Category: University of California Admissions Data 2017

Applying to College in 2020-2021–It’s All About the Extracurriculars

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Many top colleges are dropping the SAT and ACT this year. Before we discuss the details, take a look at how applications were traditionally evaluated, please see my classic post: The Secret to College Admissions. Then read on, below.

Changes for 2020-2021–The SAT and ACT in Retreat

There are big changes everywhere in higher education. Some of these, like whether classes will be online or in-person, or a hybrid, will be relatively minor concerns by the time this year’s rising seniors go to college in the fall of 2021, but the changes coming for college applications this year are definitely worth looking at, now. Particularly where the SAT and ACT tests are being dropped or made optional.

How to Apply to the University of California Without Using Test Scores
Sather Gate, University of California Berkeley

Foremost among them is a sea change in the importance of standardized test scores. Yes our friends at the SAT and ACT or getting the boot at many college application portals–like the University of California system. This is huge.

I realize there is a debate about grade inflation, and particularly with the spring semester of 2020 being something of a cypher in terms of interpreting grades, many have concerns about this. Me: not so much. Other than dropping the SAT/ACT does put pressure on you applicants to step it up in the areas outside of your required reading and testing. More on that in a moment.

Major Colleges Dropping or Suspending ACT/SAT Testing Requirements

First, a quick look at some of the names that are suspending or dropping the SAT and ACT. Suspending the tests: Williams, Amherst, Haverford, Davidson, Pomona, Rhodes, Scripps and Vassar colleges. Some colleges are exploring permanent changes. For example, Davidson, Rhodes and Williams (which often ranks as No. 1 in national liberal arts colleges on U.S. News & World Report rankings), are launching three-year pilot programs to test whether the tests are necessary at all. Vassar is planning to review their testing policy next year to see whether to extend the suspension of testing. So is Trinity University, a well-known liberal arts college in Texas. Tufts University plans a three-year pilot program (meaning a three-year suspension) of testing.

On top of that, 45 schools have temporarily waived testing requirements for high school seniors applying to begin college this summer or fall.

The Ivy League Sticks to the Tests–For the Most Part

In contrast, Ivy League and many other elite schools are not making any significant changes at the moment. Harvard claims that it’s not particularly useful to take the test multiple times (I disagree: in a game of margins, more than a few of my clients have benefited a lot by taking the test multiple times: so, whatever, Harvard). Princeton just adds that they know many students will not have the opportunity to repeat the test.

Harvard seems to be prety much just plowing ahead, while Princeton, at least, means to suggest that they are sensitive to differences in opportunity and will look all the more closely at the full picture. This is possible to do in the aggregate by data on the school you come from–public inner city with limited resources vs. well-endowed suburban high school is relatively simple to factor in, and they have the data to do that. Of course, that does not mean that any college can easily account for individual differences in access and opportunity. Like that kid living in a trailer park with spotty internet and a ten-year-old notebook to use, located on the edge of an upper-middle-class suburb.

The University of California Suspends Testing

There will be a lot of huffing and puffing about the schools that are suspending or dropping the test requirement–a quick survey of comments on the UC announcement has more than a few end-of-the-UC prophecies. But I am not really worried about that scenario. Likely some who would not have gotten in with the SAT/ACT in place will get a seat under the no-test policy, but the world won’t end, nor will the UC become a low-achievers’ paradise. Back in the day, UC gave a seat to any student in the top 10% in their high school class, which how is reduced by a double 9%–top 9% of students in California on a ranked index of all students, and top 9% at your school. That policy has not changed and clearly will shape who gets admissions.

UC is also discussing coming up with its own test vehicle to replace the ACT and SAT, which makes sense financially as well. Frankly, it’s about time some of the bigger universities started reducing the size and influence of the testing industrial complex, and the SAT and ACT have problems that have been the subject of discussion for years, like how they reward those with the dollars for extensive test prep, not to mention being able to afford homes in the better school district population areas–for those of you familiar with the debate here in the U.S., it’s also been a topic in the UK, as here: SAT favors middle class. I add here that the Telegraph, which I link here, is considered a right-of-center paper. Not the kind of paper to find a lot of liberal bias for equal opportunity.

Your Takeway: Get Going On Extracurriculars

Your takeaway is pretty clear, if you are a rising sophomore, junior or senior who will apply to college in the next three cycles: in addition to nailing grades, it’s time to put even more focus on extracurricular activites. And I always suggest picking extracurriculars that have intrinisic meaning, to you.

