The better the school, the worse your chances
The last post looked at how geographic biases affect who applies to and gets accepted by UCs. This post is going to going to drill in to how the admissions policy has evolved at one specific campus, UC San Diego, which has been in the news because 8.5% of enrolled freshmen needed remedial math classes1.
In 2024, Lynbrook High in San Jose was the highest-achieving non-selective high school in the state. 375 seniors (86% of the total) were proficient in both Math and English but only 37 were admitted to UC San Diego. On the other hand, Crawford High, in San Diego, had 38 students admitted even though only 23 (8.6% of the 266 seniors) were proficient in both Math and English. There are literally hundreds of students from Lynbrook who were rejected by UC San Diego despite being stronger than most of those accepted from Crawford.
In the popular imagination, we expect students from high achieving schools to be more successful in college admissions. This is no longer true, at least at UC San Diego. The relationship between the academic strength of the students at a school, as measured by the percentage who are proficient in both English and Math, and the chance that those students get admitted to UCSD is extremely low.
As the chart shows, UCSD seems to favor some schools at the expense of others with similar achievement levels. The dot in the top right is CAMS (the California Academy of Maths and Sciences). It’s a selective school where over 90% of seniors met or exceeded the standards in both English and Math and nearly 40% of seniors were admitted to UC San Diego. But Gretchen Whitney and Oxford Academy are also selective schools where over 90% of students were proficient in both English and Math and UCSD admitted fewer than 20% of them. Meanwhile, students from Berkeley High have much greater success than students at most other Bay Area schools despite not being better than them in any measurable way.
Preuss, Gompers, and Crawford are all in the San Diego area (Preuss is on the UCSD campus itself) and all had far more seniors admitted than would be expected based on their academic proficiency. One reason is that far more of their students actually applied than would be expected2. You can’t win a lottery unless you buy a ticket and the kids at these schools bought more tickets to the UCSD admissions lottery.
Naturally, schools with lots of strong students produce lots of college applicants. If students were being evaluated primarily on the basis of their individual accomplishments or essays, an applicant’s chances of admission would not be affected by the strength of his or her classmates. Unfortunately, if you are at a school where lots of your classmates are applying to UCSD, your chances of admission are greatly hurt.
Over the three years from 2022 to 2024, UCSD admitted about 26% of all public school applicants. That hides a huge variation. Schools that produce fewer than 25 applicants per year have an average admission rate over 40%. At the 63 schools that produce more than 200 applicants per year, the admission rate was only 18%. Students from those schools are effectively competing with their classmates for a limited number of spots. UCSD just does not want more of them, however good they may be. It may or may not be a coincidence that Asian students are the largest group of applicants at 55 of the 63 schools that produce more than 200 applicants annually.
Incidentally, San Francisco public schools had a combined admission rate of just under 20%, well below the state average. Mission had the highest rate (26.5%) and Balboa the lowest (15.4%). It may or may not be a coincidence that 90% (the most of any SF school) of the applicants from Balboa were Asian whereas only 25% (the fewest of any SF school) of the applicants from Mission were Asian.
The limited data we have on the comparative strength of public and private school applicants suggests that private school applicants are likely to be objectively stronger3. Nevertheless, the average private school applicant had only a 18.3% chance of admission, well below the 25.8% average for public school applicants. That seven percentage point difference translates into a 40% greater chance of admission for public school applicants. Whereas nearly 50% (440 out of 906) of public schools had admission rates over 30%, only 2% of private schools did (3 out of 142)4.
Among San Francisco private schools, the highest admission rate (28%) belonged to Immaculate Conception Academy, almost certainly the least celebrated and least selective of all the private high schools in the city. Archbishop Riordan had a higher admission rate than its near neighbor, Lick-Wilmerding, or its more selective peers, St Ignatius and Sacred Heart.
The lowest admission rate of all belongs to one of the most celebrated private schools in San Jose. Bellarmine College Prep has seen only 7.9% of its applicants accepted by UCSD over the last three years. In 2022, only 6 of the 167 applicants were successful, although that rose to 13 and 19 over the next two years, for a total of 38 over the three years. Over the same period, 39 Bellarmine students were named National Merit Scholar semifinalists, an achievement that requires scoring in the top 1% of students statewide on the PSAT. For Bellarmine students, it’s harder to be get into UC San Diego than to be in the top 1% in the state.
This phenomenon, of more students in the top 1% than are admitted to UC San Diego, is not confined to Bellarmine. It’s true of a number of other private schools I looked at, such as Harvard-Westlake in LA, College Prep in Oakland, Nueva in San Mateo etc. The aforementioned Lynbrook High in San Jose was the only public school I could find with the same sorry distinction.
It makes no sense to think of UCSD evaluating applicants against all the other applicants in the applicant pool. It is clear that different standards are being applied depending on the school that the applicant attended. It makes more sense to think of applicants as competing with their classmates.
The principle behind California’s Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) is that extra money should be given to schools with lots of high-needs students (defined as those eligible for free or reduced price meals, English learners and those in foster care). The Unduplicated5 Pupil Percentage (UPP) measures the share of a school’s total enrollment that falls into one of those three high-needs categories.
