Berkeley High School and Eligibility in the Local Context?
I'm many years off from this being a real concern, but haven't found anything online to answer.
Anyway, my understanding is that ELC for the UC system requires some eligibility requirements from high schools, which includes the ability to determine the top 9% (or whatever) of students, which requires the high school to regularly submit transcripts of the top 12.5% (or whatever) students. But as far as I know, Berkeley High doesn't compute individual rankings. So is Berkeley High an ELC-eligible school?
Jul 25, 2016
Parent Replies
I don't have any inside information, but since nobody has responded yet and I'm very interested in this stuff, I dug around a bit.
From the website it looks like the ranking is calculated purely from the individual's GPA, vs historical GPAs from that high school. So even if Berkeley High does not compute individual rankings, UC can still determine whether the student is in that top 9%. Of course, it's possible that Berkeley High refuses to submit those transcripts either, but that doesn't seem likely.
All that said, I believe ELC is intended to ensure that the top students statewide, regardless of the resources available to their high school (availability of AP classes, for example), have an opportunity to attend a UC. Berkeley High is a well-funded school with many high-achieving students, so it seems to me that any student in the top 9% at Berkeley High would already be a strong candidate to attend a UC in the usual "statewide" context.
Here's an interesting conversation on College Confidential about ELC (not about Berkeley High but seems to be initiated by a student who is also at a school of students with high GPAs).
I'm not sure how it was done but we received a letter about our child being in the top 9% at BHS, and there was no problem with UC admittance -- she got into all the ones she applied to except for being wait-listed at UCLA. Also received Regents' Scholarships from several of the UCs. Many BHS students go on to the UCs, so the system must be set up for that. We worked through Angela Price, the BHS college counselor for her program, and our daughter ended up with a number of good schools to choose from.