College admissions is a topic that I know a lot deal about, having gone through it with my two kids with fantastic admission outcomes, and have kept myself informed afterwards. I have previously offered to help others on this forum, but haven't had many takers. I am glad you are bringing the topic up again.
I could talk a lot about the UCs. On the one hand you have UCLA which has an admit rate of about 15%, and on the other you have UC-Merced which has an admit rate of 89%. So just about anyone who wants to go to an UC can go to one (Merced), but everyone wants to focus upon admission rates to UCLA and Berkeley. And the admission policy is essentially that they would like to have a distribution of students from throughout the state. I can understand that to a certain extent; the students in Barstow deserve a shot too. But you have to balance that with the fact that there are a lot more accomplished kids in Palo Alto. I personally believe that the right way to balance this out is to take the top X% from a school region and the top Y% from across the state, where you balance out X and Y until you fill the college.
One of the most notable things about the UCs is that they got rid of testing altogether. They are not test-optional, but rather test-blind. If you send them an SAT test score, they won't consider it. Governor Newsom had asked the UC Academic Senate a few years ago to determine if testing was useful. They responded with a very detailed analysis showing it was quite useful, particularly in selecting the smart students from a poor performing school district who had the intellectual chops to handle someplace like Berkeley. But the politicians decided to throw it out anyway.
I will be out of town for a couple of days, but I look forward to more from you.
