<p>I was at the bookstore about 2 hours ago and I found myself reading the Princeton Review’s new 2010 edition of the 371 best colleges. I flipped to the section on the UC’s and I was shocked to discover something. On the top right, there is a score for each college which is supposed to tell you how selective the institution is. The range is 60 to 99. I looked at Berkeley’s selectivity score and it was 97. I looked also at UCLA’s and it was 98. So far, nothing unusual here. But then I look at UC Riverside’s score, which is 99 (the highest score). Harvard had the same score (99), as did several other elite universities. So, apparently UC Riverside is not only more competitive to get into than Berkeley and UCLA, it is on par with Harvard and a few other elite colleges. Up until now, I had thought that UC Riverside was on the lower end of the UC’s, but I am thankful that the Princeton Review has cleared this up for me. </p>
<p>I know the Princeton Review party lists and whatnot that are available online are from student interviews, so it leads me to wonder how is it exactly that they come to the conclusion UC Riverside deserved a score of 99.</p>
<p>Uhhh that is not possible. UCR along with UC Merced takes in all the applicants that get rejected from every UC that they applied to (not including UCR and UCM of course).</p>
<p>If that was just a typo thing how would you explain then that UCLA got a 98 whilst Berkeley – the most selective school amongst the UC – got a 97 score only?</p>
<p>^ that’s b/c 10,000+ more students apply to UCLA than they do for berkeley
and each school can accept about the same number of students, so… that’s prob why ucla has a higher score than berkeley, (b/c of its lower percentage)</p>
<p>who ever typed it probably missed the number and typed in 9 instead of a 6 (69) or an 8 (89) haha.</p>
<p>yep, UCLA is slightly more selective looking at the admissions rate, which counts for something. Although Berkeley kids have nicer-looking stats on average. ;)</p>
<p>97 v. 98…it’s only one point. I think the lowest possible score is 60.</p>
<p>To get the selectivity level of the school, you have to do it by acceptance rate in which Berkeley has lower % than UCLA has, albeit only slightly. Berkeley admitted students also have higher GPAs and SAT scores, that’s beside the ECs of the applicants. So, Berkeley should be more selective than UCLA. That’s what USNews say so too. Berkeley #14 most selective in the nation, UCLA #17 or 19?</p>
<p>I think that UCLA’s slightly higher score does make sense when you look at the most recent freshmen admission stats. Here they are for Fall 2009. </p>
<p>UCLA 21.6%
UC Berkeley 26.6%
UC San Diego 37.3%
UC Irvine 42.3%
UC Davis 46.2%
UC Santa Barbara 49.2%
UC Santa Cruz 63.2%
UC Merced 77.8%
UC Riverside 78.3%</p>
<p>The average GPA, Act and SAT scores for incoming UCLA freshmen were 4.16, 29 and 2010. For Berkeley, they were 4.15, 30 and 2033. Remember that this only shows Fall admissions. If you take into account Berkeley’s Spring applicants (which it accepts at a much higher rate than its Fall applicants), you wind up with higher than a 30% acceptance rate versus 21.6% for UCLA. But of course, Berkeley also accepts far fewer transfer students than UCLA.</p>
<p>Source: Wikipedia: University of California</p>
<p>It wasn’t a typo. Look at the scores for Davis, Santa Barbara and Santa Cruz. I can’t remember exactly what scores they received, but I think at least one of them had a 98 or higher and the other two had around 97 or 98. This just goes to show that you have to skeptical when approaching these guides.</p>
<p>UC Berkeley’s 26.6% acceptance rate, as well as its GPA, ACT, SAT includes Spring 2010 admits from what I understand (I remember seeing it on the berkeley website somewhere).</p>
<p>Although the OP is obviously a ■■■■■, the UCs have always been 95%+ on Princeton Review. The fact that all the UCs have a very high class rank especially seems to help them among Princeton Review’s methodology. Also, Princeton Review just calculates the selectivity based on a formula analyzing the school’s Common Data Set. Has anyone looked at UCRs Common Data Set to see if there were any errors at the source?</p>
<p>I assume, by that, you mean I am ■■■■■■■■ for UCD. Please tell me how exposing a popular college guide’s clumsy research makes me a ■■■■■. I haven’t even said one positive word about UCD in this whole thread. Further, I am not saying (in case anyone here got that impression) that UC-Riverside is a bad or even a mediocre school. USNWR ranks it among the 100 universities in the nation and it is a major research university and an engine of growth for Riverside County and the Inland Empire. I apologize if I gave anyone here (esp. UCR students and alumni) that impression. My issue is with the Princeton Review. It makes millions selling these guides to young college applicants so the least it could do is to do sufficient research and present accurate information. UC-Riverside is selective even for undergrad (since it accepts only the top 12.5% or so of high school seniors). But to say that it is more selective than Berkeley or UCLA is just indefensible. I am proud as hell to be attending UCD’s school of law this fall but I would still never argue that it is as selective as the law schools at Stanford, Berkeley and UCLA. There is a huge difference between being proud and being just delusional.</p>
<p>Hah, no, it was a joke referring to your comment about trusting Princeton Review at face value.</p>
<p>However, I’m saying both Princeton Review and the UC schools might be to blame. They probably have a computer that reads schools’ common data sets and automatically assigns a number; I don’t think Princeton Review did any research at all for those kinds of stats. </p>
<p>As an example, look at UCLA’s average GPA in this new edition of Princeton Review: 4.22. Now, look at Berkeley’s: 3.9. Doesn’t that seem a little strange to you? Well, if you look at the Common Data Sets</p>
<p>That’s right, these GPAs came self reported from the schools. According to Berkeley’s CDS sheet, they reported their GPA on a 4.0 scale. This particular instruction is not mentioned on UCLA’s Common Data Set, so they reported the weighted instead.</p>
<p>It’s these kind of inconsistencies that can throw the rankings. I doubt it was a lack of Princeton Review’s research, they just took the data the school gave them.</p>