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May 11, 2016 at 9:22 AM #797471May 11, 2016 at 1:23 PM #797479
bearishgurl
Participantflu, 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.
(emphasis mine)
http://www.edexcelencia.org/program/compact-success
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.
http://adegreewithaguarantee.com/AboutTheProgram.aspx
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.
May 11, 2016 at 2:09 PM #797466
CoronitaParticipant[quote=bearishgurl]
I don’t begrudge the “middle eastern males” who were the bulk of foreign students back then. I wasn’t an engineering student and their presence wasn’t affecting my ability to get an education. They paid the OOS tuition and that’s just who it happened to be at the time.
[/quote]Let me complete your thought process for you. Yes, you didn’t have a problem with middle eastern men at the time, because there wasn’t “many of them”..They were a minority in numbers and didn’t affect your education (which you chose not to get). But, had you wanted to get one and if it was important enough for you, and if there was “too many of them colored middle eastern” that such that they were of serious competition to you and they were were qualified to attend, regardless of whether how much money they had to pay for the college, then you would have had a problem with that, the same way you have a problem now.
You see, that’s the problem you folks have. You start out by saying. I don’t have a problem with a minority group…so long as there numbers remain a minority….But the moment there’s more of “them” versus more of “you”, then suddenly it becomes a problem. You wouldn’t say the same thing if you couldn’t identify “those” people as being white. Anytime, someone that is colored that can do better and will do better than you, and if there’s a lot of them, then you have a problem with that….
[quote]
You seem to have some kind of a chip on your shoulder, AN, and you shouldn’t, because you’re an American.
[/quote]Lol. Pot, meet kettle. You have a chip on your shoulder from everything regarding obamacare, to foreigners, to real estate outside of chula vista, to investments other people make that you don’t. I’m sure there’s a much longer list that I forget at the current moment.
[quote]
Yes, I will admit that I would like to see more CA HS graduates get admitted to a public in-state university … preferably as close to “home” as possible so they won’t have to pay for room and board. I think its really depressing how many CA HS grads are actually admitted to UC/CSU, even after applying to 4+ campuses. It’s not fair that possibly ~108,500 slots are “given away” to OOS/OOC applicants
when our own kids can’t even transfer out of CC as a junior with a ~3.6 GPA. It’s wrong and immoral and I don’t know of any other state which does this at the expense of their own natives and residents.
[/quote]Are you arguing that your issue is that there are too many foreigner students taking up UC admissions, or are you arguing that they don’t pay their fair share? I’m not following what you’re arguing over. First of all, most foreign students aren’t paying in-state tuition for the first two years, and most of them are not on need based scholarships (at least not the ones attending UC from asia. That’s probably why the UC system is recruiting there. Because the UC schools need more people that can afford to pay the full tuition to offset all the people that don’t pay a full tuition,
Second, there’s not a “lower” standard to admit foreign students versus in-state students. It just so happens countries like India and China have 1.36 and 1.25 billion people, so you’re bound to find plenty of people who have the credentials AND can afford to pay for the full ride. Many of those foreigners might have accents, but they sure as hell can write and read better than many people in this country. Afterall, they actually took the time to learn proper English.
[quote]
You’ve got young kids who will someday want to apply to UC/CSU so you should be concerned about this issue, as well.
[/quote]Yeah, and short of any other “quota” to limit admissions on anything but academic merit is just a policy that discriminates. You know as well as I know that quota limiting would be the means to reduce the number asians not based on merit but based on numbers to be proportional to the population demographics. (Does SCA-5 ring a bell). And that would be a hell no.
The problem is that the cost of education is going up, partly due to uncontrolled costs at the universities, no one wants to pay more for it. So what do you think will happen? Of course the schools are going to turn to people with money, and they are going to fill some of those slots with well qualified candidates out of state (or out of this country).
May 11, 2016 at 2:24 PM #797481no_such_reality
ParticipantMy kid is five. I’m not sure I want my kid to go to the UC system as it is today.
It’s not because I don’t value education or appreciate how incredibly good the UC schools really are.
It’s because of how insanely competitive admission has become.
And back to my main point, if you don’t want admission to UC and particularly UCLA and Berkeley to be insanely rare, they’re massively too small.
I know first hand, many parents who have wrapped their whole family life for years around college admission prep. Kumon, check. SAT boot camp, starting in 7th grade, check. Summer academic, camps, check. College placement parent courses, check. Volunteer international internship program, check.
Some of these kids are very accomplished. Some have great resumes. Most, IMHO, are drones baking the college admissions recipe book, chained to the grindstone of putting in hours. Some like it. But they’re just grinding out the recipe, IMO.
