This SF public school is tops in UC Berkeley acceptance rate. It's not Lowell.
Students at a San Francisco public high school were more successful at being accepted into UC Berkeley for the fall 2023 academic year than their peers at any other secondary school in California.
According to data from the University of California released on March 13, Mission High School had an acceptance rate of 43% at the flagship UC campus, the highest of any high school surveyed and almost three times the state average of 15%. A data visualization made by the San Francisco Chronicle shows how much of an outlier Mission High was among California high schools (SFGATE and the San Francisco Chronicle are both owned by Hearst but operate independently of one another). The data, which is broken down by UC campus, shows the acceptance rates for California high schools with at least 40 applicants.
Though Mission High has traditionally lagged in state standardized testing results, it surpassed a wide range of high schools throughout the state in the acceptance rankings, including private schools and San Francisco’s highly competitive Lowell High, which requires placement testing for enrollment . Fresno’s Edison High and Oxnard’s Channel Islands High were the second- and third-ranked high schools with the most admitted applicants to Berkeley; they also are public with acceptance rates of 39% and 38% respectively.
Mission High, located on 18th Street at Mission Dolores Park, had 90 students apply to UC Berkeley for fall 2023. Of those students, 39 were admitted to the university, according to UC data, and 23 enrolled there in the fall.
The school has seen a steady increase in applicants to UC Berkeley in recent years. For the fall 2022 term, 89 students from Mission High applied and 31 were admitted. And for the fall 2021 term, 66 students applied and 23 students were admitted.
The Mission High students applying to UC Berkeley for the fall 2023 academic year had an average GPA of 3.98, the highest GPA for Mission students seeking admission to the university since 1994. And the group of students from Mission High who were admitted to UC Berkeley for fall 2023 had an even higher average GPA of 4.13.
Mission High’s acceptance rate comes at a time when the school has struggled with meeting standardized testing requirements, a long-standing issue at the high school. Education journalist Kristina Rizga published a book in 2015 about the school and its battle with a “low-performing” reputation because of below-average state test scores despite its high graduation, attendance and college acceptance rates.
Mission High still falls below the district and California average for its math, reading and science test scores, according to a survey for the current school year from U.S. News World & Report. But the school remains above the state average for its UC acceptance rates, with 91% of its students who applied being accepted into a University of California school last year.
Mission High’s enrolled students also include many who are economically disadvantaged and from minority groups. About 56% met the qualifications for free or reduced lunch, according to Mission High’s profile on the San Francisco Unified School District website. In the 2022-2023 school year, Mission High reported 1,082 enrolled students. A majority of the students are Latinx (65%), and 13% are African American.
Most of the students from Mission High admitted to UC Berkeley were Latinx: 21 students out of the 49 Latinx applicants from Mission High were admitted to the university, according to UC data. Additionally, UC Berkeley admitted three African American students, 11 Asian students and three white students from Mission.
In the San Francisco Unified School District, Independence High School is the only public school to come close to Mission High’s UC Berkeley acceptance rate. A much smaller school than Mission, 10 of its 75 students applied to UC Berkeley. Of those, three were admitted, resulting in a 30% acceptance rate.
Mission High still had a significantly higher acceptance rate to Berkeley than Lowell High School, which has both a larger student body and uses admissions-based enrollment. Out of 688 of Lowell’s seniors, 499 of them applied to the university. Sixty-nine students were admitted, resulting in a 14% acceptance rate.
Lowell students applying to Berkeley had the highest GPAs out of all the SFUSD schools, with an average of 4.06, according to UC data. Lowell students who were admitted to Berkeley had an average GPA of 4.22.
Systemwide, San Francisco International High had the highest acceptance rate to any UC among all the SFUSD schools. Every student who applied to a UC got in, which was 12 out of 57 seniors. Mission High was second, with 114 out of 277 of its seniors applying to a UC campus. Of those seniors, 105 were admitted to one of the campuses, a 92% acceptance rate.
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7% of the students at this school are proficient at math, yet their acceptance rate at an extremely competitive school is sky high. How is that possible.
Racial discrimination. This is what actual systematic discrimination looks like.
I am not familiar with this situation. However, based on their poor abilities in Math-- it could racial discrimination.
However I see another possibility-- in admissions criteria, they don't give a lot of weighting to Math.
Why? IDK but my guess is that English skills, reading skills, etc. are much more correlated with future academic success -- and Math less so. (Especially now that just about everyone is carrying around an electronic device that can quickly do math!)
I suspect you might be right. But only for certain schools. Looking at UC Berkeley, the top five program graduates are arguable math based disciplines. Over 35% of their under grad graduates in 2022. And doesn’t include other math based programs below those percentages
Graduates who need a computer to do their math in disciplines like this, are not the ones to hire. Not in my experience.
UC Berkeley Fall Enrollment Data for New Undergraduates
I can see what you mean, close to 50% Asian vs 30% white....NO MORE ASIANS.
The student body at the schools served by San Francisco Unified School District is 13.8% White, 6.2% Black, 37.7% Asian or Asian/Pacific Islander, 29.6% Hispanic/Latino, 0.2% American Indian or Alaska Native, and 0.8% Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander.
Oh my now we need more minorities in Berkeley.
Are you aware, Sean that Ireland honors Choctaw (they are Indians/Native American) students with scholarships every year, how cool is that putting minorities ahead of whites by other whites....Amazing.
Are you aware that the minority enrollment at Lowell is 81% of which 55% are Asian...Oh my, and only 17% white.
Amazing. They actually keep a list of undergraduates based on race and ethnicity.
Not unusual many schools do.
It's to be transparent because so many people have misconceptions about this.
Here is an interesting stat, last year the students from Mission that was accepted into Berkely had a average GPA of 4.13 not bad at all.