Chance me for UC's!

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

Objective: CHANCE me for UC’s: UCB, UCLA, UCSD, UCSB

ACT (breakdown): 32 total
Unweighted GPA (out of 4.0): 4.0
Weighted GPA: school does not calculate weighted GPA, but I’ve had A’s in all of my AP classes/ reg classes
Rank: 1/~400

AP (took max AP classes available: sophomore (1) and junior/ senior year (3)… didn’t really get good scores though. I have huge testing anxiety:
10th: AP World History: 2
11th: AP US History: 5
AP Biology: 3
AP Literature: 3

Senior Year Course Load (3 AP Class max): AP Calculus AB, AP Chemistry, AP Psych, English 12, Photography, Gov/Econ

Extracurriculars / Community service:
Varsity Tennis (9-11th): Varsity Rank 1 for 3 years, League Champion (9th), MVP (9-11), Captain (11), Player of the Year (10)
Reading Partners (11th): Volunteer tutor that works one-on-one with a first grader struggling in reading at a low-income, disadvantaged elementary school
Journalism Club (12th): Brought back club after 4 years, I’m a section editor, writer, and photographer
Interact Club: Digital Media Coordinator (10th), collaborated w/ 6 schools to form an event aiding the homeless
Debate Club President (11th and 12th)
Overall hours: ~600 including lab volunteer, Interact, and tutoring

Other awards: 2nd place for Art at County fair, 1st place for regional entrepreneurship competition, other small entrepreneurship/ school awards like superintendent award/ honor roll.

Summer activities:

  • Job shadowed at a local Biotech company during the summer before 10th grade
  • Spent the past 2 summers volunteering/ conducting research in a lab with graduate students/ undergrads at UC Berkeley

Other
Ethnicity: Asian
Intended Major: MCB, Integrative bio, or Nutritional Sciences & Toxicology
State (if domestic applicant): California
I’m female, low income and from a disadvantaged school

questioning because stats are kind of low :frowning:

2

How is an UW GPA 4.0 low? It seems like you have a really good shot at all those schools.

3

Retake the ACT; everything else looks good. For Asians, the bar is higher, so it is worth retaking ACT.

4

UC GPA calculator: https://rogerhub.com/gpa-calculator-uc/

Post capped weighted and fully weighted.

5

You seem like a great applicant overall! Aside from your AP scores, you are quite strong. Nice ACT, likely nice GPA, nice rank, pretty nice ECs.

I’d think you have UCSD and UCSB in the bag, although there is never a guarantee because admissions can be unpredictable sometimes.

UCLA an UCB, of course, are still reaches, but I think they’re reachable reaches. I can see it swinging in your favor, but you never know. You have some focused activities that relate to your major (your summer activities), but I don’t see much of a trend otherwise. Your stats seem pretty high to me, even though you said they’re low?

Honestly, I feel like ECs aren’t as important as stats. Of course, you still should have good ECs, though, because they’re not UNIMPORTANT. Just slightly less important than stats. And you’ve got nice stats, despite being low-income! Go you! I can completely see you getting UCLA and/or Berkeley, but I guess there’s no sure way to know until decisions come out. Good luck! Do a great job on those essays and hope for the best!

6

@hungrystress @preppedparent

FWIW, UCs are forbidden by law to take gender or race into account in admissions.

One cavaet about UC admissions: I’m not familiar with all the majors at all the schools these days, but make sure whatever you are apply for is not impacted/capped (or, if it is, know that will make the application much more competitive/difficult.) For instance, I know a few years ago UCSD posted all bio-science majors were impacted/capped. What specifically that applies to you’d have to check. But impacted/capped majors changes admission chances significantly.