A San Francisco high school where critics say strong grades can be earned largely through attendance is now posting the highest University of California, Berkeley acceptance rate in the state, intensifying debate over grade inflation, academic standards and whether some students are arriving on college campuses underprepared.
Mission High School saw 45% of its applicants admitted to the elite public university last fall, with 34 of 76 students accepted, according to figures compiled by the San Francisco Chronicle. That rate far outpaced the statewide UC Berkeley acceptance average of 15%.
Skeptics argue the results do not reflect stronger classroom performance but instead point to lenient grading practices and admissions changes across the University of California system, including the elimination of SAT requirements. They say those shifts have helped send students with weak math foundations into demanding college courses such as Calculus.
“Grades were sometimes too easy to earn,” Mission High student Levi Lum told the San Francisco Standard.
“In many required classes, attendance and basic completion could be enough to receive a grade that would ordinarily signal strong proficiency.”
State test results have added fuel to the criticism. On the 2025 assessment, just 17% of Mission High 11th graders scored proficient or higher in English, while only 6% reached that mark in math — the lowest results of any school in the San Francisco Unified School District. Districtwide, the averages were 59% in English and 43% in math.
San Francisco resident Liz Le is among those questioning why academically competitive Lowell High School, where about 71% of students met math standards, has a lower University of California acceptance rate than Mission High.
“UCs punish Lowell students for working hard because of their race, while setting up Mission kids up for failure & depression,” Le said, arguing that “race-based admissions fails all kids.”
Although University of California can’t legally consider race in admissions decisions, its decision in 2020 to drop SAT and ACT testing requirements as part of a settlement was presented as a bid to promote equity, as non-white applicants typically score lower than white ones.
Mission High has a large student population who are socioeconomically disadvantaged.
Students at the school often have high GPAs, but critics say lax grading standards simply set them up for failure.
Lum added that at Berkeley, he was behind in mathematical fluency and struggled to keep pace with lessons. Classes moved faster than he was used to, he said.
Just half of Mission High’s students graduated from a University of California school within four years, the Standard reported.
The discrepancy between admission statistics and proficiency standards is one reason why many professors are calling for the UCs to re-implement standardized testing for admissions.
Thousands of faculty members signed open letters earlier this year calling for the restoration of the SAT and ACT.
The change has brought up sad examples of college students needing to be taught basic math instead of the actual curriculum.
“Some students are five to eight years behind in mathematics. Office hours that should be spent discussing integrals instead become lessons on fractions and basic algebra you would expect students to learn in middle school,” wrote math professor Zvezdelina Stankova, of UC Berkeley, in an op-ed piece.
Last year, The UC San Diego Senate-Administration Working Group released a shocking report that found a 30-fold increase in students who lacked basic math skills.
Just 30 of the school’s incoming freshmen had below-high-school-level math skills in 2020. In 2025, that number rose to 900, the report found.
Mission High School’s principal declined to comment to the Standard.
A UC Berkeley spokesperson confirmed that Mission High’s high acceptance rate has held “for the last few years” but insisted “a particular strategy to target an individual school” doesn’t exist.
