College Competition [locked]

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ThatGuy
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College Competition [locked]

Post by ThatGuy »

Yesterday I was looking over a local rag, and came upon a new feature where they profile outstanding graduating seniors at some of our high schools. This first edition focused on one of several high schools in the area, but this is a school that receives a state rank of 8 out of 10 in California.

Anyways, the two co-salutatorians managed to accrue overall GPAs of 4.337 and 4.333, with the two co-valedictorians managing 4.357 and 4.280. They all have hundreds of hours of community service listed, as well as participation in several clubs apiece, to include math, physics, and robotics clubs.

All four students were rejected, not even waitlisted, from UC Berkeley. This puzzles me, as my high school, when I graduated within the past couple of decades, managed to send multiple students to every cream of the crop school, and yet their API score is not drastically higher than this local high school.

There was also a recent story over Stanford only accepting 5% of applicants.

So, I'm looking for information on why four top students would all be rejected from UC Berkeley. I could understand it if two out of the four were rejected, but all four? Have admissions gotten that competitive? Do the UCs take into account school name to a great extent? I had always thought as long as you have a solid GPA and your school isn't in the bottom 10%, you would have a reasonable chance of getting in to a UC.

The high school my toddler would eventually attend does have access to Naviance, but I can't get access that until he's actually a student. Does anyone know how to get a general login, or just general data on this sort of thing?

What experiences do parents of recent graduates have that can shed light on this? Should I spend $2 million on a home in Palo Alto just to ensure my son can go to Yale?
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livesoft
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Re: College Competition

Post by livesoft »

Here is a possibility: The students interviewed at UC Berkeley and conveyed the message that they did not want to attend and would try to go to a higher ranked university. In a situation like that, an acceptance at UC Berkeley is a meaningless trophy. I would not accept them to UC Berkeley in that situation as well.
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ThatGuy
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Re: College Competition

Post by ThatGuy »

Does UC Berkeley conduct applicant interviews?

No. The volume of applications received each year is simply too great.



So this was done strictly by a paper rubric. None of the four students was listed as being accepted to, or attending, an ivy league university.
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livesoft
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Re: College Competition

Post by livesoft »

There are quite a number of universities that are ranked higher than UC Berkeley that are not in the Ivy League.

But I would be interested in what really happened in these cases.
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ThatGuy
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Re: College Competition

Post by ThatGuy »

I don't want to fixate on where UC Berkeley is in comparison to other schools, or if an Ivy league is worth the money. All of that has been done to death.

However, I will note that:

Shanghai Ranking lists UC Berkeley at #3 in the world.

Times Higher Education gives Cal a ranking of 6th in the world.

Ok, so US News says there are 19 schools in the US better than UC Berkeley.

My main concern is that if all of the local top students are rejected at an institution like UC Berkeley, where admission is more numbers based and supposedly more egalitarian, then that pushes these top students farther down the list, say to UCSD. Then the not top students get pushed even further down. There's no guarantee that my little genius will be a valedictorian, and I don't want to limit his options if I can help it.

So I'm trying to understand if the process is really more cut-throat now, or if prestige makes a difference in public school admission, et cetera.
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lightheir
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Re: College Competition

Post by lightheir »

Without knowing the general national-level scores of these candidates, you really can't get a clear picture of what's going on. Not that those metrics are alway make-or-break, but being valedictorian at a not-as-hard school may count a lot less if your national-testing stats aren't quite up to par.

Berkley is now quite competitive as well. Probably not too far off an Ivy.

It would be strange though, if in that HS, the top 1-4 candidates typically went to higher ranked schools, reliably, year after year.
chaz
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Re: College Competition

Post by chaz »

Good students should apply at UCLA.
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William Million
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Re: College Competition

Post by William Million »

Cal's a fine school, especially if you can get it for in state tuition, but a smart , grounded young person will succeed after attending any of thee UCs or State Universities.
livesoft
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Re: College Competition

Post by livesoft »

I want to point out that in our public school district, that on a GPA scale of 0-4, the actual highest possible is greater than 5.0. This is because an A grade in an AP class counts as a 6. Many students around here end up taking 15 to 20 AP classes which is 5 or more in their sophomore, junior, and senior years along with non-AP classes such as PhysEd. OTOH, some students get out of taking PhysEd because they go to the Olympics instead.

