Yes, some do. UCs tend to be very familiar with local high schools. They have a sense of which schools are preparing students well for study at their campus.
This is my opinion only and YMMV:
It is big and bureaucratic and byzantine such that getting even the smallest things done can seem like a battle. It can be impersonal, as bureaucracies often are. You can get lost in the crowd of faces, especially in classes with 100+ and 500+ students. No one is going to hold your hand as you learn the ropes.
The upside of that is that students learn to self-advocate. They learn to be assertive. They learn how to access the resources they need. They learn independence and self-sufficiency. If they are from a small town and not used to urban areas, they become more street smart. They gain confidence.
It’s like in the song “New York, New York:” If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere. If you can learn to navigate Cal and thrive, you are can do anything.
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I’m not sure this helps with PIQs. Anecdotally, the students we know who were very successful in UC admissions didn’t have paid help on their PIQs. I think the UCs are looking for something different from the standard polished college essay (and each UC is looking for their own set of things in the PIQs too).
But I do think it can help a lot for the student to take the PIQs very seriously and this can mean rewriting or rethinking them multiple times.
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My son spent many months on his PIQs. As parents this was driving us crazy - just get it done! But it worked out for him, he punched way above his GPA (3.84 UW) for acceptances at UCs in engineering - getting in everywhere except UCLA.
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Okay
Also, a lot of kids get a leg up with SAT and ACT scores because they can hire high priced tutors to prep them. This isn’t an anecdote it’s a fact.
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In fact, Stanford did a study looking specifically at UC essay quality compared to socio-econ status and concluded there’s a very high correlation between essay quality to income (shocking right?). There’s even a higher correlation between income to essay quality then to SAT scores.
Here’s the abstract description:
There is substantial evidence of the potential for class bias in the use of standardized tests to
evaluate college applicants, yet little comparable inquiry considers the written essays
typically required of applicants to selective US colleges and universities. We utilize a corpus
of 240,000 admissions essays submitted by 60,000 applicants to the University of California
in November 2016 to measure the relationship between the content of application essays,
reported household income, and standardized test scores (SAT) at scale. We quantify essay
content using correlated topic modeling (CTM) and the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count
(LIWC) software package. Results show that essays have a stronger correlation to reported
household income than SAT scores. Essay content also explains much of the variance in SAT
scores, suggesting that essays encode some of the same information as the SAT, though
this relationship attenuates as household income increases. Efforts to realize more equitable
college admissions protocols can be informed by attending to how social class is encoded
in non-numerical components of applications.
Many hypothesize that not only can the affluent hire college counselors to help write/edit essays, but their well educated parents can provide a similar editorial advantage. Duke just changed the way it evaluates essays partly due to this concern (AI also). Yes, the average family cannot afford paid counselors, but the average student who is admitted to UCs comes from higher SES families.
I’ll leave it at that before this turns into a SAT v. Essay v Fairness argument and the moderators kick us out.
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Environmental Science is in CNR. My oldest is in CNR. It is a pretty supportive group of kids. Classes are not easy, but they do help each other and backstabbing isn’t really a thing. Grade deflation is a bit overstated (maybe not for CS). The consulting groups are competitive, but not necessary to join.
Social scene is up to you to find your niche. There are a lot of clubs and groups inside CNR that can be a lot of fun. There are so many options in clubs and many of the rec sports, which include typical teams like soccer and the unexpected like ballroom, don’t require experience. Also, look at the Units dorms, they are the most social.
It is a large school in an urban environment with the pluses and minuses that go along with that. The problems with the homeless population have become worse since Berkeley displaced them from Peoples Park. Crime is in Oakland does bleed into Berkeley, again a problem, but about the same as any urban area. My kid has been fine, but you do need to pay attention. Transportation is great in Berkeley - buses are free and BART is discounted or free (they were looking to make it free and I can’t remember if they did it). You can easily get off campus for minimal cost.
All in all, my oldest loves it and my youngest is likely to go there. Do try to go up there. It does help you make a decision.
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Parents who know how to do math can help their children get better at math. Parents who know how to write can help their child learn to write well. Both of those skills are correlated with higher socio-economic status because they’re employable skills.
I guess I’m wondering, if the colleges aren’t supposed to want students who have the fundamental academic skills that are necessary to build a college education on because this is “class bias”, what are they supposed to want?
It’s complicated, but I don’t see how it would even be possible to disentangle these kinds of factors.
D24 Accepted/Environmental Studies
GPA: 3.75 unweighted, 4.5 weighted, 4.3 UC weighted
ELC Top 9 percent: Yes
APs/Dual Enrollment: private school that doesn’t offer APs but took AP Chem (4)
ACT: 34 (not relevant for UCs obvi)
Awards/Extracurriculars: top 10 in US in a non-recruited sport, numerous international, national and regional level championships
Results:
Accepted: UCLA, UCSD, UCSB, UCSC, UCR, University of Michigan, GWU
Waitlisted: University of Chicago, UCI, Boston University
Rejected: Yale, Harvard, NYU, Georgetown
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Of course this is also a non-issue for UC Berkeley…
Yes, both are likely true as well as the higher likelihood of living in a high-performing school district and/or attending private schools with personalized attention to college applicants. I am not debating that some students are advantaged - they clearly are. I am skeptical that many students are having their essays essentially written by hired guns. And what you have posted is specifically about high income applicants. My previous point was that most students are in fact not high income. Most do not fall into this advantaged category at all. And that likely ties into the UC preference for FGLI applicants who get a boost specifically for this reason. But again, absolutely none of this supports that claim that many students are having their essays written by professional consultants.
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Most kids here applied to schools out of the UC, CSU system so it’s relevant regardless….
I didn’t say they were “written by hired guns.” You can argue your point without purposely misstating people to try to make a point.
Please refer to the topic of the thread you are in, though 
This issue is discussed in several other threads at CC so perhaps if you have additional thoughts on the matter, they might be better placed there.
That is how I interpreted what you said here:
It is possible then that I misunderstood your claim. To me, “curated” means more than helped review ideas and drafts. To me, it indicates a more active process and more active role. But perhaps that is not the meaning you intended.
Yes maybe that might be a good idea to divert that discussion elsewhere 
I apologize for participating and thereby contributing to making this digression longer!
Maybe we can go back to congratulating newly admitted bears, consoling those who weren’t admitted in this cycle, and helping admits and their parents to figure out if Cal is the right place for them 
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Right. I said “with the help of…” you are choosing to misconstrue what I very clearly said to try to make a point.
And it’s true that many kids have paid help whether you acknowledge it or not.
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I was initially responding to a post that was a bit of a dig about SLO here and now it’s “let’s keep it go UCB.”
Okay. 
Yes, now back to our regularly scheduled programming
Simply put. Government bureaucracy. It seems the process only moves as fast as the slowest government employee. This is true of any UC campus. My older son attends UCLA and same government bureaucracy.