Yes, ELC @lknomad - it seems on the CC boards quite a few requests for LoRs have been going out. It’s causing quite the stir.
D just told me quite a few of her friends received the request. One just two hours after she submitted her app!
A girl at our school applied to UCB about 2 weeks ago and got a request for the LoR’s. S applied on Monday (deadline) and hasn’t received anything. His stats are slightly higher than the girl’s if that tells you anything. Both are ELC.
S has applied to 3 UC’s, one CSU that is offering great aid and two other schools. He is waiting to see what happens with his EA school before applying to more.
Like I have mentioned before, our school sends a lot of kids to UCLA. Our acceptance rate is twice the average UCLA acceptance rate. A large number of our kids also get into UC Irvine and UC Riverside. Both Irvine and LA are about 90 minutes away. Most of the others go to the local CSU.
For those of you who know about ELC, how much will it hurt my daughter’s chances at getting into the UC’s she applied to given that she’s not ELC? We just found out when she submitted her application Sunday. While I know her HS is pretty competitive, I thought she might be in the top 9%, but clearly I was wrong. Her UC GPA is 4.18 and SAT score is 2320, and she applied to UCLA, UCI, UCSB and UCR.
At my school many kids who I am guessing were not ELC got into UCI and UCR. We even had some get into UCLA. I think part of it depends on their major. The Valedictorian was rejected from UCB and UCLA.
@Mysonsdad you have to wonder what went wrong with the essays of the valedictorian… What else could have kept that person out??
Community service and EC maybe. UC application has community service listed before everything else. So it is probably important to them.
What are LOR and ELC? I googled. Surely you had to sent letters of recommendation with the applications so I’m assuming you all are talking about something else.
@LKnomad wrote:
“@Mysonsdad you have to wonder what went wrong with the essays of the valedictorian… What else could have kept that person out??”
Easy. He was probably president of the Republicans Club.
@OspreyCV22 letters of recommendation are not required to apply to the UC’s, but Berkeley requests them after you’ve applied. I don’t think any of the others do. ELC means Eligibility in Local Context and gives an advantage to students who rank in the top 9% of their HS class.
@Mom2jl i don’t know how much advantage ELC students get beside guaranteed acceptance to UCM.
Did this mean that if my son is president of the Democrats club he has auto acceptance? I will let him know!
@Ballerina016, according to the UC website, it says that the ELC designation adds value to the application and is one of the 14 factors considered when the applications are reviewed. The thing that I’m somewhat confused about is that it seems like whether a student is ELC or in the top 9% of all HS students statewide (which apparently my DD is), they are offered a spot at UCM if they don’t get in to any of the UC’s they applied to. Am I understanding that correctly?
@Mom2jl You are correct.
@LKnomad, I hope that means good things for your son!
Wow, lots of posts.
Just wanted to chime in with the crowd saying their kid is an outlier in their community. We’re in the rural Midwest, and the big school for us is local flagship. Wisconsin is ours. Some kids who want to be adventuresome go to Minnesota. Otherwise, local directionals. Seriously, out of 250 kids in my D’s class, she knows of 3 who are looking beyond those choices.
Really interesting to us because we moved here from Madison and have many friends with kids there still. Those kids apply nationally, all over. We don’t feel like her HS is any worse than where these Madison kids go, but the mindset is really really different.
@GoodGrief16 Thanks!
Congratulations @NYDad513 @carolinamom2boys @crowlady and anyone else I missed! I can barely keep up with you all!
I’m a fan of the the EMS gig @RyanG1207, the chocolate bar job @palm715, and the literary journal startup @NYDad513. Those are the kind of interesting ECs I’d love to hear about if I were an adcom.
@LKnomad I see the request as a positive sign that they’re looking for reasons to admit him! 
My S submitted his UCB app the day before Thanksgiving, and he hasn’t gotten a request for rec letters yet. I have been hoping he would as he can’t qualify for ELC as a homeschooler. The UCs will review our transcripts via the “admission by exception” route, which is mysterious and a little nerve wracking.
Thought this was an interesting article about the new process:
http://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-uc-recommendations-20151004-story.html
@happymochi, I always forget who the other homeschooler here is! Can’t wait to see how things turn out for your son.
@happymochi I have been eyeing the whole application by exception thing as a possibility down the road for son number 2. The public charter may solve this issue for us, but I am not going the A-G route. We are going more non traditional so we shall see what happens. I am interested in hearing how that all works out.