I for one believe the reports that the admissions to the Ivy’s and neo-Ivy’s like Stanford have gotten out of hand, that they basically boil down to a lottery and a likability interviewers/admission officer going to bat for you.
The student in your prior linked article, while accomplished is a pretty ho-hum run of the mill story in California. Top 9% of her class? Whoopie-do. Don’t get me wrong, that’s good, but if the top 9% of the class deserve admission to the UC flagship schools, then Berkley’s budget pretty much needs to be increased 20X.
This year 500,000 kids will graduated. Near 4.0 and over 4.0 GPAs are frankly run of the mill in our better high schools that have AP/honors and College Prep courses.
Student body president, yawn. That’s not me, that’s the college admission officers. Homeless shelter volunteer, yawn. Accomplished instrument player, yawn.
Just following recipe.
We’ve gone further now, because now, you need to be an concert worthy musician having performed in international venues. (Not sure if that’s marketing spin on Band Camp performed at Oktoberfest in Drunkensberg, Duetschland or an actual noteworthy international performer). I do know that Harvard admitted a clandestine serial farter You get the picture, although I’m guessing they catch most of the resume fluffers, if they care.
Yes, I as the parent don’t want to run that rat race.
But back to my point, we will be graduating 500,000 kids a year from high school. We’re expecting 60%+ of them to go to college. Berkley’s Undergrad freshman class is about 4000 Californians. UCLA is about the same. It’s notable that both admitted roughly 10,000 Californians out of nearly 60,000 California applicants. I’d hazard that most of the 10,000 Berkeley admits are also UCLA admits.
In the 1990s, we were graduating 250,000 from high school. Last year it was 425,000. And going forward, the classes are getting larger.
Berkeley and UCLA have room for 1%.
Nationwide, we will have roughly 3.3 million graduates this year. Harvard has room for 1660. Stanford has room for 1700. Berkeley 5000. UCLA 5000.
We need seats for 2,000,000.
And they’re all racing for an Apple Watch school.
May 11, 2016 at 2:26 PM #797482scaredyclassic
ParticipantThe competition is brutal. My kid was wait listed at Irvine with a 97th percentile sat and over a,4.0 GPA.
May 11, 2016 at 2:55 PM #797484Participant[quote=no_such_reality]My kid is five. I’m not sure I want my kid to go to the UC system as it is today.
It’s not because I don’t value education or appreciate how incredibly good the UC schools really are.
It’s because of how insanely competitive admission has become. . . .[/quote]NSR, have you considered making plans for getting your kid situated out-of-state (relative’s houses, etc) for purposes of university attendance when the time comes? What are you leaning towards counseling your kid to do after HS?
May 11, 2016 at 3:00 PM #797485ParticipantI’m so-o-o-o glad we had the foresight to push our kids out of dodge right out of HS. One of them was only 17 when we pushed them into “Gritty City” to start a new life on their own at SFSU.
There is absolutely nothing for them here in South County, SD . . . not then, not now and likely not ever.
May 11, 2016 at 3:08 PM #797483Participant[quote=scaredyclassic]The competition is brutal. My kid was wait listed at Irvine with a 97th percentile sat and over a,4.0 GPA.[/quote]I’m so sorry, scaredy. I drove past the entrance to that campus (just north of the beautiful Newport coast) on Sunday and it is beautiful and classy. I spoke at length to a young man who was a junior there (software engineering) while we were walking our dogs in one of the local dog parks in town. He and his girlfriend (who was with him and the dog) had already purchased a condo in Costa Mesa and were saving up for a house. He said he already had an internship lined up and planned to graduate on time one year from now and stay in the local area for work (now a virtual megalopolis and far from the sleepy rolling sprinklers I remember). They seemed really upbeat and happy that he got in when he did and they are able to start their life out ahead of the game and that his GF was making great $$ working FT locally.
Unlike past decades, there are tons of good jobs in that area now and I think the toll roads built in the past ~15 years connecting it with the OC/LA “mainland” had a lot to do with major companies deciding to set up shop there.
Where did your kid end up accepting admission to?
May 11, 2016 at 3:09 PM #797486FlyerInHi
GuestBG, haha.. you call Costa Mesa/Irvine a megalopolis! That’s a sleepy suburb outside of Seoul, Korea.
And you don’t want that in San Diego so local kids can find jobs when they grow up? You want to limit growth so young adults have to move away. Way to go.
May 11, 2016 at 3:19 PM #797487GuestAt the higher level, education today is becoming like sports. You have to be incredibly good and prepare at a young age. Any joe schmo with perseverance won’t make it.
I think there is resentment for Asians who prepare in advance. You can’t have your kids playing around and be happy and then wonder why they don’t perform as well. As AN said, the stats speak for themselves.
