Interview with UC Berkeley Admissions Head on Affirmative Action

[Anonymous]

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

Isn't that the same as using the weighted GPA?

[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

Latinx and Hispanic are both divisive. Typically both are listed when people self identify. This is way off though: "Latinx is the most insulting thing you could call a Hispanic person."

[Anonymous]

Merced and Riverside were explicitly opened to serve the Hispanic students of California and if you look at their numbers, they're doing that.

Riverside - 38% Hispanic or Latino
Merced - just over 30% Hispanic or Latino

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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?

Real schools re-calculate GPAs and they look at unweighted GPA primarily.

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:

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

Real schools re-calculate GPAs and they look at unweighted GPA primarily. They look at rigor of schools as well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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

Real schools re-calculate GPAs and they look at unweighted GPA primarily. They look at rigor of schools as well.

So UCLA and Berkeley aren't real schools but what...Bates and Bowdoin are? Come on man.

[Anonymous]

If the Supreme Court rules as some think it will, effectively ruling affirmative action in higher education unconstitutional — or at least in contravention of federal statutory law — colleges that get too cute will be sued, probably.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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

Real schools re-calculate GPAs and they look at unweighted GPA primarily. They look at rigor of schools as well.

So UCLA and Berkeley aren't real schools but what...Bates and Bowdoin are? Come on man.

What is Bates?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Merced and Riverside were explicitly opened to serve the Hispanic students of California and if you look at their numbers, they're doing that.

Riverside - 38% Hispanic or Latino
Merced - just over 30% Hispanic or Latino

Segregation isn't a thing anymore. Sorry, PP.

The good news is that you can send your kids to either school!

[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.

You are absolutely right that equity does not equal equality. Equality means equal opportunity—the ideal embraced by MLK Jr. Equity means equal outcome—the ideal of Communism.

[Anonymous]

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 [b]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

Isn't that the same as using the weighted GPA?

[/b]


This isn't correct - at least in the FCPS system. Each AP course gives you a possible .5 if you get an A. So a student who has a 4.6 took 12 AP courses and got As in all of them (and had an unweighted 4.0 to begin with),, right?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
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.

Exactly!

And these are the AOs who decided which applicant shows the INTELLECTUAL VITALITY that Stanford looks for! (I believe he was a Stanford AO before UC)

[Anonymous]

You all just sound sour that you have to share a piece of the pie now with URMs. URMs are growing into their second and third generation kids now. It's expected that those kids are native born speakers and some will excel in HS just like any other race. Those URM kids aren't destined to live same blue-collar life their parents had like you all seem to believe they should.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You all just sound sour that you have to share a piece of the pie now with URMs. URMs are growing into their second and third generation kids now. It's expected that those kids are native born speakers and some will excel in HS just like any other race. Those URM kids aren't destined to live same blue-collar life their parents had like you all seem to believe they should.

Sounds to me like you’re making the best case for them to compete on an equal footing.

[Anonymous]

Very few applicants, my child included, would want to attend a university where they’re one of the only people of their race on campus.