Tutor Doctor of West San Francisco Change Location
(415) 862-4017
(415) 862-4017
Tutor Doctor of West San Francisco
(415) 862-4017

The Road to UC Admissions Championship: San Francisco High Schools (Blog 2: A Qualitative Assessment)

Let’s add further color to the San Francisco high school UC admissions data by exploring the quality of the University of California College (UC) offering the admission.

Using the U.S. News Best Colleges we have grouped the nine UCs into the top three, middle three, and remaining three.

UC colleges ranked and grouped as public ivies, top, and best value Berkeley to UCLA

With these three groups in hand, we have divided up each SF high school’s total admissions, then looking at this break down certain trends* appear.

1)High achiever schools, such as, Proof School with 88% of all admission coming from public ivies, 12% from top publics, and 0% from the best value tier. (see below table)

2)Balanced admissions schools, such as, St. Ignatius College Preparatory with 32% of all admission coming from public ivies, 31% from top publics, and 37% from best value. Also, High schools with the majority of admissions from top publics will also labelled as balanced. (see below table)

3)Safety focused admissions Schools, such as, Marshall High, with 7% of all admission coming from public ivies, 37% from top publics, and 56% from best value. (see below table)

Proof St Ignatius College and Marshall High School UC college admissions trends

For a bit of fun, we have nicknamed** the groups, “Ravenclaw style” to match a high-flying nature, versus, “Hufflepuff style” to match their grounded nature.

Hogwarts Style of SF high schools in the Bay Area from Ravenclaw to Hufflepuff

Table showing grouped UC admissions as proportion of total admissions.

Table showing grouped UC admissions as proportion of total admissions

*Our methodology:

For each high school, the number of UC admissions are grouped to top three UCs, middle three UCs , and remaining three UCs (as per APR 2023 U.S. News Best Colleges) and then calculated as a percentage proportion of the total number of UC admissions received.

Then the below order of operation is used to determine the “majority of admissions/style”. The order terminates when a statement is fulfilled:

  • When all three percentages are within ±8% of 33% (i.e. 25%-42%) this HS is classed as “balanced”.
  • When the highest and second highest percentages are within 10% the higher tier is awarded
  • When the highest percentage is leading by 10% or more then the tier with the higher percentage is awarded.

**Relax, this is just a bit of fun. We all know that the Sorting Hat placed Harry in the wrong house anyway!

References: UC admissions: UCLA, Berkeley acceptance rates for every CA school (sfchronicle.com)

Raw data: Admissions by source school | University of California

California Department of Education School Directory