Rancho San Juan emerges as UC Berkeley pipeline for students.

Rancho San Juan High School has only been open since 2019, but its college outcomes already rival some of California’s most elite campuses — and they’re doing it with first-generation students from Salinas.

For the class of 2025, Rancho San Juan ranked No. 3 in California for UC Berkeley admissions among public schools and No. 4 when private colleges are included, according to data by the San Francisco Chronicle. Mission High School in San Francisco is ranked at No. 1.

The class of 2025 earned admission to UC Berkeley at a rate of 30 percent, with 20 students admitted from a pool of 66 applicants. The acceptance rate is more than double the statewide average of 14 percent, according to Rancho San Juan Principal Yolanda Campos.

Previously, the class of 2023—the school’s first four-year graduating class—saw four students admitted to Yale and one to Harvard, all who are set to graduate in the upcoming year.

The class of 2026 had a total of 336 seniors graduating, where 12 students received a full-ride scholarship to UC Berkeley. The class received 205 UC admission offers, 246 admission offers from the CSU system, and 108 admission offers from private colleges.

Michelle Duff, 18, graduate of the class of 2026, is attending and starting her first semester at UC Berkeley and says she is forever grateful for all the help and guidance at Rancho San Juan.

“I am a first-generation college student and I am still in shock for the opportunity to be able to come to [UC Berkeley],” Duff says. “My jaw dropped for like a whole minute straight when I found out I was accepted.”

Duff will double major in business and theater and is set to graduate in 2030. She hopes to return to Salinas to open a community art studio.

Much of Rancho San Juan’s success is rooted in the Puente Project, which focuses on college access for first-generation and Latino students. The school now has 56 Puente seniors, with 32 Puente juniors and 32 sophomores, plus 62 Puente freshmen.

Puente and English teachers Peter Williams and Jordana Henry say Puente practices—intensive writing, college counseling, and a focus on community—spill into their non-Puente English classes, where they teach all students as if they are future AP and college students. This allows them to be well-prepared for rigorous courses once they head to college.

Whereas other schools within the Salinas Union High School District have separate “Plus” classes for Gifted and Talented Education or GATE, honor students or ELA students, Rancho San Juan has students all in one room.

“Even though we are the youngest school, there has been such a great success rate because of the way that all students are seen,” Campos says. “There's not a separation. They're all together and they're all seen as equal.”

Duff adds by saying she enjoyed having Williams and Henry as teachers during her time at the school.

“Ms. Henry was my AP Literature teacher junior year and really helped me through a lot of things, and she really fostered my intellectual curiosity,” Duff says. “Mr. Williams helped me out with all my college applications. He would stay after school for hours, helping everyone and giving us so much support. So I will forever value that.”

A huge part of getting accepted to UC Berkeley, Duff adds, is also possible by her attending Rancho San Juan’s College Bridge program; students can choose to take the summer before their senior year. The class is an intensive 10-day experience focused on navigating the college application process and also taught by Williams and Henry.

“And that class allows students to start looking into scholarships, they start talking about PIQs, how to request letters of recommendations,” Campos says.

The program began right after Covid and was first offered as one class, but now two classes are offered during the summer. According to Campos, Rancho San Juan is the only school in the district to offer a college bridge class.

Rancho San Juan also implements an “advisory” period which is four times a week with different themes. Monday is goal setting day, Tuesday is literacy day, Thursday is college and career day and Friday is community day.

“So it's like we have these really strategic things. Everett Alvarez High School has an advisory period, but it's only once a week,” Henry says. “So, some of our success is attributed to these systems because of the way we use them to help kids.”

What makes the school’s story distinctive is how former students regularly return to campus to speak in classes, read college essays and mentor current seniors. Each spring, Rancho San Juan also organizes parent panels to help families process fears about sending their children away to college.

Henry describes it more as a practice of real community, one that continues long after students cross the graduation stage.

This young campus is reshaping what is possible for first-generation students in Salinas—and building a college-going culture designed to last generations.