flu, carli, NSR. I can clearly see here you’re looking for a “scapegoat” because you all fear your own kids might not be admitted to UC one day. It’s crystal clear to me that NONE of you have read the state auditor’s report on the problem and I understand it’s lengthy and it was only late last night that I posted it here.
Why don’t you tell all your concerns to the State Auditor’s Office . . . that you feel the so-called “best and brightest around the world” SHOULD continue to be admitted to the UC and you don’t care if there isn’t any room for your kid(s)? The State Auditor is the entity who found the UC admissions practices to be “unfair” to CA resident-applicants and has hurt them and their families and I agree.
But it doesn’t matter what I think. I don’t make policy. My kids graduated from one of the top HS’s in the county and back in the nineties, well over half the graduating classes in that school ended up graduating from college (the vast majority from UC/CSU). That is NOT the case today. The school’s college graduation rate is now much lower because their college admissions rate is much lower yet their CAHSEE scores (which weren’t in place in the ’90’s) as well as other exam(s) the students took to “grade” the school’s performance were consistently in the top 8-12 HS’s in the county! We have to ask ourselves why this is happening and I think the state auditor did just that in her report (in which it has become clear to me that none on you have taken the time to read yet).
Changing the discussion to the CSU (which has similar admission issues), like so many other parents around me, I feel it is immoral, unethical and grossly unfair for SDSU to renege on their Compact for Success (CFS) agreement they made with our District (Sweetwater) back in 2000, 6+ years AFTER the affected students complied with all the requirements beginning in 7th grade when SDSU gave busloads of them a “grand tour” of campus (what amounted to nothing more than a “dog and pony show”) with President Weber laying out all the rules for “guaranteed admission” before the affected students, teachers, counselors, administrators and parents.
When you bestow a HS student with a certificate stating that they have met all the requirements for a “guaranteed admission” to SDSU at the end of their junior year in a special ceremony set up just for them and these students apply for admission to SDSU that fall (in their senior year) and are subsequently turned down for admission, what kind of message does that send to them? In my youngest kid’s HS class, 275 students (out of approx 535) received those certificates at the end of their junior year (incl my kid). Yet, SDSU admitted only 75 of them! Granted, not all of the students who were guaranteed admission actually applied to SDSU but certainly 150-200 of them likely did! There are 13 HS’s in the Sweeetwater District. According to the CFS website, SDSU has only admitted 2100 Sweetwater “Compact” students since 2006 (10 yrs ago).
Outcome
The Compact for Success began its work in the fall of 2000 with the seventh-grade class (high school graduating class of 2006). As of 2012 there has been a 124% increase in the number of applications to SDSU; a 70% increase in the number of students admitted to SDSU; a 87% increase in the number of students from Sweetwater enrolled for the fall semester; a 493% increase in the number of Sweetwater students without the need for remediation in math and English. Since the first class was admitted to SDSU in 2006, more than 2,100 students have been awarded the guaranteed admission to SDSU.
Where did this 124% increase in SDSU applicants (since 2012) come from? And how did they get the stats of a 70% increase in admissions and an 87% increase in fall semester (2015?) enrollments? 70% and 87% of what numbers? (They must have been really low numbers prior to 2012. How many actual Sweetwater grads were accepted to SDSU in 2011 and prior? That (extremely low) number is likely very telling.
How can SDSU give out hundreds of “guaranteed admission” certificates each and every year since 2006 to students in 13 high schools and only admit an average of 210 of them per year (district-wide) with a straight face and in good conscience? And then continue to ask Sweetwater to send busloads of 7th graders to SDSU for their annual “rah rah” meeting to gear them up for following the steps to “earn” a (near worthless) CFS certificate of their own? In my mind (and I’m not alone … not by a long shot), that’s toying with kids’ and their families’ minds … leading them down the garden path when these families could have made other, more certain arrangements early on (i.e. WUE in AZ, CO, NM, occupational school, working with relatives elsewhere in CA or even MX to put up their student in their homes for college attendance purposes, etc), had they known that SDSU would likely renege on its promises to their student.
