"There are also practical reasons to pick UCSD as the focus. [...] Many more schools have three or more students admitted to UCSD than to the more selective UCLA or UC Berkeley. On the other hand, UC San Diego is selective enough that it (unlike Riverside and Merced) gets applications from many of the strongest students from each high school."
I understand the idea of picking a university in the middle of the selectivity range, in order to increase the range of high schools represented in the admission data. However, I would expect that picking any one target university still results in a negative correlation between (1) the average academic record of a high school and (2) the average "academic rank" of the applicants to that university within their high school. Of course we can't really know how much that effect can explain the negative correlation between average high school academic record and admission rate, which you observe after controlling for LCFF+ status.
"As recently as 2021, 35% of high schoolers were in LCFF+ schools. In 2025, it was 45%."
"That does not mean UCSD is getting disproportionately more applications from LCFF+ high schools. The mix of applications by high school has been surprisingly stable. The share of applications coming from LCFF+ high schools has consistently been in the 17%-19% range and the share coming from high schools with UPPs under 25% has consistently been in the 23%-25% range."
If I understand well, those two facts together would imply that the fraction of students from LCFF+ schools who apply to UCSD has not risen as fast as the fraction of students from non-LCFF+ schools to apply to UCSD, since LCFF+ schools comprised the same fraction of the applicant pool even as their share of all high school students increased. Does that pattern extend to the other UPP categories, i.e. the fraction of students who apply to UCSD has increased more at lower-UPP schools?
"Why it has increased so rapidly is an interesting question. I have trouble believing that it is a natural increase. The economy has been doing okay. There has not been an increase in the number of English learners. And yet the share of high needs students in Napa County has apparently risen from 44% in 2019-20 to 65% in 2024-25. I have heard that the introduction of universal school meals might have mucked up the data quality but, if that is true, I don’t know what the mechanism is. If anyone can explain, I would love to be enlightened."
Regarding the statewide increase of children counted under UPP, it seems that child poverty has increased since the pandemic: https://edsource.org/updates/child-poverty-rate-nearly-triples-in-california-report-finds. Now, in terms of particularly high increases in some places or the increase in very high UPP schools, that could be due to movement of families within the state or changes in enrollment patterns resulting in more economic segregation. It doesn't seem that unbelievable knowing how there has been a lot of movement from the pre-pandemic state.
1) I calculated an average UPP over time for each school and called all schools that had an average UPP greater than 75% an LCFF+ school. Thus, when I wrote that "the share of applications coming from LCFF+ high schools has consistently been in the 17%-19% range", I meant that those schools whose average UPP exceeded 75% produced 17-19% of all applications. In reality, since the UPP has been increasing. the share of applications coming from schools with a UPP greater than 75% has also been increasing. I used an average UPP rather than each year's value in order to separate the effect of UCSD's admissions policy change from the changing UPP values.
2) The child poverty report you link to compares the poverty rate during the pandemic (when there was a lot of government financial support) to the poverty rate after that support ended. My understanding is the post-pandemic level of child poverty was pretty much the same as the pre-pandemic level. The UPP data shows a very different pattern: no decline at all during the pandemic but a dramatic increase afterwards.
The chart under 'UC San Diego Strongly Favors Applicants From LCFF+ Schools' shows the percent of seniors in 2024 that meet standards in English and Math. How are you determining this percentage? I assumed that it was from CAASPP data (https://caaspp-elpac.ets.org/caaspp/)? But the data in the chart does not match the CAASPP data. For example, for Petaluma High School, your chart says '32.6% of the seniors were proficient in both Math and English in 2024,' but CAASPP shows that 36.83% met or exceeded Math standards and 53.16% met or exceeded English standards. Why the discrepancy? Where are you getting your data from?
I'm glad someone is checking on the numbers. The numbers I'm using are from the CDE's College and Career Indicator (https://www.cde.ca.gov/ta/ac/cm/ccidatafiles.asp). One of the measures there shows the number of students in the senior class who were "prepared" for college by meeting or exceeding standards in BOTH Math and English. This number therefore cannot exceed the lower of the separate Math and English numbers. The CCI data has two other advantages: i) students take the test in 11th grade, not 12th grade, and the CCI data shows the actual 12th grade students did when they took the test in 11th grade; ii) (a minor point) if a student transfers out after 11th grade, their results are not included in the school's data.