A college prep high school will have many AP or equivalent courses to choose from.
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vkfu
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Re: College Competition

Post by vkfu »

ThatGuy wrote:I had always thought as long as you have a solid GPA and your school isn't in the bottom 10%, you would have a reasonable chance of getting in to a UC.
This is generally correct, in that high-achieving California high school graduates should be able to expect a spot in the UC system. However, HS graduates meeting the minimum requirements are not necessarily assured a spot at UC Berkeley.

http://admission.universityofcalifornia ... index.html
campy2010
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Re: College Competition

Post by campy2010 »

My alma mater, another flagship state school outside of CA, reported this year that it has increased its international/out of state slots to about 20% of the current freshman class and I think this percentage in even higher in the UC system. Unfortunately, in the age of declining state budgets, the number of out of state / international students is increasing since these students pay 2-3x the tuition as the in-state students. This is good for the diversity of the class but unfortunately it means that fewer students from within the state are accepted.

Another piece of this puzzle is that admissions committees try to create a diverse student body and UC Berkeley likely has an outsized percentage of applicants from high schools in the greater Bay area. I would bet that a student with similar stats but from a different region of the state has a higher probability of admittance.

All that said, I'm sure these students were admitted to at least one or two of the other, very excellent UC schools. And I wouldn't worry about what this means for your toddler. He has many years to go before college. My only other suggestion is that you let your representatives know, as often as possible, that you support funding of the public university system.
Last edited by campy2010 on Fri Apr 25, 2014 5:31 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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TomatoTomahto
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Re: College Competition

Post by TomatoTomahto »

What were their SATs (or ACT)?

I wonder if their recommendations gave an indication that they were "grinders." Some schools want passion, interests, cleverness, insight, intuition more than grinding away.

Essays are another gotcha. I read the college essay of one of my son's classmates, and was then not surprised (as many of the other parents were) that he was rejected at half of the schools he applied to.
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lightheir
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Re: College Competition

Post by lightheir »

TomatoTomahto wrote:What were their SATs (or ACT)?

I wonder if their recommendations gave an indication that they were "grinders." Some schools want passion, interests, cleverness, insight, intuition more than grinding away.

Essays are another gotcha. I read the college essay of one of my son's classmates, and was then not surprised (as many of the other parents were) that he was rejected at half of the schools he applied to.
I have seen this criticism of the 'grinders' before - it'll always be around.

Me personally, though - I have great respect for the grinders, and think it is quite unfortunate that extremely diligent hardworking youth risk getting labeled 'grinders' when they should be rewarded for their hard work. Even if it does come at significant cost to social life, enjoyment, extracurriculars, etc.

In a lot of the places around Norcal, this criticism is actually just veiled racism against the strong academic performance of Asians in the community.
GenXer
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Re: College Competition

Post by GenXer »

Just to clear up some of the misinformation in the thread …

1. A grade of an "A" in an AP or IB class counts as a 5, not a 6. I doubt very much that any student has a GPA above 5. In fact, a GPA of 5.0 is unachievable.

2. a.) No interviews are held for UC applicants. b.) Letters of recommendation are neither required nor read unless the student is applying to particularly impacted program that requires a supplemental application. c.) Students are evaluated based almost exclusively on GPA and test scores. d.) Extracurriculars are of minimal importance at UCs and CSUs. e.) I am not convinced that even the 500-word personal statements are read in most cases. f.) If the students applied for a particularly impacted program (e.g., engineering), that could affect admission.

3. All UCs are essentially offering preferential admission to out-of-state students at present (and for the past 2 or 3 years). This is due to the higher tuition they can charge out-of-state students.

4. Berkeley and UCLA are currently accepting 20% to 21% of applicants. UCSB, UCD and UCSD accept a somewhat larger percentage.

5. I have no idea why not one of those students was accepted to Cal. Did the article mention which colleges they were accepted to?
Last edited by GenXer on Fri Apr 25, 2014 9:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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ThatGuy
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Re: College Competition

Post by ThatGuy »

TomatoTomahto wrote:What were their SATs (or ACT)?

I wonder if their recommendations gave an indication that they were "grinders." Some schools want passion, interests, cleverness, insight, intuition more than grinding away.
No SAT scores were listed in the newspaper column, but one of them was said to have scored in the 95th percentile. UC Berkeley does not do recommendations.
campy2010 wrote:My alma mater, another flagship state school outside of CA, reported this year that it has increased its international/out of state slots to about 20% of the current freshman class and I think this percentage in even higher in the UC system. Unfortunately, in the age of declining state budgets, the number of out of state / international students is increasing since these students pay 2-3x the tuition as the in-state students. This is good for the diversity of the class but unfortunately it means that fewer students from within the state are accepted.

