While I am merely trying to rationalize based on my observations, it is wrong to assume that I am not aware of other kids’ profile at the same HS. Nevertheless, I am happy for kids who made it to UCs and wish them well.
Unless you have had access to their entire application, you don’t know.
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Thank you @Gumbymom for patiently laying out the application framework for the 100th time (or so it feels).
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These are the factors but there is zero clarity into how they are weighted. One thing that is apparent is that the formula used ends up heavily weighted against high performing schools particularly in the bay area. The admissions results are quite clear in that regard.
The results at SDSU and SLO this year are pretty much laying waste to that as well. The impact of capped and weighted along with grade inflation have made CSU admissions feel like UC admissions which isn’t a positive for the system.
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The campuses are different in how they evaluate and weight these factors.
Is it? We’re from a high performing school in the Bay Area and every year have pretty darn good results with the UCs. So this is definitely not universally true. To discover the extent to which it is true, we’d have to go to the UC source school data. I don’t have the patience to go through every such school, but I’d be surprised if they were being disadvantaged across the board - of course, I could be wrong. Have you run the numbers? If so, I would definitely be curious to see them!
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There actually are some bay area high schools that have weirdly poor results at some UCs, but it’s hard to know what exactly is going on there. I’ll try to find the link(s) and edit it into this thread…
Meanwhile, please enjoy this xkcd (not meant to represent anyone here other than ME)
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Are essays (including PIQ), GPA, ECs and awards sufficient?
Really? Students are sharing their entire submitted applications with other people? OK. Just hadn’t heard of that. What is their purpose in doing so? I am certain my daughter never shared her application with anyone and I am equally certain she never saw anyone else’s application. I am not sure of the context in which a student would choose to do this. But hey you learn something every day.
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Ok, this March 18th SF Chron article is the one I was thinking of that makes it especially easy to compare different schools’ recent results. Explore this and you’ll see some oddly different results at some schools that might otherwise seem similar. https://www.sfchronicle.com/projects/2024/uc-admissions-acceptance-rates/
The Chron often has nice visualizations and tools for this particular question.
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I don’t know exactly how this factors in, but it has to matter: at my son’s Bay Area high school (and some others I guessed about), over 40% of the class of ‘23 applied to each of the UCs except UCR and UCM (not the same 40%+ to each school) - so those schools are over-represented in most of the UC’s applicant pools. Given that, it may not be super-surprising that some of the acceptance rates are lower than the overall acceptance rates.
Hmm, I don’t subscribe to the Chron but I have no trouble accessing that page. Not sure why others have different results 
!
I think you get a few free articles a month or something like that, then they cut you off.
That is not a legitimate reason for a lack of clarity. Providing clarity would allow kids to better tailor their applications to the schools with the best fit for their profile.
I do not personally have experience with UC admissions as my child did not apply to the UC system but test blind and weighting and capping are clearly designed to limit academic excellence as weighting factors and to allow other factors to gain precedence. While this leads to some hard to explain results from very top students those most impacted seem to be kids outside of the top 10% or so but within the top 25% at competitive high schools. They get ‘doughnut holed’ in UC admissions just as upper middle class kids get ‘doughnut holed’ in admissions to the T20s and top SLACs.
If a variation of the Texas model was used the results may be the same for this group but they know exactly who/what they are competing against.
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IMO:
For schools like UCLA and UCB where 146k and 120k people applied to this year, what is it that will make your kid stand out?
The same “qualities” will stand out at every UC campus which is what I believe is the main reason my kid got into 5/6 UC campuses he applied to. 4.0 UW, comprises over 20% of the applicants, meaning many will get rejected with perfect grades. You already know that stat, it’s published data every year for the last how ever many years.
What can your kid do to separate themselves from everyone else? UC published 13 criteria for you to review and optimize. It’s not a surprise.
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Certainly wouldn’t seem to be the case when you view acceptance rates broken down by GPA (which Gumbymom has posted a number of times for various UCs and even for various colleges within UCs). The academic bar looks pretty high in most cases.
I think you might have a fundamental misunderstanding about how GPA is used in the UC system (which is understandable if your child didn’t apply to UC).
The UCs have access to all three GPAs
- unweighted
- weighted capped
- weighted uncapped
The most selective UCs place less emphasis on the capped GPA, and more emphasis on the unweighted and weighted uncapped GPAs.
As far as being test blind, UCs are test blind because this was court ordered. It is not by design, therefore it isn’t “designed to limit academic excellence.” UCs are working within the constraints that they have.
NYT gift link from 2021:
SDSU and CPSLO for some reason are not transparent about their admission formulae and thresholds, unlike some campuses like SJSU. There is no reason for them not to be more transparent, but they choose not to be transparent about it.
But remember that all CSUs admit by major, so trying to reverse-engineer a CSU campus’ admission formula and thresholds can only be done with enough samples for each major.
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