As others have said before, I was out of state and not aware of the fine arts requirement. I have decided to take the AP art history test to (hopefully) get a 3 and test out of the requirement. My question is since I am taking this test in May, would Berkeley accept me “conditionally”, dependent on my AP score, or does anyone know how this would work exactly.
I think you actually need to take a one year class (or the equivalent) to fulfill the VAPA (visual and performing arts) requirement. The AP exam without the actual course probably won’t cut it. If you can take a one-semester college class this spring at a community college or even an online accredited Art History or Music class, that might work.
My counselor and I talked to a person from UC on the phone, and they said the score would fulfill the requirement.
http://admission.universityofcalifornia.edu/counselors/freshman/minimum-requirements/subject-requirement/index.html indicates that a sufficiently high score on an AP art exam may be used to fulfill the requirement. However, you may want to ask directly to find out if planned future AP exams are accepted – if so, then you should expect your admission to be conditional on earning a high enough score.
If that is allowed, since you will not know your AP score until after you have had to decide which school to attend, you could run the risk of not knowing until mid summer whether your admission is final.
Here’s the problem with the Art History test: it is intense.
Most students don’t have background knowledge of the masters to begin with.
You could try it, but if you haven’t taken the full year of the class, it will be difficult.
My children all took the year-long course; they had a lot of memorization and visuals that were required.
You can take one community college to meet the requirement. You can take class in drawing, painting, multimedia design, ceramics, sculpture, photography, drama, dance, art history,…
One concern is if you applied this past November and didn’t meet the “F” requirement when listing senior courses, you may be automatically rejected for lacking the requirement.
Talk to your guidance counselor and have her ask admissions because decisions come out in March/ April and the SAT is in May.
Because of the complications, I have done some tricky rearranging and can fit two semester arts classes into this remaining year and am going to notify Berkeley of that Monday. Hopefully, this will give my app proper consideration even if they did not look at it before. Also, the art classes are not in the same category, one being a piano class while the other a drawing class. Will Berkeley be lenient on this if I explain the situation?
No, they have to be within the same art. You would need a year of music, or a year of drawing/painting. The point is to help you develop a skill.
Berkeley will not be “lenient” especially if you didn’t read the requirements. The description of the “f” requirement is delineated well on the website. They expect their caliber students to be well-informed from the website description. You can explore specifics on the link:
http://ucop.edu/agguide/a-g-requirements/f-visual-performing-arts/
[You are setting yourself up by already assuming that Berkeley will accept you. Berkeley is tough admit even with all of the met requirements. You can’t make that assumption. Berkeley received over 100K apps for only a few spots!]
@newkidnewschool: Here is some information posted by other CC posters in regards to this requirement and the responses from UCLA and UC admissions:
Question about VPA UC requirement:
Not to revive an old thread, but I thought I’d post this response since it’s still relevant to this application cycle:
Me:
Good day, I have a question regarding UCLA’s application requirements. As an out-of-stater attending a private school in New Jersey, I was not cognizant of the requirement that we had to take one year of an art to be applicable to the UC system. At our school, I took AP Computer Science, Intro to Computer Science, Health and Driver’s Ed and Physical Education to satisfy the High School’s requirements for “Fine Arts” as opposed to “Visual/Performing Arts.” Are those courses satisfactory for the requirement? In my free time, I do dabble in Graphic Design (Photoshop CC) and Video Effects (Adobe After Effects CC) if that opens up any doors for me.
UCLA’s Response:
Hello,
Unfortunately, those courses would not meet the VP requirement. For more information about what courses may satisfy the requirement you can go to the UCOP website http://ucop.edu/agguide/a-g-requirements/f-visual-performing-arts/index.html.
In addition, while the University of California have a set pattern of academic courses that are required for admission, we understand that these subject requirements may be difficult for some applicants to meet due to differences in school curriculum.
All applications for admission are reviewed within the context of courses available to them; if a particular required subject is not available, we will consider the application without it. We would not deny an applicant due to any one single criteria, therefore if the applicant is otherwise a strong competitive applicant but they are missing the VPA course (1 semester or the entire year) we can still admit that student.
There is no single academic path that we expect all students to follow, but the strongest applicants take the most rigorous high school curriculum available to them.
Sincerely,
UCLA Undergraduate Admission
ASUAR
Thank you for contacting the UC Application Center.
The Visual and Performing Arts requirement states that a student must take a year long or two semester long courses in one of the four accepted disciplines of Music, Theatre, Dance or Visual Art. If the student opts to take two semester long courses they must fall within the same discipline. For example, a student can take a semester of Painting and a semester of Ceramics to fulfill the requirement. If they take a semester of Painting and a semester of Orchestra they will not fulfill the requirement as the courses do not fall into the same discipline.
If your school does not offer two semester long courses that fall into the same discipline there are alternate ways to fulfill the requirement. The website included below will detail the other ways to fulfill this requirement.
http://admission.universityofcalifornia.edu/freshman/requirements/a-g-requirements/index.html
If you find that you are unable to fulfill the requirement with any of the above options you can explain the reason why in the additional comments section. Please be aware that failure to fulfill all requirement will have a negative impact on your application.
If you have any other questions please feel free to contact us again.
Thank you,
Kaely
University of California Application Center