Another piece of this puzzle is that admissions committees try to create a diverse student body and UC Berkeley likely has an outsized percentage of applicants from high schools in the greater Bay area. I would bet that a student with similar stats but from a different region of the state has a higher probability of admittance.

All that said, I'm sure these students were admitted to at least one or two of the other, very excellent UC schools. And I wouldn't worry about what this means for your toddler. He has many years to go before college. My only other suggestion is that you let your representatives know, early and often, that you support funding of the public university system.
Yes, I do think regional diversity is one part of the puzzle. I just didn't expect the top four to all be rejected, and it makes me pause. Up until today I've always been of the belief that an education is only what you make of it, and the piece of paper doesn't really mean sh*t how smart or hard working a person is, due to my own experiences at multiple well regarded universities. But if I'm possibly taking away opportunities from my son because I believe in a fairy tale world... I can't abide by that.

The UCs have increased their admission of higher paying students.
L.A. Now wrote:UC offered fall entrance to 61,443 California students to at least one of its nine undergraduate campuses, a rise of 3.6% from last year.

It also admitted 18,846 students from other states and countries, up from 13,144 the prior year. Those students would pay an extra $23,000 a year and help plug the budget gaps caused by reductions in state funding. Students have until May 1 to decide whether they will enroll.

UC hopes to raise the overall enrollment of non-Californians to 10% of undergraduates in a few years, up from the current 6% or so, although some campuses like UCLA and UC Berkeley already have much higher shares of out-of-staters.
Thank you for this. So not only do you have to be in the top 9% at whatever school you're at, but it has to be a participating member. And you have to rely on the school to send transcripts en masse to the UC so they can rank you.
livesoft wrote:I want to point out that in our public school district, that on a GPA scale of 0-4, the actual highest possible is greater than 5.0. This is because an A grade in an AP class counts as a 6. Many students around here end up taking 15 to 20 AP classes which is 5 or more in their sophomore, junior, and senior years along with non-AP classes such as PhysEd. OTOH, some students get out of taking PhysEd because they go to the Olympics instead.
California only gives 1 extra point to honors/AP/IB courses. UC unweights these grades for admission, or at least they did when I was applying.
William Million wrote:Cal's a fine school, especially if you can get it for in state tuition, but a smart , grounded young person will succeed after attending any of thee UCs or State Universities.
No doubt. My only concern is that I don't want to prematurely shut doors for my offspring. He can shut doors all on his own when he refuses to do his homework.
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ThatGuy
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Re: College Competition

Post by ThatGuy »

GenXer wrote:5. I have no idea why not one of those students was accepted to Cal. Did the article mention which colleges they were accepted to?
One will attend UCLA, one will attend UCSD, and another will attend Santa Clara University. The last one has not made a decision, and other acceptances were not discussed.

Once again, my concern is a trickle down effect, and my ponying up to being a responsible parent, if I understand the issues and can afford to mitigate them.

Really, the big question in my mind is how much prestige, or lack thereof, really impacts public university admissions.
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lululu
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Re: College Competition

Post by lululu »

ThatGuy wrote: Anyways, the two co-salutatorians managed to accrue overall GPAs of 4.337 and 4.333, with the two co-valedictorians managing 4.357 and 4.280. They all have hundreds of hours of community service listed, as well as participation in several clubs apiece, to include math, physics, and robotics clubs.
Those GPAs do not seem that excellent to me. They seem to be B+s. The country is full of solid A students.

Also, when I was in high school, students might load up with all solid courses, others would have one or two that could be passed by anyone breathing. So the latter students might have a higher GPA than the former, but colleges aren't fooled by that.

I'm not sure how loading up on a lot of extra-curricular activity is viewed. If I were an admissions officer, I'd look for one or two solid interests or community contributions vs. "I belong to everything." There's no way someone can belong to everything and still have time to study their heads off.
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Re: College Competition

Post by livesoft »

GenXer wrote:Just to clear up some of the misinformation in the thread …

1. A grade of an "A" in an AP or IB class counts as a 5, not a 6. I doubt very much that any student has a GPA above 5. In fact, a GPA of 5.0 is unachievable.
How can you possibly know how all high schools in the world and/or US do their GPA scales? Let me answer that for you: You can't. :)
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GenXer
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Re: College Competition

Post by GenXer »

Question for the OP: Why do you think moving into the Palo Alto school district might help? Moving into an especially low-performing school district (API of 4, for example) may offer a kid a slight edge.
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Re: College Competition

Post by Jack »

livesoft wrote:
GenXer wrote:Just to clear up some of the misinformation in the thread …

