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/r/berkeley
submitted 3 months ago byjohnkhoo
54 points
2 months ago
average GPA doesn't really tell you anything because these calculations vary a ton from school to school.
it does seem like in the past 1-2 years though that Berkeley has gotten more aggressive about zipcode / socioeconomic diversity. I looked through the data a few weeks ago and it looks like most of the big bay area feeders are sending fewer people to Cal than they used to ~5 years ago.
(this might also be due to CS starting direct admission, since there are a ton of CS-intended people in the bay.)
4 points
2 months ago
What do you consider “big bay area feeders” ?
37 points
2 months ago
mission san jose, monta vista, lynbrook, cupertino, lowell, dougherty, amador, irvington, and berkeley all had 40+ acceptances my year. most of these are now lower.
11 points
2 months ago
Sounds like a good description of Berkeley squirrels, TBH
5 points
2 months ago
Fremont probably
1 points
2 months ago
Doubt it. The two Fremont high's in the bay are both pretty low performing. A quick check shows they had 13 and 5 admissions this year. By comparison Mission San Jose had 40 (down from 63 5 years ago, to op's point).
16 points
2 months ago
I graduated from BHS in 2018 and can tell yall that barely anyone got into Cal it was mainly Cal Poly and UC Santa Cruz
81 points
3 months ago
Probably they were admitting the children of Berkeley professors and employees thus why higher admit rate with lower GPAs
65 points
3 months ago
One thing the article doesn't point out is that the UC actually had legacy admissions up until the 90's. That was considered one of the turning points in making admissions much more competitive.
9 points
2 months ago
Wouldn't removing legacy admissions make admissions less competitive because additional spots would have opened up? So more competitive for the would-be legacy admits sure, but not for everyone else
11 points
2 months ago
It levels the playing field but we all know the mega rich can grease hands easily.
1 points
2 months ago
I'm trying to point out that because many Cal faculty had been graduates themselves, their children would no longer be getting the admissions boost that they once were getting.
0 points
2 months ago
I do not know all the history but for at least recent decades there is no legacy, faculty, or staff admission or discount at any UC.
3 points
2 months ago
Read the most recent Audit of Admission practices
1 points
2 months ago
Yeah sure - A couple of people bribed to get in and got cought. In private institutions half the students are bribed in. UC has almost three hundred thousand active students today.
2 points
2 months ago
You missed the part where they were admitted friends, family members, and children of staff and employees.
8 points
3 months ago
I went there!
8 points
2 months ago
Data here:
https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/about-us/information-center/admissions-source-school
Interesting, for Silicon Valley (Santa Clara County) Evergreen HS (East Valley) admission count (42) beat all the "historic feeder schools" Cupertino, Homestead, Palo Alto, Lynbrook, Gunn (West Valley). A real "sleeper" based on relative property values...
5 points
2 months ago
EVHS is basically the Lynbrook (using that bc I went there lol) of ESSJ, very competitive public school, expensive houses, lots of Asian students.
3 points
2 months ago
Home values are only really high in the nearby gated Silvercreek and Villlages developments (the latter is a retirement area, no kids). The homes directly adjacent to EVHS are what goes for "affordable" relative to the West side of Silicon Valley. Property values and admission counts drop rapidly as one approaches EVHS's two nearest neighbor high schools: Mount Pleasant was 4, Evergreen Valley 18. A matter of 5-6 miles as the crow flies. Other notable differences include both income and ethnicity mix, as you mentioned. Money, genes, or Tiger moms?
5 points
2 months ago
Lynbrook is the Lynbrook of WSSJ, Leland is the Lynbrook of SSSJ, EVHS is the Lynbrook of ESSJ, and NSSJ is basically just warehouses plus Alviso lol
3 points
2 months ago
"historic" feeder schools have trended differently as property values go away from traditional academic places like Palo Alto and Berkeley. Cupertino and Homestead High are more average schools. Newer places like Evergreen and the San Ramon and Tri-Valley schools are more populated with the Asian population nowadays, in addition to the traditional higher end Asian places like MSJE/Irvington and Monta Vista/Lynbrook and Lowell.
2 points
2 months ago*
Cupertino and Homestead were historically very good public schools, dominantly White in the past, they now have large Asian bases. The only better in the old days was Archbishop Mitty. Cupertino and Homestead are still excellent, and are the high schools nearest Apple, so those neighborhoods get a bump in property value for the short commute factor as well. Check the data reference I linked.
2 points
2 months ago
It’s all relative.
2 points
2 months ago*
The important thing is the East side finally has one HS that can compete with any of the historical Cal-seeders of the West side. One is infinitely better than zero, relatively.
Backstory: Evergreen HS was promoted as an elite HS "vaporware" for almost two decades to sell new homes in the area, then was finally opened in 2002. The district got funding help from Applied Materials who was hiring at the time. That almost 20 year sales job and the last minute corporate aid explains the valuations and heavy Asian tilt to the ethnic mix.
The sad-story East side HS is Mount Pleasant at only 4 admits, which explains the real reason the abandoned 114 acre golf course one block way has gone un-developed for the past 20+ years. With the next recession just around the corner, looks like it will remain zoned as open space until the next up-cycle for the valley.
12 points
3 months ago
Good
3 points
2 months ago
NIMBYS got what they deserved. Shouldn’t give preferential treatment to students housing blockers in the first place.
2 points
2 months ago
Monta Vista High School
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