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

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[quote=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.

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