Venting Thread Class of 2030!

Colleges & Universities University of California - GENERAL
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When my older kid went through back in 2023 there was great thread for venting. I thought it would be nice to start one now.

This younger kid of mine has a very different friend group who are all IB students and just born scholars and will do great things. They constantly amaze me. They wanted to talk world politics so started a model UN club. They loved science but had no science olympiad teacher so did it themselves … and made State finals. Being a large public school their college counsellor is swamped so didn’t let them know about UC internship programs so they all car pooled to the local UC and knocked on doors and some found internships by pounding pavement.

But alas I’m sure that quite a few won’t get the UC of their choice.

I saw this happen with the older kid and what really annoyed me (even though it didn’t effect me) were the platitudes being dosed out to the point of gas-lighting the kids! That a 4.7 GPA wasn’t enough! And having enough AP/IB/DE classes to qualify as a junior if you started UC + hours of ECs etc was not enough dedication! Instead the admissions reader who spent minutes really thinks this other kid in your class who didn’t have your GPA or ECS but who wrote something that could be interesting in a PIQ (which is not fact checked) is a better fit for UC.

In fact I’m amazed UCLA has NOT taken down their advertisement. They still pay gig employees $2500 to read 1000 apps. What is that $2.5 an app or $0.50 a PIQ! What’s that saying, you get what you pay for?

I’m off my soapbox. Let the platitudes and gas-lighting begin. Infact I’ll get it going.

”Kids this great will do well where-ever they go”

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Frankly, if this is their experience, their determination level, and mindset, they’ve already won. I don’t care is they go to UCLA or CSULA.

They are natural sales people, leaders. We all need to be great salespeople no matter our occupation. My first job after my tenure as a brief (9 months and behind the scenes, not on air) broadcast journalist from arguably the top school in the country was in outside sales.

I ended up knocking on 50 doors a day of people that didn’t want to see me. Time after time in life, I’ve been told - if you can do that, you can do anything.

I know you are brand focused but in the end, there are studs from CSULA and unsuccessful from UCLA.

It’s the kids, not school name that determine success. And from what you wrote about these kids, they’re going to win - period, end of story.

They seem to have a drive that no college can teach.

So I wouldn’t give two craps what a college thinks. They can’t define these kids.

In many ways, they’ve already done it themselves.

Kids voluntarily choose safeties each and every day. Both mine did over near-elite acceptances. They are driven and both have great outcomes.

The way you describe these kids - I wouldn’t expect anything different.

Many at UCB haven’t found jobs - even in the high ranked majors like CS and ECE - like a huge chunk - a quarter of 24 grads at last report.

A school name doesn’t give or take away what you described above - which is heart - and that’s irreplaceable. And I have no doubt these kids will be big winners in the future. Where they attend isn’t relevant to that.

Good luck.

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LOL The guy said let the platitudes roll in and you did. Firstly, I don’t think what you care matters too much. Isn’t this about the student not you?

And do you seriously think a degree from UCLA commands the same reputation and alumni connections of CSULA? I think you’d find on one hand the number of students who chose CSULA over UCLA in the last 10+ years.

But getting back to the OP vents wrt to UCs. Here are mine:

a) Nothing in the PIQ is fact checked. So many kids believe in fake it till you make it. Bad combo.
b) The lack of empathy and surviorship bias towards kids that are really good but got unlucky.
c) The skirting around admitting based on race by admitting based on surrogates like language spoken at home etc that you are encouraged to self identify in the PIQs (look at the examples UC gives online). If they were serious about not admitting based on race they would immeadiately disqualify any applicant who self identifies race in a PIQ.

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Not a question of what people would choose. It’s a question of why would you let some person unknown to you define you.

These kids, if what described is true, don’t need help.

Btw - part of the issue today - OP said the GPA isn’t high enough - for many, not UC, the gpa isn’t all that because guess what - straight As are a dime a dozen. And yes people embellish - college apps, job apps, you name it.

No one, short of auto admit, has a right to anywhere. Schools get to choose. And then students get to choose amongst those schools. And I’m guessing more than a handful chose CSULA over UCLA but it’s besides the point and we’ll never know. I hope no parent writes their kid off because of what some third party said. If a college name defines you, life is gonna be rough.

They wrote. I decided to respond. Sorry if it’s a bother.

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First, I hear you, and a rant is a rant, and you don’t really need somebody coming up and telling you that your feelings are not valid.

Your frustration with the system is valid. Even if this were the optimal way to do things it doesn’t mean that you are any less frustrated, and even if you have it better than many other people, that also doesn’t make it any less frustration.

