Admissions stats for the incoming freshman class are in, and boy are they a doozie. NewsCenter, of course, points out that acceptances were sent out to various people better than us like world-class figure skaters, fencers, debaters, Irish dancers and … triplets.

But it might be interesting to note that there’s no obvious effect of the … economic downturn … on the types of admitted applicants. To read more about numbers, you can go here or here.

Image Source: Lara Brucker, Daily Cal
Almost 13,000 high school students offered admission to UC Berkeley [NewsCenter]
UC Admissions Data Released [Daily Cal]
Earlier: Tomorrow Is Your Yesterday for Many People … Today

Note: Post is data-heavy after the jump.

So a bunch of seniors nobody cares about get to find out if they’re coming here or not, whoopdee doo. Well, that may be your attitude, but we at the Clog care about our future readership fellow students.

You’ve probably guessed by now—tomorrow is when billions, maybe even thousands of kids get their letters of acceptance or rejection from UC Berkeley. Tough stuff. But we’ll defer to the Master to convey in music that which we can’t with words.

Image Source: liber under Creative Commons
Audio Source: Columbia University Orchestra
Fall 2009 Applicants — Freshman Decisions on March 26! [UC Berkeley]
Earlier: You’re Either In, or You’re Out: UC Berkeley Admissions Breaks Hearts, Futures at 5 p.m. PST

You know it’s getting time to sling out some line and reel in a new school of freshmen when the Berkeley news website starts putting up videos trumpeting Berkeley’s diversity and academic superiority and bureaucratic compassion, not to mention its, nudge nudge, gorgeous green lawns and peerless Californian sunshine. Observe! Sproul fountain spouts water. Also, people walk down streets.

Really, we applaud its ideals–among them the university’s emphasis on its holistic evaluation process, and the refutation of falsified impressions about the application procedure–but the video’s kinda the sanitized yawnfest you’d expect it to be.  But hey-at least there’s a nifty online aid Cal-culator to make it all better. Geddit?

Applying to Berkeley? [Berkeley News]

A few weeks ago, the Daily Cal reported that this year’s incoming students will be the largest group yet, but the post-apocalyptic classes will be damned if they don’t continue Cal’s 10-year tradition of breaking enrollment records.

It looks like the UC system is planning on relaxing its admission standards, and we’re not quite sure how to feel. Among the proposed changes are scrapping the SAT Subject test req, a total review of some apps that don’t quite reach the minimum standards, and–this one puzzles us the most–for-sure admission to a few of the unqualified.

Maybe we’re a little fuzzy on the semantics, but it would seem that–by definition–someone who’s unqualified can’t be admitted. So what are the minimum qualifications now, if they aren’t really minimum qualifications?

“Suggested standards?” “Proposed conditions?” “Gosh darnit, you did your best but didn’t quite make it so we’ll let you in anyway and give us a hug?”

Image Source: joebeone under Creative Commons
UC close to new admissions requirements [Contra Costa Times]

Yesterday, Apr. 30, after an absurdly long wait, UC Berkeley transfer applicants everywhere finally received the big news. Over a month after those obsessive-compulsive, overachieving upstarts known as future freshmen got their decisions, transfer applicants finally got their just desserts in the form of tasty hunks of Berkeley acceptance. Well–either that or they had an extra month to get their hopes up, only to end up tasting the bitter fruits of rejection, some for the second time around.

So, what we’re trying to say is now might be a good time to call your BFF back home to see what’s what. And you might want to have your sympathy voice ready, because according to a transfer admissions FAQ, usually about 2 in 3 transfer applicants get the shaft. Ouch. Though, to be fair, those odds are better than the very general estimate for freshman applicants–3 in 4 applicants receive a “nix.”

Earlier: You’re Either In, or You’re Out: UC Berkeley Admissions Breaks Hearts, Futures at 5 p.m. PST
Prospective Transfer Students FAQ’s [Cal UGA]

Still, none of that compares to the emotional turmoil that arrives in many student mailboxes across the country today. Yes, it’s that time of year again–the day many high school seniors open a long-awaited letter from the UC Berkeley admissions department (or, rather, log into the myBerkeleyApplication portal at 5 p.m PST for quicker results).

One glance at College Confidential, a message board consisting largely of soccer moms and stressed out overachievers, and you can get a sense of the agony. Some are even accusing admissions of an e-mail conspiracy after their “suspicious” and “cruelly worded” letter announced the release of acceptances on Mar. 27. The letter proclaims, “Thank you for your patience: We’re worth the wait!” Cruel, indeed.

Posted by yayitsjane at College Confidential:

Because of this whole overanalyzing-the-emails thing, I’m psyching myself out and thinking that the myBerkeleyApp person is telling us white lies. This isn’t good for me (because I didn’t get an email), but maybe the emails really do mean you are admitted and if you didn’t get it, you are a reject. I just don’t see any other explanation to this email thing…why would there be so many people who didn’t get an email? Honestly, what are the chances of having that many “technical glitches”? (But then again…there were quite a number of people who got the email too…I DON’T KNOW! I’m driving myself crazy!! Errg….)

Am I just being overly pessimistic or am I making sense here????