For the sake of perspective, most public high schools in San Francisco have UPPs in the 50%-75% range. SOTA is the only one under 25% while both Lowell and Gateway are under 50%. The only schools above 75% are KIPP and International (which is filled with new arrivals who are still English Learners). Yes, even Mission, O’Connell, and Jordan have UPPs under 75%.
Schools with a UPP of 75% or higher are known as LCFF+ Schools. The California legislature has, since 2017, required that UCs report annually on the number of students from LCFF+ schools who apply to, are admitted to, and enroll at each UC campus. Though not required by law to do so, UC San Diego has decided to give students from such schools a big boost in admissions.
This chart shows the average admission rate by UPP over the period 2022-24. There is a very clear discontinuity. Most of the schools with UPPs above 75% have admission rates above 40% while most of the schools with UPPs below 75% have admission rates well below the UCSD average.
I experimented with a little regression analysis to see what factors might predict a school’s admission rate. As you might expect from the graph above, whether or not a school is a LCFF+ school6 is by far the most important factor. The school’s academic quality, as measured by the share of seniors who were proficient in both Math and English, was also significant but, here’s the kicker, the co-efficient was negative. In other words, given two schools that are both LCFF+, the one with the lower proficiency levels will have the higher admission rate7.
A couple of other points:
The preference applies at the school level, not at the applicant level. The non high-needs students in the LCFF+ schools will be the biggest beneficiaries because they are likely to be stronger students than their high-needs classmates. Conversely, about 40% of high-needs students are in non-LCFF+ schools and they are much less likely to gain admission because they will appear weaker than their classmates, even if they are stronger than high-needs students in LCFF+ schools.
The fraction of high school students that fall into one or more of the high-needs categories statewide was in the 57%-59% range every year between 2016-17 and 2020-21. It has since risen steadily and reached 65% in 2024-258. As recently as 2021, 35% of high schoolers were in LCFF+ schools. In 2025, it was 45%.
It wasn’t always this way. As recently as 2016, a school’s UPP did not affect its average admission rate9.
The number of applications that UC San Diego receives annually from California high school students rose by a huge 57% between 2016 and 2024. All the other UCs also experienced their own jumps in applications. The number of applications had been rising before the pandemic but the elimination of the SAT gave it another boost. Early last year, we looked at how the strength of the applicants had changed over time and found that, while applicants are taking more and more honors classes, the biggest increase in applications came from weak students i.e. those who had taken fewer than five honors classes. That does not mean UCSD is getting disproportionately more applications from LCFF+ high schools. The mix of applications by high school has been surprisingly stable. The share of applications coming from LCFF+ high schools has consistently been in the 17%-19% range and the share coming from high schools with UPPs under 25% has consistently been in the 23%-25% range. The UCs received money from the legislature to grow the number of applications from LCFF+ high schools. That their share of applications hasn’t increased demonstrates that the money was not well spent.
However, the different admission standards that are being applied today has had a significant effect on the composition of the admitted class. Students from LCFF+ high schools used to comprise around 20% of the admitted class. They now comprise over 30%. Meanwhile, the share of admits coming from schools with UPPs below 25% fell by one third, from 24% to 16%.
Such a dramatic change in the admissions policy has obviously produced winners and losers. Given the increase in the total number of admits, an increase in the number of admits from LCFF+ schools could have been accomplished without reducing the number of admits from any high school. Nevertheless, hundreds of schools did see a decrease in the number of students admitted to UCSD.
Over the period 2016-18, Lowell High in San Francisco had an average of 115 students admitted to UC San Diego, more than any other high school10. In 2022-24, it had an average of 94 admits per year, a decline of 21 (18%). It was far from the worst affected. Torrey Pines High in San Diego went from an average of 100 admits to an average of just 42, a decline of 58. Monta Vista High in Cupertino went from 104 admits per year down to 48, a decline of 56. Four other high schools also saw their average number of admits decline by 50 or more.
Some schools with lots of high needs students also saw their number of admits decline. Highlighted on the chart are San Gabriel High and Gabrielino High, both of which saw their admits halve from around 50 to around 25 per year. It may or may not be a coincidence that at least 85% of UCSD applicants from both schools were Asian. Evidence that it may be a coincidence is that Bolsa Grande High, another high needs school where 85%+ of the applicants are Asian, saw a big increase in its number of admits.
On the flip side, four schools saw their number of admits increase by at least 50. Granada Hills Charter is now the largest source of admits to UC San Diego, averaging 151 in 2022-24, up from 94 in 2016-18. There were actually a massive 196 admits from Granada Hills in 2024 alone: the average is 151 only because it includes the 74 admits in 2022. Similarly, Eleanor Roosevelt High’s average of 105 is a combination of the 39 admits it had in 2022 and the 147 it had in 2024. Berkeley High saw the biggest increase in absolute terms, up from 50 admits per year to 125. Meanwhile, Birmingham Community Charter went from 18.3 to 71.7, an increase of 291%.
