Which high schools send the most students to UC Berkeley?
You want to send your kid to UC Berkeley? I’ve been playing around with University California’s database of admissions data which is awesome and provides, among other awesomeness, admission stats by high school.
- Here are the top 20 “feeder” schools to UC Berkeley for the past five years (2012–2016):
Monta Vista HS in Cupertino tops the list with 204 students enrolled (average of about 40 students per year from a graduating class of about 500). Mission San Jose is just behind with 202 (out of a graduating class of around 550). Lynbrook sent 176 to UC Berkeley (about 35/year of a graduating class of about 450).
All of these schools are in California, and they’re all public:
The entire list is here for people who are interested.
2. But who actually gets admitted to UC Berkeley?
Here is a list of high schools with the highest admission rates to Berkeley
The overall admission rate during this time period was 15.2%, so these schools do considerably better than average the admission draw. Students at the top schools are more than 3 times more likely to be admitted than the average student. There are magnet and private schools, and the list is also more geographically diverse:
Interestingly, the yield rates of these schools tend to be lower than average (35.9%) is average, which leads us to. . .
3. Admitted students from outside California don’t seem to like Berkeley as much. Their yield rates tend to be lower.
Yield rate is defined as (enrolled students)/(admitted students). A high yield means that when students get in, they tend to go. A low yield means that when students get in, they tend to go somewhere else.
This graph compares the top 50 CA and top 50 non-CA schools that have the most students admitted to Berkeley. Students from non-CA schools are admitted at a higher rate than those from CA schools (29.5% vs 23.7%). However, Non-CA schools have significantly lower yield than CA schools (20.9% vs. 47.3%).
Put another way, the lower right hand quandrant in the above graph shows schools where the students are admitted at a higher rate than average, but attend at a lower rate. These are the schools where Berkeley loves them, but they don’t love Berkeley and they’re mostly non-CA schools.
4. Students from private schools also have lower yield rates
Among California schools, yield rates tend to be lower for private schools. For the top 50 public and top 50 private schools that admit the most students to Berkeley, here’s a scatter plot of admit rate vs. yield:
Interestingly, admit rates are *slightly* higher for public than private schools (23.3% vs. 22.9%). Yields, however, are dramatically higher for public schools (48.8% vs. 30.8% for private). The schools in the bottom quadrant are essentially private schools where the students are at higher than average rates, but enroll at lower than average rates. Again, the Berkeley loves them, but they don’t love Berkeley. Maybe the students from these private high schools have more options?
The upper right quadrant where the love goes both ways. These are mainly public high schools.
5. Asian students have the highest rates of admission, followed by White students. Hispanic/Latino and African-American students have the lowest rates of admission. UC Berkeley cannot use race-based criteria for admissions per Proposition 209.
Remember the top 3 feeder schools? They have a lot of Asian students:
- Monta Vista: 83% (school website)
- Mission San Jose: 91% (US News)
- Lynbrook: 87% (school website)