We all know that out-of-county student room and board is a big financial hurdle for thousands of CA families and the cost of on-campus housing (required for freshmen living 39+ miles away) has gone thru the stratosphere in recent years. The affected families with Sweetwater graduates relied on their student’s CFS agreement to “guarantee” them admission to their local CSU, SDSU … and rightly so, only to have their student be denied admission. Many of these students ONLY applied to SDSU (and UCSD, if they were qualified) because there wasn’t any feasible way they could swing room and board in another county without taking out student loans. CSU campuses in other CA counties have similar agreements with nearby school districts and strive to admit these students so they can stay in the family home for “free” while earning a bachelor degree. This is the case with the CSU my youngest kid attends and it is as it should be.
Now, what has become particularly disgusting to me (and should be to ALL CA parents of HS students who are considering enrolling in CC for two years) is the “Degree with a Guarantee” program trotted out by the CA CC system just 2.5 years ago.
Essentially, here the CA CC’s (in cooperation with the CSU) will “guarantee” admission to a CSU as a “transferring-in junior” if the CC student earns an AS-T or AA-T degree which meets all the core-class requirements of a Bachelor of Science or Bachelor of Arts. Here, in the Sweetwater District, we now have a portion of HS graduates from the classes of 2013 forward who glommed onto this “go-nowhere” track only because SDSU reneged on their CFS “guaranteed admission” promise to them when they were a senior in HS! These students opted to follow the *new* rules and lived at home and attended CC FT for 2+ years to meet all the requirements of an AS-T or AA-T degree and are now being turned down for transfer to SDSU as a junior because their CC GPA in the mid-3’s is “too low,” yet those in their HS graduating class who were admitted to SDSU or another CSU as a freshman were admitted with GPA’s as low as 3.1!
If the CC GPA needed for admission as a junior into SDSU (or CSULB or other CSU campus with a “desirable” location) is now a ~4.0, why isn’t this mentioned on the Degree with a Guarantee website? Maybe if it was and also repeated by HS and CC academic advisors, and the prospective CC student knew they wouldn’t be able to attend university out-of-county due to high housing costs, they could have made other arrangements in the spring of their senior year. Instead, the CC’s have now led these students down a second garden path, wasting 2+ years of their young lives and in doing so are fvcking with they and their families’ lives, who relied on the (non-occupational) CC degree they earned to be worth something. It’s a double-whammy and this group of recent Sweetwater HS grads have now been lied to and effed over twice by the official “educational machine” that they were cranked out of.
In short, the reality of actual chances for admission into UC/CSU is being covertly hidden from well-qualified CA high school seniors who have blindly followed all the rules laid out before them to have what they believe will be “guaranteed admission” to their local public university. This is so because SDSU is stating that they have too many freshman (and transfer) apps to consider. They “have too many apps to consider” because a HUGE portion of those apps are from OOS and OOC and these groups are given admission preference over state residents (thousands of whom were already promised admission) solely because of the much higher tuition they pay.
Yes, I believe first and foremost, that CA’s public universities should exist to serve its OWN residents first. If there are few to no “billets” left over after that for OOS and OOC apps, then so be it. And in no case should an OOS or OOC applicant get a “choice” as to which campus they will be admitted to. If CA took away the choice of campus (beach, coastal, etc), then certainly the OOS applicant group would drop away like flies.
It’s not about race, people, so you can drop your race cards, now.
I never expected that me or my kid(s) should be able to apply to public university in another state/country and get an admissions preference over their OWN natives and/or residents so why should these non-resident groups expect admission to CA public universities when tens of thousands of its own resident highly-qualified HS seniors are cast adrift because they can’t get admitted to their OWN public university in their OWN city and state, even after “following all the rules” for 4-10 years to do so! It’s a travesty and I’m happy to see that the state has decided to audit the admission stats of the UC and publicly call them out on their back-room admissions dealings. It’s a good start on reform and I hope the CSU is next in line for an audit. I feel a “study” or “audit” of this nature would be very revealing, especially for those campuses situated near popular beaches, such as SDSU.
