Chance Me- UC's and CSU's etc.

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

Hi, I’m a Junior currently living in California. I go to a school of super smart people and have heard so many stories of those same people getting rejected. So I wanted to know what I should sort of expect for the next year. (And also help decide which schools are actually reach schools )

Cumulative UW GPA: 3.65
Cumulative W GPA: 4.06
(Projected for end of Junior Year GPA according to RogerHub
UW: 3.70
W:4.2

ACT: 35
Math: 36
Science: 34
English: 35
Reading: 33

AP Classes (* are classes in senior year)
AP World (5 on the test)
AP Comp Sci
AP French
AP Lang
AP Chemistry
AP Calc BC
*AP Physics
*AP Statistics
*AP Literature

Extra Curriculars/work experience:
President Robotics Club (lots of time devoted to this one :slight_smile: our team qualified for the VEX U.S. Open last season)
VP Girls Who Code Club (this one too, love the gwc fam)
Mathcounts/ Math Olympiad coach for middle schoolers (basically prep 6th-8th graders for the math olympiad tests)
French Honors Society
Private Tutor
Classical Dancer
(I’m waiting on the decisions of whether or not I get into 3 engineering/ computer science related internships for the summer)

Intended major: Mechanical Engineering (or another engineering discipline)

Please let me know realistically what my chances are with UC’s( like UCB, UCLA, UCD, UCSB,etc.) , CSU’s like Cal Poly SLO, and other California colleges like USC etc.

Thank you!

2

You are a competitive applicant. Your stats are decent and your ECs are good. Write great essays and you could get accepted to any of these schools

3

Did you calculate your UC uncapped weighted GPA correctly? 4.2 seems a bit high given a 3.7 unweighted unless you took less than 20 semesters of a-g classes. At 3.7, you would have to have taken only 17 semesters before you would get a 0.5 spread. Most high achieving students will have between 20-26 semesters worth of a-g classes in 10th and 11th grade.

UCLA and UCB Engineering are a bit of a reach regardless of the GPA, but certainly within reach. People with perfect ACT and SAT scores get rejected from UCB and UCLA Engineering routinely, so it’s going to be tough. The 2nd tier UCs are matches though, but even there, unexpected results occurred a lot this year. I think you do need to take the SAT Subject tests, and you should do Math II and Chemistry, preferably in June. You should be targeting for 800s for each one. Did you take the ACT with Essay? You’ll need an essay score too. Something 9 and above. Your ACT score is great, though It seems as if I see a 35 correlate more to 1530-1540 SAT, and not higher.

If the UCs and CSUs are your only targets and/or you are keen on getting into private schools via the ED route, a bit of controversial advice, I personally would load up with as many APs as humanly possible in your senior year. That’s because the UCs don’t look at your senior grades, unless you’ve been accepted. As long as you can maintain a 3.0 GPA (unweighted for UCLA/ UCB, weighted for the rest) or higher. I think UCLA and UCB highly emphasize whether you’ve taken the rigorous road or not. If you’re targeting privates for regular decision, then perhaps you shouldn’t follow this advice, since they usually ask you for your 12th grade first semester grades. A slew of Bs will potentially hurt.

A good verifiable internship definitely helps as well.

4

With a GPA of 3.7 unweighted or around 4.0 UC weighted capped, these are probably all reaches for mechanical engineering. USC may be slightly better chance due to its test score bias (versus GPA bias at UCs).

You may want to add UCR, UCM, and other CSUs (e.g. SFSU, SJSU, SDSU, CPP, CSULA, etc.) to have more match/likely/safety options, unless starting at a community college is your safety plan (though that may be less optimal for engineering majors than many other majors).

5

As a California resident, your best value financially is probably going to be a UC or CSU. However, if your family is prepared to potentially pay more for a private school, then you should apply to California privates like USC, Caltech, Harvey Mudd, and Santa Clara. Your stats are actually better suited to privates: the UCs tend to put more emphasis on GPA, while the privates tend to put more weight on test scores and extracurriculars, which in your case are stronger.

