then New York) at umich and many of them either didn’t get into the top UCs or don’t like the UC schools in general. I met a girl from California who received a full ride scholarship from Umich that she otherwise would not have been able to afford. I have heard that UC schools have a lot of budget cuts going on and UC Berkeley accepted 1,500 fewer students than last year.
I see a fair amount of data supplied in Reply 1233. The fact that some of us (self included) have some anecdotal examples to reinforce the data is not surprising.
@sushiritto that’s total number of undergrads. The undergrad Admissions’s director told me that in last year’s freshman class, California was the most represented state outside of Michigan. That trend continues to grow.
@Eeeee127 That wouldn’t surprise me, but I’d prefer actual data from UMich.
However, I agree with your premise that many of the top students in CA are leaving the State, but that’s just an opinion. Not fact. In UMich’s case, they have a cute town, a relatively compact campus, smaller class sizes and a $11 Billion endowment to spend on constructing new buildings.
The California kids who get into UM are not having any trouble getting into UCM, they are getting denied at UCB/UCLA due to lack of slots, but are still top students.
I never said that these top students didn’t or wouldn’t get into UCM. In my little neighborhood, I know some top students who did and didn’t get into UCB and UCLA and both are leaving CA.
California students half as likely to be admitted to UCSC as nonresidents – the widest gulf in the UC system
“The Santa Cruz campus admitted 41 percent of a record-setting 45,737 freshman applicants from California, while admitting 80 percent of the 10,369 non-residents who live elsewhere in the U.S. or abroad, the data shows. Only UC Davis came close to matching UCSC’s skewed admissions ratio, accepting 34 percent of in-state applicants and 58 percent of non-residents to its incoming freshman class.”
It is possible since they don’t mention the data that the allure of a beach campus draws well qualified non resident applicants.
Many well qualified CA residents choose not to apply to UCSC for whatever reason.
Perhaps in addition to paying more, the nonresident applicants have better stats?