Does taking classes outside school help for UC Berkeley?

UUC Berkeley's admissions readers weigh the context of an applicant's school, and that context protects a student whose school offered little. Berkeley's own research instrument, printed in the 2005 Hout report, shows readers were also asked a second and harder question: when the school ran out, what did the student do next?

Many families assume context does all the work, and that a thin course catalog will simply be forgiven. Forgiveness is not the same as credit, and a file can end up weaker than the student's record deserves. Both the coding sheet and Berkeley's former readers are unusually specific about what earns that credit.