Oldie but goodie. I don’t think these parents exist anymore by the way…
My wife and I had 12 children over the course of 15 1/2 years. Today, our oldest is 37 and our youngest is 22. I have always had a very prosperous job and enough money to give my kids almost anything. But my wife and I decided not to.
I will share with you the things that we did, but first let me tell you the results: All 12 of my children have college degrees (or are in school), and we as parents did not pay for it. Most have graduate degrees. Those who are married have wonderful spouses with the same ethics and college degrees, too. We have 18 grandchildren who are learning the same things that our kids learned—self respect, gratitude, and a desire to give back to society.
BTW I was surprised to find out that UC tuition alone now costs 15k a year. Living expenses would be another 15k so altogether UC now costs 30k a year! All along I thought tuition only costs a couple thousand bucks…
2018-2019 estimated tuition+room&board for UC is $35,000/year.
However, it is still way cheaper than $78,000/year for private school.
As a result, the competition for STEM in UCs are higher than ever.
One of kid at Lynbrook who has UWGPA 3.8 out of 4.0 got rejected by every single UCs (for BME) but admitted to decent private schools.
Practically, it is better for you to save enough college fund than listening to those stories.
How about taking out a student loan? Four years of 35k is 140. If the kid majors in CS or even EE, she could probably pay it back in two or three years.
I think I did way less reading about this type of issues than you, @manch, @Terri and @boolean. Only when you guys talk about it, I went to read more and checked. Recalled at MVHS when my son was there, he got 3.9 UWGPA and was ranked between 30-40%. So 3.8 would rank around 60% i.e. below average in MVHS. Believe should be similar in Lynbrooks.
If the student is only 60 percentile at her high school, I can understand she would be rejected by every UC. UC can only admit top 10%. How can you admit a 60 percentile student into the best universities in the world? If we account for students from China and India and apply a worldwide diversity, only top 1% should be admitted into UC.
She can still go to a decent private school in Oregon.
That’s a BS method to say top 10% of each HS though. Does anyone think a 10% EPA student is better than a 60% MVHS student? It’s California’s way of social engineering equal outcomes. What would be even better is to see graduation rates by HS. Studies have shown admitting kids to schools they aren’t prepared to handle actually does more harm than good.
@hanera ‘s son got admitted to uc eecs (the most difficult major+school combination AFAIK) when his GPA was 30-40% at Monta vista.
UC’s admission process becomes more and more close to top private schools (ie holistic review) and highly values national level academic award.
“Guaranteeing a spot at any UC if you are top 9%” is pretty much meaningless since it only guarantees undecided major at UCR, UCM. (I did research on this after my kid got this letter. The conclusion was “not very meaningful”).
UCs tend to use a computer to decide placement. I doubt overqualification ends up being a concern. There are issues with the system though–for example, if she took all her APs in freshman year, she doesn’t get the grade-bump for having an honors class in 10th and 11th grade.
I have to wonder if she filled in her application wrong though, or failed to get the SAT/ACT scores properly delivered.
Honestly though, if you’re a poor student with decent grades from a bad school, please don’t goto a UC. The kid will get a full ride at a private school.
UC gives extra point up to 4 year-long courses for UC_honor or AP and most of Lynbrook’s 10/11th classes are UC honor/AP. Thus, I am sure she got all extra point.
Average SAT score of Lynbrook is about 1500.
I don’t think she screwed up SAT score too much.
For popular major like CS, admit rate is single digit for UCB and UCLA.
From Lynbrook Naviance, I am seeing many kids got rejected/waitlisted with 4.0/4.0 WGPA and SAT score over 1550 for UCB. I assume they applied to popular major like EECS, though.
CS is hard at Berkeley. Even top private schools can have issues getting kids in. I’ve written it off for my own kid. Because he did his math and CS APs in 8th and 9th grade, he’s not going to get that grade bump…
in MVHS. Believe should be similar in Lynbrooks.
and UCLA 
only