University of California - ELC

[ucbalumnus]

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@filius1

Before, if you were in the top 15% (I think) of your high school class, you would be notified that you were guaranteed acceptance at a certain number of UC schools – with my older son it was 5 schools.

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<p>Hmmm, don’t think this was ever true. UCs target the top 12.5% statewide, though it was possible for a top 12.5% student to not get any UC admissions if s/he only applied to campuses too selective for him/her.</p>

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@filius1

Now, as I understand it, you are not guaranteed admission to any particular school. Instead when you apply to <em>any</em> UC school, you are automatically evaluated and compared with other students from your school. If you are in the top 9% in terms of your GPA and SAT scores, then you qualify for ELC and are guaranteed admission to at least one UC school.

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<p>ELC is determined by UC admissions GPA meeting the top 9% UC admissions GPA threshold set by recent previous classes at the high school. Note that while this correlates to class rank, it is not identical, since high schools typically use different GPAs for class rank purposes, and ELC uses the recent previous classes as the benchmark, not the current class. The high school may be able to tell you what the ELC threshold GPA is.</p>

<p>ELC merely means that if the student is not admitted to any UC s/he explicitly applies for, s/he will be admitted to a UC which has space available. This almost certainly means Merced.</p>