Interview with UC Berkeley Admissions Head on Affirmative Action

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My other favorite was Dean of Admissions saying “Latin x” I don’t want to pollute this thread with the word choice but good god, actual Hispanic here and most Hispanics I know hate this Latin X tribal BS lingo. Haven’t there been surveys on this?

Berkeley seems like it’s admissions office is run by someone with an agenda and someone thinking they are doing good but actually probably subverting the law. I guess I should not be surprised.

Latinx is the most insulting thing you could call a Hispanic person - forcing a label on an ethnic group just because it promotes your political ideology and radical views on gender. It’s disgusting

Agreed. And I’m as liberal as they come. My hispanic family thinks the term is ridiculous.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To clarify, are they looking at AP course grades or AP exam scores?

Course work and course grades primarily each AP course is a 1 point GPA lift. B becomes A etc. with a cap on how many of those you can use

What I don’t know is whether they see the AP test scores too. Someone else might know.

He also mentions IB as being important for them as someone on todays UCLA thread said too

They do. All the colleges see all the scores via College Board

To reiterate, colleges only see scores that are submitted to the college by the student, either in the application or by ordering an official score report. Colleges cannot "see" into the College Board database.

The question still stands, do UCs consider AP scores? Is there a place in the app to report them and/or do UC admission offices accept official AP score reports sent by students prior to admission?

It was unclear from the interview if he was talking about AP exams or course work generally

My guess - the AP courses count more because they impact GPA and that really matters at UC (weighted GPA is a big factor these days)

They also look at AP tests as it says here - but mostly for course credit purposes

https://admission.universityofcalifornia.edu/admission-requirements/ap-exam-credits/ap-credits/

The former really hurts the 7 DMV private schools who mostly eliminated AP courses bc UCs don’t take the UL or honors designation as carrying any weight for weighted calc. So a 3.8 from GDS is being compared to a 4.6 from some other school. The 4.6 will win 8 out of 10 times is my guess

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My other favorite was Dean of Admissions saying “Latin x” I don’t want to pollute this thread with the word choice but good god, actual Hispanic here and most Hispanics I know hate this Latin X tribal BS lingo. Haven’t there been surveys on this?

Berkeley seems like it’s admissions office is run by someone with an agenda and someone thinking they are doing good but actually probably subverting the law. I guess I should not be surprised.

Latinx is the most insulting thing you could call a Hispanic person - forcing a label on an ethnic group just because it promotes your political ideology and radical views on gender. It’s disgusting

Agreed. And I’m as liberal as they come. My hispanic family thinks the term is ridiculous.

Agree. Is always the self-proclaimed do-gooders who get these jobs. The virtue signaling itself is a way to get the job. It’s all so F’d

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Very interesting listen
https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/tnyradiohour/segments/supreme-court-affirmative

What I was struck by was the linguistic tricks (for lack of a better word) that UC Berkeley admissions head used to say they don’t look at race as a factor (as public California schools can’t) but then he basically says they do use race by peering into the application. Lots of use of terms of equity and diversity. I’m for diversity but as we know, equity is a loaded word that doesn’t mean equality.

It’s a fascinating listen regardless of your views

Also found fascinating that this head of admissions at Berkeley who was previously at Stanford admissions was unaware of California public university prohibition on affirmative action in admissions prior to joining Cal. I’m mean how the heck does that happen?

He also does say how much they rely on APs in this interview.

Any of your DMV private parents at schools without AP courses holding out hope of UCB later this month, listen to this and lower your expectations by several notches. It’s probably not happening. Plus the bias against OOS given recent state mandates to increase in state and in state community college transfer ins.

It sounds like they’ve opened the door to lawsuits

[Anonymous]

Has anyone even thought to look past the language and actually look at the stats? 3.4% AA, 14% Hispanic. That's a ridiculously low percentage of both given their percentages both in the country and especially the state for Hispanics. Why does anyone imagine that affirmative action has some major impact at Berkeley with such numbers?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To clarify, are they looking at AP course grades or AP exam scores?

Course work and course grades primarily each AP course is a 1 point GPA lift. B becomes A etc. with a cap on how many of those you can use

What I don’t know is whether they see the AP test scores too. Someone else might know.

He also mentions IB as being important for them as someone on todays UCLA thread said too

They do. All the colleges see all the scores via College Board

Colleges only see your scores if you submit them. if you don't submit scores, colleges don't see them during the application process.

UCs won’t look at sat or act. Will they look at AP Test scores? That’s the specific question

yes

[Anonymous]

"Affirmative Action" has been replaced by "DEI", which will be replaced by something else. It is all very deliberate, in education and jobs. Anyone who thinks otherwise is extremely naive.

[Anonymous]

I said this on the ucla thread but remember
UCs also will only weight 2 classes per year out of 10th & 11th grade for the assessment of GPA

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I said this on the ucla thread but remember
UCs also will only weight 2 classes per year out of 10th & 11th grade for the assessment of GPA

Yes but that’s 4 possible additional gross GPA points. Could be 0.5-0.7 additional weighting in wGPA. That’s not trivial when we know the UCs use algorithmic sorting as first pass

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Very interesting listen
https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/tnyradiohour/segments/supreme-court-affirmative

What I was struck by was the linguistic tricks (for lack of a better word) that UC Berkeley admissions head used to say they don’t look at race as a factor (as public California schools can’t) but then he basically says they do use race by peering into the application. Lots of use of terms of equity and diversity. I’m for diversity but as we know, equity is a loaded word that doesn’t mean equality.

It’s a fascinating listen regardless of your views

Also found fascinating that this head of admissions at Berkeley who was previously at Stanford admissions was unaware of California public university prohibition on affirmative action in admissions prior to joining Cal. I’m mean how the heck does that happen?

