The ELC status can be found on the UC application by logging into the application.
Click on how your application is reviewed: Shows applicants if they’ve been designated ELC status
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The UCs don’t make decisions based on an applicant’s sex or ethnicity (and I’m pretty sure the app readers can’t see that info). However, they do evaluate applicants in the context of their own high school, so if the high school has a large number of high stats applicants with a lot of honors / AP classes and impressive ECs, a given high stats applicant might have trouble standing out in the crowd.
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So it either states the ELC status or it says nothing at all? Thank you.
Correct either ELC status is listed or it is blank.
Thanks again! His private school does not rank, UC sent the email in Dec/Jan to apply to Merced but not seeing anything where you indicated that status would be. Just following up for informational purposes. Thanks.
You’re telling me they can’t tell if Nguyen, Chang, Kim, whang and wang are Asians? lol
The app readers don’t see the applicant’s name. (if that was a serious question… 
)
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I just entered below stats into RogerHub GPA Calculator:
26 A, 0 B, 0 C, 0 D, 0 F and 20 honors/AP
Unweighted GPA: 4.00
Weighted GPA: 4.77
Weighted and Capped GPA: 4.31
Then entered below stats:
22 A, 4 B, 0 C, 0 D, 0 F and 20 honors/AP
Unweighted GPA: 3.85
Weighted GPA: 4.62
Weighted and Capped GPA: 4.15
The 4 Bs caused the CAP GPA dropping from 4.31 to 4.15. This has more impact than your example of taking 8 more classes, CAP GPA dropping from 4.18 to 4.13.
Just want to show how a few Bs will negatively impact CAP GPA and getting more As won’t recover it. Any student getting more than 8 Bs will have CAP GPA below 4.0, the average CAP GPA for mid tier UC acceptance. Good Luck
not sure if I truly believe that race doesn’t impact admissions somehow… Holistic admissions kind of gives them carte blanche. Regardless, my real question is how the First Gen initiative impacts the overall admissions and do they have a specific target…
It’s important to note only a third of older Americans have a four year degree so still have double the participation rate in college compared to first generation.
Readers do not see the name of the applicant. This has been stated many times.
Readers do not see the name or sex of any applicant.
Yes…a single B (or more) meaningfully impacts the GPA at any end of the unweighted or weighted spectrum (many courses or few courses). However, since one or more B’s is not unheard of with increased classes/rigor (let’s assume that as constant because of reasonable likelihood), course number then has a huge impact. Even compared to your example (4.3 capped with 26 A’s), taking only 20 courses and only 8 honors/AP, and getting all A’s, gets you to an even higher capped GPA of 4.4, at a lower risk of getting B’s (because of fewer honors/AP courses). To take this even further, reducing the courseload to 20 courses AND yet getting 3 B’s, while taking 8 honors/AP courses still keeps the UC-capped GPA at 4.25! This is meaningfully better (and well within the median 25-75th percentile of any UC) than the one achieved by my son taking 30 courses, 20 honors/AP, and getting one more B! (4.13; low end of the 25-75th percentile). So for my S25, getting 1 more B as a result of taking 10 more semesters of AP/honors (compared to 3 B’s in the course-limited example) results in a drop in UC-capped GPA from 4.25 (median accepted) to 4.13 (25% accepted). I think you would agree that it would be easier to accomplish 17 A’s and 3 B’s in 20 courses (8 AP/honors) compared to 26 A’s and 4 B’s in 30 courses. Going in, and assuming as a constant that a student will get AT LEAST one B or worse grade when taking 20+ courses, the best way to protect the UC-GPA is to take fewer courses, because 1) it decreases the likelihood of a non-A and 2) it decreases the denominator. I’m not saying that should be a strategy, as I acknowledge all of things you and others have pointed that impact acceptance decisions (e.g. fully weighted GPA, unweighted GPA, course rigor, major, ECs, writing prompts etc etc). But I am saying that it is the most conservative approach to protecting the UC-capped GPA. But also, I enjoy the discussion and appreciate the well-wishes, and also wish you and your child the very best of luck!!
This comparison is misleading.
Students with lower weighted capped GPA are accepted at a lower rate, but this is not a result of these students taking additional honors courses.
The pool of students with a lower weighted capped GPA also includes plenty of students with lower unweighted grades and lower rigor. Such students are going to be accepted at a lower rate. Thus, this pool as a whole is accepted at a lower rate.
There is no evidence that taking 10 additional semesters of honors courses would hurt any student applying to the UC system.
I know it can be confusing because UC typically reports admission statistics based on capped GPA… but this doesn’t mean they are making decisions based on capped GPA.
(On the other hand, in the CSU system, weighted capped GPA has a lot more importance.)
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Class rank as determined by the high school is not used for ELC.
Every few years, participating high schools send academic records to UC, which will recalculate HS GPAs from them to determine where the top 9% benchmark HS GPA is for the high school. For the next few years, applicants from that high school whose UC recalculated HS GPA meets that benchmark HS GPA get ELC designation.
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Actually, UCB has long had a business major. However, it recently changed the business major to direct admission instead of competitive secondary admission. As a result, economics is no longer a capacity-limited major at UCB (it was a popular major for business major rejects when the business major used competitive secondary admission).
Where major matters in admission, different STEM majors can be differently selective, depending on their popularity relative to their capacity.
I don’t disagree with and haven’t argued against any of the points you’ve made. Yet- the data I have presented (comparisons of capped GPAs under various scenarios), are not misleading. They are what they are - schools including UCs use school-specific GPAs for a reason (see lots of OOS examples also) and the UC capped GPA decreases substantially with more rigor, all other things (such as minimal B’s) being equal. I have wondered whether there may be a sweet spot where the rigor is pretty good, weighted GPA is pretty good, and the UC-capped GPA is not at the low end of the 25th-75th percentile, as a result of lots of rigor and a few B’s. There is some zone where the fully weighted GPA and UC-capped CPA converge at around 4.3, with a couple of B’s. How that is looked at by admissions compared to a fully weighted of 4.5+ and UC-capped of 4.12 (low end of median), is unknown. I am simply considering the 2 experiences in my family who are both ELC (top 9% of competitive bay area public high school) and fall more into the latter category but are a combined 0 for 8 thus far with UCs + Cal Poly. Inevitably, this has caused me to wonder about the relative importance of these things. Truthfully though, I think the biggest factor was their major choices, both of which are quite competitive at UCs and Poly.
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Yes, that’s probably the biggest factor… the most competitive major choices will put most UCs in the reach to high reach category for everyone. High rigor (high uncapped GPA / slightly lower capped GPA) would be a positive, not a negative factor in admissions to competitive majors especially at the most selective UC campuses. It just might not appear to be that way if you are looking at anecdotes of individual students’ results.
Cal Poly SLO, however, is a CSU, and it does use capped GPA as an important component of its admission process (although CPSLO has its own capped GPA calculation that is different from UC and other CSUs). So it is possible for high rigor to hurt a student in admission to highly impacted majors at CPSLO, and other CSUs with impacted majors.
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