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A San Francisco high school where students get top grades simply for showing up now has the highest acceptance rate in the state to the prestigious University of California, Berkeley — as critics blame rampant grade inflation and rock-bottom standards for a surge in ill-prepared college students who end up dropping out.
Mission High School had a 45% acceptance rate into the elite university, with 34 out of its 76 applicants gaining admission last fall, far ahead of the state average of 15%, according to data compiled by the San Francisco Chronicle.
But it’s not because of superior academics, critics say, but rather because of low standards and a lefty policy that eliminated SAT testing requirements in the University of California system, sending a flood of students who can barely do fractions into demanding courses like Calculus.
“Grades were sometimes too easy to earn,” Levi Lum of Mission High 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.”
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, the lowest of any school in the San Francisco Unified School District — which averaged 59% and 43%, respectively.
San Francisco resident Liz Le is among many who have noted the academically rigorous Lowell High School, where around 71% met math standards, has a lower acceptance rate in the University of California system than Mission High.
“UCs punish Lowell students for working hard because of their race, while setting up Mission kids up for failure & depression,” said Le, who claimed “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.
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