Bay Area class of 2023 rejected by [UCD, UCSB, CPSLO], hired by Google [3.96 GPA, probably for CS major]

[mtmind]

Such articles and students seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding about how competitive admissions is for students from high performing high schools with an abundance of similarly situated, highly qualified students. The same goes for many posting on CC. Likewise, while the test scores don’t matter at Ca publics, many can’t seem to get over this so they continue ignore this reality and insist that they should matter. It is not likely that it is racism or a breakdown in the process, it is too many highly qualified students from the same place competing for the same seats.

Here are the numbers for Gunn students applying to Davis for 2022. (I imagine they will be similar for this year.)

It is safe to assume that there are a large number of extremely qualified CS applicants from Gunn, which is a top school in Palo Alto, and the numbers will be even more competitive for CS.

Here is another example of unreasonable expectations regarding Ca admissions from another recent thread:

@hebegebe

The family lives in a relatively wealthy south bay suburb, but the family is low-income (complicated to explain). I never saw the daughter’s transcript, but I was told that she “stumbled a bit” freshman year and then did fine afterwards. But she also became National Merit Finalist, so obviously her grades were pretty good. She also clearly brilliant as evidenced by some of her extracurriculars.

As the dad admits, “mistakes were made” with respect to college admissions, and that the public high school counselors didn’t offer much guidance. All the private colleges she applied to were high reaches. But she also applied to a number of UCs, including (from memory) UCB, UCLA, UCI, UCSD, and UCSC.

She ended up with 14 rejections, no admittances, and a few waitlists. Her test scores were no longer considered that year for California colleges, so that didn’t help her at all. Fortunately the University of Oregon decided to reach out and offer her admission, even though she had not applied, perhaps because of National Merit. And she eventually got off the waitlist at UCSC, which she is attending.

This is the type of of “collateral damage” that is a natural part of an obscure college decision process, particularly for state universities. While those who spend a lot of time on CC could have pointed out the mistake of applying to only high reaches outside of CA, they didn’t expect an initial shutout from all the UCs they applied to.
The Misguided War on the SAT - #1012 by hebegebe