The University of California's Admissions Crisis:

The Deceit No One Talks About
The University of California (UC) system, once the gold standard of public higher education, now stands accused of quietly dismantling the foundation of merit-based admissions and deceiving families and students about what truly matters for acceptance. In this exposé, we lay bare the realities the UC administration doesn't want you to know.

A System Rigged Against Excellence
For decades, the UC's holistic admissions process was a model for evaluating academic rigor, extracurricular impact, and personal story-offering students from diverse backgrounds a fair shot at California's top universities. High-achieving students with excellent GPAs, top SAT/ACT scores, and national or international accolades were routinely rewarded with admission to the flagships: UC Berkeley, UCLA, UC San Diego. That world has vanished. Today, star students-the ones elites like MIT, Harvard, and Stanford covet—are often shown the door by UCs, in favor of applicants who tick the right geographic or demographic boxes. Imagine a student with a 4.4 GPA, a near-perfect SAT score, and international science awards being rejected by UC San Diego—only to be welcomed by MIT. This is not a rare occurrence; it is the new normal.

The Quiet Quotas: How the Numbers Reveal the Truth
Let's cut to the data. In elite high schools-Westview, CCA, Del Norte—acceptance rates to UC Berkeley and UC San Diego have collapsed since 2018. In 2016, Westview students enjoyed a 44% admission rate to Berkeley; in 2021, it plummeted to 6.7%. The most rigorous schools, once feeders to the UCs, now find their students all but locked out. Contrast this with schools in less academically competitive or more "underrepresented" areas, which have seen dramatic surges in their acceptance rates, even with absentee rates as high as 40%. The selective exclusion is obvious and, in the language of the Supreme Court, likely illegal, favoring group quotas by geographic and demographic proxy.

The Illusion of Holistic Review
After California banned affirmative action in the 1990s via Prop 209, the UCs pioneered a sophisticated holistic review process that considered the full human context of each student. Yet, after 2020, under the guise of promoting "equity" and "diversity," UC admissions have regressed. The UC's manipulations include:
  • SAT/ACT Abolition: Despite clear internal research and faculty votes showing standardized tests as objective, equitable predictors of success—especially for under-resourced students—the UCs made the SAT/ACT test-blind, but doubled down on saying it was “unfair,” a claim unsupported by their own data. UC is increasingly isolated as perhaps the only top universities with a policy of willful ignorance to this proven metric. 
  • Opaque Criteria: The UC system has stopped publishing meaningful, data-driven profiles on admitted students. Now, the only transparent metric is the GPA, which is inflated or deflated depending on school district ideology, not academic merit.
  • Devalued Essays and Extracurriculars: Essays are rarely thoroughly read—UC application readers are paid so little, they cannot legally earn minimum wage if they do more than skim each file. Extracurriculars and APs matter less if you’re not in the “right” zip code.
Equity or Cover for Discriminatory Practices?
Let’s be clear: the UC system’s rhetoric of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” has morphed from a commitment to fairness into a system of quiet quotas, hiding behind proxies for race and class. Geographic origin, zip code, and race-based group metrics have replaced individual merit. The hard truth is that the new admissions regime punishes working-class immigrant families in “overrepresented” communities. It’s no longer enough for your child to be smart, hardworking, or the first in their family to win a national award—if they’re from the “wrong” school or group, they face rejection.

The False Hope of GPA
The fetishization of GPA as the single measure of academic distinction is deeply dishonest. “Equitable grading” policies ensure that, in some districts, nearly everyone gets an A, regardless of effort or skill. In others, top students face grade deflation for taking the hardest classes. The UCs know this but exploit it anyway, using artificial GPA cutoffs to quietly manipulate the diversity of admits.
  • Median Unweighted GPA for UCLA Admits: 4.0—no B’s allowed.
  • If you attend a school where honest grading still exists, your chances dwindle, no matter how outstanding your achievements.

The Cynical Engine: Rankings and Rejection
Why do this? Every year, the UC system boasts about record “selectivity.” When SAT/ACTs became optional or blind, tens of thousands more students applied—many with little hope of admission, inflating the numbers. Rejecting them boosts UCLA and Berkeley’s U.S. News rankings, even as the quality of the admitted cohort declines and qualified California students are excluded.

The Human Cost: Talent Lost and Lawsuits Filed
The victims are real: students who win international math and science competitions but end up denied by UCs—while being snapped up by Ivy League schools and leading tech companies. Families have begun to file lawsuits, arguing the admissions process is not only deceptive but discriminatory.
Many of California’s best and brightest—kids whose immigrant parents dreamed of opportunity—are instead being sent out of state, or overseas, forced to seek fairness and reward for merit elsewhere. California's economy, from which we all benefit, is driven by Silicon Valley, which in turn is driven by brainpower. Yet the madness of UC's program of social engineering ignores the talented children of talented Asians, forcing them out of state, where they face higher college costs.

The Deceit
What drives this? UC regents and administrators are not just bureaucrats—they are ideologues, often politically appointed, who substitute their own worldview for data, empire over excellence, and ideology over fairness. When their preference for restoring affirmative action was rejected at the ballot box (Prop 16), they simply built workaround quotas in secret. They do this while publicly claiming transparency, posting misleading “admissions requirements” and ignoring their own studies. The result: a system where “equity” is weaponized to justify exclusion, and every applicant, family, and taxpayer pays the price.

The Path Forward
Students and families deserve honesty, not gaslighting. The UC system can hide the trout, but the milk is tainted. It’s time for California’s public universities to:
  • Restore transparent, merit-based admissions.
  • Publish real admissions data, including school-by-school admit rates and student profiles.
  • End cynical ranking games and group quotas.
  • Reward authentic achievement, effort, and story.
Until then, the UC’s greatest deception isn’t what they say—it’s what they hide. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. SARD is exposing UC's folded lies in federal court and will bring them to heel.