I wish universities were more transparent on how they apply points and on what so that kids could make different choices

[Anonymous]

We are in CA. I’m really struck by how little the UC and Cal States reveal about how they score applicants and how little the high school counselors know. One of our kids did far better than Naviance predicted for in state and one did far worse for instate. Privates tracked pretty close to the acceptance rate by GPA, EC, SAT but the CA in states did not. High school counselors just chuckle and say UC and top Cal States are a crapshoot and unpredictable but this is far from reality. They just don’t have the information to be predictive.

CA public high schools code their courses. If they’ve coded them correctly, which isn’t always the case, a course may count as a lab science and lab science is awarded more rigor points. If you take four years of Project Lead the Way you end up with 8 extra semesters of lab science and rigor points than any other elective series including languages. In our school district and the next school district over Project Lead the Way courses are coded as honors so there is an extra bump but at our school it isn’t coded that way even though the courses over here have more rigor. None of this is shared with students. Cal States and to a lesser degree UCs give a bump for proximity. Cal States give a huge bump for proximity.

The individual UCs give different points for URM, 1st gen, rural, low income, and non traditional UCB reserves half its transfer spots for applicants in one of those categories. 1st gen is defined by the individual university and not shared and no information on % that is reserved for incoming students.

I believe that universities should admit who they want and I’m not even opposed to quotas. I do think though that kids should know their actual chances and be able to preschool their applications with the point factors that they can’t control. Holistic isn’t magic, they have weighting points fed into an enrollment management system, they build a class by outsourcing readers and scorers with clear guidance on assigning points. At least for public institutions that information should be shared with the public. It isn’t a trade secret.

[Anonymous]

UCs are race-blind, though perhaps they look for other factors that correlate with race.

I agree that transparency would be nice, but then UCs would get fewer apps.

Whatever the scoring system is, if it were released, there would be a reaction to that. Students would formulate their apps according to that scoring system.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We are in CA. I’m really struck by how little the UC and Cal States reveal about how they score applicants and how little the high school counselors know. One of our kids did far better than Naviance predicted for in state and one did far worse for instate. Privates tracked pretty close to the acceptance rate by GPA, EC, SAT but the CA in states did not. High school counselors just chuckle and say UC and top Cal States are a crapshoot and unpredictable but this is far from reality. They just don’t have the information to be predictive.

CA public high schools code their courses. If they’ve coded them correctly, which isn’t always the case, a course may count as a lab science and lab science is awarded more rigor points. If you take four years of Project Lead the Way you end up with 8 extra semesters of lab science and rigor points than any other elective series including languages. In our school district and the next school district over Project Lead the Way courses are coded as honors so there is an extra bump but at our school it isn’t coded that way even though the courses over here have more rigor. None of this is shared with students. Cal States and to a lesser degree UCs give a bump for proximity. Cal States give a huge bump for proximity.

The individual UCs give different points for URM, 1st gen, rural, low income, and non traditional UCB reserves half its transfer spots for applicants in one of those categories. 1st gen is defined by the individual university and not shared and no information on % that is reserved for incoming students.

I believe that universities should admit who they want and I’m not even opposed to quotas. I do think though that kids should know their actual chances and be able to preschool their applications with the point factors that they can’t control. Holistic isn’t magic, they have weighting points fed into an enrollment management system, they build a class by outsourcing readers and scorers with clear guidance on assigning points. At least for public institutions that information should be shared with the public. It isn’t a trade secret.

The UCs actually provide a lot of information, more more than most. But, they do not disclose how they weigh the 13 factors individually. Roughly for UCB and UCLA admissions from top HS will roughly mirror the average admissions rate overall. And, if you are not ELC you aren't likely to get a spot unless you are applying to a low demand major.

When it comes to the exact admissions level for an individual applicant you then need to look at the admissions rate for the specific major and use that as a guide within a guide.