The UC rates a student compared to "how well a student performed relative to the educational opportunities available at their high school" and "UC’s Eligibility in the Local Context (ELC) identifies top-performing California resident students from the top 9% of each participating high school" There is also an effort to get geographic diversity by admitting some students into the UC from each school.
Practically this means you are mostly competing against the students at your high school first, not statewide. So high performing schools with lots of applicants won't get as high an admission rate. This can look like a bias against high performing schools, but it really isn't. Your best chance is to the be valedictorian at your school, no matter which school.
Great post! I'm a UCSD alumni and went to a high school you mentioned in this post. The data lines up with my anecdotal evidence in which I met so many people who are from the San Diego area or OC (SoCal in general) compared to Northern Californians. UC admissions shifted towards geography selection as a way to increase diversity after prop 209, though other private colleges like Harvard had always used geography as a diversity factor. In essence, students are competing against each other in each individual high school which data points to. I thought this was known for a while now, but going to a less competitive perhaps more grade inflationary school and being ranked higher improves one's odd in getting into a UC or another ivy+ school.
I just want to mention that getting into a UC is really only the beginning. How well you do in college is a larger indicative of future success than the school you went to. I have friends at UCSC or UCSB or a CSU who are making more than I am, in an ivy league for graduate school, etc. Of course school bias among employers and some postgraduate programs still exist and the resources available differ. I would be interested in seeing (if data is available) how students from high-achieving high school vs LCFF+ schools fare post-college and their median GPA in college when controlled for major, SES, etc. As you heard, UCSD has a growing remedial math problem which is a larger issue in many elite schools (case in point what a MIT calculus instructor told me).
Is there any data on California high schools (both public and private) and their corresponding four and five year graduation rates (including dropouts) from the UCs?
"There are also practical reasons to pick UCSD as the focus. [...] Many more schools have three or more students admitted to UCSD than to the more selective UCLA or UC Berkeley. On the other hand, UC San Diego is selective enough that it (unlike Riverside and Merced) gets applications from many of the strongest students from each high school."
I understand the idea of picking a university in the middle of the selectivity range, in order to increase the range of high schools represented in the admission data. However, I would expect that picking any one target university still results in a negative correlation between (1) the average academic record of a high school and (2) the average "academic rank" of the applicants to that university within their high school. Of course we can't really know how much that effect can explain the negative correlation between average high school academic record and admission rate, which you observe after controlling for LCFF+ status.
"As recently as 2021, 35% of high schoolers were in LCFF+ schools. In 2025, it was 45%."
"That does not mean UCSD is getting disproportionately more applications from LCFF+ high schools. The mix of applications by high school has been surprisingly stable. The share of applications coming from LCFF+ high schools has consistently been in the 17%-19% range and the share coming from high schools with UPPs under 25% has consistently been in the 23%-25% range."
If I understand well, those two facts together would imply that the fraction of students from LCFF+ schools who apply to UCSD has not risen as fast as the fraction of students from non-LCFF+ schools to apply to UCSD, since LCFF+ schools comprised the same fraction of the applicant pool even as their share of all high school students increased. Does that pattern extend to the other UPP categories, i.e. the fraction of students who apply to UCSD has increased more at lower-UPP schools?
"Why it has increased so rapidly is an interesting question. I have trouble believing that it is a natural increase. The economy has been doing okay. There has not been an increase in the number of English learners. And yet the share of high needs students in Napa County has apparently risen from 44% in 2019-20 to 65% in 2024-25. I have heard that the introduction of universal school meals might have mucked up the data quality but, if that is true, I don’t know what the mechanism is. If anyone can explain, I would love to be enlightened."
Regarding the statewide increase of children counted under UPP, it seems that child poverty has increased since the pandemic: https://edsource.org/updates/child-poverty-rate-nearly-triples-in-california-report-finds. Now, in terms of particularly high increases in some places or the increase in very high UPP schools, that could be due to movement of families within the state or changes in enrollment patterns resulting in more economic segregation. It doesn't seem that unbelievable knowing how there has been a lot of movement from the pre-pandemic state.
