Hey all,
I wanted to see if you thought that I had a good chance to get into UCLA. A little background, straight out of high school, I went to a community college in Virginia, had no guidance in what I wanted to do in life, took a bunch of random classes for a year, failed a bunch of them, retook a few just to repair my GPA (barely) in case I did want to return to college later on. My cumulative GPA dipped as low as 1.333 and after retaking what I could, I ended up stopping taking courses there after awhile with a final cumulative GPA of 2.206
Fast forward 4 years, I ended up moving to California for a job, ended up finding something that I really have grown to love and decided to pursue it as a major. I’m in the California Community College system right now, and I feel as though I’m doing quite well. I’ve done 3 semesters so far and have gotten A’s in all of my courses so my GPA at this school is a 4.0. I’ve really busted my butt with this because it’s something I love. I still have a semester to go, but I’m hoping for straight A’s again.
I can’t do much extra curricular at this point as I work full time and am a full time student at night. However, in the past I’ve been a youth leader at my local church for over four years, and after I moved, I found a local church where I help to teach the elementary school kids, as well as am part of their creative production team.
My hopeful major is linguistics and I work as an international logistics coordinator. After travelling for work and meeting so many international contacts that can flawlessly transition between 2, 3, 4 languages, I was hooked. As a kid, I had always heard the Republican side of immigration and just automatically thought it was all true. In high school, my dad ended up being incarcerated because of his citizenship status (thankfully it’s resolved now). It completely tore apart our financial situational, and made me second guess the stance that a lot of people have on the Spanish immigrant population… so I ended up choosing Spanish as my (first) language to study, hopefully major in.
I know that my first GPA is awful, and I really don’t have much going for me in terms of extracurriculars, but is it worth it pursuing a UC at all? Or if anybody has an ideas on how I can make the push to at least be considered?
Just for a little more info, I’m 25, Female, Asian. Other volunteering I’ve done at church is a lot of homeless community outreach. I was never a straight A student in high school, but I’ve always tested greatly. AP courses, pretty decent SAT’s, the works. I’m fairly well spoken as English was my favorite subject and I’ve just been speaking in front of crowds at church for years, so I know I’d write one helluvah essay.
It would be very helpful if you could compute your overall GPA in all UC-Transferable classes in order to have a better sense of where your potential application would fall within the average GPA of linguistics major admits to UCLA. The UCs do like see positive grade trends, so you should focus at least one of your essays on writing about your challenges and how you worked to solve those challenges. Additionally, look into whether or not you can use Academic Renewal at your former Virginia CC to disregard those bad grades from your GPA computation.
The good news is that Linguistics is not an impacted major and the average GPA of transfer admits is about a 3.66, and the acceptance rate was roughly 64%.
The UCs do not consider SAT or ACT scores for transfer admission, but AP scores can be submitted in the application and may help your chances if you scored well.
You absolutely should apply to the UCs, as you definitely might have a good shot at UCLA in light of your unique background, passions, and commitment.
If your CC has an Honors Program, it would be very beneficial for you to participate in it and earn the TAP certification which will give your application a VERY significant boost and will allow you to choose an alternative major - giving you essentially two chances at admission for the price of one.
Good luck!
Thank you! I appreciate your encouraging feedback. I tried to look into the Academic Renewal thing, but my previous school is telling me they only submit renewals for students returning back to their campus, not students returning to school at another institution. Darn!
UCs have a very friendly policy regarding situations like yours, at least for undergrads. As long as you retake the course (it has to be below a C tho) they take the highest grade received and don’t count the lower one into the GPA. Even if you can’t get academic renewal, it’s not the end of the world because of this policy. If you can retake all the transferrable courses at your school, you definitely have a shot at all of the schools, provided you maintain a high GPA and finish all your requirements.
Now if we’re talking grad schools, that’s a different story. Those grades might come back to haunt you. But that’s a different topic for another day, right now we’re concerned about transferring.