At UCB that is about 2% for CS. So even at Lynbrook all of those kids who apply for CS are going to get shut out despite their high grades and scores. And the first cut is against the applicants from your school. This is why Stanley Zhong will fail in his lawsuit; compared to other kids at Paly he was a crappy candidate.

[Anonymous]

This is a pervasive problem across the board for 99% of US universities and colleges, OP. Nowhere else on earth is there this incredibly secretive and subjective system! It creates a lot of stress for families, especially those of the middle class who would like the most bang for their buck because they can afford some but not all colleges, and are interested in both financial and merit aid.

I come from abroad, where you get in based on academic achievement, because the high school grading system is homogeneous and the end of high school exam is a very big deal, with scores that also factor into admissions. It's transparent, and the admission process itself is more streamlined. Universities in my country couldn't care less what extra-curriculars kids do - they are well aware that those will depend on family wealth and motivation, which introduce a additional socio-economic inequality into the equation.

Here it's needlessly complicated. Ideally, the federal Department of Ed would administer an SAT-like exam for all high schoolers, for free, so that colleges could have a basis of national comparison. States could do whatever the heck they wanted, but the proof of the pudding would be scores on that final exam. If universities started to admit based on that, it would greatly motivate states who don't invest in public school education to get their act together.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We are in CA. I’m really struck by how little the UC and Cal States reveal about how they score applicants and how little the high school counselors know. One of our kids did far better than Naviance predicted for in state and one did far worse for instate. Privates tracked pretty close to the acceptance rate by GPA, EC, SAT but the CA in states did not. High school counselors just chuckle and say UC and top Cal States are a crapshoot and unpredictable but this is far from reality. They just don’t have the information to be predictive.

CA public high schools code their courses. If they’ve coded them correctly, which isn’t always the case, a course may count as a lab science and lab science is awarded more rigor points. If you take four years of Project Lead the Way you end up with 8 extra semesters of lab science and rigor points than any other elective series including languages. In our school district and the next school district over Project Lead the Way courses are coded as honors so there is an extra bump but at our school it isn’t coded that way even though the courses over here have more rigor. None of this is shared with students. Cal States and to a lesser degree UCs give a bump for proximity. Cal States give a huge bump for proximity.

The individual UCs give different points for URM, 1st gen, rural, low income, and non traditional UCB reserves half its transfer spots for applicants in one of those categories. 1st gen is defined by the individual university and not shared and no information on % that is reserved for incoming students.

I believe that universities should admit who they want and I’m not even opposed to quotas. I do think though that kids should know their actual chances and be able to preschool their applications with the point factors that they can’t control. Holistic isn’t magic, they have weighting points fed into an enrollment management system, they build a class by outsourcing readers and scorers with clear guidance on assigning points. At least for public institutions that information should be shared with the public. It isn’t a trade secret.

Agreed with your frustration. I remember coming to the realization that having my children take honors courses (before the AP series became available to them in the spring of their sophomore years) was a mistake because the district didn’t code them all as “honors” courses in the A-G mapping rubric or whatever. Sure, schools can re-calc GPAs however they want, but if the student’s own district gives no GPA boost for an honors class …

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We are in CA. I’m really struck by how little the UC and Cal States reveal about how they score applicants and how little the high school counselors know. One of our kids did far better than Naviance predicted for in state and one did far worse for instate. Privates tracked pretty close to the acceptance rate by GPA, EC, SAT but the CA in states did not. High school counselors just chuckle and say UC and top Cal States are a crapshoot and unpredictable but this is far from reality. They just don’t have the information to be predictive.

CA public high schools code their courses. If they’ve coded them correctly, which isn’t always the case, a course may count as a lab science and lab science is awarded more rigor points. If you take four years of Project Lead the Way you end up with 8 extra semesters of lab science and rigor points than any other elective series including languages. In our school district and the next school district over Project Lead the Way courses are coded as honors so there is an extra bump but at our school it isn’t coded that way even though the courses over here have more rigor. None of this is shared with students. Cal States and to a lesser degree UCs give a bump for proximity. Cal States give a huge bump for proximity.

