Anyone in admissions care to shed some light on just how holistic the process is?

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of California - GENERAL
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<p>Does anyone familiar with UC admissions know how “holistic” the process is for edge cases? Reason i’m asking is because I have an extremely strong upward trend with three years of very unique real-life experience. I fear that my below-average high school numbers from 2009 are going to hurt me.</p>

<p>I had a pretty traumatic first/second year of high school as I moved from a different country just before freshman year. During that time I took courses I really shouldn’t have and racked up a few C’s and D’s. I had no friends, no clue what the education system was like, and no one to turn to for help.</p>

<p>My UW GPA back then was around 3.33.</p>

<p>In junior/senior year I signed up for a bunch of AP classes, made new friends, and saw my grades improve dramatically even though the classes were much harder. I maybe got 4 Bs in those two years, hovering around a 3.9UW/4.4W.</p>

<p>My SAT is a 2220 in one sitting. I scored 800 on the math2 SAT and 5’s on 4 AP tests, a 4 in one, and 3 in another.</p>

<p>Things really got interesting after high school. I served in a foreign military. I also started a tech company while I was in the army to kill time on the weekends. I have recently been hired as the CTO of an up and coming los angeles startup, and have been getting 4-5 job offers a month since January.</p>

<p>As I was applying to colleges I couldn’t help but feel that my 3.6ish GPA, albeit three years old, was going to automatically disqualify me from consideration at a lot of colleges. Of course, applying three years out of high school also means that I’m not infatuated with brand name schools as I know success can be found anywhere. I’m just curious to know how applications like mine get evaluated behind those closed doors!</p>

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<p>I’m not in admissions, but have had experience with the UC system as a parent.
My niece was admitted to UCSD with few APs, good–but not great–GPA and marginal SAT scores. On the comprehensive review, she received extra points for things like having parents who never graduated from college, having a single mother, low income, difficult family situation, and leadership experience. They were using a point system at that time, but the bottomline in our experience was that they clearly took into consideration social and economic circumstances, which I believe they do in the holistic approach as well.</p>

<p>Just my two cents, but I think your background will serve you well at admissions.</p>

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<p>thanks for sharing your experience, it’ll be interesting to see in the coming days how i fare. i do like UCSD a lot more than Cal or UCLA, but it would be nice to be spoiled for choice.</p>

<p>hope my results will be of interest to people planning to take 2-3 gap years before college, which is very common in some countries.</p>