Admission Chances at a University of California

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of California - GENERAL
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1

Hi,

My kid is committed but not sole-minded (she has a balanced life). This shows in her transcript (4.25 weighted GPA for the U.C. application purposes from collegeboard website) because she is “only” taking 4 AP classes. She has good volunteer experience and also played competitive (travel volleyball) so her well-rounded ness comes across but she didn’t do anything especially noteworthy in the sense her volleyball team didn’t win any championships, her volunteering didn’t win any awards etc.

She is a junior and will take a further 2 AP classes next year so we expect the weighted UC GPA to stay around 4.1 to 4.25.

We live in CA and we prefer she goes to a U.C. but if she doesn’t get in she needs to prepare to apply for other schools.

So the big questions are:

  1. What are her chances to get into ANY U.C. as an undeclared major?
  2. What are her chances of getting into one of the better (not Merced, not Riverside, not Santa Cruz) UC as an undeclared major?
  3. Same two questions as above but not for a pre-med major like biology.

Thanks in advance.

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I’m sure someone else will jump in with the GPA chance stats.

I can’t find where College Board has a UC GPA calculation. You might look at which courses at her HS (some UC approved honors courses may be included) qualify for a UC GPA bump (University of California A-G Course List) and then calculate her UC GPA using courses from the summer before 10th grade to the summer after 11th grade. GPA Calculator for the University of California – RogerHub It may be the same number but just verify that CB calculation is correct.

The UCs use 13 criteria to evaluate an applicant. How applications are reviewed | UC Admissions They look at much more than GPA. If your daughter takes advantage of the Activities & Awards section and Personal Insight Questions, it will help her application.

Many applicants focus on the four PIQ but I would make sure she also spends time on the wording and crafting of her descriptions of her extracurricular activities. They allow for 20 and give 350 characters to describe the organization and 350 to describe her involvement. Don’t worry about winning a championship or volunteer title. Describe her role and how she engaged in these activities.

As a CA resident, you should also look at CSUs.

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The UC’s consider all 3 UC GPA’s so using the Rogerhub caculator posted by @lkg4answers, repost with all her UC GPA’s. Undeclared major is not an issue since many majors are found in the College of Letters and Sciences which admit all students as Undeclared. Then the students need to take specific course requirements and maintain a specific GPA to declare the major. Undeclared does not necessarily mean an easier admit.

Biology is highly competitive and impacted at the majority of the UC’s so if the major is housed in the College of Letters and Sciences at any of the UC campuses, it will not make a difference she if lists that major or Undeclared. If Biology is housed in specific college for Biological sciences then it could be a tougher admit.

Biology is found in the College of L&S at the following campuses:
UCB
UCLA (The College)
UCSB
UCSC

Biology is found in Natural Sciences or Biological Sciences College:
UCSD (Capped major=Impacted)
UCD
UCR
UCI
UCM

That said, I will list how each campus admits Freshman:
UCB:
Division (L&S, CNR, CoC, CED, CoE) matters for admission selectivity

Note that L&S admits students as undeclared; admission to capped majors (e.g. CS, economics, psychology, ORMS, statistics, art practice, and a few others) is by college GPA in prerequisite courses (and portfolio for art practice) after attending for a few semesters.

UCB does not consider alternate majors.

UCD:
Admission decisions are made based upon the qualifications of the applicant pool and the number of available spaces within each academic area:
• College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences admits by college
• College of Biological Sciences admits by college
• College of Letters and Science admits by College but within specific academic departments: ie. (Humanities, Arts and Cultural Studies; Mathematics and Physical Sciences; Social Sciences)
• College of Engineering admits by academic department

Students applying as “undeclared” or “undeclared/exploratory” are considered within the college/academic department to which they applied.

Applicants are encouraged to list an alternate major, but not in the
same area as the primary major (e.g., Computer Science Engineering with alternate Computer Science in the College of L&S). Occasionally, UCD admits to the alternate major.

UCI:
UCI admits into the University first and then into the major. In the case that UCI is unable to accommodate all qualified applicants in their first-choice major, those students who indicate a valid alternate major may be offered admission in that major or Undeclared.

