So this has been a question on my mind for the past few weeks. Take the applied math major at UC Berkeley for example. 372 people applied and 122 were admitted. This is an admit rate of 33%. The GPA 25-75 percentile range for these people 3.76 to 3.98. I first though that by the data people who are closer to hte high end should have a extremely good chance and people inbetween the range have an extremely strong shot. I was thinking that many of the “372” people who applied would be below the gpa range. The data doesn’t show that. All we know is that the gpa range for admits are from 3.76 to 3.98. For all we know all 372 people who applied had GPA’s from 3.7 to 4.0. That nobody below a 3.7 even applied. That would mean that the competition was much more difficult than at first glance and people in the GPA range are not that competitive.
Or can we confidently think that at least some portion of the people applying have below the admit range?
It makes sense when you think about it. Someone with less than a 3.7 GPA is probably not too optimistic about their chances at getting into Berkeley. It becomes a self fulfilling prophecy at that point. They would rather try their chances at a different UC, and save their money.
tldr; If the acceptance rate is comparatively high for its GPA range, then the Data should be reliable, if its comparatively low, then falling within the GPA range isn’t enough as they look at more than that.
You could be right. Especially since cal is more hollistic than other ucs its harder to use the dataset as an indicator. But 33% is a relatively high acceptance rate, so I think if you fall within that GPA range you should be accepted. But for other majors like Haas, which has a similar GPA range, but a much lower acceptance, then just falling in the GPA range isn’t enough as they clearly look at other parts of your application (essays, ECs etc.) more than they do for other majors.
Also I’d also point to LS CS, which is 3.81 to 4.0, but has a 7% acceptance rate. From what I’ve heard, CS and Applied Math are reviewed together as they are in the same department, and they have similar GPA ranges, but one major is significantly harder to get in than the other.
@UCLAorUCBTRNSFR Ah, I’m not an applied math major though. Cognitive Science which has a 12% transfer rate. That’s what worries me. There aren’t that many CogSci applicants, 143 in total. The people that apply to UC Berkeley for Cogsci have probably have the grades and the pre-reqs mainly completed. I doubt many will have low GPA’s since otherwise they might not have applied. Them only accepting 17 students with a gpa range from 3.58-3.91 makes me worried just how much they base on holistic. Making it a 12% admit rate. Since they could easily reject a couple dozen 3.7 gpa students if they felt like it and that information wouldn’t be reflected in the data.
Also I’ve been playing around with the data sets, has anyone been able to find out how many people from a certain community college applied to a certain major at a certain UC? I’ve been able to find how many people accepted a certain offer, but not much for how many people applied.
The data set if anyone doesn’t know what I’m talking about.
@UCLAorUCBTRNSFR Misread your words there. You sure both are read by the same department? I’m praying that the committee that looks at CogSci transfers is impressed by my application so damn bad. This wait is legitimately slowly killing me. Please Based Berkeley Gods, take pity on me.
@Aerolyze Exactly. Most of the time I try to disregard acceptance rates. Like when people are in awe of Stanford’s less than 5% acceptance rate. A lot of that is due to a significant portion of people just doing a hail mary type of application and sending it in for the hell of it. I personally knew more than two dozen people from my high school that did that. They ended up going to schools like Davis, SD, SB, Irvine and University of Washington. Great schools, but in a different class compared to Stanford.
This time around though the acceptance rate seems to matter. Since there are multiple filtering rounds. Most people are CC applicants, if you’re applying to a less known major like me and CogSci the people who are applying are usually more interested. Most people aren’t really into making hail mary applications as a transfer since everyone is like gpa matters most meaning mainly high gpa and solid applicants are the ones that are applying. All of these factors combine to suggest that there is much more competition than one would think at first glance. The rest of the applicants to your major probably had similar GPA ranges and things like EC’s and essays matter a lot more.
Yea, ik for freshman admissions they showed acceptance rate by GPA Range, Test Score range etc. which would have definitely been helpful for transfers.
Also, speaking on the topic of ECs, do you know if they prefer major related ECs even if they are from high school, or generic ECs that you did in college. I only had like 3 major related ECs from college, everything else I did in college was unrelated to my major so I chose to put down some major related ECs I did in high school instead. But I got worried when I saw somewhere that High School ECs are irrelevant.
Something like that would have been so helpful for transfers. I mean I’m happy we have some data and it’s great we know more now some people in years past did, but at the same time I wish they were willing to give more so we aren’t misled by the shiny information and can get a more balanced view on these.
I think they prefer having good in depth EC’s on the whole. I think putting down major related EC’s was the right call since that shows a continued interest in your major. As long as you had major related ec’s in college and you said you put down three so I think you should be good on that front.
@Orangered123 Yea I think for applications to L and S, applications are divided by like the four main sub-categories found here: https://ls.berkeley.edu/divisions-and-units , looks like your major is under Social Sciences. Not sure how this impacts admissions however.
@ucbalumnus can probably provide some valuable insight.
I think you’re missing that 25% of admits have below and above the 25% and 75% GPAs. That is, for the 17 admitted Berkeley students to CogSci, about 4 of them had GPA less than 3.58 and about 4 had greater than 3.91.
@Orangered123 There are things we simply don’t know about the bottom 25%. All we know is that 25% are below that mid 50% range. It could be a huge spread or zero difference. (Just like the 75th sometimes is 4.0, meaning the top 25% above is also 4.0.)
My opinion about the lower 25% is not to put your eggs in that basket. These could be athletes, celebrity kids, special circumstances. But you are correct, the higher up you go the higher your chances, all things being equal. Also, look at the Enroll GPA range - often it has a lower 25th% GPA (sometimes substantially lower). Does this reflect the original admitted 25% or does it include lower GPAs that came off a waitlist? We simply don’t know.