Chance a SoCal Asian Girl staying in CA (or outside depending on $)

Chance Me / Match Me!
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Please chance my HS senior Chinese daughter:

4.07 weighted & capped GPA

Business Major
-Coursework: Chem Honors, English Honors 1/2 & 3/4, AP Lang, AP Environmental Science, AP Literature, AP Government
-Completed half a semester of Community college classes, working toward two full semesters of college credits before end of high school

Reach Schools: UCLA, USC, UCB
Schools: UCSD (her 1st choice), Pepperdine, Loyola Marymount, University of San Diego, UCD, UCI, UCSC, UCSB
Safeties: San Diego State, UCR

We’ve saved $120k in her 529, and that’s probably all we’re going to pay, so would prefer public unless any of the privates provide decent grants/scholarships (would privates outside of CA offer better ones to attract someone with these specs?)

Awards:
-MVP for High School Volleyball team (Freshman team)
-Certificate of Merit for Piano (10 year music curriculum completion)
-1st place in State of California for FBLA (Future Business Leaders of America) Public Speaking event
-4th & 6th place in Southern California for FBLA objective testing event

Jobs:
-Summer marketing intern for Sportshi company
-Social media ambassador/intern for Sportshi company
-Worked a summer at local night market (in a stall selling drinks)
-Bought and resold clothes online (made +$3k)

Leadership/Clubs:
-Founded World Vision club/VP: raised $500+ for charity
-Founded Aurora Foundation/President: raised $1000+ for charity
-Future Business Leaders of America
-Event Coordinator for club dedicated to children with disabilities
-Key Club

Volunteer:
-Coordinated/led a toiletry drive: 7+ different schools, collected 700+ items for Downtown LA Women’s Center
-Food banks
-Church events

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For UCs…

Recalculate your HS GPA with GPA Calculator for the University of California – RogerHub . Use the weighted capped version for the table below.

Fall 2020 admission rates by campus and HS GPA range from Freshman fall admissions summary | University of California :

Campus 4.20+ 3.80-4.19 3.40-3.79 3.00-3.39
Berkeley 37% 14% 2% 1%
Davis 86% 55% 16% 7%
Irvine 60% 38% 9% 1%
Los Angeles 38% 8% 1% 1%
Merced 98% 97% 95% 88%
Riverside 97% 90% 65% 30%
San Diego 78% 39% 8% 1%
Santa Barbara 81% 40% 9% 2%
Santa Cruz 92% 82% 59% 26%

These are for the whole campus. Different divisions or majors may have different levels selectivity (usually, engineering and computer science majors are more selective).

Note that business is available at UCB (except for a small number directly admitted frosh in some very reachy special programs, must apply for junior entry after completing prerequisites), UCI, and UCR. The other UCs may have business-adjacent majors (e.g. business-flavored economics) rather than actual business majors.

Among the private schools in the list, there are three religious ones of different religions and expected level of religious participation. Are the student’s religious beliefs and observance compatible with all of them?

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Thank you so much ucbalumnus for your reply.

The RogerHub calculator is what we used to get her GPA. One part we weren’t clear on is it mentioned A-G community college classes should be counted but not sure the classes she took (intro to psychology, Spanish, etc…) would be, so left them off. If they do count, her GPA would go up to maybe 4.2.

Our family is not religious so in regards to the private schools on her list, already told her LMU doesn’t really care about religious participation (I’m an alum - go Lions!), USD is similar so not an issue. Now Pepperdine is pretty conservative - but they have a good business program so she’ll have to weigh how important of an issue that’ll be.

I’m not in the loop as most are here so forgive this newbie question - Do privates outside of CA offer high $ merit scholarships to attract this type of student?

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Community college courses that fulfill the a-g course requirements like Psychology and Spanish would be included in the UC GPA calculation. 1 semester course grade plus 1 extra Honors point for the UC’s. She would also require a college transcript to be submitted once she is admitted and enrolled.

There are several OOS private universities that offer Merit$ for competitive stats. One that is mentioned frequently is the University of Arizona.

I am sure other posters can give you a good list depending upon which geographic locations are preferable.

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Transferable college courses count as honors courses for UC and CSU HS GPA calculations. One difference between UC and CSU:

  • Each semester college course counts as one semester of course and grade for UC.
  • Each semester college course counts as two semesters of course and grade for CSU.

Therefore, a student with college courses taken while in high school may have different UC weighted-capped HS GPA and CSU HS GPA (which is otherwise the same as UC weighted-capped HS GPA).

You can check high school courses and community college courses against a-g categories at University of California A-G Course List . These listing will also show which courses count as “honors” (note that not all high school designed “honors” courses are “honors” for UC purposes).

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When you say
" * Each semester college course counts as two semesters of course and grade for CSU."
This is automatically done by the cal state application or we add the grade twice like “AA” instead of “A”

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https://www.calstate.edu/apply/freshman/Documents/freshman-application-guide-21-22.pdf (page 26-29) does not say to add them twice. That suggests that CSU will automatically do the double counting described at GPA Calculator | CSU , but you can ask CSU or the campus directly to make sure.

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What’s her UW GPA and test score - if you’re looking out of state where they’d matter.

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If you’re looking for out of state merit, look at Arizona State (ASU). They offer merit scholarships to out of state students. Some of them go up to full tuition. With scholarship, this would probably be under your $30 per year budget from 529.

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UW GPA is 3.9 if you include Freshman year & community college classes (not sure most schools include that - just know UC does not). She did not take the SAT or ACT since she always focused on UC’s.

I briefly looked over Arizona and Arizona State and some of their merit scholarships just about cover tuition, which is incredible to me since many schools don’t give a dime to OOS students. Would assume they’d be much more popular but doesn’t seem like they are.

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Hmmmm. Check again. ASU. Arizona. Alabama. Arkansas….and more…bursting at the seams with super smart OOS kids. They buy them in.

ASU has arguably the country’s top Honors College and U of Az has a superb Honors Facility.

There is no shortage of takers for their merit. Very popular choices.

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