@ucbalumnus "Note that UC admissions is by holistic reading, not a point system, although college GPA is the strongest influence for transfer applicants to a given campus and major.
Neither gender nor race/ethnicity is considered in UC admissions."
While I 100% concur in theory, it is almost impossible to remove gender for those that write about it in their essays. I did not mean to indicate a true ‘point system’ - my apologies if taken that way.
Also - my experience is from that of a transfer student parent. We will have three kids in college at the same time this fall and from the get-go, the plan was CCC and transfer. The better they did at CC, the more options they would have at the UC/CSU level. This also decreased the pressure at the HS level. Allowed them to pursue being teenagers, exploring life, friends, sports, arts. Well, the plan worked! D1 transferred to SJSU (her #1 choice) because they have the exact program she wanted. D2 applied to three UCs, and two CSUs with the long-term goal of a JD. UCB is her dream school and she got it with a 4.0, solid ECs and (presumably) good personal statements. S starts CCC this fall. The cycle continues, and I’ll probably be back on ColConf in 18 months seeing what has changed and what has not.
@SFBayRecruiter “We will have three kids in college at the same time this fall and from the get-go, the plan was CCC and transfer”. I was a CC and transfer to a UC student and I can tell you that I feel I did miss out by not going to a UC directly from HS. There are certainly both pros and cons of doing the community college and transfer route that prospective college applicants need to consider before making that choice.
@ucbalumnus: great tool - My daughter and I have had that bookmarked for months. = )
@socaldad2002 - Yes, students will ‘miss out’ on certain aspects of the college experience if they don’t got to a 4-yr right from HS. This is also true if students commute, attend a small LAC vs a large UC, live in one dorm vs another, or go to a CC. The same could also be said regarding pledging, clubs, research. For everyone though, what a student puts into their education will better determine what they get out of their education. 5,10, 15 years after graduation, it will mean less and less.
I was also a CC transfer, and was even married for my last year at University. I can certainly say that my college experience was different than most of students in my classes.
From an academic standpoint, the CC->UC/CSU route works best for:
Students interested in majors with relatively common lower division courses.
Students who are not advanced enough to want to take upper division courses in the frosh/soph years.
The above describes a very large percentage of college-bound high school students. However, starting at CC is less suitable for students in majors like some engineering majors and CS, where many UC/CSU campuses have unique lower division courses that are not available at CCs (and even if they are covered at CCs, they may not be the same for the same major at various UC/CSU campuses). It is also less suitable for the students who are more advanced in their subjects. http://www.assist.org can help show how well CCs cover the lower division courses for the student’s majors of interest at UC/CSU campuses.
One type of student who may find starting at CC more advantageous from an academic standpoint is the undecided one who wants to explore different subjects without being on an administrative time limit to choose a major, and without having as strict a financial time limit, since CC attendance is typically considerably less expensive.
“Here are some stats UCLA Engineering just sent out for the students recently admitted to engineering:
Median Unweighted GPA: 4.0”
Wow, the median (middle) UNWEIGHTED GPA was a perfect 4.0? That means every single admitted student had perfect straight A grades. Nobody ever got a B.
Since in the old school unweighted grading system you can’t get any grades higher than a perfect 4.0, for that to be the median then it must also be true that no one got any grades lower than a perfect 4.0.
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No, it means that at least half of the admitted students had straight A grades. For example, if there were three admitted students, they could have unweighted GPAs of 4.0, 4.0, 3.9, giving a median (middle value) of 4.0.
I don’t know what it is about those who chose to post on College Confidential, but if you just casually browse through almost any thread (this one included) you would swear to God that 85% of freshman applicants want to go into Computer Science or Engineering.
The reality, however, if you look at one sample (UCLA), only 12% of the entering class actually study in these fields. Everyone else is humanities, life sciences, physical sciences, social sciences, arts, etc.
“The reality, however, if you look at one sample (UCLA), only 12% of the entering class actually study in these fields. Everyone else is humanities, life sciences, physical sciences, social sciences, arts, etc”
UCLA, just like all colleges that accept students based on declared majors, have to fill spots in many majors.
The "major “de jour” these days among many college applicants is CS and engineering.
10 years ago it was biology and biotech.
10 years ago at HYP, the majority of students wanted to go to Wall Street. Now its SV.
thats’s where the $$ is or is percieved to be.
@Undercrackers Thank you for posting the info about your student and your humbleness. My daughter has almost the same stats as your student. Denied from all the UCs. We are in-state.
