Not necessarily. I have a niece who is a textbook A-plus Asian student, she didn't get into any top school nor did any UC-school accept her. She is in a CA community college now hoping to transfer later. (She did get into an expensive 2nd tier private college, but since Covid shut everything down she withdrew and transferred to a CC near home.)
Years ago I tried to counsel her parents into letting her do extra-curricular activities that did not fit the stereotypical Asian student profile, but they would not hear it. Piano it was, rather than sports or other non-academic work/volunteering. They did not understand that an Asian girl with a 4+ GPA and years of piano training was not going to get a fair shake when it came to college admissions.
Yeah, you might not get Berkeley, but an A+ student is guaranteed admission to a UC. The profile you describe is far better than the average student at UCR and would be quite competitive at Davis or Irvine.
Did something fall through here? Did she not even apply to a mid-tier "safety school"?
When have these schools ever said they care only about academic merit? They explicitly don’t and never have; every high school has a counselor that will tell you that you need to have more on your application than grades and a test score.
Anecdote: I had straight As in high school, took every AP class they offered, 98th percentile SAT and got rejected from every single college I applied to except for one state school which I’m pretty sure they were obligated to accept me to for being a resident
Years ago I tried to counsel her parents into letting her do extra-curricular activities that did not fit the stereotypical Asian student profile, but they would not hear it. Piano it was, rather than sports or other non-academic work/volunteering. They did not understand that an Asian girl with a 4+ GPA and years of piano training was not going to get a fair shake when it came to college admissions.