Presumably the 40% of those admitted to some UC from your high school who went outside the UC system to enroll were not too happy with whatever UC campus offer they received and thus declined it.
The UC option seems to have worked for about 25% of your school’s (in-state) applicants. I guess it is a matter of perspective as to whether that is good or bad.
Yet, they chose to apply to those campuses so they must have considered them viable and at last somewhat desirable options at some point…And admissions “worked” since they got an acceptance to at least one campus that they CHOSE to apply to. Not everyone wants to attend a UC as their first choice. Some want to leave the state, some hope to attend a private university with smaller classes, etc. so if their financial aid works out, they may accept a different offer. Some may opt for a lower cost CSU if money is a deciding factor. Seems reasonable. And seems to indicate a situation where high stats California students do have the option of attending a UC should they so choose.
We obviously see this quite differently, it’s not remotely working from my POV yet it does in yours.
I generally agree that the 6 UCs mentioned will give high stat students a good home. But I’m not sure those students will consider those an academic (or prestige) fit for them. Many high stat kids apply to UCs with UCLA/UCB as their reach, and UCSD/UCI/UCSB as their matches. Kind of stretching it in my book but there they are. If given UMich, UVA, UNC I think many would choose it over UCSD/UCI/UCSB (even though I think it unwarranted). UCI is a tougher swallow for a top stat kid… (even though it’s a great school! I loved it when we toured… my old timey self had to refresh his understanding of the school).
But take a look at what it takes to get in, and what the yield is. Here is Gunn HS in Palo Alto:
Admit rate: 13.2% 19%yield
It’s a difficult get. Most will be denied even though it’s not held in regard as high as it should. Most old timey families with high stat kids (i.e. competitive for UCB/UCLA) would like to place in a more “prestigious” place than UCI (hence the 19% yield). Many would pick UMich, UVA, UNC, UW over it. Some would pick UO, UWisconsin over it. (assuming they have enough means that it doesn’t unduly sway the decision)
There is nothing wrong with students choosing OOS flagships, privates, LACs, CSUs or whatever they prefer, as long as they can afford their choice. My kid would have preferred several much lower ranked OOS flagships over UCSD, UCSB, UCI, and even UCLA, although those are all fine schools. Preferences do not necessarily line up neatly with rankings. This doesn’t indicate that the UC admission system is broken.
Sure, and I agree. But I’m trying to say that the admit and yield rates for the UC system as was shown above do not give a clear picture of what’s going on. It’s not that easy to get in to the more popular UCs, and even those don’t yield as well as the system-wide stats indicate. There are high stats people (including those at Gunn) who would sign up for UCI as a safety, even though it’s a stretch. Yet even if they got in, it’s not that valuable to them.
To their eyes, it’s high difficulty for low personal value. Maybe they’re crazy but there they are.
(Personally, we are not planning on applying to many if any UCs/CSUs but it’s mostly due to wanting a different environment… but a little due to the funky admissions process, and the admissions disappointment we’ve witnessed amongst friends)
I see this psychological pattern with some other states’ underappreciated flagships, too… for example, people in NJ talking about Rutgers.
I think that you are on the right track.
I took a look at Lynbrook (higher stats than Gunn) as well. UCB yields very well (68%) but the acceptance rate is 12% at a school with about a 1425 SAT score (86% took it). UCLA does well too 35% yield on 12% as well. But, then things really fall of to mid 19% to 26% for the other 4 schools. And if you look at the matriculation info UIUC, Purdue, UWash, Wisconsin are all very popular.
Admissions rates to the schools considered acceptable are average though the schools stats are far above average. Most of these families are doughnut hole families given the high cost of living in the bay area as well.
It is pretty easy to see where the negative impression of UC admissions policies comes from in the bay area.
Same for us. We have no horse in this race but we hear the angst often enough that my kid considered applying to be a waste of time.
All of the UCs, apart from UCB and UCLA, have low yield. That is the result of being part of a system in which students only have to check additional boxes in order to apply to multiple UCs.
At least at our school, students admitted to the “middle” UCs (UCSD, UCD, UCSB, UCI) are typically not just being admitted to one UC. Most students admitted to these schools have more than one UC to choose from, and also have admissions to OOS flagships, CSUs, and/or private schools.
Low yield for these schools doesn’t mean that UC admissions is broken. It means that students have choices.
Public colleges reflect the priorities of their state. There are states for whom geographic representation is an important value (and usually a political neceessity). So even if all the spots at UCB and UCLA could be filled by bay area kids with high stats, it ignores the rest of the very large and diverse state. I can only imagine the uproar that would occur if some counties didn’t have any or very few of their students accepted because the stats of uber-competitive students in highly-populated areas filled up the vast majority of the spots. Those less-populated areas are paying taxes and supporting higher education, but virtually none of their kids can attend the most popular schools? Frankly, it would be political suicide.
I think there are certain communities where there is a culture of hyper-ambition. The ones where families are trying to get into the right daycares/preschools to set them up for the right elementary schools for the right high schools for the right colleges. The ones that are starting their kids early in the “right” ECs so that they can use those as springboards to success (usually defined as entrance to elite/highly-sought colleges). And attending the desired colleges is then the path to extreme success in life, or so the thinking goes.
Additionally, in many of these communities, there is a desire to show their markers of success. This is everything from the size/location of their house, to the car they drive, the clothes they wear, where they vacation, etc.
Another marker is the name of the school on the car’s bumper sticker (whether a K-12 or post-secondary school). So, a family would rather have a kid who goes to Amherst which has much more cachet rather than Gustavus Adolphus (which produced almost 20% more physics PhDs than Amherst over the same time frame) or Lawrence (which produced only 1 less than Amherst, though it has a smaller population). It’s not so much because the education is so much greater at Amherst than the other two, but because it’s a status symbol.
