Pirate Wires

Share this post

University Of California Uses High School Racial Composition For Admissions, Data Suggests

www.piratewires.com

Discover more from Pirate Wires

technology, politics, culture
Continue reading
Sign in

University Of California Uses High School Racial Composition For Admissions, Data Suggests

in 2020, california voters rejected affirmative action, but data suggests that ucsd is finding a way around that

Brandon Gorrell
Apr 3, 2023
7
Share this post

University Of California Uses High School Racial Composition For Admissions, Data Suggests

www.piratewires.com
1
Share
USCD’s Geisel Library | Image credit: Ali Eminov

University of California San Diego (UCSD) admissions data recently unearthed by Orange County-based parent Steve Miller on Twitter suggests that despite California’s ban on affirmative action, the university is using applicants’ graduating high schools’ racial composition as a determining factor in the admissions process.

Miller found that there seemed to be no correlation between the percentage of students at a school offered admission to UCSD and the high school’s average AP score, number of AP classes, or percentage of students exceeding California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress (CAASP) standards.

Twitter avatar for @SteveMillerOC
Steve Miller @SteveMillerOC
The percentage of all eligible students at the school who were offered admission to UCSD, regardless of whether they even applied, was essentially unrelated to the average AP score, the average number of AP classes, or the percentage of students exceeding standards.
Image
Image
6:57 AM ∙ Mar 30, 2023
62Likes11Retweets

For Orange County public schools, Miller found that the higher the school’s average AP score was, the lower their school’s UCSD acceptance rates.

At the same time, metrics from UCSD’s website show that acceptance rates at majority Asian California high schools have trended precipitously downward since 2017 while acceptance rates at majority Hispanic high schools have shot up during the same term.

Twitter avatar for @SteveMillerOC
Steve Miller @SteveMillerOC
I finished UC San Diego data for all LA and OC public high schools with more than 30 applicants to UCSD in 2022 where the applicants were either majority Asian (red line) or majority Hispanic (blue line) The lines connect 2017 admit rate to 2022 rate, left to right.
Image
11:59 PM ∙ Mar 28, 2023
152Likes30Retweets

Miller used University of California’s own data in his analysis, as well as the publicly available data on EdData. Read his full tweet thread here.

In 2020, California voters re-affirmed their rejection of affirmative action in higher education when they voted no on Proposition 16, which aimed to repeal Proposition 209 (passed in 1996) and thus allow race, ethnicity, and gender to be considered in public education, employment, and contracting decisions.

If higher education institutions in California such as UCSD used the racial composition of graduating high schools as a determining factor for admission, it could be considered a violation of Proposition 209.

-Brandon Gorrell

Some parts of this article were drafted by GPT-4.

7
Share this post

University Of California Uses High School Racial Composition For Admissions, Data Suggests

www.piratewires.com
1
Share
1 Comment
Share this discussion

University Of California Uses High School Racial Composition For Admissions, Data Suggests

www.piratewires.com
Treeamigo
Apr 11·edited Apr 11

The UC system admits the top ten percent or so of every high school class. Yes- students from the 50th percentiles of Irvine or Palo Alto or Orinda are way more academically qualified than the top 10 percent of many urban or majority Latino school districts, but the whole point was not to admit the most qualified students but to find an objective system (based upon class rank) that would implicitly allow affirmative action. Genius. Has nothing at all to do with AP or other test scores and this system has been around for well over a decade and everyone knows about it. Also, because it is objective, it is probably legally defensible.

Note that some families are shifting their kids over to poor high schools (especially with remote learning available) to improve admissions odds. One of my friends (Asian-American) noted that you’d have to be insane to want your kids to go to the pressure cooker that is Irvine (with it almost guaranteed you will have to shell out for private university tuition, your academically capable kids being excluded from admission to UC and CSUs unless they want to go to community college) while surrounding towns offer much better odds of your kid getting their rightful share of state benefits through UC or state university admission.

Expand full comment
Reply
Share
Top
New
Community

No posts

Ready for more?

© 2023 Mike Solana
Privacy ∙ Terms ∙ Collection notice
Start WritingGet the app
Substack is the home for great writing