The catch is that USC, Caltech, and Mudd now have very low acceptance rates (<15%), so they are “reaches” for everyone. Your chances of admission would be much better at Santa Clara; their engineering program had an amazingly generous 55% acceptance rate for Fall 2017. Note that the SCU engineering program enrolls excellent students despite the high acceptance rate: their current 690-770 Math SAT range for newly enrolled freshmen tops most UCs and Cal Poly SLO, and their 4-year graduation rate is outstanding as well. The catch with SCU is that they are less well endowed than the other top CA privates, and are the least likely to offer competitive financial aid.
http://profiles.asee.org/profiles/7791/screen/19?school_name=Santa+Clara+University

6

First you need to calculate your CSU/UC GPA: https://rogerhub.com/gpa-calculator-uc/

Post your capped weighted UC GPA (8 semesters of UC approved Honors points for 10-11th A-G courses) which is equal to your CSU GPA and your uncapped weighted GPA (unlimited semesters of UC approved Honors points for 10-11th A-G courses).

For Cal Poly SLO, they use grades from 9-11th A-G courses but capped the honors points at 8 semesters for UC approved Honors/AP/IB or DE courses taken 10-11th grades. Also they will look at your grades for Math such as Algebra/Geometry and Foreign Language taken in Middle school.

So you will have 3 GPA’s to post: UC capped weighted, UC uncapped weighted and SLO capped weighted.

All CSU’s admit by eligibility index and major except for SLO.

Eligibility index= (CSU capped weighted GPA x200) + (ACT composite x10). An ACT EI of 1100 should make you competitive for all the Cal states.

SLO uses MCA points and ranks by major so here is the link to calculate your MCA points. For ME at SLO you want to aim for 4800+ MCA point score.

http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/cal-poly-san-luis-obispo/1694769-confused-about-mca-score.html
Check post #52 on how to calculate your MCA points.

ME is highly competitive for all the schools on your list.

Some statistical information for 2017 in-coming Freshman to use for comparison for the UC’s below. 2018 Data will be available hopefully in the Fall.

Freshman admit rates for UC GPA of 3.80-4.19 (capped weighted) and not major specific:

UCB: 12.6%
UCLA: 11.7%
UCSD: 38.7%
UCSB: 53.6%
UCD: 56.5%
UCI: 52.1%
UCSC: 75.7%
UCR: 90.1%
UCM: 96.1%

25th - 75th percentiles for ACT:
UCB: 30-34
UCLA: 30-34
UCSD: 29-34
UCSB: 28-33
UCD: 26-32
UCI: 26-32
UCSC: 26-31
UCR: 23-30
UCM: 20-27

Identify 2 safety schools first that are affordable and you are willing to attend no matter what. Then start forming your list with a majority of Match schools with 1-3 Reach schools.

I would target UCSC and UCR. UCM if your ELC eligible would be a safety. I would also look at Cal Poly Pomona, Cal State Fullerton, Long Beach State and San Diego state.

Cal Poly SLO is a Reach. UCD/UCI/UCSB could go either way due to GPA. UCSD,UCLA/UCB are more Reach schools.

7

With your ACT test scores, and strength of AP courses I don’t see any problem to get into at least 2 UC. And USC also at reach. I would avoid CSU.

8

ACT 35, not 25, why targeting UCR UCM? acceptance rate 90% is red flag to me.

9

According to RogerHub, my UW capped is 3.74, W capped is 4.07 (the 4.2 and 3.7 would be what I would have counting second semester of junior year, which technically hasn’t finished) and the SLO MCA calculation confused me a little when it came to the course rigor part.

I think the fact that the first semester of sophomore year I got a lot of B+'s but then got a lot of A’s in AP classes this year, skew my unweighted GPA a lot, since raising that is harder than weighted.

In Math 2, I got an 800, and I will be taking Chem Subject Test in two weeks, and I am ELC eligible.

Do you all know any other private schools that would be more target then?

10

Pepperdine University. Improving course strength and grades are your strong selling point. If you want safety net, U of Oregon.

11

Because they have the OP’s desired major (mechanical engineering) but are less reachy than the schools on the OP’s list (the UCs heavily emphasize GPA over test scores).

Neither has the OP’s desired major.

12

Just using my kid’s school as data points (sounds like a similar school), I would say that if you applied to the big 6 UCs, you probably won’t get accepted to all 6 but you probably will get accepted to 2 to 4. (Every single one from my kid’s AP Physics C class got into a desirable UC, many of them UCB). Which ones, not sure. In brief, my kid was 4.05 UC GPA, 35 ACT, 10 APs, average ECs, got into 3 of the 6 and waitlisted on 2, all as a highly impacted CS major. As a girl going for a hard STEM major, I gotta think your chances will be as good if not better than my kid.