But How?

But now we have the Covid paradox: most extracurriculars are closed down, from internships to camps and a range of group activities. And where they are open, you have to weigh the risk of doing an extracurricular against the risk of getting sick and/or infecting those you care about. And taking that risk mainly or solely to boost your college applications.

Rather than taking extra health risks, I suggest taking another tack: find a way to pursue and develop your interests independently. This means more time online, of course, but rather than filling in blanks and uploading assignments into Google classroom, you have to choose your own path.

Suggestion one: Find a way to pursue you interests through a website. An easy way to do this is to go to a service like WordPress.com, where you found the post you are reading now, and build a website. You can figure it out and get a site up in an afternoon, includig picking a free theme.

Suggestion two: Try to find a way to help others, whether through information or through networking. Possibly use a website you set up.

I will be more specific with ideas in my next post, but with up to 20% unemployment in many areas, food security has become a big issue. Brainstorm for a bit and you might find a way to use a website to link up those needing food with excess food, particularly if you happen to live in one of those suburbs where there is an excess of fruit trees that tend to go unpicked.

Suggestion three–find some other way to organize people to do good, using a website and social media, or to create a community with shared interests.

I will let you ponder those ideas and brainstorm for yourself. I will post on extracurriculars again soon, with more specific suggestions. And of course I will be starting my annual analysis of application data soon, as well. So come back early and often, or click to follow this website, so you get regular updates.

Strategy for your University of California Application and Data Update

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Who should read this post–anybody applying to the University of California.  Contents–see below for a look at the latest data, as of July 11, 2017, with acceptance rates, a one-campus snapshot of GPA and test averages (for subscribers only) and your takeaway on relative chances of admissions based on your numbers and who you are.  The big story remains the same:  The state budget directly affects your chances of enrollment.

So the big news is that the U.C. has finally released its data, or at least some more of it, after sitting on information that is normally out in April.  The story is mixed, with some hints of sunshine for in-state students, but this is more a break in the clouds than a change in climate–expect the difficulty level of admissions to increase at all campuses, with Merced remaining the go-to backup for the U.C.  I know, I know . . . Merced.  But there are some reasons to like Merced.  More on that later.

Reasons that the difficulty will go up for California residents start with the deal to admit an additional 10,000 students over a three-year period that was agreed between the U.C. and the state government (to be more exact, Governor Brown himself was behind this).

This deal is now over, and I see no real discussion of anything new on that front, so this year several thousand spots will not be set aside for California students.  Please keep that in mind as you read on.  There is still political pressure to admit California students, but nothing concrete that will help you Cali residents, though some campuses have been clear about their intention to help a particular category of Cali applicants–more on that shortly.

Just to keep some perspective on the effect of this program ending, the UC system as a whole, for fall of 2016, admitted 105,671 freshman and 23,279 junior college transfers–so the approximately 8,488 extra California students admitted last year was about 6.5% of the total.  And many of those would be offered a backup campus, like Merced.  Still. That was  pretty good boost for California applicants who were freshman last year, and the march of data continued to go up, overall, in terms of average GPA and test scores increasing for admitted students.

Why the admissions are more difficult is a two-part problem–Part 1, the people of California, as represented by their elected officials, have not been investing in a whole lot of new campuses.  There is a very large building program at Merced, but not much else going on that actually expands the number of seats available at the UC (or Cal State, for that matter); and overall, the universities in California are still underfunded–here’s a quote from an analysis in 2016:

“State support for CSU and UC has not kept up with the significantly increased demand for higher education in California. Since 1980-81, enrollment has increased by more than 50 percent at CSU and by more than 90 percent at UC. Yet during this same period, General Fund support for each institution has declined by nearly 13 percent, after adjusting for inflation.”

For the full report, click here:  CBPC Report

Obviously a 13% budget cut in the face of such increased enrollment demand is in reality a much larger budget cut, as summarized in a different article by our friends at UCLA:

“California invests less per student in its public universities today than it did 30 years ago, according to another PPIC report. In 2013, California spent about half as much as it did in the late 1980s per student in the UC system.”

The upshot will be increasing tuitions in the near future and decreased chances of enrollment for the immediate future.  For the full article, click here: Less State Investment.

