Nolte: Highest Berkeley Acceptance Rate Is from School Where 94% Flunk Math

The average high school acceptance rate for UC Berkeley in the state of California is 15 percent. But Mission High School in San Francisco enjoys a UC Berkeley acceptance rate of 45 percent. Of the 76 Mission High students who applied to Berkeley in 2025, 34 were accepted.

At this point, you might say, What’s wrong with that? Maybe Mission graduates the most qualified seniors. Well…

“Only 17% of Mission High’s 11th graders scored proficient or above in English, along with a shocking 6% in math on the 2025 state assessment exam,” reports the New York Post, adding that this is the “lowest of any school in the San Francisco Unified School District — which averaged 59% and 43%, respectively.”

At this point you might say, Maybe Berkeley is accepting those 17 percent who scored proficient in English and those six percent who did the same in math.

Nope.

The 76 seniors who applied to UC Berkeley in 2025 made up 29 percent of the total senior class. Since Berkeley accepted 45 percent of those of that 29 percent, there is no way Berkeley avoided accepting students who failed to pass the math state exam. Seriously, do the math. Or, if you attend Mission High School, have someone do the math for you.

This news also helps to confirm a recent op-ed column written by a UC Berkeley teaching professor of mathematics named Zvezdelina Stankova. The article is titled:

I teach calculus at Berkeley. Some of my students can’t do middle school math

Since the University of California abandoned the SAT and ACT, thousands of faculty say it’s admitting students who aren’t prepared for the coursework. Will UC listen?

He goes on to compare the UC Berkeley acceptance rate at two separate California high schools (including Mission High) along with their test scores. This is fascinating…

“At Dougherty Valley High School in San Ramon, 432 of 756 juniors exceeded California’s math standard in 2024, as measured by SBAC,” Stankova reports. “Of the school’s 542 Berkeley applicants that fall, 44 were admitted — an acceptance rate of 8%.”

But…

“At Mission High School in San Francisco, 193 of 202 juniors did not meet the state math standard. Yet Berkeley admitted 34 of the school’s 76 applicants — a 45% acceptance rate.”

He adds that 174 “Dougherty Valley students who exceeded the state benchmark were rejected,” while at “least 25 Mission High students who failed to meet the benchmark were admitted.”

At present, “admissions officers [are] forbidden from considering the one standardized measure that provided a common academic benchmark across California’s thousands of high schools.”

That insanity has been in effect since 2020.

So why are unqualified students accepted at a much higher rate than qualified students? Obviously, it’s a DEI scam, a way to promote the horrors of equity at the expense of white and Asian students.

From where I sit, this is also a reprehensible sin against non-white and non-Asian students in two respects…

First, there is no motivation to go through the trouble of teaching these students to a college level when the SAT and ACT tests don’t count for California admissions. Okay, who does that hurt? The students, obviously. Who does this benefit? The lazy middle and high school teachers, obviously.

Secondly, this is one more way for these universities to abuse these students financially. In-state tuition at UC Berkeley is presently around $15,000 per year. That does not include housing, meals, etc. So you’ve got all these students unprepared for college, paying for college.

This is cruel to those students who do the work to qualify and get snubbed.

This is cruel to the students who are not qualified and then dropped into a deep end they cannot handle.