These four schools are all enormous. Berkeley High is the smallest and it has around 800 seniors. Granada Hills has over 1100 seniors. While they are all good schools with lots of strong students, it is unclear why they are so favored by UCSD admissions. Only Birmingham Community Charter is an LCFF+ school. In 2024, sixty-eight high schools produced more graduates who were proficient in both English and Math than Berkeley High. Eleanor Roosevelt’s big increase may have been helped by a conveniently large increase in its UPP. It was between 35% and 40% every year up to 2021 but jumped to 59%, 67%, and 67% in the next three years.
The big increase in the number of students admitted from LCFF+ high schools coincides exactly with the big increase in students needing remedial help. It is natural, but wrong, to conclude that the former was sufficient to cause the latter.
There are plenty of smart students at LCFF+ high schools. There are more students at those schools who are proficient in both Math and English than apply to UCSD. UCSD accepts about 40% of LCFF+ applicants so, even though every proficient student doesn’t apply, the number of proficient applicants from LCFF+ high schools probably exceeds the number of students admitted from those schools. It should thus be possible to keep the same number of admits but have zero who need remedial classes because all the admits are proficient in both Math and English. That’s not what happens in practice, however, because the UCSD admissions office has no way to know who those proficient students are. Rampant grade inflation means that high school transcripts and GPAs are unable to distinguish strong students from weak. Meanwhile, the UCs have blinded themselves by ignoring SAT scores and paying scant attention to AP exam scores. If you’re picking blindly from all the applicants from Lynbrook High, you’ll probably pick a very strong student because Lynbrook is filled with very strong students. If you’re picking blindly from all the applicants from Crawford High, you may get a competent student but you’re more likely to get someone needing remedial help.
The opaqueness of the whole process is what I find most objectionable. UC San Diego has dramatically changed its process for how it evaluates applicants but there is no public record of it announcing this dramatic change or describing what its new evaluation rubric is or how it has changed. Students and their families are supposed to trust in the integrity of the holistic review process even though it produces results that appear unjustified using publicly available data.
The UCs receive nearly $5 billion in state funding and receive applications from over 100,000 high school seniors every year. Other government-run programs have clear eligibility rules. We deserve a proper accounting of how each UC makes its admissions decisions.
Read the original article
Comments
By lateforwork 2026-01-1019:375 reply See: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-04-12/covid-co...
Excerpts:
UC admissions directors stressed that they evaluated students in the context of their own schools and communities to assess how much they challenged themselves and took advantage of available opportunities. A student who took all six AP classes offered at her school might be more impressive than the one who took six at a school that offered twice as many.
A campus might admit a student with a 4.0 GPA who ranked at the top of an underserved school over one with a higher GPA but lower class rank at a more high-achieving school.
That is, they are biased towards top performers, not just high performers, even if one student's "merely high" is formally higher than the ceiling the other student hit.
(The "winning" strategy then is to move to an underserved high school after an elite middle school, and hit the ceiling.)
You may be joking, but I have several high achieving peers whose families did this with good results. The choice was: did they want to be in the best high school with the highest level of competition, or did they want to go to an OK school that had good magnet programs and less competition. my sample size is only about three, but it worked out well for them.
I don’t think the GP is joking, but they may not have realized that this strategy is already well known. A lot of families won’t uproot themselves for it, though.
By osnium123 2026-01-110:29 They have local magnet/specialized programs in CA public schools that they use to attract good students to poorly performing schools for help goose up test schools.
By strbean 2026-01-127:27 This may be sampling bias as well. Having parents with the means, willingness, and involvement to do this is probably a strong predictor of success already.
By lubujackson 2026-01-1023:242 reply This is the new meta, in SF at least.
Despite the "what are secondary effects?" school admins trying to "fix inequality" by creating school lotteries, ending gifted programs and focusing on "equality of outcomes not equality of opportunity", the only thing that has actually improved troubled schools is that smart kids with involved parents now actively seek out lower rated schools like Mission High so they can more easily rise to the top of the class and get a free ride to Berkeley or another UC.
There was an article about this exact phenomenon in SFGate a year or two ago so it is definitely a real trend.
While I'm usually not a fan of ending gifted programs and such, I do believe that the kids in the lower-rated schools must feel a positive effect, mingling with highly-motivated, better-educated kids. It may do away with the whole "study is uncool, real kids hate school" vibe that holds many "bad neighborhood" schools back.
> I do believe that the kids in the lower-rated schools must feel a positive effect, mingling with highly-motivated, better-educated kids. It may do away with the whole "study is uncool, real kids hate school" vibe that holds many "bad neighborhood" schools back.
That's the logic, but it doesn't pan out. IMO it's because 1) by high school it's too late--kids already segregate themselves and the ones with strong study habits will tend to hide them. In America generally the culture is for upper classes to pretend they're anything but, coopting the styles and mannerisms of the lower classes, especially Black culture (which in American culture is almost by definition low status yet valorized).
I grew up poor, with zero structure at home. It wasn't until I was mid-way through college when I realized the people around me actually studied and did their homework. I just didn't see it because they all pretended otherwise, then snuck off with their higher class peers, almost like secret rituals.