Application demand overall was also up, as I explained with detailed numbers in a previous post–click here for that: UC Application Totals.

 

Application Strategy–Buy the U.C. brand, not a specific campus; be willing to go to a community college.

But the story is not all doom and gloom, particularly if you are willing to go to a less in-demand U.C. campus and, if you are really set on the U.C.,  are willing to purse what I would call the two-step dance into a U.C.  campus–by going to a good junior college, and then transferring.

Your basic takeaway is this:  There were clear advantages to being in certain categories for admissions last year.  Those categories were led by California Junior College applicants.

But before we get into that, let’s take a look at the data we do have, the only complete data–

The full content of this post is available only on my private blog, which is available fo clients and subscribers.  For information on how to subscribe, or to become an editing or advising client,  please contact me.

Trends in College Applications at the University of California. Bonus: an Explanation of the Waitlist, the rise of Waitlist Admissions, and the Role of Politics in College Admissions in 2019-2020. Warning: Somewhat Wonky.

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Who should read this post–anybody who wants an overview of data in admissions for the University of California, and anybody who wants to understand the use of waitlists and waitlist admits, with a historical perspective that applies all the more in 2020.   Also: Anybody who is still innocent enough to think data is just data.  

Bonus links to fill in the data holes, and an explanation of why those holes in data today exist.

As you have probably heard, there are three kinds of lies:  lies, damned lies and statistics.  The fact that nobody really can say for sure who came up with that aphorism–Benjamin Disraeli?  Mark Twain?–is a lot like the information available for the most recent application season.  Outside of the Ivy League, most application information for the class of 2023 is still AWOL or incomplete.  The reasons for this are budgetary and political, but the politics vary.  Let’s look at the University of California first, and how these trends have developed–

A look back at the data on admissions over the last decade at the University of California Admissions.

The big jump in applications happened after 2010;  by  2016-2017  applications were up at all campuses, and way up at a few, particularly at UCLA, which had 123,992 total applicants that year; for some perspective on that, in 2015, UCLA had 112,744.  The trend line was clear, though in both years, you had enough applicants to populate a medium-sized city, and the population of applicants not allowed through the gates was also growing rapidly.

What is also obvious is the trend in GPA and test data–the average GPA and test scores for students entering UCLA in the fall of 2016 was 3.91 unweighted and 4.33 weighted, with an SAT II average of 2080 and ACT composite score of 32.  And I add that for 2019 applications, the UC campuses have largely shifted from offering a simple average GPA and SAT/ACT up front to offering the middle 25th-75th percentile . . . partly, I think, to avoid saying who now has  a 3.93 or above unweighted GPA.  Berkeley, UCLA and Davis all reported a 3.92 unweighted GPA average in the last three years  . .

But we still await full data on admissions for 2019 high school graduates, a.k.a. the (college) class of 2023.  There are several reasons. First is the increasing use of waitlists. But before we look at waitlists, let us look at some UC admissions data today–there has been a bit of a plateau at the most competitive schools, (thank the god of your choice) but the admission walls are still very high at the top half of the UC system.  Here is recent data on total admissions for the UC:  UC admissions 2019.

And here is a place to click on the most recent Freshman profiles to see those GPA ranges, etc:  UC Freshman Profiles.  Just click on a campus for the data, and note that you are looking at weighted averages when you see that U.C. Berkeley 4.16-4.30.

So:  What are Waitlist Admits?

Waitlists are just that: lists of students who are qualified but who are bumped aside by students who appear to be slightly better qualified.  This also means that waitlists are places of hope, in fact are becoming increasingly so at the U.C. But the rise of waitlists has also meant the delay of data.  Here’s why:

The universities have to finish admitting students before they finish their data, and these days, with more students applying to more schools, it is becoming harder to predict yield for regular admissions.  Yield  is the total percentage of students who are admitted and then accept the offer.  After offers are accepted in early May, the schools, then go back to the drawing board, in this case, the waitlist, and make more offers.  This was still going on at some U.C. campuses when  I wrote the original draft of this blog in June of 2016–that was not an anomaly in 2016, and is now a rule of thumb in July of 2019.   This means that we won’t have full details on 2018-2019 admissions until 2019-2020 admission are being accepted.