1. A grade of an "A" in an AP or IB class counts as a 5, not a 6. I doubt very much that any student has a GPA above 5. In fact, a GPA of 5.0 is unachievable.
How can you possibly know how all high schools in the world and/or US do their GPA scales? Let me answer that for you: You can't. :)
It doesn't matter what any high school does. In the context of this discussion, the UC system specifies that all application GPAs for 30 required semester courses must be converted to a 1 to 4 scale (D to A), pluses and minuses don't count, and that AP courses add one point, up to a maximum of 8 semesters.
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Re: College Competition

Post by livesoft »

In the state of Texas, the state flagship universities admit students who are in the top 7% of their 2014 class ranked by GPA.
http://bealonghorn.utexas.edu/freshmen/ ... -admission

Some parents in Texas send their kids to lower performing schools to guarantee that their kids meet the cutoff and are guaranteed admission to the University of Texas.

@Jack, I understand your note about context which is why I put a specific comment about context in my posts about GPAs. Thanks.

http://voices.yahoo.com/understanding-g ... 57789.html
Some school districts take this a step further and award as high as a 6.0 for honors classes.
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Wolkenspiel
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Re: College Competition

Post by Wolkenspiel »

ThatGuy wrote: The UCs have increased their admission of higher paying students.
For completeness, one should point out that the UC system and UCB in particular have faced/are facing enormous budget pressures due to reduced state support. As UCB wants to continues as a world-class institution, money has to be found elsewhere. Admitting fewer students that pay only a small fraction of their cost seems like an unsurprising, if unfortunate, solution to this problem.
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Re: College Competition

Post by diasurfer »

livesoft wrote:In the state of Texas, the state flagship universities admit students who are in the top 7% of their 2014 class ranked by GPA.
http://bealonghorn.utexas.edu/freshmen/ ... -admission

Some parents in Texas send their kids to lower performing schools to guarantee that their kids meet the cutoff and are guaranteed admission to the University of Texas.
When I entered high school in Texas, it was the top 25%. By the time I graduated, it was 10%. I recall it well because I was at 11%, but I went to a good high school, and had no problem getting in anyway. Now it's 7%.

So I try not to worry about it too much. Things are so much different now than when I was a freshman (1986) and although college applications aren't that far away for us, I suspect the situation will have changed even more by the same when my 5, 3, and 1 year olds enter college.

I do put a priority on living in a state with several good public universities, and have a general hope they'll get into one of them and the tuition will be reasonable. Or that they are ok going to the university their father works at, which is private but also a good school. But who knows if I'll still be working here in 12+ years.
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Re: College Competition

Post by TomatoTomahto »

livesoft wrote:
GenXer wrote:Just to clear up some of the misinformation in the thread …

1. A grade of an "A" in an AP or IB class counts as a 5, not a 6. I doubt very much that any student has a GPA above 5. In fact, a GPA of 5.0 is unachievable.
How can you possibly know how all high schools in the world and/or US do their GPA scales? Let me answer that for you: You can't. :)
For another data point, at my kids' school, an A in AP or IB counts as a 4.4. More generally, that is why most (if not all) schools recalculate GPAs based on their own formulas. Additionally, they request the school's profile indicating the distribution of grades, since so many schools now do not calculate or provide class rank.
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Re: College Competition

Post by GenXer »

I do not claim to know how all schools in the U.S., much less the world, calculate GPAs. I know only how it works in California (and most schools in the U.S.), which seems relevant to the OP's question. The 2008 Yahoo contributor piece you cite, livesoft, does not offer much evidence otherwise, but again, I am not an expert.
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Re: College Competition

Post by cheapskate »

OP - I have anecdotal evidence that UC admissions for Fall 2014 were simply brutal. I have heard of several kids with GPAs in the 3.7+ range not get into *any* UC except UC Merced (note that 3.7 would have given them admission easily into most UCs in past years, except for Cal/UCLA and possibly UCSD). In another sign of strain, UCSD has opted out of the TAG program with California CCs, and I expect other UCs (likely Davis and Irvine next) to follow suit. Cal and UCLA already did not participate in TAG.

I don't see how you can extrapolate data from the past few years to when your toddler will attend college. To do that you'd need to carefully research projected demographic changes 15 years hence. I have no clue how demographics is going to look like.
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Re: College Competition

Post by Ged »

Well, we are seeing an upsurge in college applications because of increased birth rates in the 1983-2001 'baby boom' echo.

