I have no doubt there is grade inflation at our HS. My S got an 89 in 8th grade honors english (which counted for HS because it was honors), everything else was an A and he took 5 or 6 AP courses. But in SC, the scaling is determined by the actual score. For example, a AP course is weighted to 100 is 6.0, a 99 is 5.9,…90 is 5.0, 89 is 4.9… Honors classes start at 5.5, and go down similarly. So A’s and B’s don’t really matter as every 1 point drop from 100 is penalized the same. His unweighted GPA was around 3.99ish and weighted GPA around 5.2-5.3, which was good enough to rank 8% in his school that graduated around 400, and did not qualifying for the highest automatic in-state scholarship that cuts off at top 5% of class. Which wasn’t the driving factor but certainly didn’t hinder his decision to go out of state for college. The school is designated a “magnet” school for STEM, and there is general belief that grading in the designated STEM “majors” is not, shall we say, rigorous.
The other thing is, for some of the “honors” courses the state required end of course standardized testing is the exact same as the standard “college prep” courses. So the material covered is the same, and the final tests are the same, but maybe in the honors class there are a few more hard questions on the section tests. My D was considering transferring from an honors class to a CP class, and the teacher told her explicitly that it is the same material and the tests are not easier enough to make up for the .5 higher GPA weighting she was receiving in the honors course. And this was a teacher who we found out was relatively hard on grading because she believed grade inflation was a problem.
When I graduated from college, a 3.3 was cum laude. Not that many persons graduated with latin honors. It’s easy to see how someone who grew up in that environment would not understand what those grades really mean.
I find myself conflicted on this one. I generally agree with the crux of what you are saying but the reverse is also true in that a kid from a well resourced area who performs slightly below their peers but objectively far better than most should not be penalized because of their zip code.
They are penalized in public college systems that auto admit the top X% of students from each HS or have preference for in-state students or at those schools (public or private) where class rank is important. Schools have to pick their mission and processes, none are perfect, not many admit ‘only the best and brightest’. Arguably (because no one agrees on everything lol) MIT and CalTech only admit the best and brightest, but after that, not so much.
Aaah, the perennial “kids getting penalized for their zip code” argument.
I won’t go into the myriad advantages these kids have had since birth; it’s not worth enumerating the differences (physical health, mental health, access to opportunity) for kids in affluent areas vs. not affluent- even if the kid’s own family is NOT affluent, etc.
But it is still not the case that the kid who is “penalized” for living in Scarsdale or Winnetka or Atherton or Belmont ends up folding sweaters at the Gap or flipping burgers for the rest of his or her life because the spot that “should have” gone to him/her at Princeton went to a kid from Camden, NJ.
And I’m not sure this penalty always exists, even at public universities. Our zip code would be penalized, but our admit rate to Cal is around double the overall rate. It’s marginally below at UCLA, and roughly in line at the other UCs.
My response is focused specifically on Public schools where I think trying to achieve the right balance in terms of accessibility and priorities is a tricky thing. The families in the neighborhoods that you mention pay their state taxes just like everyone else, actually they pay far more than most. I don’t know where the balance should lie but I’m pretty sure that we haven’t arrived anywhere near it to date.
The issue is far more acute for doughnut hole families than the wealthy. In my area the wealthy just opt out of the UC system and focus on privates but among the doughnut hole families competition for the top publics is fierce and the angst levels high.
Personally I believe that Private schools should be able to admit anyone they want within the bounds of legality. I have no issue with ALDC preferences at all. The acceptance of a lesser admit who family funds a building benefits potentially millions of students over the lifespan of that building. People who complain about these things are missing the forest for the trees. Students are left behind in HYPSM admissions because of preferences, they are left behind because when 60,000 students apply for 2,000 spots the sheer numbers overwhelm all other considerations.
I don’t know where you live- but there are many states where the problem isn’t the donut hole families- it’s the actual “middle middle class” (i.e. median wage families which is usually below the donut hole) and the lower middle class. These are ALSO people who have dutifully paid their state taxes and to discover when your kid is in HS that your own state flagship is just off the table is a very rough awakening.
Ask families in Pennsylvania for example.
These are not families being penalized because of their zip code (they live in middle class towns, after all- and frequently they’ve been paying outsized property taxes to support the local public K-12 school system.) They are “penalized” if you want to call it that because state legislatures have discovered that under-funding the university system is a neat way to get to a balanced budget. So tuitions go up. The U’s discover that admitting kids from out of state with an “out of state penalty” is a nice way to enhance the revenue stream (who do you think those more affluent out of state kids have knocked out of their dorm rooms? )
I think we’re both concerned about the same phenomenon- but looking at it from different ends. I know many donut hole families- their kids DO go to college. Maybe not choices numbers 1-5, but they get to college. Two income rungs below that and it becomes a question. If there’s no commutable state directional? Then the question is often no. The costs of room and board quickly make that “kinda sorta” affordable college completely out of the question.
In order not to derail this thread further, I’ve started a new topic for people who want to continue the discussion of state flagships and which students get in and how the school’s rigor can advantage/disadvantage certain populations:
Good strategy indeed to increase admission chances at selective schools but in the long-run would not be good for society because the tax revenue that subsidizes said less resourced areas will shrink. No one wins.