The individual UCs give different points for URM, 1st gen, rural, low income, and non traditional UCB reserves half its transfer spots for applicants in one of those categories. 1st gen is defined by the individual university and not shared and no information on % that is reserved for incoming students.

I believe that universities should admit who they want and I’m not even opposed to quotas. I do think though that kids should know their actual chances and be able to preschool their applications with the point factors that they can’t control. Holistic isn’t magic, they have weighting points fed into an enrollment management system, they build a class by outsourcing readers and scorers with clear guidance on assigning points. At least for public institutions that information should be shared with the public. It isn’t a trade secret.

For UC schools, the major selected on the application matters - a lot. Especially for humanities majors at Cal and UCLA (ex. its not just CS and eng. Biology is very oversubscribed at both schools.) But (as example), philosophy and foreign languages are undersubscribed (as example). You can pull this data and look for yourself.

Get familiar with how UC recalculates GPA (there is a rubric).

The rubric provides for a "bonus" for special talents (exceptional and recognized high level skill in an EC) or national/large scale awards.

[Anonymous]

op--there's a lot of subjectivity in college admissions. that's a hard fact for many to swallow. but if everything were based on something more objective, like test scores, people would be equally unhappy with that...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:op--there's a lot of subjectivity in college admissions. that's a hard fact for many to swallow. but if everything were based on something more objective, like test scores, people would be equally unhappy with that...

Why would people be unhappy with more objecrive measures??

[Anonymous]

The entire UC problem could be fixed if students are only allowed to apply to the ONE school they really want. When they changed the system to allow multiple applications to all the UC’s from every student everything went crazy and it became much much harder for admissions to find the students who really want to go there and will accept an offer. I think the change was made back in the early 80’s and it needs to go back to that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The entire UC problem could be fixed if students are only allowed to apply to the ONE school they really want. When they changed the system to allow multiple applications to all the UC’s from every student everything went crazy and it became much much harder for admissions to find the students who really want to go there and will accept an offer. I think the change was made back in the early 80’s and it needs to go back to that.

Or, like the national residency match program, applicants provide a ranked list of schools and they get matched to the highest school on their list. Every applicant gets matched to one school. This wouldn't really be feasible at the national level, but it seems like the UCs could implement it far more easily.

[Anonymous]

(same poster: ^ "they get matched to the highest school on their list that accepts them")

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:op--there's a lot of subjectivity in college admissions. that's a hard fact for many to swallow. but if everything were based on something more objective, like test scores, people would be equally unhappy with that...

There is not an army of admissions officers looking over 150,000 applications subjectively scoring them on just their own individual desires. The UCs are feeding the apps into an enrollment management system and hiring 3rd party consultants to build the class they want. This means that there is clear objective criteria in addition to gpa. UCs are test blind and say they don’t consider AP scores yet they have you self report them. UCs also are always bragging that they’ve increased URM, Latino, first gen and low income students. That’s great but to achieve this they have to be assigning additional points to a proxy measure.

If the value of your house, zip code, your parents level of education and proxy measures for your race change your odds of acceptance from 20% to 2% that is valuable information in deciding college planning.

We dodged a bullet as DH is UC all the way, multiple legacies, PhDs, doctors etc all from UCB, UCLA and a dark horse who went to UCI. He did not want to save for private but I wasn’t willing to drink the Kool Aid. DS is top stats and going to an excellent top 10 SLAC which he will enjoy and benefit from far more than any of the UCs. He was shut out of the UCs despite a perfect GPA, most rigorous courses, great ECs and great essay. It’s really shocking in our school district who got in and who didn’t. It certainly wasn’t the top students. There are a lot of kids whose parents banked on in state. If they knew they only had a 2% chance of a top UC or a 5% chance of a mid UC that brags about a 40% acceptance rate, they would have planned differently.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:op--there's a lot of subjectivity in college admissions. that's a hard fact for many to swallow. but if everything were based on something more objective, like test scores, people would be equally unhappy with that...

