<p>@bomerr </p>
<p>OK, see now you’re repeating claims for which you have little proof: that UCLA admissions officers value school extracurriculars over off-campus jobs.</p>
<p>And as for the lower graduation rates at Berkeley, there are any number of reasons why they are the way they are. You assert that it has to do with holistic admissions, but you haven’t actually established that that is the case. Even if you can, it doesn’t mean that Berkeley and other UC schools with comparable graduation rates shouldn’t abandon holistic admissions. Rather, they should do a better job informing their students about the resources made available to them on campus to help them graduate on time and perhaps improve those resources as well.</p>
<p>Holistic review isn’t designed to merely admit more “unqualified” applicants(By the way, admissions officers decide whether an applicant is qualified or not, not disgruntled applicants such as yourself). It’s designed to treat applicants as more than the sum of the numbers in their application(GPA, number of pre-reqs completed, how many units completed, etc) and looks at the less tangible qualities in their profiles. If a group of admissions officers collectively decide that one applicant’s life circumstances and off-campus activities are more impressive in conjunction with their academic accomplishment than another applicant in the same major, then one will be admitted and the other may not be. Again, it isn’t perfect; I <em>acknowledge</em> that, but to expect it to be perfect is to expect too much of admissions officers who are only human but whose judgment is, I like to think, reasonable. Holistic review benefits those who may have earned what would appear, outside of their respective contexts, mediocre GPAs. But if, for example, an engineering major gets a 3.3 GPA but happens to be a parent who works 30 hours a week to support his family, I believe he should get admitted to UCLA/Berkeley, and from the looks of how holistic admissions work, UCLA/Berkeley admissions officers will agree. A 3.3 GPA in such a major in such circumstances is impressive no matter how you spin it. Accepting applicants like him may seem unfair to you, but, truth be told, it’d be far more unfair to reject him because his GPA is low without considering the circumstances behind such a low GPA. It would reduce the applicant to his GPA and number of pre-reqs completed, and it is wrong.</p>
<p>Of course, such a student should receive extra assistance upon transferring to good schools such as UCLA and Berkeley, and the resources to make that possible exist, although perhaps they could be better managed by those schools. Regardless, holistic review is here to stay and it remains my conviction that it is more helpful than harmful. Would you rather do away with holistic review? What is your preferred system of admission?</p>