That might be an available strategic move for some and some may do that but the “solution” might also force parents into having to decide between their job and their child’s admissions optimization. In the same vein the solution for those in rural or poor performing areas might be to move to better resourced ones. Do you think that is a reasonable approach? After all, migration for economic opportunity is a well established part of American history.
This is an issue that I care deeply about but I think that it is a separate issue relative to the issues of grade inflation causing bunching at the top that isn’t reflective of preparedness and it’s impact on the UC system. The UC system actively works to obfuscate performance differences in admissions which just adds to the challenge.
I currently live in CA but I’m from rural upstate NY and I understand the challenges that PA families are facing. PA has done a very poor job of funding the PASSHE schools and their state schools in general. Affordability is a big problem and, the regional feeders and 4 year schools are under huge pressure as the more remote areas lose population.
NY does a much better job of funding the SUNY system but I see the same issues in NY where schools like SUNY-Fredonia in western NY and SUNY-Potsdam in northern NY are suffering big declines in population and having to retrench. The fact that these schools are also the economic lifeblood of their communities in many cases makes the issues even more pressing.
It is a lot easier for wealthy parents to find and move to a nearby less resourced school zone than it is for poor parents to afford to move to a better resourced school zone that tends to be expensive.
There is kind of a perversity for families to game college admissions by choosing less competitive schools. Yes, their kids will more easily stand out, but have they developed to their potential when they are not challenged?
My parents were immigrants, and in our various moves, they chose school district first, apartment/house second. They couldn’t imagine prioritizing any differently.
We chose our neighborhood because we had to balance what we could afford and what was a workable commute. The result was a very nice neighborhood that was attached to very weak schools in a district boundary realignment. For us that meant private schools from the beginning, we budgeted for it and it has worked out wonderfully. One of my D’s middle school classmates played the “optimization” game when it was time for HS and it worked out very well. She lived in the same school district boundaries that we do which as I mentioned is majority low SES areas. She was very bright, ended up as the Val, attends Stanford and was accepted into UCB and UCLA. Her observations were that you had to take care in selecting your peer group, there were other kids who wanted to do well, and that many kids at her school didn’t realize that Alaska and Hawaii were states and not their own countries.
Another friend tried the same thing and it did not work out in the way that the family hoped. Her public school district was average, possibly slightly above average, pretty typical for the area without any low SES areas within the boundary. She was also Val, NMSF, mid 1500’s SAT, 4.3 weighted capped, 4.6W GPA with many APs, strong ECs and, she is visibly brighter than girl one. She was shut out at UCB, UCLA, and UCI. She was waitlisted at UCSD and UCD.
These two high schools are about two miles apart. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.
I know this is an old post but I am confused about how she could be Val and yet be shut out of the top UCs? The first two understandably but wouldn’t being Val mean she ranks #1 in her school? Did every single student at this school get shut out and how if it was a typical public high school or was it the case that there were many Vals and not just 1? I know that being Val is no guarantee but I haven’t heard a situation where the top ranked student in a class doesn’t get into at least one of those UCs.
UCs do not use high-school-determined class rank in admission.
There are plenty of subjectively-assessed factors like the essays and rigor of course selection* that matter but are not visible to outside observers who typically see only stats. There is also no mention of application to or decision from UCM, UCR, or UCSC.
*For example, a student with impressive-looking stats, but only took the bare minimum course work in some subjects like English and foreign language, may have less successful college admission results than might be expected by looking at stats.
Yes but you would think that the school’s class rank would align with the UC’s ranking system to some extent, especially given that this is not a private school that follows its own rules. I’ve yet to see a CA public school not take rigor into account when calculating class ranking and it sounds like a fairly decent school. Plus based on the post, it sounds like the student would have taken rigorous courses.
Right and no mention of UCSB either so I assumed it was likely that some of the latter 3 were admits but usually - and again this is from my experience - the top student in a school will get into at least 1 higher ranked UC. In this case, the ones that were listed along with UCSB. Thus I wonder if something was off with the PIQ’s or possibly there was a lack of rigor in coursework or there were many Vals etc. This just doesn’t align at all with my experience. The people I see shut out of the UCs are those that are in highly competitive schools and don’t make it into the top echelon of their school rather than those that are the top of their class.
In the end she landed ok; she got into UCSD off of the waitlist and is happy there. I do not know how her school handles Val, there could be more than one. I also have no insight into why she was rejected, as we all constantly remind people, there is no way of knowing.
There are a couple of things that do come to mind though. She was applying to challenging engineering majors so that never helps. Her ECs were also strong but she was a VERY stereotypical Asian candidate. The school that she attended as I mentioned was average in terms of SES and a better environment overall than the other student that I mentioned. Looking at the schools success rated for top UCs it isn’t great, generally at or slightly below the overall acceptance rate and they were spectacularly unsuccessful at UC Irvine for some reason and did not have a good year at UCLA.
Overall I would have to say that she was probably in the mix with a few other kids at her school and the PIQs weren’t where the other kids were. I think for her parents the waitlist at Davis and outright denial at UCI were the biggest shocks.
For her non-UC applications she had no success in the T20 and excellent success with considerable merit at the T40/50 level. A typical “average excellent” set of results.
Yes, at the more selective UCs, engineering majors (and computer science) are generally more difficult for admissions than overall campus stats may suggest. Only recently did UC show some information on how frosh admission varies by major grouping at Freshman admission by discipline | University of California
However, the most selective major for frosh admission at UCs is nursing at UCLA and UCI.