Still I can't imagine that it's as bad now as it was when the boomers started applying for college.
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Re: College Competition

Post by Jack »

What happened in California is that in 2004, the governor signed the Higher Education Compact which declared that the state would no longer be the primary source of funding for the California university system. The percentage of the state budget dedicated to UC was cut in half from 4% to 2%. The universities were told to find private funding sources instead. Bake sales didn't cut it, so the universities started selling seats to non-residents and international students for triple the in-state tuition. In-state students have dropped from about 80% to 60% of admissions.

If you really want to get your kid into Cal, your best bet might be to move out of state and be prepared to pony up a Harvard-size tuition fee. It will run you over $50K per year.
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Re: College Competition

Post by harrychan »

My wife and I have visited several area private schools and were extremely impressed with their list of schools their seniors get admitted to. We have decided that we will enroll them into private school from middle school rather than buying into a better school district for this exact reason.
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Re: College Competition

Post by ThatGuy »

GenXer wrote:Question for the OP: Why do you think moving into the Palo Alto school district might help? Moving into an especially low-performing school district (API of 4, for example) may offer a kid a slight edge.
It was meant to be a tongue in cheek response about spending for the "best" of something.
Jack wrote:What happened in California is that in 2004, the governor signed the Higher Education Compact which declared that the state would no longer be the primary source of funding for the California university system. The percentage of the state budget dedicated to UC was cut in half from 4% to 2%. The universities were told to find private funding sources instead. Bake sales didn't cut it, so the universities started selling seats to non-residents and international students for triple the in-state tuition. In-state students have dropped from about 80% to 60% of admissions.

If you really want to get your kid into Cal, your best bet might be to move out of state and be prepared to pony up a Harvard-size tuition fee. It will run you over $50K per year.
I really wish Boglehead reading comprehension was at least good enough to earn a B in High School English.
ThatGuy wrote:Once again, my concern is a trickle down effect, and my ponying up to being a responsible parent, if I understand the issues and can afford to mitigate them.
cheapskate wrote:OP - I have anecdotal evidence that UC admissions for Fall 2014 were simply brutal. I have heard of several kids with GPAs in the 3.7+ range not get into *any* UC except UC Merced (note that 3.7 would have given them admission easily into most UCs in past years, except for Cal/UCLA and possibly UCSD). In another sign of strain, UCSD has opted out of the TAG program with California CCs, and I expect other UCs (likely Davis and Irvine next) to follow suit. Cal and UCLA already did not participate in TAG.

I don't see how you can extrapolate data from the past few years to when your toddler will attend college. To do that you'd need to carefully research projected demographic changes 15 years hence. I have no clue how demographics is going to look like.
Which is why I asked for more data, or pointers towards where to find that data.
ThatGuy wrote:Does anyone know how to get a general login, or just general data on this sort of thing?
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Rodc
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Re: College Competition

Post by Rodc »

UC unweights these grades for admission, or at least they did when I was applying.
My understanding is all or nearly all schools disregard the average provided and compute their own. Since different schools use different methods this is the only way for colleges to get scores that can sort of be meaningfully compared.

Of course different schools have different levels of difficulty in awarding grades in the first place so this is only a partial solution.
We live a world with knowledge of the future markets has less than one significant figure. And people will still and always demand answers to three significant digits.
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Re: College Competition

Post by TomatoTomahto »

lightheir wrote:...

I have seen this criticism of the 'grinders' before - it'll always be around.

Me personally, though - I have great respect for the grinders, and think it is quite unfortunate that extremely diligent hardworking youth risk getting labeled 'grinders' when they should be rewarded for their hard work. Even if it does come at significant cost to social life, enjoyment, extracurriculars, etc.

In a lot of the places around Norcal, this criticism is actually just veiled racism against the strong academic performance of Asians in the community.
Lightheir, I don't personally mind grinders (at work), but from what I've been told, the perceived problem is that they "consume" their education just fine, but they don't give much back to the campus community. I'm on the other coast, but I've also heard the "veiled racism" accusation although I've heard just as many non-Asian kids accused of being grinders, so I don't know. Supposedly, years ago, legacy preferences stemmed from antisemitism.

I don't want to get political, but I would really prefer to see college admissions become more based on the academic value of the applicants and less on where their parents went to school, how well they can play a sport, etc.
I get the FI part but not the RE part of FIRE.
lightheir
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Re: College Competition

Post by lightheir »

TomatoTomahto wrote:
lightheir wrote:...

I have seen this criticism of the 'grinders' before - it'll always be around.

Me personally, though - I have great respect for the grinders, and think it is quite unfortunate that extremely diligent hardworking youth risk getting labeled 'grinders' when they should be rewarded for their hard work. Even if it does come at significant cost to social life, enjoyment, extracurriculars, etc.