UC is reluctant to talk about waitlists, but here is a historical look at what the  University of California, Berkeley did with waitlist admits for students entering Berkeley in the fall of 2015, :

U. C. Berkeley Waitlist 2015-2016

Number of qualified applicants placed on waiting list: 3,760

Number accepting a place on the waiting list: 2,445

Number of wait-listed students admitted: 1,340.  

For some perspective on this, 13,321 students were offered admissions prior to this waitlist admissions, so about 10% of enrollees were off of the wait list.  Not only that, those who were on U.C. Berkeley’s waitlist for fall of 2015  had a 55% admit rate –very good odds, with the overall enrollment rate at only 17% for that year.  For more on waitlists, with an FAQ for this year, take a look:  UC Waitlist FAQ

But of course, waitlist enrollments delay basic data totals until June and even July, which is of course also the last chance for admissions people to take a vacation, and with yield–the number of those admitted who actually show up to school–not confirmed until late August and not finalized until September or October, you have a number of problems getting accurate, recent data.  And you also have some disincentives.

But it’s not just the waitlist delay that shapes today’s data drought. Taking note of that switch in how GPA averages are reported, (simple average to a percentile range average) increased GPA is one reason we are still waiting for the data, imho.  Because:

Politics and Data Disincentives

There are two primary drivers that bury data here:  first, the U.C. and both branches of government in California have been engaged in battle over enrollment numbers, with Governor Brown for years being most vocal on the political side, but also numerous members of the legislature criticizing the U.C. for not admitting “sufficient” California residents.  Gavin Newsome has not made much noise . . . . yet.

But as you likely noted above, at least for that year, out-of-state GPA was slightly higher at Berkeley that for in-state GPA, which is not what you might expect, but still, when you tell your average California parent of a high school student that the average unweighted GPA for the two biggest U.C. campuses is at or over 3.9 . . . well let’s just say some constituents are not happy.

They don’t care if having 15% of students paying out-of-state tuition allows UC Berkeley to stay more or less funded (Ah, a couple of hundred million bucks short at Berkeley a year ago, but that is another topic . . .).  California parents just want their kid in the University.

And how far behind the curve the data is becomes pretty clear when you find that The Common Data Set for U.C. campuses like Berkeley for this year is still  a mostly empty Spreadsheet; go back a year and you have a pdf with complete data.  Yes, it is all going very slowly on the data front . . . with one additional political factor: audits and scandals in the past three years. And I am not talking about the admissions bribery scandal here.

Remember that audit and what had been hyped as a scandal involving “overpaying” some U.C. leadership, and some P.R. funds that U.C. President Napolitano had earmarked to make herself, excuse me her office,  look good? . . .

The pros who run the UC and the pols who run Sacramento do. So don’t expect to see  data suggesting that it is once again harder for a California kid to get into the University of California released before, Oh, Thanksgiving, when  a plurality of Americans are eating too much and distracted by football or holiday shopping. (P.S.–I don’t blame Napolitano for arming herself with some P.R. dollars for her battle with the state gov.)

Budget Factors

Adding to my last comment, I want to be fair to the U.C. –some of the same pols who attack the U.C. and its enrollment practices also fail to give it adequate funding–the budgets for the University of California and the Cal State University systems fell by about 30% between 2008 and 2013, and these cuts have only been partially restored.  Add the fact that student tuition has, on average, tripled in two decades, an increase which is almost entirely due to cuts in state funding.  So . . . any improvement in expenses would have to be met by an increase in funding.  Good luck with that, in this political climate.

It’s easier for a pol to blame and yell at the people running the universities than it is to pass the blame where it mostly belongs, which is to the voters.  Yep, I said it.  You get what you pay for, folks. And since people don’t seem to value the public commons much these days, you pay more for what are ostensibly public goods, if you want them.

In this context, why would the U.C. want to release data that would be used as a club against them by, oh, Assembly members who want to look like they are standing up for middle class families without actually paying for the needed services?    I expect that some of the folks building the common data sets that are currently AWOL have themselves been made redundant at places like Berkeley, which cut hundreds of classified/admin jobs last year, to deal with that deficit noted.  So in end, it all adds up.

If you want to get wonky and compare the more recent data I linked above to historical trends, see this:

Three year totals for University of California applications, 2015-2017.

That’s my roundup of data on the biggest college brand in California, at least for now.  When I get updates, I will add them.  Come back soon for this year’s discussion of the U.C. essays.  In the meantime, enjoy your summer . . .