Berkeley, UCLA, USC, UCSD???

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

<p>Berkeley, UCLA, USC, and UCSD are my top choices for college and I was wondering what you think my chances are so far... I'm only a sophomore, but do you think my grades and ECs so far will hurt my chances?</p>

<p>9th Grade Summer
Health Education: A/A</p>

<p>9th Grade:
Honors English A/A
Physcal Education A/A
Biology A/A
Honors World History A/A
Basic Geometry B/B
Spanish 3/4 C/B
Orchestra A/A</p>

<p>10th Grade Summer:
Chemistry B/B</p>

<p>10th Grade
Honors English A/?
Physical Education A/?
AP European History B/?
AP Environmental Science B/?
Algebra II C/?
Spanish 5/6 B/?</p>

<p>Extra Curriculars:
1) FIRST Robotics
2) Red Cross Club (Elected Club Representative)
3) Interact Club
4) Science Club
5) Volunteering at local hospital
6) <strong><em>POSSIBLY</em></strong> My city's explorers program (which sounds weird, but the detective in charge runs it so that it gives "academic high achievers and dedicated students a look into their city's police department") so I'm not really sure if I should do it, because most explorers programs are for "at risk" kids and it would be difficult to explain that this one is different.</p>

2

<p>Math seems to be your weakpoint; you are going to need to do a lot of catching up if you are planning to pursue a math related major.</p>

3

<p>You might want to do the COSMOS program in the summer because that seems to help with admissions to the UCs.</p>

4

<p>Your grades are low for the schools that you listed, so try your best to turn it around with mostly As and few Bs. UCs do not count your freshmen year.</p>

5

<p>etg2013: What about a business or marketing degree type thing?</p>

6

<p>Ucb: 8.4%
ucla: 11.7%
usc: 20.9%
ucsd:40.4%</p>

7

<p>Honestly, no guarantee. </p>

<p>The UC system almost randomly picks students, no SAT score, GPA, even EC can guarantee you a spot at UC. I have plenty of friends who got rejected with 2200’s and plenty that got accepted with 1900’s in the UC system. </p>

<p>UCLA generally likes smart people </p>

<p>UCB likes smart people who are kind of odd (unique) </p>

<p>UCSD likes kids from San Diego (your grades are good now, but i dont know the admission atmosphere 2 years from now… its only getting more and more competitive) </p>

<p>USC - they accept ivy level students, kids that got into UCLA, UCB, Georgetown etc didn’t get into USC.</p>

8

<p>I agree with business student. My high GPA, SAT, SAT2, EC, awesomeness could not get me to UCLA or CAL. Not even after an appeal. Probably because I’m Asian.</p>

9

<p>UGH, how about NYU?</p>

10

<p>

Disregarding the tongue in cheek aspect, I think those % are completely unrealistic given the 3.2 -3.4ish GPA trend OP is showing. I would put the first three at under 1%, and UCSD at about 10%.</p>

<p>Assuming OP at the end of Jr. year has 3.4 GPA and about 1700 SAT, then the matches would be UC Riverside, UC Merced, San Diego St., Long Beach St. and Cal Poly Pomona.</p>

<p>OP, the UCs and Cal States are willing to cut slack on the SAT scores, but absolutely not on GPA. For the top 3 UCs, it is uncomon for UC weighted GPA to be under 4.1… for the three mid-tier, 3.8, for UCSC 3.7, and for Riverside and Merced, plus San diego St. – 3.6. The UCs think there is a higher predictive value to GPA than for test scores.</p>

<p>You can look at this another way: THe mission of the UCs is to prepare students for graduate research. To do this, they target only the top 12% of graduating HS Seniors. Then you can further break that down by heirarchy within UC: Berkeley and UCLA target top 1-2% students, UCSD 2%, UCSB, UCD and UCI top 6%, UCSC top 9%, and UCR and UCM top 12%.</p>

<p>So you see even for the least renowned of the UCs, you’ve still got to be a top 12% student. YOu have plenty of time. Half of your GPA has yet to be determined, and you control your own fate Jr. year.</p>

<p>Last point: You can take a look at the USNWR ranking of top colleges. Start at a weighted GPA of about 4.5 (where APs are counted as 5 out of 4). For each band of ten colleges after the first ten, reduce the ave. GPA of accepted students by 0.1 So that by the time you’re at the USNWR schools ranked 90-100, you’ve got an accepted ave. weighted GPA of about 3.5. Then just keep going… .a 3.3 would be a fit for a school ranked in the 110-120 range… which isn’t a bad ranking at all considering there are over 3000 colleges in the US.</p>

<p>Lastly, take a look at the website collegedata.com There you can search for a University, then have a look at a scatterplot with GPA and SAT of the students who were accepted and denied admission. This will give you a decent idea about where you want to be, and also help you select appropriate target schools to apply to. <a href=“http://www.collegedata.com/cs/admissions/admissions_tracker.jhtml[/url]”>http://www.collegedata.com/cs/admissions/admissions_tracker.jhtml&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;