When he was a Mission High School student, Misael Villalta was grateful for the college counselors who guided him as he applied to selective universities.
The college and career center helped him navigate the forms, scholarships, and financial aid that led to his acceptance to UC Berkeley. But once he arrived, Villalta realized that being accepted to one of the world’s top public universities didn’t mean he was prepared to succeed there.
“The challenge begins once students arrive on campus,” he said. “Many of us are academically behind our peers.”
Villalta’s experience reflects a growing gap between those who get into California’s top public universities and those who are ready for a rigorous academic experience.
A clear example is the link between Mission High and UC Berkeley. Mission, part of the San Francisco Unified School District, has for four consecutive years had the highest percentage of students accepted to UC Berkeley of any California public high school with more than 50 applicants. But it ranks as the second worst in the proportion of students who stay at the university for more than a year.
Mission also has had the lowest six-year UC graduation rate among the Bay Area’s largest public high schools: 61%. That’s among the worst rates in the state and 23 points below the next-lowest SFUSD school.
How SF high schools compare on Berkeley acceptance
Berkeley-specific and systemwide UC acceptance rates for fall 2025 freshman applicants, by SF high school.
Berkeley acceptance rate Systemwide UC acceptance rate
Mission's 44.7% Berkeley acceptance rate for fall 2025 was nearly double the next-highest SF school and roughly four times Burton's.
Source: University of California Office of the President
This exemplifies a tension playing out across the UC system: Since campuses dropped standardized testing in 2020, admissions have leaned more on GPA, essays, extracurriculars, and hardship. It’s a shift that’s meant to widen access for students, like many at Mission, who are disproportionately first-generation, low-income, and/or part of minority groups.
But as more students get accepted to Berkeley, professors and counselors say, the university has no reliable way of gauging who is prepared for the workload — and a growing number are not. The result: San Francisco’s feel-good admissions story (opens in new tab) is also a story about the cost of getting rid of the SAT.
A test-blind experiment
Thousands of faculty members signed a pair of open letters (opens in new tab) this year demanding that UC reinstate the use of standardized tests, like the SAT and ACT, which were abandoned as factors of admission in 2020. They argue that since the testing requirement was abolished, professors have seen more students who are unprepared for the rigor and content of college-level coursework.
Between 2017 and 2019, Mission High had an average annual acceptance rate of 24.5% at UC Berkeley. Between 2023 and 2025, that figure jumped to 41.8%.
“You just see a completely different population of students,” said Mina Aganagic, a UC Berkeley professor of mathematics and physics who helped write one of the letters. She described students arriving without “any mathematical infrastructure at all.” She was disappointed, but not surprised, when informed of the juxtaposition between Mission’s acceptance and retention rates.
Aganagic says that without some way to verify that students are prepared before admission, UC risks becoming “some kind of degree-stamping mill.” Aganagic and her colleagues recently found (opens in new tab) that, between 2021 and 2023, the share of first-semester calculus students at Berkeley who failed to pass rose from 18.5% to 30.7%.
“We’ll just let a whole bunch of kids in, we’ll just stamp their degrees, they walk out, and we hope we’ve achieved something.”
Mission High's Berkeley acceptance rate, 2016-2025
Share of Mission High applicants accepted to UC Berkeley each year. The dashed line marks 2020, when the UC system dropped SAT/ACT scores and moved to test-blind admissions.
Mission's average Berkeley acceptance rate rose from 24.5% in 2017-19 to 41.7% in 2023-25 — a jump that took hold after the UC system moved to test-blind admissions in 2020.
Source: University of California Office of the President
College admissions consultants who work with Bay Area students note that without standardized test scores to reference, UC Berkeley leans heavily on GPA and extracurriculars when considering applicants.
It has also given more weight to factors that indicate a student comes from a disadvantaged background, such as household income and first-generation status. Mission has the second-highest percentage of students receiving free and reduced-price meals of any public high school in San Francisco with over 900 students.
“If kids are applying with the same grades — the most important thing Berkeley looks at — but Mission students also have hardship, first-gen, and low-income status factored in, that’s obviously going to mean a higher acceptance rate,” said Dan Lee, cofounder of Solomon Admissions Consulting (opens in new tab).
David Montesano, an admissions strategist, framed the rationale for that approach as similar to venture capital. “I think what they’re doing is they’re just giving these kids a chance,” he said. “You don’t know which ones are gonna hit.”
Counselors say it’s common even for strong test-takers from low-performing high schools to struggle once they reach rigorous colleges. Notably, though, a Mission student’s odds of staying enrolled through their freshman year have fallen since test-blind admissions began — with the first-year retention rate going from 100% in 2018 to 83% in 2024.
High grades, low readiness
Levi Lum has high praise for his old college counselors. The Mission High alum remembers one staffer who coached students on personal statements and ran strategy sessions well past the end of the school day.
But when he started at UC Berkeley, he realized the chasm between a good academic résumé and preparedness.
“Grades were sometimes too easy to earn,” Lum said of his time at Mission High. “In many required classes, attendance and basic completion could be enough to receive a grade that would ordinarily signal strong proficiency.”
How SFUSD's 11th graders compare on state testing
The CAASPP is California's annual statewide standardized test for English and math. Here's the share of 11th graders scoring proficient or above on the 2025 exam, by SFUSD high school.
English proficient Math proficient
Just 17% of Mission's 11th graders scored proficient or above in English and 6% in math on the 2025 CAASPP — the lowest of any SFUSD high school in both subjects, and far below the district averages of 59% and 43%.