UCLA:
For the College of Letters and Science, the applicant’s major is not considered during the review process. Alternate majors are not considered.

UCSD:
The campus does not admit students on the basis of academic major or choice of UC San Diego undergraduate college. UCSD admits into the University first then into the major. Alternate majors are considered and capped majors are highly competitive. Also note: Capped majors require additional pre-req courses and specific GPA to be able to qualify if changing majors. Also if applying to a capped major, select an non-capped major as an alternate.

UCSB:
College of Letters and Sciences: Choice of major is not considered in selection to the College of Letters and Science. Alternate majors are considered for Engineering applicants if a major in the College of L&S is listed.

UCSC:
Choice of major does not influence the selection of first-year students, except for those applicants interested in a major offered by the Jack Baskin School of Engineering (BSOE).

UCR/UCM:
Admission by major but alternate/2nd choice major will be considered if applicant does not meet their first choice admission standards.

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Regarding chancing, all I can do is list the overall admit rate for each campus based on the Capped weighted UC GPA. The more competitive/impacted the major, the lower the admit rate will be. These are only guidelines to give you an idea of what schools she should be targeting. Since there are 13 areas of criteria in the UC application review and each campus weights each item differently, it is impossible predict. I also agree that she should be applying to several Cal states. Just note that Cal States admit by major, some do not offer Undeclared as an option (ie. Cal Poly SLO) and the CSU’s use only the Capped weighted UC GPA (exception of DE/CC classes are taken) for admission purposes and are mainly stat based.

2021:

Campus 4.20+ 3.80-4.19 3.40-3.79 3.00-3.39
Berkeley 30% 11% 2% 1%
Davis 85% 55% 23% 10%
Irvine 60% 31% 14% 1%
Los Angeles 29% 6% 1% 0%
Merced 97% 98% 96% 89%
Riverside 97% 92% 62% 23%
San Diego 75% 35% 5% 1%
Santa Barbara 73% 28% 4% 1%
Santa Cruz 91% 81% 46% 9%

Here is a link to some specific data for UCB using the Fully weighted UC GPA by College or Overall: OPA – University of California Berkeley

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She needs to consider other schools besides UCs, or be open to UCSC, UCR, and UCM. My D has similar stats to yours and was shut out of UC completely (only applied to Santa Cruz, Davis, and Santa Barbara). Waitlisted at Davis and Santa Cruz, but she did not want to stay in CA anyway and is happily choosing a school 2300 miles away. Her BFF also has similar stats, accepted only into Santa Cruz and Riverside (waitlisted at Davis and San Diego), but is happily choosing Oregon State.

All OOS schools offered my D enough merit to bring the cost down to within $3000 of UCs.

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Be sure to note the distinction between weighted and weighted-capped GPA on UC web sites. Most UC web sites use weighted-capped GPA, so comparing with weighted GPA can result in overly optimistic changing.

GPA Calculator for the University of California – RogerHub will show weighted, weighted-capped, and unweighted versions of UC-recalculated GPA.

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While biology is the most common type of major for pre-meds, there is no specific undergraduate major requirement for pre-meds. However, many of the pre-med course requirements overlap with biology major requirements, so it can be “convenient” in terms of course selection.

But biology majors at the BA/BS level do not have that good major-related job prospects if they do not get into medical or other professional school.

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“But biology majors at the BA/BS level do not have that good major-related job prospects if they do not get into medical or other professional school.”

@ucbalumnus is spot on.
Bio majors, for the most part, have a weak ROI opportunities after graduation.
Pre med is a lofty goal so she should look at other areas of interest. Any major can get her into med school but the road there will be tough and VERY expensive. We’ve just been through that and continue to deal with the non coursework side of things.

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I recommend that you keep an open mind to what you are considering the “lesser” UCs and read my review of Merced in the UC Merced forum. Especially if she’s looking to go into Biology, pre-med etc. There is something really special and unique about what’s going on at UC Merced right now.

Also, UC Merced is offering us the best financial aid of any UC.

We have offers from several CSU’s and it’s shockingly minimal.

I think it’s impossible for any of us to chance your daughter. A review of any of the UC forums will show you that many of us have very high stats, highly qualified kids and there has been an unprecedented amount of rejections and waitlists with no real rhyme or reason.

