Chance me for Berkeley EECS?

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

<p>As of right now, Berkeley EECS is my top choice.</p>

<p>A little background: I could have cared less about my grades freshman year and beginning of sophomore year. Only after I realized how important success in high school was, I began to try harder. As a result, my GPA has suffered (not too much, though) and two of my AP test scores are awful (1 on APES freshman year and 2 on AP Bio sophomore year). I'm just scared that my sophomore and freshman year may hurt my chances for getting into my top school choices.</p>

<p>Basic Info:
State: CA
Gender: Female
Ethnicity: Caucasian
Family Income Bracket: $250k+
Top 5% of my class</p>

<p>SAT: Superscore = 2340</p>

<p>First time- 2100
Math- 780
CR - 580 (ouch.)
Writing - 740</p>

<p>Second time-2320
Math - 800
CR - 800
Writing - 720</p>

<p>GPA: Should be around 3.83/4.0 UW, about 4.67 W. </p>

<p>Note: I had a few Bs my first two years of high school, but I was able to maintain straight As throughout my junior year (5.0 W GPA both semesters). I've heard that showing improvement is a good thing?</p>

<p>SAT II: Bio M 730 (might retake?), Math II 800, Physics 800</p>

<p>AP: AP World (4), AP Eng.Lang (5), AP Statistics (4), AP Calc BC (5), APES (1) (fml), AP Bio (2) :/</p>

<p>Senior Year AP Courseload: AP Art History, AP Chem, AP Physics C, AP English Lit., Political Science (community college class), Linear Algebra (community college class)</p>

<p>Awards: National Merit Commended Scholar (11th) (213 on PSAT)</p>

<p>Extracurriculars:
UNICEF President (12th)
water polo (9 & 10)
swim team (9 & 10)
Best Buddies Club (9, 11, 12) </p>

<p>I'm not sure if this counts as an EC but...</p>

<p>I'm taking on online course on Java programming this summer (via UCSD extension)</p>

<p>Jobs: N/A (unless you count internships, see below)</p>

<p>Volunteering/Internships:</p>

<ul>
<li><p>Volunteered at an Aquarium... won't even put that on app most likely because it was only about 15 hours. </p></li>
<li><p>Volunteering/Interning at San Diego Supercomputer center all summer
(learning how to program, working on a website using HTML/CSS etc) (20 hours a week)</p></li>
<li><p>Volunteering/Interning at UCSD Photonics (4 weeks) (30 hours each week)</p></li>
</ul>

<p>--</p>

<p>Side note: I'm going to be getting a letter of rec. from one of my math teachers so could that potentially help me? Should I ask someone else to write me one also?</p>

<p>Chance me please! I'll be happy to chance back.</p>

2

<p>How did you make that huge jump in critical reading</p>

3

<p>You have a good chance.</p>

4

<p>UCs dont look at recomendation letters and its really a crap shoot when it comes to uc Berkeley, especially that major.</p>

5

<p>@motheshow</p>

<p>I devised this really amazing strategy.</p>

6

<p>@cekelly</p>

<p>Well where do you think I stand with my current stats?</p>

7

<p>Can you please pm to share this strategy because I need to get mine up</p>

8

<p>UC Berkeley doesn’t consider freshman grades either.</p>

9

<p>@Motheshow</p>

<p>It took a lot of practice and a lot of vocabulary memorization.
I went over vocabulary words every night. There is a great list of complied vocab words in the SAT/ACT Preparation forum (breaks down all the common words by percentages). </p>

<p>Basically I did this and took 1-2 practice tests almost every weekend for 4 months or so. Practice makes perfect, apparently. For critical reading (the longer passages…I always used to panic on these), I would look at the questions first and label the lines in the passage by putting brackets or parentheses around these lines and writing the number of the question that refers to them right next to that. (sorry, that sounds a bit convoluted… but basically say #20 says in lines 45-48, you would go to lines 45-48, put brackets around them, and put a #20 next to these lines.) You do this for every question referring to this passage. (as quickly as you can) Then, read paragraph by paragraph and answer the questions corresponding to the lines you have read, rather than reading the entire passage and then answering questions at the end.
Honestly, this probably won’t help you if you don’t practice enough. It took me a LOT of practice (believe me when I say a lot… I went through the entire blue book and the entire SAT online course) to understand how exactly ETS writes these questions and what kind of answer choices you should eliminate.
(That’s another thing btw… always automatically eliminate choices you know are too extreme or you know don’t make sense)
Hmm… I hope that helped at least a little? Just practice! Every day if you have to! Get your mom/dad/brother/sister/whoever to help you study vocabulary if you can. It helped me very much. When I implemented my strategy and learned a ton of new vocabulary words it seemed as though my score jumped from high 500s to 750+ instantly.
Try it and tell me what you think. I also did this on the MC portion of the AP English Language test and I got a 5. Soooo… yeah. Maybe it’ll work for you too!</p>

10

<p>@UCBChemEGrad</p>

<p>Awesome sauce.</p>

11

<p>Yeah, but theyll still see them so it might be a minute part of the decision making, but it doesn’t hold that much importance.</p>

12

<p>Yea Berkeley EECS :smiley: I’d say you have a pretty good chance of getting in. Don’t worry about your freshman grades, UCs really don’t care about them; I got a 3.3 UW that year, but I got a 4.0 UW sophomore and junior year and I still got in. One thing you have to make sure to do is write 1 of your 2 UC essays about your interest/experience in EECS. It’s unofficially “required” (when selecting your major they warn you to write about your interest in EECS). This isn’t a warning worth glancing over; I know people who were much more qualified than I was, but chose not to write about their interest in EECS, and they were rejected. This holds true for pretty much any major in Berkeley’s college of engineering. Some more minor notes, UCs don’t superscore the SAT, so your SAT score will appear as your highest score in one sitting. Also, the College of Engineering strongly recommends taking the SAT II Math and just 1 SAT II science test of your choosing, so since you nailed both of those requirements with math and physics, there’s really no need to retake bio. In addition, UCs aren’t allowed to hold quotas for student admission based on race/gender/income bracket, etc., but they still look at these factors to some extent, so your race and gender will help considering the student body composition of Berkeley’s CoE.</p>

<p>In a nutshell, if you write a coherent essay about your love for and experience in EECS, I’d say your chances of getting in are pretty good!</p>

13

<p>@cob123</p>

<p>Thank you so much! Your reply was very thoughtful and informative. I see that this is your first post… are you new to college confidential? Thanks for the advice on the essays by the way… I’m about to start writing them so I need all the input I can get. Once again, thanks :D</p>