“Ah yes, but the college population and rigor of school was quite a lot different 50 years ago. Now, all sorts of low intelligence people are in community colleges, and doing well is trivial, at least in our experience.”
Yes, today many public HS in CA are more rigorous than it was 50 years ago, or least 30 years ago when many parents went to HS. They can’t believe how competitive the schools have gotten, when they went, it was in their words, a cakewalk compared to today. And the UCs do not assess intelligence and determine a person’s future based on that, as calmom and ucbalumnus have detailed, there’s a lot more compassion in how they view the role of post hs education.