B.R. Valentine

I often get asked by parents, what does my kid need to achieve to earn a place at UC Berkeley? The answer is, I don’t know. There used to be an implicit social contract that if a California resident excels in school and is a very high achiever, there would be a predictable path to one of the leading campuses of the University of California system. Until the early-2000s this was explicit in that between 50-75% of incoming classes had to be admitted on the basis of academic criteria alone (GPA, SATs, APs). A high school student basically knew what they had to hit to get admitted to Cal. UCs no longer considers SAT/ACT scores, and letters of recommendation are generally not part of the application. The remaining academic record is heavily based on grades, course-taking, "school context", supplemented by personal insight questions (in the AI era!) and activities. But in an era of substantial grade inflation, transcripts have become a noisy signal. True academic achievement matters much less than it used to. The result is, while not literally random, highly unpredictable and illegible admissions. For California families, it is no longer clear what level of achievement is enough for their kids, or even what kind of achievement the system is trying to reward. I suspect that is not what most families in California want.

This campaign is not about Democrat v Republican. It's about common sense, change, practical solutions. I'm not a politician. I'm an outsider, running for governor to shake up a system that is obviously not working. Here's my story:

something about the whole "he's a salt of the earth oyster farmer" story slowly giving way to "uh his grandpa was a famous furniture designer and he went to private schools and his mom is basically the only customer of his oyster farm" thing does really irritate me though