Contrast that with, e.g. East Asian culture. I remember the first time I visited Singapore and saw a group of elementary school kids, without supervision, congregating at a McDonalds do to their homework together.
My daughter goes to a Chinese immersion public school in SF. It's mostly Asian, but there's actually a sizable minority of black students there. Like their slightly more numerous white peers, they tend have a parent (or relative--grandmother, aunt, etc) who made a very deliberate decision and who provides the necessary structure and support at home. Home support is key because, talking with those parents, not even by 8th grade does the feeling of being different disappear; it's very taxing, and without constant encouragement kids will slip back into their comfort zone. It's entirely unreasonable to drop a poor white, black, or 4th generation Asian kid off at that school and expect them to adopt and internalize the culture without significant support at home. By contrast, the recently immigrated Asians fit right in regardless of class or wealth.
Now imagine dropping a few smart students with strong study habits and support networks off at a school where most kids don't have those benefits. It's never going to move the needle.
I just got back from Malaysia, where the majority Muslim Malay population benefits from government programs in ways that would be unfathomable to all but the most leftist Americans. 50 years from independence, excepting for the most wealthy, cosmopolitan strata, the country is as racially and economically stratified and segregated as it ever was. AFAIU, the situation is similar in South Africa.
I'm onboard with the idea that diversity and breaking the structures of inequality are laudable goals, but so far nobody has figured out to socially engineer that outcome. Culture is like a newtonian fluid; you apply pressure and things tend to become even more rigid and less fluid. It's not just the privileged who push back, it's the social underclasses that also push back; they're no less invested in their identity. Change, when it comes about, tends to only happen organically in ways we haven't figured out how to induce.
I no longer advocate for affirmative action programs, though I don't like dropping what programs we have. Constantly changing the rules creates its own burdens and unfairness that probably exceed the costs of keeping them. Better to just let them quietly recede into the background where they can continue helping a small minority of people capable of leveraging them.
By paulryanrogers 2026-01-1114:27 > ...so far nobody has figured out to socially engineer that outcome
Isn't forced busing a counter example? When I was younger it increased my exposure to different races and expanded my friend groups. By the 90s my family had moved a few times and the bussing had ended nearly everywhere. Things were far more 'naturally' segregated without some forcing function.
Coworkers with similar bussing experiences said their friend groups were also more diverse than peers or younger generations who didn't have it.
Civil rights legislation (and enforcement) also ended phenomenon like whites-only businesses and bathrooms. Changing some centuries old racism may just take longer than we expect.
By lateforwork 2026-01-1115:331 reply > I'm onboard with the idea that diversity and breaking the structures of inequality are laudable goals
It is not OK to manipulate college admissions to achieve those goals. A student who worked hard in high school should get into the college he deserves based on merit alone.
By terminalshort 2026-01-1121:37 Yes, but it should have nothing to do with how hard you worked, only what your performance is.
By sublinear 2026-01-110:33 Has this not always been "the meta" everywhere for all of human history (and nature)? It's the fundamental driving force in favor of "diversity" always winning out over time. It's diffusion.
It's definitely there in sports teams, jobs, politics, etc.
There's a natural limit to this effect. The downside is that being a big fish in a small pond means you may not leave the pond without a longer term goal beyond it, and there's a saturation point of talent beyond which any competitive advantage is minimal.
This ultimately does not really impact the lesser schools much unless they were starved for talent for too long and needed to raise the bar. Migration patterns have an ebb and flow.
One of the charts in TFA shows a discontinuity in admissions rate around 75% UPP. This means that if you send your kid to a HS that is underserved when you enroll, but drops below the critical 75% threshold because too many other families are doing the same, then the school could fall out of the strong-benefit category.
The kid would still have a better chance than if he applied from a high-performing school, but it wouldn't be as much of an advantage.
Socially, I'm guessing the kid could face some challenges because (1) other high performing students might not like him because he's a curve-breaker, (2) teachers would know what the family was up to and could view it as distasteful, and (3) if the student went to UCSD or another school where this is a well-known hack, there could be stigma for having gamed the system/being less-smart.
No one cares what high school you went to in college, unless maybe you went to the same high school yourself.
By apparent 2026-01-113:00 Most of the time, no one knows. But if you're from a nice part of LA or SD but you went to a HS in a bad part of town, people might wonder why you went there, or figure it out for themselves.
I think in most cases fellow undergrads would see it as just playing the game, but some might see it as "cheating" or like you didn't earn your spot as much as they did (if they were from a HS that was from a good part of town).
By aprilthird2021 2026-01-1110:09 > other high performing students might not like him because he's a curve-breaker
Not that common in high school to have classes and exams curved. Also kids don't care.
> teachers would know what the family was up to and could view it as distasteful
They also don't care
> if the student went to UCSD or another school where this is a well-known hack, there could be stigma for having gamed the system/being less-smart.