I also agree - if the UC are claiming to have holistic reviews, $2,500 for 1,000 applications is ridiculous. At California’s minimum wage, that pays from around 68 hours of work, which means that a reviewer is expected to spend no more than 6 minutes and 45 seconds on each application. When reading something that needs concentration, the average reading speed is around 50 to 75 wpm. That means that each reviewer can read, at most, a bit over 500 words. That is about as long as a college essay alone, and will not include the rest of the application.

I will just comment that it is indeed a platitude, but not really gaslighting, even in the wrong sense that it is commonly used. While yes, the name of the university can matter, it matters less than is generally though (except in a few cases).

However, it matters enough that ranting about the difficulties for many lower income high achieving students students in being accepted to your state’s flagships is a perfectly acceptable thing to do during college acceptances season.

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It’s not just the number of reviews but realistically how good are the reviews after the first 100? It makes alot of sense now. The Valedictorian that gets denied from all the top UCs probably got the admissions reader who wasn’t paying attention or was probably reading an app whilst watching TV because you can get paid more flipping burgers (and get benefits!).

But I think the OPs point is very nuanced. It’s not just that the review process is flawed its the gaslighting that holistic review is perfect that annoys them and it does me as well. If the AO spent hours on each app, then maybe it would work. But come on, 5 minutes per app and what someone wrote/imagines in a PIQ outweights years of hard academic work and assessment. One is fact, the other is probably at best spinned fiction and in the worse false.

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Thanks. The entire 10+ friend group all finished their last OOS application on the 02/01 and I took them out for a Boba to celebrate but they looked sooo miserable to the point of crying.

It turns out their college counsellor had given them a “prep” talk. This school has two modalities of students. Their small group taking the IB who have a GPA approaching 4.75 and a larger group who just take non-AP/IB classes whose GPA is closer to 3.75. The counsellor told them last year that more kids from the larger (lower GPA) modality got into the top UCs then their group. Apparently UC normalizes for success against opportunities even though the kids went to the same school.

And I can see the kid’s point. Projecting this onto the adult situation Why bother to study/work hard, work late to get good grades/results, start clubs/go-beyond, do science olympiad etc if what you achieve doesn’t define your success but rather who you are (or perceived to be) does. Just spin a narrative and don’t worry about results. Imagine being up for a job promotion and being told you were clearly the most qualified based on qualifications but someone else gets it because they could have achieved more or their circumstances didn’t allow them to achieve more.

They all had the same opportunities at the same school, some choose to take them and others didn’t. But (per the counsellor) it didn’t always matter to UC.

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Am I allowed to ask if the two groups have vastly different demographics? Seems absurd that kids from the same school are admitted to a UC with a GPA a full point less than another kid that is denied. What is the rational behind this decision? That the kid with a 3.75 GPA is a better fit for a UC by what reason if its not demographics?

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Adding these two quotes together. Then why don’t all the kids from the lower GPA group go the CSULA and the kids from the higher GPA group go to UCLA if it’s true that the school name means nothing?

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I hear you, but to be honest, opportunities are generally related to income, regardless of the school. If you tell me that there are upper income kids from the lower achievers who are accepted over low income high achievers, that means that something is wrong there. Parental education also has an effect here (though education is also correlated with income, at least until the top 5%). Though it wouldn’t entirely surprise me if that happens, considering how little time reviewers seem to be spending on reading applications.

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Kids from UCLA will work with kids from name any school. We had a Harvard Law working for Fairleigh Dickinson. I have a top 40 MBA and work for a W Georgia undergrad, a school I admittedly had t heard of.

I never said a top student in most cases, by far but not entirely, would not choose UCLA. I said that going to UCLA doesn’t ensure success and going to CSULA doesn’t bring failure. And some CSULA will outperform UCLA kids in life.

Is the kid from Long Beach State at Yale law inferior to the others there ? How about the one from Northern Arizona or Ole Miss? How about the Ok State or Southern Maine or Eastern Michigan kid at Harvard law ? Or the kids from Arkansas State, College of Charleston, Southern New Hampshire or U of Idaho at Penn. Bums are they …..?

In the end, your kids if well grounded, given the proper mindsets and opportunities will be fine.

The pressure these poor kids are under….

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Whoo. Are you saying the UC admissions are based on income. The university uses this information?

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They consider the effects of growing up in a low income home on academic achievements. Of course, many private (and some public) “elite” colleges definitely consider family wealth when accepting students.

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They look at achievement in context of opportunities. Opportunities are commonly correlated to parent income, since parents with money commonly use it to increase educational and other opportunities for their kids.

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They also have studies show that future success is based on socioeconomic status.