In a lot of the places around Norcal, this criticism is actually just veiled racism against the strong academic performance of Asians in the community.
Lightheir, I don't personally mind grinders (at work), but from what I've been told, the perceived problem is that they "consume" their education just fine, but they don't give much back to the campus community. I'm on the other coast, but I've also heard the "veiled racism" accusation although I've heard just as many non-Asian kids accused of being grinders, so I don't know. Supposedly, years ago, legacy preferences stemmed from antisemitism.

I don't want to get political, but I would really prefer to see college admissions become more based on the academic value of the applicants and less on where their parents went to school, how well they can play a sport, etc.
I'll admit I have never seen the 'grinder' term used the way you're stating it, in that they 'don't give back enough.'

In the vast majority (?all) of the cases where I've seen it applied, and I've seen it quite a few times, it's because the interviewer or applicant director wants to find someway to NOT take those highly motivated asian kids who have top grades, top extracurriculars, and by all objective measures, should be admitted without question. Then all of a sudden they start mentioning 'well, because they work, work, work, they're going to be socially unbalanced, not a good peer addition to the community, etc. While these concerns in themselves are valid, the criteria they use to determine who IS socially balanced, a good peer addition, etc., are so amorphous and random that they end up being nothing but a sad excuse for racial discrimination for admissions. If they had ANY semi-reliable criteria to back up their claims, I'd buy into a little, but I've never seen such data. Whereas there are reams of data about how well certain achievement levels in academics (not just tests) correlate with success in the college community.

I do agree with you that it's not just asians, although by the sheer numbers where they are overrepresented in ivy league and other top schools, they're the most obvious example of this.
goodenoughinvestor
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Re: College Competition

Post by goodenoughinvestor »

Because GPA varies so much from school to school a lot of big state universities rely greatly on SAT scores. OP: you mentioned that one of the students profiled had SAT scores in the 95th percentile. That's actually not very high for Berkeley. When it comes to the nation's most selective schools (and Cal definitely qualifies) the conventional wisdom is that a "typical" student (one who does not have a "hook" such as legacy, athletic recruitment) really needs to score at the higher end of the school's SAT range in order to have a good chance of admission. So, yes, admissions to top-tier schools has become insanely competitive.
GenXer
Posts: 127
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Re: College Competition

Post by GenXer »

ThatGuy: Your initial post asked for the near-impossible: an explanation of why these 4 students from an unnamed high school in an unnamed town in California were not accepted at UC Berkeley. I am not sure who could answer that. What would be interesting to know is whether any students at this particular school were accepted at Cal.

Whichever poster said that you could probably increase your child's chances by moving out of state and then paying out-of-state tuition (equivalent to a high-cost private) is correct, at least in the current climate. And whichever poster said that it is far too early to predict the state of college admissions for your toddler also makes an excellent point. Hard to predict the future. I don't imagine you are truly freaking out about something 15 years away. :happy There's a lot to freak out about (and more to enjoy) between now and then. :wink: Don't borrow trouble.

If you are interested in data from the UC system, here is a link to UCOP (Office of the President) where you can search each campus: http://www.ucop.edu/news/studstaff.html. (This includes multiple tables on applications by campus and level, ethnicity, first in family to attend college, region of CA for each campus, etc.) Information is preliminary for 2014 entrants, but goes back quite a few years.

For a quick snapshot, you can take a look at the following UC Freshman Application Data, a 1- to 2-pager that is targeted toward CA high school counselors: http://admission.universityofcalifornia ... n-data.pdf

And the final link includes an average freshman profile (fall 2013) for each UC campus: http://admission.universityofcalifornia ... /profiles/

For UC Berkeley, the Fall 2013 admit:
Admit rate — 20.8%
Admits 14,101
Applicants 67,691
California Residents (% of admits) 65.4%

Averages
High School GPA 4.18
ACT Composite Score 31
SAT Critical Reading 678
SAT Mathematics 706
SAT Writing 692
freddie
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Re: College Competition

Post by freddie »

Less than 29% of baby boomers have a bachelors degree. 63% of Gen Y have bachelors degrees.

At a place like Berkley the the difference between the bottom 1/3 of the class that gets in and the 1/3 after that gets rejected is very small. These kids sound like excellent students but not the top tier (i.e. top 1% in national tests). When you start talking about top 25 schools, being in the top 5% is just too large of population.

Ged wrote:Well, we are seeing an upsurge in college applications because of increased birth rates in the 1983-2001 'baby boom' echo.