Waitlisted to two. Again, not over the top stats, but over a 4.0, a 31 ACT, decent ECs and very well written and unusual statements. Applied as undeclared. I do think there is a significant amount of luck that goes into whether you are admitted. Have heard stories about people with lesser stats getting in. They stood out because of hard luck family situations or other unusual circumstances that perhaps made them appealing to a certain bucket the UC was trying to fill. If she’d gotten in, I would have attributed it to hard work and, yes, luck. Fortunately we had backups and threw out a wide net, but in the end as she wants to stay in CA due to family issues going on right now, she basically had only a few options in-state including a private school which was over our budget, but we will make it work. Wouldn’t go CC route and I don’t blame her after all her hard work in HS.
When a school has admission by major or division, it has different standards based on the major or division applied to. That is not unique to UCs, but is often not noticed by applicants when assessing reach/match/safety based on admissions stats or Naviance plots for the entire school.
Actually, it shouldn’t be surprising. There is probably a big difference between the stats of admitted and stats of matriculated. Since UCLA yield is only around 37% the top half the admits would probably matriculate elsewhere. So you can have a scenario where admits have GPAs like 3.2, 3.7, 4.0, 4.0 and 4.0, and freshman class stats look more like 3.2 and 3.7.
@RedwoodForest D is at Cal. I post her stats so that others can see just how kinda nuts it is, as you have attested to with your own situation. I cannot think why your kiddo, who appears to be very similar stat-wise to mine, was shut out. Again, mine went to a middle-of-the-road public HS, so it was easier for her to stand out, I guess. I dunno. I’ve seen kids with way better stats be rejected from Cal Poly SLO but get into UCB/UCLA, so crazy town.
Like your student, mine goes to a pretty middle of the road HS. I wouldn’t say it is one of the top ones in our community - it’s socioeconomically diverse with a large immigrant population that go on to work or community college but there is a small group of dedicated very academic 4-year college bound students that she is part of and some of them were accepted to the UC of their choice, but many were not including a few who were incredibly qualified and advanced in math. It sounds like your choice of major can make a huge deal, but in my child’s case, I really don’t know what the deal was as she went in as undeclared and knows others who did, with lower stats, and were accepted. She was accepted to Cal Poly (declined due to not really being thrilled with the major) and the only CSU to which she applied but she didn’t really want to attend.
She wasn’t expecting UCB or UCLA (though she hoped for UCLA) but figured one of the other three she applied to would come through so I don’t think her expectations were unrealistic. But no dice - didn’t get into even one.
It is one of those things that you cannot wrap your head around, like a lot of things in life, and so I have just resigned myself to the fact that it wasn’t meant to be. While I think a UC education is a fabulous opportunity, it seems pretty clear to me that their system is broken and failing in-state families. There is no way they can accommodate everyone given the number of students that want to attend vs the number of spots, but the system should be more fair to people who have lived here their whole lives and paid their share of taxes here and meet some sort of minimal benchmark.
I would not have been highly upset if my CA resident kid had not gotten into UCLA or Cal – because by the UC decision time he already had acceptances from Stanford with full pay and OOS Honors College with good merit money with – but I would have been surprised just because he was among top 25 students, and every year around 40 or more kids get into eirher UCLA or Cal. And besides he was a non STEM kid so it was less difficult to get into to UCs IMO.
@RedwoodForest So world class universities like Berkeley and UCLA should be automatically accessible to any tax-paying family who has lived in California for their whole lives? Do you really think this or are you just venting?
Public education IS guaranteed - at the community college level. Anything beyond that you need to earn your way in. And when you start talking about creme de la creme schools like Berkeley and UCLA, that is even more true.
@KTJordan78 Nope. Didn’t say that UCB and UCLA should be accessible to any tax paying family who has lived in CA. What state are you from, by the way? You should re-read my posts. I am saying that my child, and many she knows, applied to a range of UCs and she along with many this year were not accepted at a single one. There were record numbers of applications. Never expected UCB or UCLA but UCI, UCSB, UCSD, UCD were within her range. Didn’t get into those. Now I am reading that for UCSC, the folks that are getting contacted now to be accepted off the waitlist are OOS students first.
Being “in range” for a school means there is a chance of getting in. Safety schools are almost guarantees. Those schools you mentioned would not be “safety” schools for almost anyone. Did she apply to UCSC? UCR?
There were record number of applicants, yes, but there have been record number of applicants every year for the last 25 years. That’s nothing new. People are applying to more colleges, so naturally each college will receive more applications.