Chance Me for UCs and CSUs (in-state student)

Chance Me / Match Me!
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US citizen (California resident)
public school (underprivileged school, low rate of students pursuing higher ed)
female/white, central CA (considered northern California by population)

Major: Political Science (Public Policy Focus at UCSD and ISCOR at SDSU)
4.52 W GPA, 4.0 UW, Rank: 1 out of 604, SAT: 760 writing, 640 math

11 APs, 6 Honors classes, reached AP Spanish in foreign language
AP Scores: 4’s on Bio, Psych, and Spanish, 5’s on APUSH and AP Lang

High School Heisman Award State Finalist
2x First-Team All-League for field hockey
2x field hockey team MVP
5x school Scholar Athlete award winner
Community Service Award (400+ hours)
DNC Youth Debate Winner in 2020

California Youth and Government: elected Youth Chief Justice by 4,000+ peers (Tier 1 leadership) and first freshman appointed to Supreme Court in 70+ years of program history

Conference on National Affairs: highly selective national Youth and Government Conference, appointed to California delegation sophomore and junior year, winner of Distinguished Delegate award

3 years of Varisty field hockey and 2 years of Varsity lacrosse

field hockey captain junior and senior year

New Voters Intern: national youth-led nonprofit dedicated to improving youth civic engagement and voter turnout, interned for over 2 years in three departments, org. recognized as UN Youth Solution in 2020
registered over 100 students at my high school to vote

NHS officer, CSF member

competed in Mock Trial for my school junior and senior year, highest scoring team attorney as a junior, club Vice President and defense lead attorney senior year

nearly 200 hours of community service through National Charity League, three-time class officer, multiple awards within the organization

I think my essays were strong enough, they probably could have been better but I still feel good about them

safety(ish) - San Diego State, UCSD, UCSB
targets - UCLA, UC Berkeley

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Which UCs and CSUs did you apply to?

Your tags include UCLA, UCSB, Berkeley and SDSU. Did you apply to any other schools?

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That was my mistake, I just edited the intial post! I applied to SDSU, UCSD, UCSB, UCLA, and Berkeley

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Congratulations on a competitive profile.

The UC’s and CSU’s are test blind so your SAT scores will not be considered for admission purposes.

The CSU’s only consider the Capped Weighted CSU GPA in their application review and the maximum is a 4.4.

The UC’s consider 3 UC GPA’s: Unweighted, Capped weighted and Fully Weighted. GPA Calculator for the University of California – RogerHub

I see no safety school on your list?

SDSU looks like a Likely school but not a solid safety.

Here are the 2021 UC admit rates based on the Capped weighted UC GPA and not major specific.

Campus 4.20+ 3.80-4.19 3.40-3.79 3.00-3.39
Berkeley 30% 11% 2% 1%
Davis 85% 55% 23% 10%
Irvine 60% 31% 14% 1%
Los Angeles 29% 6% 1% 0%
Merced 97% 98% 96% 89%
Riverside 97% 92% 62% 23%
San Diego 72% 25% 2% 0%
Santa Barbara 73% 28% 4% 1%
Santa Cruz 91% 81% 46% 9%

You should have several options from which to choose in the Spring but the UC’s are very unpredictable. I would try to find at least 1 more Likely/Safety and a couple more target schools.

UCLA/UCB will be Reach schools, definitely not target schools but they are attainable. UCSB and UCSD would be Target/High Target schools.

Some of the Cal states have extended Freshman deadlines until 12/15/2022. You can do a search on this link: Application Dates & Deadlines | CSU

Best of luck.

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My uncapped UC GPA is actually higher than my school GPA (assuming the calculator I used was correct) at 4.67, which was a bit surprising to me! Thank you for sharing the chart, the acceptance rates for my GPA range (especially UCSB and UCSD) make me feel much more confident! The UCs are definitely notoriously random as far as decisions go, which was part of the reason I chose to limit my applications, since I have heard that they will collaborate so that some students only get in to one or two UCs.

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Do campuses make their admissions decisions independently from other UC campuses?

Each UC campus evaluates each application without knowing the status of the same application at another campus. In making admission decisions, campuses do not consider where you’ve applied or your admission status to other campuses. All campuses consider your application simultaneously, yet independently of all other campuses you applied to.

As you can see you are mistaken. The reason that students may only get into a few UC’s is that they all use the same 13 areas of admission review criteria, but weight each area differently.

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I’ve seen this answer about UCs not sharing application data before. I think that it could well be the case.

Anecdotal evidence appears to suggest that UCs with higher admit rates reject or waitlist many of the students that are likely to take places at the more selective UCs.
Since the UC admission criteria are in actuality strongly based on grades (as the table above demonstrates, and those 13 areas clearly reflect), the rejection of students with the highest GPAs is otherwise unexpected. However, I think that individual UCs do attempt to predict where their applicants are likely to go without data sharing. Thus, like many other colleges they stabilize their yield.

Nevertheless, without a statistically significant sample it would be hard to test if that is really the case.

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