Still I can't imagine that it's as bad now as it was when the boomers started applying for college.
Jack
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Re: College Competition

Post by Jack »

freddie wrote:Less than 29% of baby boomers have a bachelors degree. 63% of Gen Y have bachelors degrees.
63% doesn't sound right. I don't think any cohort has ever been much over 30%. Check out the Census Bureau data here:
http://www.census.gov/hhes/socdemo/educ ... ables.html

Pull up the first XLS file and check it out. The U.S. does not have nearly enough colleges to educate 63% of young people. In fact, I think there recently has been a stall or slight decline in college degrees because of the high expense and low opportunity for college graduates. This might be the first generation of Americans that has a lower percentage of college graduates than the last.

Edited:
Ah, I think this is what you might be talking about here:
http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2012/11/ ... d-college/

63% have attended some college, and that is up from 58% previously. 33% have a bachelor's degree, up from 29% previously. A slight rise after a decade of flat trend. Over the last decade or so, the rest of the developed world has increased their percentage of college educated while the U.S. has been flat.
pcsrini
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Re: College Competition

Post by pcsrini »

I would think that these students applied to the competitive majors at UC Berkeley like EECS (ELectrical Engg and Computer Science) - the bar for the competitive majors is very high, and admission criteria is a combination of the SAT score, GPA and relative ranking at the school, with consideration given for the first few AP's taken.
Topic Author
ThatGuy
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Re: College Competition

Post by ThatGuy »

lululu wrote:Those GPAs do not seem that excellent to me. They seem to be B+s. The country is full of solid A students.
We've already hashed this out. The only way a student gets above a 4 is to get an A in an AP class. To think 4+ GPAs are B+ students is...
goodenoughinvestor wrote:. OP: you mentioned that one of the students profiled had SAT scores in the 95th percentile. That's actually not very high for Berkeley. When it comes to the nation's most selective schools (and Cal definitely qualifies) the conventional wisdom is that a "typical" student (one who does not have a "hook" such as legacy, athletic recruitment) really needs to score at the higher end of the school's SAT range in order to have a good chance of admission. So, yes, admissions to top-tier schools has become insanely competitive.
From GenXer's numbers, average admit SAT was 678 and 706, which are about 93% accord to the CollegeBoard. Certainly not way above the average, but then the average means 50% of admitted students had scores below that.
freddie wrote:]At a place like Berkley the the difference between the bottom 1/3 of the class that gets in and the 1/3 after that gets rejected is very small. These kids sound like excellent students but not the top tier (i.e. top 1% in national tests). When you start talking about top 25 schools, being in the top 5% is just too large of population.
They may not be the absolute smartest kids in the world, or even the country. But what else are they supposed to do if they're already at the top of their school? What actions can a student take to increase their chances? Or is it down to the parent sending them to a highly prestigious (and expensive and competitive and probably soul-sucking) feeder school?
GenXer wrote:ThatGuy: Your initial post asked for the near-impossible: an explanation of why these 4 students from an unnamed high school in an unnamed town in California were not accepted at UC Berkeley. I am not sure who could answer that. What would be interesting to know is whether any students at this particular school were accepted at Cal.
To be pedantic, no I didn't. I said "I'm looking for information on why four top students would all be rejected from UC Berkeley." It's a more general question of why (any) four students at the top of their school, still wouldn't be considered good enough. I highlighted these students becasue this column is what got me thinking, but I'm more interested in general data, which you provided.
GenXer wrote:TIf you are interested in data from the UC system, here is a link to UCOP (Office of the President) where you can search each campus: http://www.ucop.edu/news/studstaff.html. (This includes multiple tables on applications by campus and level, ethnicity, first in family to attend college, region of CA for each campus, etc.) Information is preliminary for 2014 entrants, but goes back quite a few years.

For a quick snapshot, you can take a look at the following UC Freshman Application Data, a 1- to 2-pager that is targeted toward CA high school counselors: http://admission.universityofcalifornia ... n-data.pdf

And the final link includes an average freshman profile (fall 2013) for each UC campus: http://admission.universityofcalifornia ... /profiles/

For UC Berkeley, the Fall 2013 admit:
Admit rate — 20.8%
Admits 14,101
Applicants 67,691
California Residents (% of admits) 65.4%

Averages
High School GPA 4.18
ACT Composite Score 31
SAT Critical Reading 678
SAT Mathematics 706
SAT Writing 692
Thank you, this is helpful. However, I was really looking for information at the broadly high school level :D Never the less, I'm always appreciative when people provide data with references, instead of just opinions on how the world should be.
pcsrini wrote:I would think that these students applied to the competitive majors at UC Berkeley like EECS (ELectrical Engg and Computer Science) - the bar for the competitive majors is very high, and admission criteria is a combination of the SAT score, GPA and relative ranking at the school, with consideration given for the first few AP's taken.
The majors listed were microbiology, mechanical engineering, chemical engineering, and undecided. These probably are more competitive than, say, photography, but it still puzzles me what else the students are supposed to do to increase their chances. Or should I just consider Cal a crapshoot in the vein that Stanford is, but then, when do I start to consider UCSD and UC Davis a crapshoot? Merced can't take everybody.

