10/17/2023: Top College Admissions are Tough

Take it light!

I fell down the college admission rabbit hole after hearing the story of Stanley Zhong (video as shown above), a high school senior who was rejected by 16 out of the 18 colleges he applied to despite stellar credentials and was eventually hired by Google. I went to college in Taiwan so I really have no idea how complex the college application process is in the USA. My husband went to UCLA and a lot of my friends went to elite colleges like Caltech, Stanford, Harvard, etc. They told me the admissions seem way harder these days than 10, 20 years ago. I ended up finding the University of California college admission data and boy, things are indeed getting a lot more competitive over the years.

I downloaded historical application and admission data of select high schools from University of California information center. I downloaded data for two competitive high schools: Gunn High in Palo Alto where Stanley Zhong went to and Monta Vista High where my daughter will be attending and two less competitive high schools: Oakland High School and Clovis High School. The numbers are staggering. You can see the detailed spreadsheet here but let me just post two relevant charts here: 

In essence, from 1994-2022, the number of applications to UC Berkeley from Monta Vista and Gunn went up ~200% while the number of admissions stayed flat if not slightly down. Number of applications to Oakland and Clovis went up ~100% while the number of admissions is slightly up. Basically, it’s a lot harder to get into the flagship state college in California compared to 30 years ago. In the past decade, the admission rate for Monta Vista and Gunn almost halved while Oakland and Clovis remained flat. The same phenomenon is even more pronounced for UCLA and UC San Diego. It appears that California has a capacity issue for its flagship state colleges. I know the top 9% students can still go to Merced but most students will prefer a more research focused university. Across the board, UC Berkeley’s number of freshman applications grew from 67,658 in 2013 to 125,874 in 2023 , an 86% increase and AFAIK, they only expanded the capacity by ~15% over the past 10 years. No wonder it’s so much harder for California high school seniors to get into flagship state colleges.

The limited capacity doesn’t stop students from trying harder though. I personally found it devastating that kids spent so much energy to get into a good college simply because there are not enough spots. They could have spent this energy on other more productive things rather than obsessing with getting into a good college as they are told they need a college education to access good career opportunities and elite colleges would unlock more exclusive opportunities. Perhaps we should reorient the conversation to how we can direct the young, brilliant and ambitious kids to other opportunities where they can continue to build their skills and make good contributions. Stanley ends up being the real winner here as working for Google is probably a better growth opportunity for him. I mean if I could choose between going to UC Berkeley EECS vs. going to work at Google as an SWE, I would choose the latter any day and I could always go back to college later. I see more young and brilliant kids following in Stanley Zhong’s footsteps and hopefully we can end this college application madness that is imposed on our children.