Why would people be unhappy with more objecrive measures??

Because if it were based on number of AP tests or AP scores, people will be upset that not all schools offer equal number of AP tests. Grades can no longer be an objective measure, because of grade inflation and differences in inflation between schools. And of course, we all know the arguments against standardized testing. I very much think tests offer valuable info about students, and I think test-optional is a dumb system, but even I would not say tests are the only measure that should be considered. I don't really like the cram school system that has exploded in some countries because their college admissions is based only on exams.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:op--there's a lot of subjectivity in college admissions. that's a hard fact for many to swallow. but if everything were based on something more objective, like test scores, people would be equally unhappy with that...

There is not an army of admissions officers looking over 150,000 applications subjectively scoring them on just their own individual desires. The UCs are feeding the apps into an enrollment management system and hiring 3rd party consultants to build the class they want. This means that there is clear objective criteria in addition to gpa. UCs are test blind and say they don’t consider AP scores yet they have you self report them. UCs also are always bragging that they’ve increased URM, Latino, first gen and low income students. That’s great but to achieve this they have to be assigning additional points to a proxy measure.

If the value of your house, zip code, your parents level of education and proxy measures for your race change your odds of acceptance from 20% to 2% that is valuable information in deciding college planning.

We dodged a bullet as DH is UC all the way, multiple legacies, PhDs, doctors etc all from UCB, UCLA and a dark horse who went to UCI. He did not want to save for private but I wasn’t willing to drink the Kool Aid. DS is top stats and going to an excellent top 10 SLAC which he will enjoy and benefit from far more than any of the UCs. He was shut out of the UCs despite a perfect GPA, most rigorous courses, great ECs and great essay. It’s really shocking in our school district who got in and who didn’t. It certainly wasn’t the top students. There are a lot of kids whose parents banked on in state. If they knew they only had a 2% chance of a top UC or a 5% chance of a mid UC that brags about a 40% acceptance rate, they would have planned differently.

DP. This. The process is data/algorithm driven, but those algorithms are proprietary trade secret info within the enrollment management industry.

Also, College Board's Landscape tool goes beyond zipcode, down to census tract.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:op--there's a lot of subjectivity in college admissions. that's a hard fact for many to swallow. but if everything were based on something more objective, like test scores, people would be equally unhappy with that...

There is not an army of admissions officers looking over 150,000 applications subjectively scoring them on just their own individual desires. The UCs are feeding the apps into an enrollment management system and hiring 3rd party consultants to build the class they want. This means that there is clear objective criteria in addition to gpa. UCs are test blind and say they don’t consider AP scores yet they have you self report them. UCs also are always bragging that they’ve increased URM, Latino, first gen and low income students. That’s great but to achieve this they have to be assigning additional points to a proxy measure.

If the value of your house, zip code, your parents level of education and proxy measures for your race change your odds of acceptance from 20% to 2% that is valuable information in deciding college planning.

We dodged a bullet as DH is UC all the way, multiple legacies, PhDs, doctors etc all from UCB, UCLA and a dark horse who went to UCI. He did not want to save for private but I wasn’t willing to drink the Kool Aid. DS is top stats and going to an excellent top 10 SLAC which he will enjoy and benefit from far more than any of the UCs. He was shut out of the UCs despite a perfect GPA, most rigorous courses, great ECs and great essay. It’s really shocking in our school district who got in and who didn’t. It certainly wasn’t the top students. There are a lot of kids whose parents banked on in state. If they knew they only had a 2% chance of a top UC or a 5% chance of a mid UC that brags about a 40% acceptance rate, they would have planned differently.

If you think a 40% acceptance rate is too high, wait until you see what happens to acceptance rates when admissions is objective and transparent!