Do I have to move to San Francisco and bribe someone to get into Lowell? Can anyone quantify how much prestige of the school matters? What's the cut-off, does a child in the Oakland public schools just have to give up on Cal because their parents didn't have the good sense to be rich?

Again, my worry is not that my genius has to go to Cal, but what happens to him if the best local students can't even get in to Cal. Or down the road UCLA, or UCSD, etc.

Maybe the answer is to move to Los Angeles...
Work is the curse of the drinking class - Oscar Wilde
NorCalDad
Posts: 774
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Location: Northern California

Re: College Competition

Post by NorCalDad »

I agree mostly with GenXer here. Ever since Prop. 209, getting into the top UCs has been far more predictable than getting into the Ivies. Under the current system, GPAs and test scores will get your kid in, and these kids you mentioned didn't make the cut. There has been significant GPA inflation, and even at your average high school, students now have access to many more honors/AP/IB classes that will qualify for an extra grade point.

You hear of kids with 4.5 GPAs or better. And I'm not even sure if a 95th percentile SAT score would have been good enough back in my day - the kids I knew getting into top schools 20 years ago were scoring higher than that. So the short story is, if you want your kid to get into Berkeley, he or she will probably need a higher GPA than these kids had and something approaching a 98th-99th percentile test score.

Also, this year was more brutal than any other. Berkeley altered its admissions policy to wait list rather than accept more kids than it did in previous years because its yield was getting higher than it wanted. Both Berkeley and UCLA saw their admit rate fall below 20% for the first time for Fall 2014.

For UC, choice of school matters only insofar as it offers enough honors/AP/IB courses that your kid can game the formula if he gets straight As. I agree with GenXer here: if you're trying to maximize your opportunity for UC, find the school that offers the most courses that qualify for the elevated GPA in UC's scoring system but does not have a cutthroat environment that will ruin the curve for your child.

Now if you want your kid to get into an Ivy or Stanford, then I think school matters far more. Those admissions committees have relationships with top high schools in each area, and they know that an A from Lowell isn't the same as an A from a school with a 750 API. Their admissions process is more subjective than UC's because they do not have to abide by Prop. 209.
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TomatoTomahto
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Re: College Competition

Post by TomatoTomahto »

NorCalDad wrote:You hear of kids with 4.5 GPAs or better. And I'm not even sure if a 95th percentile SAT score would have been good enough back in my day - the kids I knew getting into top schools 20 years ago were scoring higher than that. So the short story is, if you want your kid to get into Berkeley, he or she will probably need a higher GPA than these kids had and something approaching a 98th-99th percentile test score.
The Common Data Source (http://opa.berkeley.edu/sites/default/f ... 2-2013.pdf) for 2012-13 (the most recent available afaik) shows the 25-75 percentile for enrolled students to Berkeley:
590 - 720 Critical Reading (a 720 CR is 96th percentile)
630 - 770 Math (a 770 M is 99th percentile)
620 - 750 Writing (a 750 W is 99th percentile)
So, to be in the top quarter of the class, you pretty much had to be in the top 1% of SAT scorers.

Remember that many of the low end scores go to students who were accepted with hooks (URM, recruited athlete, etc.). If all you've got is your grades and scores (which IMHO should count for more than it does), you've got it tough.

My suggestion is to target schools that do holistic admissions (well, if OP's kid were older that would be my suggestion). I have been pleasantly surprised at how well admissions committees have sussed out the nature of applicants this year. I know many of the town kids who applied, and many of my son's classmates, and with a couple of exceptions, the holistic schools saw past the smoke and seemed to figure the kids out. There were a couple of head scratcher admits and rejections, but my opinion of the adcoms has improved since I've seen their work this year. And, beyond who was happy and who was sad, I think that most of the kids were accepted at schools where they will do well and be happy.
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Alex Frakt
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Re: College Competition

Post by Alex Frakt »

Locked. Non-investing questions must be both personal and actionable. The OP's child is a toddler, so this is neither.
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