The poor child.

Best of luck to you who plan to frantically refresh your computer screen until 5 p.m. See you next year! Maybe.

Image Source: Crimfants under Creative Commons
Letter to 2008 Applicants [Berkeley]
Email from UCB admissions about Mar 27 decions? [College Confidential]

Ok, so perhaps no one was calling it the messiah of the admissions process. Well, at least no one we know. (Though Ricardo Vazquez in the UC Newsroom seemed pretty stoked about it).

Really, StatFinder didn’t come to redeem the admissions process. But like the iPhone, it has some nice things about it that just make life a bit easier.

The University of California is smitten with this new Web site of theirs, calling it a

bq. first-of-its-kind Web site for a public university that will allow anyone to access and search a wealth of admissions data with a few simple clicks of a mouse.

And, that’s, well, true. There are more than 50 tables, breaking down data on admissions by high school GPA, ethnicity, college GPA, SAT scores, parent income and parent education, among others things.

The university sees “reporters, parents, counselors, policy makers and others interested in this information” accessing this information. Notice that they include “parents” but not “applying students.”

Perhaps it’s come to this point where Mom and Dad are more interested in the competition of college than the kiddies and thus commandeer the application process for their offspring.

Like the iPhone, the application has minor inconveniences … Doesn’t increased accessibility to admissions data only encourage increased competition in applying for colleges?

Oh well, at least we all already got into Berkeley. And at least we aren’t comparing StatFinder to the Nokia N800.

Online Service Will Open UC Admission Statistics to the Public [Daily Cal]
StatFinder puts admissions data at your fingertips [UC Newsroom]
UC StatFinder [Web site]

In an opinion piece in today’s New York Times, UC Berkeley sociology professor Jerome Karabel suggests that “despite their image as meritocratic beacons of opportunity, the selective colleges serve less as vehicles of upward mobility than as transmitters of privilege from generation to generation.”

We like think of colleges as meritocratic institutions, open to everyone who meets the standards. However, As Karabel explains it:

bq. The paucity of students from poor and working-class backgrounds at the nation’s selective colleges should be a national scandal. Yet the problem resides not so much in discrimination in the admissions process (though affirmative action for the privileged persists in preferences for the children of alumni and big donors) as in the definition of merit used by the elite colleges.

His proposed solution?

bq. One of my favorite [ideas] is a lottery. This could take the form of reserving a modest number of places in the freshman class — say 5 percent to 10 percent — for applicants who, having met a high academic threshold, would be selected at random. While the admissions office would know the identities of the students admitted by lottery, no one else — not faculty, not employers and not the students themselves — would.

The Clog’s two cents? It’s no surprise that unequal education at the elementary and high school level produces inequalities at the college level. Until we fix that, anything else is just a Band-Aid. Also, there is a place for students who can’t make it at the best schools.

The New College Try [NY Times]
Jerome Karabel [Department of Sociology]

a student who danced with a ballet academy in Salzburg, Austria; several nationally-ranked debaters; a member of the U.S. Junior Olympic Water Polo team; a nationally-ranked chess player; and several members of a high school team that won the first place in the American Computer Science League All-Star Contest. The class also includes 44 sets of twins.

Several members of a prolific comp-sci team???!! Really??!! AND 44 sets of real-life, honest-to-god twins!! Excuse us as we all simultaneously wet ourselves.

Honestly, no celebrities? We couldn’t admit a Star Wars Kid caliber famous person to make things interesting in this urban-hippie-hellhole? Couldn’t we get Jonny Moseley or SuChin Pak for another season? Being on MTV totally proves that you took advantage of opportunities.

You’d figure that we’d get something a bit more substantial from such a gigantic class. Nope, stuck with the usual batch of MCATs-obsessed stress queens and EECS androids. Thanks a lot, Office of Undergraduate Admissions. Now, only an incoming class of 88 Siamese twin debate wizards can salvage fall ’07’s prospects of being interesting.

It’s important to note, though, that these students haven’t decided to join our ranks just yet. Berkeley expects only about 4,250 kids to enroll. It is also important to note that Berkeley accepted 370 more students than they did last year. So don’t expect much breathing room in the RSF come September.

Timothy Egan’s recent feature in The New York Times
packs more slop into the messy ongoing battle between advocates and opponents of affirmative action in post-secondary education.
The racial roulette for classroom seats is a hot-button issue for California’s public university system in the post-Prop 209 era and, as Egan suggests, particularly so at UC Berkeley.
With the school’s Asian American admission numbers reaching around 46% in the past couple years, Egan’s article focuses
on Berkeley’s consequent administrative and social dynamics issues.

Vital points raised:
• Race-neutral admissions policies vs. gaping discrepancies between inner-city and suburban high schools vs.
  cultural capital differences as the main reason for increased admission numbers of Asian American students and the
  subsequent drop in African American and Latino freshman counts
• The sticky plurality vs. majority issue as applied to the Asian American minority on this campus
• Lumping a bunch of distinct ethnicities together under the “Asian” umbrella
• Discrepancies in standards among admission candidates of various ethnic minorities
• Stereotypes and ethnic cliques existing without a lot of protest among the students