College kids also don't care and there are lots of other ways to game the system. Ocne you're at school, no one cares who gamed the system to get there and how they did it
Once upon a time, the SAT an IQ test, and it was a real achievement to score a 1600. That achievement has been hollowed out in tandem with the value of most college degrees.
We know how to test for merit. The greatest tragedy in this college admissions racket isn't the shadowy affirmative action policies, the mountains of student loan debt, or the entire college admission-industrial complex that's sprung up.
It's that even the tools we've used to use to measure if someone was _ready_ for college have been annihilated.
By JumpCrisscross 2026-01-1023:581 reply > the SAT an IQ test
You’re thinking of a 2004 study that found “the SAT (and later, with Koenig, the ACT) was substantially correlated with measures of general cognitive ability and could be used as a proxy measure for intelligence” [1]. To my knowledge, this remains the case.
By losvedir 2026-01-113:07 Time pressure is a crucial aspect of it, though. I think GP may be alluding to the alleged abuse of disability exceptions, allowing kids (who don't need it) to take longer.
By hackyhacky 2026-01-1021:252 reply The SAT was never an IQ test, and it certainly doesn't measure "merit", whatever that is. It's a Scholastic Aptitude Test, and it isn't particularly good at that either.
If we had a good "test for merit" then we could directly assign people to their roles and ignore their actual performance.
By JumpCrisscross 2026-01-1022:431 reply > It's a Scholastic Aptitude Test, and it isn't particularly good at that either
It’s a pretty good measure for how a student will do in their first year in college.
By everybodyknows 2026-01-113:16 "Aptitude" was dropped from the name back in 1990.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAT#Name_changes
It may have become something of a dirty word ...
> A student who took all six AP classes offered at her school might be more impressive than the one who took six at a school that offered twice as many.
Damn, this is as stupid as it gets.
There nothing stupid about controlling for circumstances.
As an analogy, let’s say you want to build a fun race car that you can take to the track. You go out and look at a bunch of used cars and you want to be qualitative so you measure out their 0-60 times.
You could just say “the car with the best time wins” and take the fastest one you tested. Or you could consider context like “this one had bald tires tha could easily be upgraded” or “we tested this one going uphill”.
The goal is to find the car that can be turned into the fastest and not which has the best numbers right now.
Better circumstance do create better students though. And all this will do is cause the best students to hide in shit schools to game the system
> And all this will do is cause the best students to hide in shit schools to game the system
No it won’t, because they would get a horrible base for their education and be 1-2 years behind their “super strong school” peers. (I did not make up these numbers; it’s easy to have more than 1 year of college credit from Advanced Placement classes in the US system.)
Acting like college is the beginning of education is foolish. Imagine struggling with learning how to learn challenging material while taking classes with students who already did that three years ago.
By labcomputer 2026-01-113:51 So they’ll take dual-enrollment classes at the local community college instead.
By gopher_space 2026-01-1020:25 The students operating at this level are identical. There’s no practical difference between a 4.0 and a 4.5 GPA when comparing students from different schools.
By jayd16 2026-01-1023:45 Ok well look at it the other way. Should a student be punished if they took every AP offered but less than another student?
They should just make this explicit, like the UT system does. The top X% of students are admitted automatically from each school.
California has that. The top 9% from each high school and the top 9% statewide are guaranteed UC admission. This does not guarantee admission to any specific campus, so if you are only interested in say Berkeley or UCLA you might get admitted but UC will find you a place at some campus.
By everybodyknows 2026-01-113:191 reply Recall that there are UC campuses in Riverside, Merced, Davis.
By throwaway2037 2026-01-119:41 Yes, I agree. The UC system is large and has many different campuses, but for undergraduate degrees it is by far Berkeley then LA. For grad schools, it is a toss up because different UCs specialise in different areas. Example: LA grad for film will be way better than Berkeley. And Berkeley physics or compsci will be much better than LA (but LA is still OK those). And don't forget there are some UCs that are grad schools only, like SF. They have excellent life sciences and medical school
It's all publicly funded universities in Texas, not just the UT system.
In other words: you've just pissed off a lot of Aggies grouping them in with, ahem, tu.
By next_xibalba 2026-01-1023:552 reply No one in Texas calls it “TU”. Rather, UT.
Context clues matter--note that we're both talking about Aggies and that tu is lower-cased.
They do that to imply that "varsity" is not the University _of_ Texas.
As with lots of things coming from College Station, you just sort of have to accept it.
By next_xibalba 2026-01-1114:571 reply I live 45 minutes from A&M. I’ll repeat myself. No one in Texas calls it tu. ;)
There may be some disenfranchised barbarians out in the wilderness that do. But likely only due to their extremely tenuous grasp of the fundamentals of English. Primarily they communicate through grunts and hand signs.
I'm not sure why you insist on doubling down. It's not hard to find info about it: https://www.reddit.com/r/aggies/comments/v54bu/why_do_you_sa...
Hell, it's on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_University
By next_xibalba 2026-01-123:21 > Texas A&M
> There may be some disenfranchised barbarians out in the wilderness that do. But likely only due to their extremely tenuous grasp of the fundamentals of English. Primarily they communicate through grunts and hand signs.