He also does say how much they rely on APs in this interview.

Any of your DMV private parents at schools without AP courses holding out hope of UCB later this month, listen to this and lower your expectations by several notches. It’s probably not happening. Plus the bias against OOS given recent state mandates to increase in state and in state community college transfer ins.

It sounds like they’ve opened the door to lawsuits

Lawsuits are likely to fail. The Supreme Court is pretty likely to declare affirmative action unlawful, colleges will engage in whatever shenanigans they need to continue their practice of soft racial quotas, and the lower federal courts will engage in a campaign of massive resistance to the Supreme Court’s ruling and lawsuits will seldom succeed, just as with gun control cases. Affirmative action advocates think it is too important to allow a little thing like the law to stand in the way.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Very interesting listen
https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/tnyradiohour/segments/supreme-court-affirmative

What I was struck by was the linguistic tricks (for lack of a better word) that UC Berkeley admissions head used to say they don’t look at race as a factor (as public California schools can’t) but then he basically says they do use race by peering into the application. Lots of use of terms of equity and diversity. I’m for diversity but as we know, equity is a loaded word that doesn’t mean equality.

It’s a fascinating listen regardless of your views

Also found fascinating that this head of admissions at Berkeley who was previously at Stanford admissions was unaware of California public university prohibition on affirmative action in admissions prior to joining Cal. I’m mean how the heck does that happen?

He also does say how much they rely on APs in this interview.

Any of your DMV private parents at schools without AP courses holding out hope of UCB later this month, listen to this and lower your expectations by several notches. It’s probably not happening. Plus the bias against OOS given recent state mandates to increase in state and in state community college transfer ins.

It sounds like they’ve opened the door to lawsuits

Lawsuits are likely to fail. The Supreme Court is pretty likely to declare affirmative action unlawful, colleges will engage in whatever shenanigans they need to continue their practice of soft racial quotas, and the lower federal courts will engage in a campaign of massive resistance to the Supreme Court’s ruling and lawsuits will seldom succeed, just as with gun control cases. Affirmative action advocates think it is too important to allow a little thing like the law to stand in the way.

Agree

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Very interesting listen
https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/tnyradiohour/segments/supreme-court-affirmative

What I was struck by was the linguistic tricks (for lack of a better word) that UC Berkeley admissions head used to say they don’t look at race as a factor (as public California schools can’t) but then he basically says they do use race by peering into the application. Lots of use of terms of equity and diversity. I’m for diversity but as we know, equity is a loaded word that doesn’t mean equality.

It’s a fascinating listen regardless of your views

Also found fascinating that this head of admissions at Berkeley who was previously at Stanford admissions was unaware of California public university prohibition on affirmative action in admissions prior to joining Cal. I’m mean how the heck does that happen?

He also does say how much they rely on APs in this interview.

Any of your DMV private parents at schools without AP courses holding out hope of UCB later this month, listen to this and lower your expectations by several notches. It’s probably not happening. Plus the bias against OOS given recent state mandates to increase in state and in state community college transfer ins.

I also found it stunning that he somehow didn’t know about the public prohibition on affirmative action before he got the job. Wow that sounds incompetent.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I said this on the ucla thread but remember
UCs also will only weight 2 classes per year out of 10th & 11th grade for the assessment of GPA

Yes but that’s 4 possible additional gross GPA points. Could be 0.5-0.7 additional weighting in wGPA. That’s not trivial when we know the UCs use algorithmic sorting as first pass

It is not trivial, correct. But it's not going to be the same as a Bethesda high school where a kid might be taking 4 APs in 10th or 11th grade. Some colleges will count all the added points, but the UCs will not.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Very interesting listen
https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/tnyradiohour/segments/supreme-court-affirmative

What I was struck by was the linguistic tricks (for lack of a better word) that UC Berkeley admissions head used to say they don’t look at race as a factor (as public California schools can’t) but then he basically says they do use race by peering into the application. Lots of use of terms of equity and diversity. I’m for diversity but as we know, equity is a loaded word that doesn’t mean equality.

It’s a fascinating listen regardless of your views

Also found fascinating that this head of admissions at Berkeley who was previously at Stanford admissions was unaware of California public university prohibition on affirmative action in admissions prior to joining Cal. I’m mean how the heck does that happen?

He also does say how much they rely on APs in this interview.

Any of your DMV private parents at schools without AP courses holding out hope of UCB later this month, listen to this and lower your expectations by several notches. It’s probably not happening. Plus the bias against OOS given recent state mandates to increase in state and in state community college transfer ins.

It sounds like they’ve opened the door to lawsuits

Lawsuits are likely to fail. The Supreme Court is pretty likely to declare affirmative action unlawful, colleges will engage in whatever shenanigans they need to continue their practice of soft racial quotas, and the lower federal courts will engage in a campaign of massive resistance to the Supreme Court’s ruling and lawsuits will seldom succeed, just as with gun control cases. Affirmative action advocates think it is too important to allow a little thing like the law to stand in the way.

Sure they will

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To clarify, are they looking at AP course grades or AP exam scores?

Course work and course grades primarily each AP course is a 1 point GPA lift. B becomes A etc. with a cap on how many of those you can use

What I don’t know is whether they see the AP test scores too. Someone else might know.

He also mentions IB as being important for them as someone on todays UCLA thread said too

They do. All the colleges see all the scores via College Board

To reiterate, colleges only see scores that are submitted to the college by the student, either in the application or by ordering an official score report. Colleges cannot "see" into the College Board database.

The question still stands, do UCs consider AP scores? Is there a place in the app to report them and/or do UC admission offices accept official AP score reports sent by students prior to admission?

We never submitted a score, but my kid's SAT score is in StudentVue, even though it's been deleted from College Board account.