I’m really motivated to be admitted as an anthropology major at UCLA. Before I knew I wanted to major in anthropology, I received a C in physical anthropology which is 1 out of 4 of the prerequisite.
What can I do to strengthen my application? I plan on working harder to excel in the rest of the 3 out of 4 required courses.
Also, how much would this C affect me?
Just do well in your othe rcourses. GPA for transfers is pretty much the entire app for the most part.
https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/infocenter/transfers-major
You’ll need a 3.5+ in order to be a competitive applicant. No more Cs in major pre-reqs though, that’s for sure.
The good news is that the acceptance rate for transfer students to the UCLA Anthropology major is 57%. However, the 25%-75% gpa bandwidth for those accepted into this major is 3.5-3.71. You are going to need to earn grades solidly within this bandwidth, and closer to the 3.71 if you are unhooked.
Thank you guys so much. Do you know if this GPA on the records are major GPA or overall GPA?
It’s overall GPA. Luckily for you, anthro is not an impacted major at UCLA, so they’re not as selective for the major as they would be for say, English, Bio, Psych, etc. Although I am far from being an expert, from talking to admissions counselors, researching online, and talking to students I feel like there’s a pretty big difference in selectivity between non-impacted majors vs impacted majors. Despite that, you already know UCLA is a super selective school and is literally breaking records every year for the amount of applications they receive. Receiving a C in one of the major courses when there aren’t a lot of prereqs to begin with certainly does not look good. Regardless, I think most people would agree that it’s certainly not a deal breaker- and if you can excel in all of your other classes, you can still be a competitive applicant. There’s no denying that the C made you take a couple steps back tho
It’s funny, I’ve been having a lot of convos recently to discuss whether getting a C is actually worse than a D or F. It may sound crazy at first, but the UCs are so lenient with the whole retaking policy, where the higher grade for a repeated course is the only grade they’ll consider, that it makes one think whether it’s better to just fail the course than get a C. A C is permanent, a D can always be made better in these scenarios(although the policy is going to be different for grad schools and private schools).
Anyways, that’s a topic for another day. To make your application better, there’s nothing else you can do but focus and try to get an A in everything else. Basically, understand that this C has made you take a few steps back and fight like your back is against the wall. It may sound a bit corny, but getting into a college like UCLA is so competitive these days it’s really do or die, IMHO. ESPECIALLY for the rest of your major prereqs so that you can boost your major GPA, which is gonna be a bit tough to do just mathematically considering there are only a few prereqs you can even take.
At the end of the day, it’s a holistic review and when you make a mistake you have to try to make-up for it, and bring forth a compelling case to the admissions committee where they almost have to accept you
If it makes you feel any better, my best friend got into UCLA last year with 2 Cs in major courses in the most competitive major for the campus (business econ, one of those Cs was even in Calc 2!). He got waitlisted before the acceptance tho
Thank you so much for the helpful information!