;)
By throw2312321 2026-01-110:40 "tu" is a term of disrespect used by the students at Texas A&M University (Aggies).
A&M is the other very large public university system in Texas. So there is a small intra-state rivalry there.
By blindriver 2026-01-1020:20 UCs already guarantee this to the top % of students in every school.
By jgalt212 2026-01-111:41 I think U of Florida used to give full rides to the top n of each high school's graduating class. I think n was something around 5.
This seems terrible incentives. You are now in a purely adversarial relationship with your peers and hurting them helps you
Not only that, but high performers are incentivised to move to worse schools.
It may actually improve mean outcomes, but harm societal outcomes, as the scientific impact of educated individuals may tend to be power law distributed (e.g. the most important breakthroughs come from a small sector of the population with wildly disproportionate impact)
By SoylentGreenGPT 2026-01-1022:241 reply What breakthroughs are coming from high school students?
By LarsDu88 2026-01-1216:55 Example: A high school student, Noam Shazeer placed Silver in the international math olympiad. Went on to build the foundations of LLMs in multiple papers including the transformer paper. Founded Character.AI...
Forget the fact that he's now a 50 year old dude, this kind of stuff started in high school
There are multiple examples of highly citied ML papers coming from essentially people in the middle of undergrad, meaning they essentially learned all their shit in high school. The first protein diffusion paper, the single cell autoencoder paper, diffusion autoencoder paper... these were all from essentially high school prodigies publishing in undergrad or first year of graduate school.
The bottleneck on research is funding. We have a glut of students wanting to go into research who don't because of how competitive the field is. We then have researchers constantly leaving the field for the same reason.
By kelipso 2026-01-110:49 The thing is the people who do get the funding should be the smartest of the smartest. That funnel needs to be there and this nonsense is destroying it.
Texan here. There’s still ways to get in if you don’t make the top X% of your class (the percentage is shrinking every year as the school climbs up the rankings and more people want to go… I think it’s near top-4% now? It used to be top 15% I recall), and many of those high achievers go onto other out of state schools, so it’s in the interest of UT system to offer automatic admission to the top achievers from across the state.
Just because the top X% is guaranteed admission, that does not mean all (or even most) of the school is from the top X%.
By dustincoates 2026-01-1022:29 I believe it's only UT Austin that's shrunk the percentage. All of the other public universities are still at the original top 10%.
By Mountain_Skies 2026-01-1020:10 It's not unusual for families to change their school district so their kid can play for a better sports program and of course it's extremely common for families to want to live in the best district for education quality, but maybe some are now incentivized to move into a district with lesser competition for the top spots.
By terribleidea 2026-01-1020:121 reply How much control can your classmates have over your own GPA? What percentage of 'control' over your GPA is up to you vs. your teachers, parents, classmates, and everyone else? I put those in order intentionally, as I think your classmates are below teachers and parents on the hierarchy.
By john-h-k 2026-01-1116:53 Disincentives group learning, collaboration, teaching each other.
Many good cases to have a strict zero sum competition but you won’t see collaboration in these (eg olympiads, competitions). That’s fine for a short term event but for long term learning in a persistent social group it seems good to encourage collaboration
This kind of competition happens in other areas of academic pursuits too. Is that strictly a bad thing?
The bad thing about UT's policy is that it encourages well-off students to move to a less-competitive school district (usually rural) in order to improve their chances.
This seems like a good thing to me actually, lower performing students generally benefit from having high performers in their social circles
By john-h-k 2026-01-1116:55 If we were really optimising for this, we’d ban colleges using anything other than geographic area. Keeping all the high performers at high performing unis will hurt the lower performers
It is hard to hurt someone when their score is a standardized test.
IMO they'll roll back. It was a bad decision, and a few unis already rolled back.
By apparent 2026-01-1021:39 Many other schools have rolled back their temporary suspensions of SAT-optional/blindness, but UC made a decision that was permanent. And when they made the decision, it was over the objection of the UC faculty recommendation. They might roll it back, but I'm not holding my breath.
By SilverElfin 2026-01-1019:451 reply This is a terrible system because it forces students and parents to start playing all kinds of games to navigate a non transparent process for admissions. What now? Are parents going to send their kids to good schools until it is time to apply to colleges? And then they are going to switch to the best school for applications?
By lateforwork 2026-01-1019:502 reply Right, up until middle school send kids to the best school, then for high school move to an area with poor schools.
By crab_galaxy 2026-01-1020:062 reply Maybe they can bring their resources with them too, and the poor schools can have things like lead paint remediation, honors classes, and extra curricular activities.
I like this idea!
By Mountain_Skies 2026-01-1020:121 reply Resources are mainly property taxes. Unless they're building a new house whose value is significantly greater than the median for the area, families gaming the system aren't likely to have much of a lasting impact on the district.
By crab_galaxy 2026-01-1020:361 reply Yeah you’re right. However, resource gaps can be filled by things like volunteer librarians, teacher wishlists/donations, field trips, strong PTAs, etc..
