I am a senior in high school, and I’ve wanted to attend prestigious colleges such as UCLA for a long time, but I know my grades will get me nowhere near acceptance.
GPA:
Because of family complications, I got a 3.46 my freshman and sophomore year. But junior year I took 7 APs, with all As (same for 1st semester Senior year), so total weighted is 4.17 (4.62 excluding freshman year).
Test Scores:
I took the SAT 2 times, and got 1600. I got 5s on all my AP tests (Biology, Chemistry, Physics 1, Physics 2, Stats, Calc BC, Comp Sci, Lit, US History, Psych)
Extracurriculars:
I took STEM classes at community college, and started a iGEM Team. I run a nonprofit organization for my neighborhood (donated 10,000 dollars in charity and 100,000 to the community over 3 years), interned at HP and attended Stanford Science Circle. Created a couple of apps, which are doing well ($1000 revenue per an app). Research assistant at local university in AI Learning and Neuroscience since sophomore year, been swimming for 12 years and varsity all 4 years. Won some coding competitions, semifinalist at Siemens competition. Wrote an original research paper while an assistant at the Neuroscience lab. Nothing too great, but all I thoroughly enjoyed doing.
My essays, according to teachers and friends, were really good and I put in a ton of effort. I also want to go into Computer Science or Neuroscience, which I know are impacted majors. I’m concerned that because of my Freshman and half of Sophomore year grades, I messed up my chances of attending a good college (not just UCLA). Any advice or criticism appreciated!
Congrats on a perfect SAT that is quite an accomplishment and you have much to be proud of. UCLA and the other UC’s are very GPA focussed in their selection process. You should calculate your UC GPA which takes into account sophomore and junior year. UCLA will look at uncapped so they will not limit the number of honors/ap courses that can be used to boost the GPA; The normal UC gpa will cap at 8 semesters of honors credit. Remember that not all school level honors classes count as honors in the UC system. For CS at UCLA it is extremely low due to the large amount of applicants with almost perfect stats. If you applied for CS at UCLA then they will not consider you for Letters and Science as an alternate. Likewise if you applied for Neuroscience then you would not be considered for CS. For majors in L&S you declare those once you are in school so everyone is undeclared when applying for L&S so major doesn’t matter for admission purposes.
Do we really believe an applicant with a 4.6 GPA and 1600 on their SATs is worried about getting into UCLA? I mean its definitely possible to not get accepted, but with numbers like that the presumption is that they will, unless something else is odd about the application.
OP wrote: “I took the SAT 2 times, and got 1600.” = That could be a problem.
@KTJordan78, stats alone won’t get a kid in. Each application is just like a four-legged stool - GPA/rigor, test scores, EC’s and essays. All four have to be strong or strong enough. With three out of the four, the chances are prettty good, but scores/grades alone, no matter how stellar, won’t guarantee anything.
Congratlations on getting a 1600 on your SAT. And your resume looks great overall ! However, my concern is that your GPA went from 3. 46 to 4.17. This is a huge rise but is this calculated in weighted or unweighted ?