UCs and class rank?

kluge
Tue, 30 Aug 2005 16:12:14 +0000

Epiphany - you’re right about some public high schools not being included in ELC. Only accredited public high schools are eligible, and it appears that there are a couple dozen high schools in California (out of 900+ schools statewide) which are not accredited. You’re not correct about the other things, though. As you can see from the UCOP ELC website I cut & pasted above, UC asked each high school for the top 12.5% students, and picks the top 4% from that sample. And ELC absolutely is about qualifying the top 4% of students from every high school, particularly the ones which otherwise wouldn’t send that many students to UC. Again, from the UCOP ELC website:

"ELC stands for Eligibility in the Local Context and is one of three paths to freshman eligibility to the University of California, along with Eligibility in the Statewide Context and Eligibility by Examination Alone. Under ELC, the top 4 percent of students in each California high school class will be designated UC-eligible based on the coursework taken at the high school.

The University implemented the ELC program to advance several long-held goals.

The ELC program increases the pool of eligible students and is expected to return UC to the guideline set by the California Master Plan for Higher Education, which is that the top 12.5% of public high school graduates will meet the UC eligibility criteria.

The ELC program gives UC a presence in each California high school and serves to stimulate a college-going culture at those schools that typically do not send many graduates to the University.

The ELC program recognizes and rewards individual academic accomplishments in the context of the student’s high school and the opportunities available to the student."

In fact, ELC was criticized when implemented as being a stalking horse for affirmative action, on the theory that many students in the top 4% from schools serving primarily minority populations would not otherwise qualify for UC admission, and those students would crowd out white kids from the suburbs. I honestly don’t know where you got the idea that ELC was about recruiting top students from highly competitive schools. The top 4% from those schools were already eligible under the statewide standards. ELC was always about getting more kids from the low-performing high schools into UC.