This is common in my city. It’s a big underfunded school district with a handful of coveted, well supported schools. I’m assuming it happens elsewhere in America with the success of platforms like donors choose.
By fn-mote 2026-01-110:28 Yes. Well off schools raise hundreds of thousands of dollars from parent donations.
By lmz 2026-01-111:02 Or it could end up like some Asian countries with a large afterschool tuition industry. I guess at a minimum you don't want the kid to get shot up at school though.
By chaostheory 2026-01-114:03 This exists. They’re called magnet schools. The IB program is decades old.
Honestly, I don't know how do you even compare students with different backgrounds against each other.
That's why standardized testing is good - it gives everyone the same chance to excel.
> it gives everyone the same chance to excel.
How does the existence of standardized testing give everyone the same chance? As an extremely over-exaggerated example example, someone whose home study time is disrupted frequently by gunfire outside is probably not getting the same chance as someone who lives on a 20 acre estate with private tutors for every subject.
How does the existence of a standard hoop height in the NBA give everyone the same chance to play? Shorter players should get lower hoops, and slower runners should get electric scooters. That way, everyone can appear to be equally capable.
I would say that the NBA is explicitly not about giving everyone the same chance. Not everything has to be about giving everyone the same chance. A totally equitable NBA would probably be less entertaining to watch.
But that doesn't mean we can say that standardized testing gives everyone the same chance either...
By alex43578 2026-01-1319:03 Standardized testing does give everyone the same chance: answer the question correctly or incorrectly.
By terminalshort 2026-01-1121:441 reply Which is exactly the point of testing
Which may be okay then? But let's not pretend it's about equal chances
By kelipso 2026-01-1212:38 NBA gives everyone the same chance to get it, just you have to be good at basketball.
If the circumstances of your childhood made it so that you are shit at basketball but hey you were the top performer in your group of terrible players, the NBA is not going to pretend like you are good enough or grade you on a curve because of your circumstances.
Because if the NBA does that, well, you will get crappy players in the NBA. And can you then say that the NBA gives everyone the same chance to get in anymore. Just move to a neighborhood where everyone is shit at basketball and you suddenly have a much higher chance at getting into the NBA? That’s a much more unfair system than a standardized measure.
This is like saying all furniture must be made waterproof because some people have leaky roofs. No, you fix the roof.
I know my proposition sounds absurd, but it kind of point out the issue with this kind of thinking is that applying some patchwork fixes to complex issues rather than treating the root cause is a bad idea. It's a bad idea in CS and a bad idea in planning social systems.
Neighborhoods should be made safe, or failing that, dorms should be made available for kids (in my country, there are tons of dorms for high schoolers already, who live in the countryside, and want to attend a somewhat better high school).
Alternatively I suggest making this a demand problem - good high schools should compete for talent (which is always in short supply) and should actively take measures to seek out and nurture gifted kids.
As for your rich kid example - what makes you think that in a more holistic system, he won't be able to optimize admissions by exploiting resources?
Just recently there was an article on HN about how the majority of those admitted to US elite college received some 'pity party' points - sounds to me the system is being actively exploited.
By dmoy 2026-01-1119:16 Fixing the root problems sounds good to me.
But that doesn't mean that as it currently stands you can say that standardized tests gives everyone the same chance in the US. It would in some hypothetical future maybe yes, but not now.
By next_xibalba 2026-01-110:07 This belief is how UC San Diego ends up with 900 freshman below high school math proficiency. And thus college becomes a remedial education institution.
https://senate.ucsd.edu/media/740347/sawg-report-on-admissio...
By Ekaros 2026-01-110:43 Hmm. I suppose with modern Flock technology and GPS tracking for whole childhood we could calculate some average of gunshots heard in vicinity to score and give school spots to those with highest total.
Or well, accept that same test is fair enough solution and it is impossible and probably not even sensible to apply some gameable metrics.
By blindriver 2026-01-1020:21 The schools that went test-optional already have switched back because this actually gives lower income students the best chance to distinguish themselves. The narrative that lower income students with less opportunities would benefit from not submitting SATs turned out to be false.
By ThrowawayR2 2026-01-1022:35 “People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it” -Bernard Shaw
I'm pretty tired of progressives insisting that people who grew up in poverty but were able to improve our lot in life through study, doing well on grades, and, yes, on standardized tests, like me, do not exist.
By JumpCrisscross 2026-01-1022:47 > someone whose home study time is disrupted frequently by gunfire outside is probably not getting the same chance as someone who lives on a 20 acre estate with private tutors for every subject
Is there any world in which the first student, struggling in that context, treads water at a UC?
I used to volunteer to tutor high-school aged students in New York. I gave up and moved to grade schoolers. A refugee who will take the SAT in six months and wants to go to college, but is struggling with basic reading comprehension and symbolic math is just not going to do well in college in a year.
Note: the student who excels in that first setting should absolutely be admitted. But they’re, by definition, already excelling.
By pepperball 2026-01-1020:39 Most likely the people living somewhere continuously with gunfire wasn’t ever going to succeed academically either way. There are exceptions of course.
You’d have to basically rebirth and resocialize them in a different culture entirely.