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I believe that @JenBar is spot on with her post about keeping an “open mind” regarding UC Merced, Riverside and Santa Cruz. The UC’s all have wonderful things to offer California students and although these campuses are not as well known as UC Berkeley and UCLA, they are still UC’s with the same academic standards found at the rest of the campuses.

I would have her visit UCSC and UCR since she maybe happily surprised. I know that there was one poster whom I was corresponding with recently who’s daughter only got into UC Riverside and was not willing to attend. The poster finally convinced her D to visit during the Highlander days and she loved the campus and ended up enrolling.

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Does this refer to the difference between how CSU and UC calculate GPA when including CC classes taken while in HS, i.e. one honors semester point for UCs and two for CSUs… or something else?

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You are correct the difference between how the UC and CSU GPA are calculated is only if community college/college/DE courses have been taken.

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UCs count only 10-11 grades and Cal Poly is 9-11.

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Yes, UC and all the CSU’s except Cal Poly SLO use 10-11th grades for their GPA calculation. SLO uses 9-11th grades with the same 8 semester Honors cap for qualified classes taken 10-11th grades.

15

Thank you for the informative post. Her current GPA of 4.25 includes 4 AP classes takens so far and she will do 2 more next year. So I believe her GPA will go down slightly next year as she will have met the 8 semester cap.

I got my GPA from the https://www.californiacolleges.edu website.

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Apologies. I used the https://www.californiacolleges.edu website which shows a UC GPA of 4.25 and a CSU GPA of 4.17

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Thanks, trust me. I’ve been telling her a Biology degree is not going to open many doors if you just graduate with it.

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Senior year classes are not included in the CSU or UC GPA and unless she took CC/DE courses the summer prior to 10th through the summer prior to 12th, her CSU Capped weighted GPA should be the same as the UC Capped weighted GPA. Rogerhub is the better calculator since it calculates the unweighted UC GPA , Capped weighted and Fully weighted UC GPA. UC’s consider all 3 in their admission review.

Also 4 AP classes if they are a year long, meets the 8 semester cap already. Additional AP classes will be considered for HS course rigor but since Senior grades are not reported on the UC or CSU applications, they will not be considered in the GPA calculation.
UC approved Honors classes taken during this time will also qualify for the extra Honors points which could help with the Fully weighted UC GPA. She can look up the HS courses that meet the Honors point bump criteria here, just type in the HS name: University of California A-G Course List

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Just to give you some more statistical data for the UCSB as an example. Again a student is evaluated within the context of what is offered at their HS and how they compare to other top students there.

Average # of Honors/semesters for enrolled UCSB Freshman was 17.
Average enrolled UC GPA capped weighted was 4.24. Average admit UC GPA was 4.36.
Average # of a-g courses by semester was 50.

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a couple of quick points
Competitive CA publics have gotten stupidly difficult to get into. As far as UCs, with a 4.1ish GPA your kids best shot is going to be at UCR and UCM. UCSC is coin toss and the rest are unlikely.

this will give you a look at the GPA admitted to each UC.

For other CA publics, Most of the CSUs have honors programs that offer priority reg and some smaller GE classes. They are probably a good option. Most of the 23 CSUs would be happy to have her CPSLO probably not, SDSU probably a coin toss unless you are local, the rest are likely to admit her. All of the CSUs have solid and well respected STEM programs. Chico and Sonoma offer a traditional 4 year experience with lots of students on/near campus, while CPP, CSULB, Sac and most of the rest have a more commuter vibe. That doesn’t mean they have a bad rep with employers, it is just a different student experience - one at which lots of kids thrive thanks to access to local internships in more metro areas.
take a good look at privates like LMU and USD - with merit aid, the will probably be cost competitive with in state UCs.

Look at Wue - a program that offers discounted OOS tuition at Western publics. schools like UNR, Co State and Or State -
https://www.wiche.edu/tuition-savings/wue/wue-savings-finder/

also - she is very likely to change her major at least once(I recall reading an average of 2.5 major changes for all US college students)… so, pick a school that works for her rather than getting hung up on a single program.