UCs and class rank?

epiphany
Tue, 30 Aug 2005 13:21:50 +0000

UCB & UCLA: 99% of non-URM’s are in top 10% of class. For UCSD 2 yrs ago, the figure was 90%. (Don’t know the figure for the most recent cycle.) The “official” sites can talk about 12.5% all they want, but the reality is recently that the 2 top UC’s are generally not accepting many non-URM’s below 10% unless something very unusual is at play. Three cycles ago, there was a student from my D’s high-profile private h.s. that was top 12% but did not get into any of the UC’s to which she applied. Her test scores were mediocre, so possibly she did not make the combo formula cut-off for that year. She got accepted only into one not-terribly-selective East Coast school instead.

Rank is only one factor, but more importantly, rank is no guarantee. Public U notwithstanding, UC is under no obligation to accept any student respective to his or her rank. There have been highly qualified CA students who were not accepted during the last cycle, due to factors other than GPA’s, tests, ranks, & demanding h.s. curriculum. The percentages that UC posts are public policy guidelines. An applicant must express in writing a convincing interest in attending a particular campus, & be able to support that interest in his or her essay. Comprehensive Review means just that.

As to high schools that “do not rank,” many of them merely do not publish those ranks in files & on computers. My D’s h.s. does not rank, yet the GC produced her rank for colleges which requested that, for the NMSF competition (h.s. has to fill out part of the form), for awards solicited by private institutions, etc. This (secretive ranking) is standard practice for many schools. Even in order to produce a quartile or quintile published ranking, the school must do the math privately to determine the order of the students in the top tier, including for ties. It’s not difficult to recall that info for the purpose of reporting to colleges, whether public or private.

For UC, rank reporting really mostly comes into play for the ELC designation anyway. For non-ELC, it’s not so much that a percentile is selected (no teacher recs, & apparently no GC report) as that it merely happens to be (as someone mentioned) that theoretically the UC admissions system is designed to accept an approx. rank of CA student. But whether recently it has really worked out to that in fact, is not necessarily true for the most competitive campuses.