So the disappointment that is felt by many in the bay area is because there are many hyper-ambitious individuals in the region, and they feel that getting any result that is not coveted by a number of others is a disappointment. So it doesn’t have to do with the fact that the state isn’t offering them a spot at an excellent university (as all the UC campuses are)…it’s just not the most prestigious ones. Thus, it’s not a failure of the system that there are disappointed hopes.
Perspective from a totally average non-bay area CA public school - all the UCs are thought of highly and most parents would be thrilled for their child to attend any. UCI is in the prestigious category. Not many from our school apply, likely due to price and a lot of first gen kids who don’t know much about college admissions - so our admit rates are pretty high with only 10% of students even applying.
Class off approx 400
40 apply
30 admit
17 enroll
75% admit, 56% yield. About half these admits are at UCM so that skews the data also. Not many kids go to private so most end up at a CSU or a CC for $ savings.
Admit rates are a bit funky due to the small sample size 27% cal, 24% UCLA, 50% UCI, 33% UCD, 22% UCSD
Going back to your post here, I was thinking about what the numbers would have to be in this model.
It looks like there are about 30K first-year seats reserved for CA students in the top 6 UCs combined (B, LA, SD, D, SB, I). (30K is 82% of the total entering class at these 6 schools, which allows for the 18% cap on OOS admits.)
That’s about 6% of CA graduating seniors (given that there are about 500K students graduating HS in CA each year).
So let’s say your system guarantees admission to at least one of these six UCs to the top 5% from each HS (a total of 25K graduating seniors) and the top 5% statewide (another group of 25K graduating seniors, but these are likely to overlap substantially with the first group).
Of course the system would have to define how students are ranked against each other… are you imagining that the system would use unweighted, UC weighted capped, or UC unweighted capped GPA? If you are ranking students against each other at different HS, you would probably need to use capped GPA (similar to CSU admissions).
I really don’t think this sort of system would cut down on unhappiness from parents of students at Paly, Gunn, etc., though. You would still have lots of parents who are unhappy that their kids are not being admitted to their preferred UCs.
The top 5/6% rankings are frustrating though, at our school you can boost gpa by taking dual enrollment (2 courses per year at 10 units each) vs an AP course (1 year, 10 units total) when the AP course has a higher level of difficulty and usefulness. Kids would need to take AP art appreciation over AP Chem just to stay in the top 5%. Plus that would take away from holistic nature of admissions. I don’t see the UCs signing up for that sort of program any time soon.
Probably any non-holistic statewide HS student ranking system would have the result of opening up ways to game the system that do not necessarily improve a student’s actual education and preparation. We hear similar complaints about the guaranteed admission in TX.
(Edited to specify HS student ranking system, since that is what I meant.)
Although the UCs already have a guarantee that uses a non-holistic measure to rank HS students against their peers in their own HS and statewide, it’s low level enough that it doesn’t cause hypercompetitive families to go nuts trying to game it.
If you were to try to do the same thing with X% of kids guaranteed a seat at UCB / UCLA, it would definitely make families go nuts trying to game it, though!!!
It’s possible there is a middle ground that looks somewhat like the solution proposed by @Aimlesscat1 where high stats kids have a guarantee of being admitted to some subset of UCs… but I feel this is unlikely to satisfy the target audience, if we’re talking about families unhappy with Irvine or Davis, or families shocked that a valedictorian ends up at UCSD.
The easy checkbox for UCs is part of it, but there are other factors. Yield is primarily a function of selectivity, early admission policies, and for lack of a better word uniqueness.
Less selective colleges are more likely to serve as a backup for more selective colleges, leading to lower yields. Many people do use UCs as a backup, rather than a first choice, particularly the less selective ones. This would be even more true, if UCs offered guaranteed admission based on stats, as some have proposed in this thread, which would further drive down yield.
UCs also don’t play early admission games, such as driving up yield by favoring ED/REA/SCEA applicants, or even offering early admission. This again hurts yield.
A public college having a lower yield should not be considered a broken admission system.
Slightly different question but in line with the above discussion on prestige. Are students applying to the Sciences Po dual degree program because it is an easier way to get admitted to UC Berkeley and Columbia, the two US universities participating in this program?
It looks like a great experience for the students but I wonder whether people (parents and students) are going this route more to secure the coveted prestige.
I don’t know anything about Columbia, but for UCB, I don’t think applying for the dual degree makes it any easier to get admitted. My understanding is that applications go through the regular process, and students are only considered for the sciences po double degree if they are admitted.
I wonder if people are willing to go back to the old system of 1/2 of the admits being determined by holistic methods and 1/2 being determined more by stats. In those days, the stats crowd would get their results back early (I think Dec?) and the results are more “predictable” from that perspective. The holistic pathway still has a lot of room to shape the class, find students with lots of promise, etc. One can change the ratios of one pathway vs the other, but I thought there were less complaints back then.
If UC went to any kind of rank based system, it would likely use the method it currently uses for ELC, which uses the top 9% threshold recalculated GPA from a recent previous class as a threshold recalculated GPA to get ELC. Presumably, this is to reduce cutthroat competition and rank gaming that is rampant in Texas.
Back then, the stats threshold for the top half of the admission bucket (which could be by division or major) was competitively set, so it was not known before applying.
The other half was not evaluated holistically, but racked and stacked by adding additional points to the stats based on essays and other stuff.
Back then the smaller population of top-end applicants, lesser high school grade inflation, not recentered SAT scores, and use of Achievement tests gave a wider stats spread with less compression at the top compared to now, although certain popular majors were starting to see the beginning of stats compression at the top.