May 11, 2016 at 3:43 PM #797488Participant[quote=bearishgurl][quote=no_such_reality]My kid is five. I’m not sure I want my kid to go to the UC system as it is today.
It’s not because I don’t value education or appreciate how incredibly good the UC schools really are.
It’s because of how insanely competitive admission has become. . . .[/quote]NSR, have you considered making plans for getting your kid situated out-of-state (relative’s houses, etc) for purposes of university attendance when the time comes? What are you leaning towards counseling your kid to do after HS?[/quote]
I want him to do is immaterial. What he wants to do is what matters.
Overall, I just try to continue to encourage his ability to create. Realize that which he hasn’t realized before, that what he hasn’t seen before and figure out how to make it so.
As for anything else, in hindsight, the union reps of the 80s were right, outsourcing is a race to the bottom. First it was manufacturing. Then back office services. But now, it’s pretty much coming for every professional service, including medical. Our health plan sent us info for 24/7 doctor visits via video this past week touting the affordability of it, $49.
Jobs for those that can create will remain, but the grunt work of programming, xray reading, expense review, etc, have several hundred million ready to do it for a couple dollars an hour, and that number is growing and they’re being replaced by machine too. AKA Schwab already has algorithm portfolio managers that do better than their people.
May 11, 2016 at 4:04 PM #797489Participant[quote=FlyerInHi]BG, haha.. you call Costa Mesa/Irvine a megalopolis! That’s a sleepy suburb outside of Seoul, Korea.[/quote]
Compared to what this area was in the ’70’s, yeah, it is a “megalopolis” today. It was a bit shocking to me as I hadn’t been down there since about 1980. Their (expensive) toll roads are what actually put this remotish section of the OC on the map, IMO.
[quote=FlyerInHi]And you don’t want that in San Diego so local kids can find jobs when they grow up? You want to limit growth so young adults have to move away. Way to go.[/quote]
SD County already has enough growth and 3 out of 4 corners of it are absolutely infiltrated with subdivisions, as well as any empty swaths of land in between (excepting that which belongs to the Federal Government). We already HAVE enough housing for everyone and then some for years down the road. SD County DOESN’T have enough living wage jobs and those which are ARE present here (non-govm’t) tend to be mostly situated in North City or North County, an arduous daily commute from South County. South County has had plenty of acreage/parcels (with utilities brought in) in Otay Mesa for companies to move into for at least 25 years yet none seem to be doing so (unless they are a wrecking yard or other heavy industrial-type biz). Ask yourselves why. And longtime employer Goodrich (fka Rohr and Rohr Industries) moved out of here in 2012 after they got bought out. And as we all know, the Dynergy Power Plant on SD Bay in Chula Vista (which employed hundreds of union workers for decades) was blown up back in 2013.
South County is NOT the place for millenials to settle down and start families in unless they work no further than Kearny Mesa and their job is very, very secure. And KM might be challenging to get to some/most mornings in less than 45 minutes. If a south county dwelling worker-bee works further than that and commutes four or more days/week during regular rush hours, their daily lifestyle is going to be seriously adversely affected, IMO.
It didn’t used to be nearly this bad. The South County commute really took a turn for the worse after 91915 was annexed into CV and the first phases of new subdivisions down there were built out and sold (~2003).
I really feel that South County is going to find a way to bill itself as a tourist destination. But that isn’t going to bring any “living wage” jobs down here to any significant degree.
May 11, 2016 at 5:56 PM #797492GuestNSR, being creative is no recipe for success if you don’t create things that people want to buy. Sure, Americans are creative with products such as the iPhone which was created by immigrants more than natives.
But if you want to be an actor, musician, sculptor, winter, the numbers are against you. good luck making a living. That’s where social benefits like kindercare, health care, free college, higher minimum wages are helpful.
I hope you have a subsidy for your kids so they can pursue the life of their dreams. Otherwise, push them to have a “backup plan/insurance policy”.
May 11, 2016 at 6:00 PM #797493carli
ParticipantBG, when you wrote, “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 made me chuckle. Too late for scapegoats and fear. I’ve already got one kid there. He’s at UCLA, but not for long. He’ll graduate June 10th after making it through in 4 years (woot woot).
And I don’t have fear that my other kids won’t go to UCs. I have a fair degree of confidence each kid will find his/her way regardless of which school they graduate from (or maybe don’t graduate from)!
You are parroting a tired old stereotype of the uber-driven tiger mom who is pushing her kids in to a UC or the most competitive college they can get into. Sure, they’re out there, but most parents I know these days are doing their best to avoid (or at least minimize) the stress fest that is the college admissions process.
May 11, 2016 at 6:01 PM #797494ParticipantI said create. Not creative
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