Source: California Department of Education
Lum, now a rising junior economics major at Berkeley, added that Mission’s rigorous Advanced Placement or honors courses, and classes taught by perceivably “tough” teachers, were limited and usually elective. He also noted disparities in some AP classes between classroom grades and exam scores, suggesting a strong grade didn’t always reflect the comprehension that someone outside the school might expect. “Most teachers seemed to care a lot, but the quality and collegiate relevance of instruction were often uneven,” Lum said.
Mission graduates who enroll at a UC school met the college’s entry-level writing requirement (opens in new tab) less often than graduates of all but one other San Francisco public high school in 2024, at a rate of 26.8%. Of all SFUSD schools with over 600 students, Mission also posted the lowest average CAASPP scores in 2025, which measure English and math proficiency among 11th graders. In 2019-20, the most recent school year in which UC required standardized tests in admissions, Mission had the worst average ACT of any SF public school with more than 40 test takers.
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Of the 924 SFUSD students who took the ACT that year, 53% got a 21 or higher. The average ACT math score was 22. At Mission High, only 15% of the 82 ACT test-takers got a 21 or higher. The average ACT math score was 15.
“I did not arrive at Berkeley unable to read, write, or understand difficult ideas,” Lum said. But he noted that he found gaps in mathematical fluency and struggled to keep pace with cumulative lessons. Classes moved faster than he was used to, making “it harder to keep up with new material.”
Mission High touted (opens in new tab) that of the 83% of students who applied to a UC campus for the 2021-22 year, 90% were accepted — “higher than any other school in SFUSD.” But just 69% of the students who enrolled ended up staying for their sophomore year — and only 47% graduated within four years.
Which SF high schools' graduates finish at UC?
Four- and six-year graduation rates for students from San Francisco high schools who enrolled at any University of California campus.
4-year rate (class of 2021) 6-year rate (class of 2019)
Mission High graduates have the lowest four-year UC graduation rate of any SFUSD high school — 47%, about 23 points below the group average of 70%. Its six-year rate, 61%, also ranks as the lowest of any public high school in San Francisco.
Source: University of California Office of the President
Students who leave college rarely come back. Only 2% to 3% of the roughly 43.1 million Americans who have attended college but did not earn a degree re-enroll in a given year (opens in new tab), and just 36.1% of those who return go back to the same school (opens in new tab), according to National Student Clearinghouse and Trellis Strategies. The odds worsen with each departure (opens in new tab); students who drop out more than once are far less likely to ever finish a degree.
Villalta said he believes Mission’s curriculum can be blamed for students’ lack of preparedness and retention. He pointed to a difference in AP course offerings between Mission and Lowell High School — a magnet school that is considered to be SFUSD’s most academically rigorous — as an example.
Mission caps 11th and 12th graders (opens in new tab) at three AP or honors classes a year, and students must be “recommended for these courses by their teachers.” SFUSD’s 2025-26 course matrix (opens in new tab) lists eight AP courses at Mission — none in biology, chemistry, U.S. history, government, psychology or economics, and no math beyond Calculus AB. Lowell offers 33, including eight in history alone under an “open enrollment policy.”
“I often had to put in significantly more effort to keep up,” Villalta said, “because I had never been exposed to that same level of academic rigor.”
Still, he said, Mission does a great job of helping students achieve their dream of going to college, adding that those who struggle do so “not because we lack the ability or work ethic, but because we were not given access to the same academic opportunities.”
What the schools say
SFUSD spokesperson Katrina Kincade points to Mission’s AP and Career & Technical Education pathways and dual enrollment partnership with City College of San Francisco as evidence of investment in college preparation.
She did not directly address the gap in AP course offerings Villalta described or if anything was being done to close it.
Mission High School’s principal declined to comment.
AP course offerings across SFUSD high schools
Number of Advanced Placement subjects offered at each school for 2025-26, per SFUSD's course matrix.
Mission offers just 8 AP subjects for 2025-26 — a fraction of Lowell's 33. Even adjusted for enrollment, Mission offers about 8.4 AP subjects per 1,000 students, the lowest rate in the district, compared with Lowell's 12.7.
Source: SFUSD 2025-26 course matrix
UC Berkeley spokesperson Janet Gilmore confirmed that Mission’s elevated acceptance rate has held “for the last few years” but said it isn’t part of “a particular strategy to target an individual school.”
UC Davis mathematician Joel Hass says placing students in programs well beyond their preparation is “a cruel recipe for ruining their lives.”
“They can help guide students to the educational environment where they have the greatest opportunity to flourish,” Hass said. “For some, this is one of the UC campuses, and for others it is CSU or the community colleges.”
Other major universities that abandoned testing requirements during the pandemic have since reinstated them, including MIT, Stanford, Harvard, and Yale.
The UC Board of Regents addressed the testing issue at its July 14 meeting. Chair Maria Anguiano set a June 2027 deadline for the Academic Senate to deliver a formal recommendation. Any reinstatement of testing is unlikely to take effect before the fall 2028 entering class.
Until then, admission will continue to rest on grades, extracurriculars, and personal circumstances rather than test scores.
“Mission gave me considerable room to pursue independent interests and projects, but it did not consistently require sustained academic discipline,” said Lum. “It was possible to excel without especially consistent study habits. I had to develop those habits after arriving at Berkeley.”