Leadership Award Invite

soaringcicada
Mon, 17 Feb 2014 07:56:15 +0000

Hi nimble09 … that’s not quite right. Leadership invites are sent to a subset of applicants. Some of those applicants will be accepted and some won’t. Cal Alumni Association doesn’t know which ones will/will not when the invites are sent, but they have to do it early in order to get through their process so they can give out the scholarships about the same time admissions are announced. So that means their readers end up assessing many essays and the kids won’t even get in. (I say many because Berkeley’s admit rate is 20%-ish. Now, it’s somewhat self-selective, so the admit rate of Leadership applicants should be higher than that. But the only students who can know with certainty that applying isn’t a complete waste of time is Regents’ and Chancellor’s candidates, plus recruited athletes and other special admits.) When Cal Alumni gets the “admitted” list (and they get it before March 27th), they pull all the students that didn’t get admitted (or at least they try to get them all).

I’m not sure how they determine which students to invite and which not to invite. From CC posts, all we can conclude is that they don’t invite all Regents’ candidates, and they don’t invite everyone who checks the “I’ve done craploads of leadership” box. Who knows how the computer picks? But any applicant to Cal can apply. So applying won’t increase your chances or everyone would do it. Being chosen for the scholarship probably means you have shown good leadership so by virtue of that you stand a better chance (Berkeley being holistic and all), but your application needs to pass muster with the admissions office. And the idea is that you wouldn’t know that you’ve got great leadership, but weren’t admitted. Good luck to you/your child!