Far too many people already have been educated past their natural state and it’s going to get ugly.
Ear plugs are under $5. If you could not think of that over years, you're not gonna be able to score well in SAT for different reasons.
By cuttothechase 2026-01-1023:414 reply >> Incidentally, San Francisco public schools had a combined admission rate of just under 20%, well below the state average. Mission had the highest rate (26.5%) and Balboa the lowest (15.4%). It may or may not be a coincidence that 90% (the most of any SF school) of the applicants from Balboa were Asian whereas only 25% (the fewest of any SF school) of the applicants from Mission were Asian.
In order to promote diversity of the freshman classroom the college needs to suppress merit to achieve their diversity targets?
Universities and basically every major company, including all the big tech companies, have been openly and publicly doing this for years.
By aprilthird2021 2026-01-1110:03 Not UCs, they are forbidden from doing so by law
By Spivak 2026-01-125:04 The merit metric is just different than you expect it to be. The university wants students who rise to the top of their school.
The state champions all move on to the regional tournament even if 2nd and 3rd place in Illinois are better than 1st place in Ohio.
And I have to say, doing it this way is a fantastic way of breaking the "good school district" rat race when everyone piling on to a few really wealthy schools actually makes it more difficult to get in.
By aprilthird2021 2026-01-1110:031 reply That is illegal in California public schools like this article focused on.
The truth is, UC San Diego admits students who didn't get into the more prestigious UCs like Berkeley, LA, etc. That's probably why you see data like this
Everyone knows that UC still practices AA, though not named as such. And UCSD doesn't just admit students who didn't get into UCLA and UCB. Students who get into the latter also get into UCSD. Some much lower-ranked UCs might not admit these students because they assume they'll not come (yield managing), but UCSD is close enough that some students might choose it, especially if they want to be near on the beach/in SD.
By aprilthird2021 2026-01-1323:30 No, everyone does not know that and it's not true. UC have a much different demographic skew than private California schools which do practice AA (e.g. compare Berkeley and Stanford)
By buckle8017 2026-01-111:39 That is literally what Affirmative Action (DEI in school admissions) means.
Ignore merit, consider race.
These programs have only succeeded in making a large number of people accept that race is a valid way to screen people, at which point your goal is to win.
Racism resets.
> The opaqueness of the whole process is what I find most objectionable.
I also find that objectionable. However, recalling my own college admission process, I think we have collectively determined that this opaqueness is basically working as intended. We are now treating it as a rite passage that qualified high school students can be mysteriously rejected.
I applied to 6 colleges (not counting those outside the United States), which would be considered an extremely low number today. I have colleagues who have kids applying to colleges right now so I know. Everyone is applying to more colleges just to counteract these seemingly random rejections.
By lateforwork 2026-01-1019:471 reply The opaqueness is unique to USA and is thanks to "holistic reviews", which is a highly questionable practice.
Elite-College Admissions Were Built to Protect Privilege https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2019/03/histor...
The new holistic admissions policy worked as intended, successfully suppressing Jewish admissions. https://www.economist.com/united-states/2018/06/23/a-lawsuit...
The 'holistic' admissions lie - The Daily Californian https://www.dailycal.org/2012/10/01/the-holistic-admissions-...
The False Promise of 'Holistic' College Admissions - The Atlantic https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/12/the-fa...
Lifting the Veil on the Holistic Process at the University of California, Berkeley https://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/04/education/edlife/lifting-...
It’s an arms race. Now that students are encourage to apply to huge numbers of universities for safety, the universities are forced to accept a smaller percentage of applicants to avoid overcommitting.
So student, parents, and counselors see this and tell everyone to apply to even more colleges and the cycle continues.
By cherryteastain 2026-01-1020:011 reply UK caps applications to 5 to combat this exact problem.
By kelipso 2026-01-110:56 When you have this problem of universities rejecting applicants based on arbitrary criteria, limiting that becomes an issue too.
By blindriver 2026-01-1020:23 Every school has increased tuition without substantially increasing the number of students. What you are seeing is that schools are getting thousands of students that are exactly the same which is why admissions is turning into a lottery system. It's basically like a CPU maxed out at 100%. There's nothing you can do except build more schools and increase the number of students otherwise it will continue to be a lottery.
> We are now treating it as a rite passage that qualified high school students can be mysteriously rejected.
How could it realistically work any other way? Each year, Harvard gets nearly 50K applications for 2K acceptances and 1.6K enrollments.
It’s not hard to see that tens of thousands of qualified high school students will unavoidably be rejected from just this one university.
By kccqzy 2026-01-1118:44 > How could it realistically work any other way?
Well for one, what if universities like Harvard publish clear and transparent criteria for their students? For example it could say that the minimum required SAT score is 1580, and students with a lower score will simply not bother to apply, instead of sending in their application in the hope that other parts of their application will stand out enough.
For two, university admissions officers have internal adjustment algorithms to adjust the GPA from different high schools. They could publish that together with a minimum adjusted GPA.
The 50k application problem only exists because under the holistic process, everyone thinks they have a chance.
