In Reply to: Anyone hv insight into UC sytem Admissions Process posted by BruinLove42 on April 05, 2024 at 11:12:26
> my friend in Education thinks the UCs limit the amount of students they can accept from each hs. if so, does that mean it would've been better off if my nieces had gone to a less academically prestigious hs in a less affluent area?
That's the issue my kid is in. Have a slightly lower GPA in a better high school than a higher one at a weaker one.
My friends who made a calculated risk to send their kids to a good but not competitive school did better with the higher GPA though my son did make a middle-tier UC. I went in the opposite direction mostly because the data shows if you are middle class or higher, your skill not your college rank determines your professional success unless you rank in the top 5% of an elite school like MIT.
I don't believe the UC's have a quota for each high school, at least from the many years I have followed it. When I was accepted, 30+ students from my high school which is similar in demographics to my son's were accepted whereas schools like Hacienda High got only 2.
Unfortunately, a weighted 4.0 gpa is not a good GPA for the UC system. If she is not good at writing an essay and hasn't done a lot of additional activities, she likely didn't have much of a chance.
My friend's son had a 4.6 GPA with 1500+ SAT with a ton of extra curriculum and was accepted to only 1 UC (UCSD) because he had an arrogant-sounding essay. I told him I'd help him re-write it but he wanted to go with it. Another friend's daughter had an identical GPA/SAT and was humble enough to have me help her rewrite her essay several times and she got into Yale. There is no difference in their abilities.
The kid who went to UCSD was able to get extra attention from the professors as a standout where he would likely have been lost in the herd at Yale so he was able to get summer internships and a MS in AI at UCSD. He was just hired into one of the large consulting firm's newly created AI divisions on Wall Street. The girl from Yale was an average student and became a quant on Wall Street. It's an example of how being great at a lesser college gets you in the same place as being average at a better college as the Harvard research on this showed.
A lot of times it has to do with presentation. Colleges don't want to hear about how you want to get a good job and make money. What they want to hear is how you will use their institution to gain the skills to better the world.