So many say what college you go to doesn’t matter, but the harsh reality is that it wasn’t always this hard to get in. I watched a video by Scott Galloway, and I was shocked to find out that UCLA took over 70% of applicants in the 80s. You could get into Berkeley with a GPA below 3.0. Today, plenty of 4.0 kids get into neither. You need to be a valedictorian to have a chance at UCLA and Berkeley now.
The amount of spots in top colleges haven’t scaled to the growing American population. It shouldn’t be the case where public universities have single digit acceptance rates. A strong high school student should be able to get into an in-state flagship school like Michigan, UCLA, UVA, UNC, and others. But that isn’t the case.
Society tries to make higher education more accessible and fair, but at the same time, the standards to get into top schools have become more nebulous.
I am not a parent, but I am a young adult who knows many that are a victim of the changing times. It’s just so sad there is no solution that politicians are willing to take to address this.
Like it or not, this is the reality now. In order for a CA student to have a chance for top 6 UCs, CPSLO or SDSU, your UC capped WGPA has to be over 4.0. There is not much room for error in your Sophomore and Junior years in HS. If you get more than 8 Bs during these 2 years, you need to start thinking about the rest of CSUs and the bottom tier UCs. Especially if you are CS or Engineering major. Good Luck.
UCLA receives ~150k applications per year for freshmen, and tens of thousands more as transfers. There are ~500k high school graduates in CA each year, many of which are “strong students”. I don’t think it’s realistic to expect a flagship in a state with this many grads to admit every “strong high school student” to the flagship (I realize Berkeley may be considered flagship, rather than UCLA). It’s not practical for UCLA (or Berkeley) to grow to a large enough size to admit every strong student in the state.
Instead the California public system includes 33 four-year colleges, with a wide variety of acceptance rates and guarantees that strong students will be admitted to a UC, even though they may not be admitted to the most selective of the state’s 33 public colleges.
That said I do agree many colleges have become more selective in recent decades, and colleges as a whole have not been increasing class size at a comparable rate to the increase in college going population. I think selective private colleges are more guilty of this than the public colleges you are focusing on. The UC system, including UCLA have had substantial increases in enrollment over the years, but many selective private colleges have not. Private colleges have a different mission, and much of their appeal relates to the selectivity, like a luxury good. If such a college doubles its class size and becomes half as selective, it’s likely to negatively impact the brand’s appeal.