1) I calculated an average UPP over time for each school and called all schools that had an average UPP greater than 75% an LCFF+ school. Thus, when I wrote that "the share of applications coming from LCFF+ high schools has consistently been in the 17%-19% range", I meant that those schools whose average UPP exceeded 75% produced 17-19% of all applications. In reality, since the UPP has been increasing. the share of applications coming from schools with a UPP greater than 75% has also been increasing. I used an average UPP rather than each year's value in order to separate the effect of UCSD's admissions policy change from the changing UPP values.
2) The child poverty report you link to compares the poverty rate during the pandemic (when there was a lot of government financial support) to the poverty rate after that support ended. My understanding is the post-pandemic level of child poverty was pretty much the same as the pre-pandemic level. The UPP data shows a very different pattern: no decline at all during the pandemic but a dramatic increase afterwards.
UC evaluates applications based on 13 factors. https://admission.universityofcalifornia.edu/how-to-apply/applying-as-a-first-year/how-applications-are-reviewed.html
Factor 13 is the location of your secondary school, with each UC giving greater preference to students in their specific geographical area.
The chart under 'UC San Diego Strongly Favors Applicants From LCFF+ Schools' shows the percent of seniors in 2024 that meet standards in English and Math. How are you determining this percentage? I assumed that it was from CAASPP data (https://caaspp-elpac.ets.org/caaspp/)? But the data in the chart does not match the CAASPP data. For example, for Petaluma High School, your chart says '32.6% of the seniors were proficient in both Math and English in 2024,' but CAASPP shows that 36.83% met or exceeded Math standards and 53.16% met or exceeded English standards. Why the discrepancy? Where are you getting your data from?
I'm glad someone is checking on the numbers. The numbers I'm using are from the CDE's College and Career Indicator (https://www.cde.ca.gov/ta/ac/cm/ccidatafiles.asp). One of the measures there shows the number of students in the senior class who were "prepared" for college by meeting or exceeding standards in BOTH Math and English. This number therefore cannot exceed the lower of the separate Math and English numbers. The CCI data has two other advantages: i) students take the test in 11th grade, not 12th grade, and the CCI data shows the actual 12th grade students did when they took the test in 11th grade; ii) (a minor point) if a student transfers out after 11th grade, their results are not included in the school's data.
The UC rates a student compared to "how well a student performed relative to the educational opportunities available at their high school" and "UC’s Eligibility in the Local Context (ELC) identifies top-performing California resident students from the top 9% of each participating high school" There is also an effort to get geographic diversity by admitting some students into the UC from each school.
Practically this means you are mostly competing against the students at your high school first, not statewide. So high performing schools with lots of applicants won't get as high an admission rate. This can look like a bias against high performing schools, but it really isn't. Your best chance is to the be valedictorian at your school, no matter which school.
Great post! I'm a UCSD alumni and went to a high school you mentioned in this post. The data lines up with my anecdotal evidence in which I met so many people who are from the San Diego area or OC (SoCal in general) compared to Northern Californians. UC admissions shifted towards geography selection as a way to increase diversity after prop 209, though other private colleges like Harvard had always used geography as a diversity factor. In essence, students are competing against each other in each individual high school which data points to. I thought this was known for a while now, but going to a less competitive perhaps more grade inflationary school and being ranked higher improves one's odd in getting into a UC or another ivy+ school.
I just want to mention that getting into a UC is really only the beginning. How well you do in college is a larger indicative of future success than the school you went to. I have friends at UCSC or UCSB or a CSU who are making more than I am, in an ivy league for graduate school, etc. Of course school bias among employers and some postgraduate programs still exist and the resources available differ. I would be interested in seeing (if data is available) how students from high-achieving high school vs LCFF+ schools fare post-college and their median GPA in college when controlled for major, SES, etc. As you heard, UCSD has a growing remedial math problem which is a larger issue in many elite schools (case in point what a MIT calculus instructor told me).
Love this blog. Thanks for doing it.
Is there any data on California high schools (both public and private) and their corresponding four and five year graduation rates (including dropouts) from the UCs?
https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/about-us/information-center/ug-outcomes