13

Re: #11

Your kid may have written exceptionally good essays. There have been many applicants with similar stats who posted gripefests about not getting into any of the “top 6” UCs, particularly for engineering majors.

14

If you are willing to consider privates, then there is no reason to limit your search to California (unless you specifically want to stay in California). Californians who apply to out-of-state privates tend to focus on the Ivies and just a few others, like MIT or Johns Hopkins. Those schools are super competitive, but at a slightly lower tier there are other excellent out-of-state privates that would love to enroll more Californians, and would likely give you a geographic preference in admissions.

Lehigh, for example, is strong for both engineering and technical management. They seem to be positioning themselves as an out-of-state alternative for Californians who are frustrated with the UC system, and have set up a regional office in San Mateo specifically to recruit more talent from the West Coast. Other highly-ranked non-Ivy privates to consider for engineering might include Rice, Carnegie Mellon, RPI, Rochester, Tufts, or Case Western. Chances are that schools like this would be very interested in a female engineering student from California with high stats and cool extracurriculars.

As with Santa Clara, these schools will have test scores that compare favorably to most (or all) UCs, along with smaller classes, more flexibility with majors/minors, and higher 4-year graduation rates. On the other hand, they may cost more, even with financial aid.

15

if you consider out of state , Minnesota and Purdue are reasonable choices.
How about UT Austin and TX A&M

16

This thread is devolving into suggesting schools that commenters happen to like, rather than narrowing down what will actually work for this student. UT Austin is just as hard to get into for Engineering as the top UC’s, and will be even more expensive for a CA student. Purdue can be a great choice for full-pay students - it’s cheaper as an OOS public than an expensive private U would be - but it isn’t affordable for OOS students who need financial aid. And so on.

An appropriate list for OP will depend on her EFC and what she and her family can actually pay for college. We can’t possibly tell whether she should be focusing on in-state publics, OOS WUE schools, private U’s with good financial aid, schools with good merit-based aid… it all depends on her particular financial situation.

What we can say is that there are very solid in-state options where she should be able to pursue her major. I’m sure she will be doing the UC application, and she should be able to get into at least one or two, if not more. Then there’s the CSU system (and it is completely unproductive to just say “avoid CSU” without explanation. There are pros and cons both in general and in specific. Many, many students get an excellent education at CSU’s).

From there, we need to know OP’s budget and how much financial aid she’s eligible for, in order to know which additional categories of schools to look at, and to assess what might improve on the baseline of what she can get through the CA public system.

Basically, @amd2019 , your academic rigor, standardized test scores, and EC’s look great. Your GPA is a little weaker (though certainly not terrible!), and that will make some of the tippy-top schools more of a reach; but with your courseload and weighting you’re still in a strong position for many excellent schools. In addition, a lot of schools are more competitive for engineering than for non-engineering. So you’ll need to take this into account and identify schools that will appreciate your considerable strengths. (Also, perhaps, schools that are looking to increase enrollment of your gender and possibly your ethnic background as well, depending on what that is.) You also need to be clear on your financial situation: what does your EFC say you can pay, and what does your real-world financial reality say you can pay - do the two align? This will determine whether you’re looking mainly for need-based aid or for merit aid or just for a lower “sticker price.” Also, are there other “filters” that are unique to you - for example, do you want to pursue dance in college, in addition to engineering? What are your preferences for school size, location, climate, and culture/personality? Specifics like this will help schools that are a particularly good fit bubble to the top.

17

My assessment of your odds:
UCB, LA and SD, i think it is a doable reach.15/85 against you.
SB, D and I, you are a solid candidate but, 60/40 in your favor
SC, R and M, are very likely to admit you.
CPSLO, probably not 30/70 against you
http://www.sacbee.com/news/state/article211776744.html

I encourage you to keep an open mind as you go through this process. There are smart people at every college… many less selective schools have honors programs so, you take your GE with other relatively high stat students - LB, SD and Chico are the 3 i am most familiar with. I’d add one of them to your ap list (maybe CP Pomona too) as a safety.

Good luck.

18

FWIW, my instate D (ACT 31, 4.0 uw) was accepted to many of the same schools that OP mentions (UCB, UCLA, UCSB, Cal Poly SLO, USC, Santa Clara). Santa Clara did throw money at her - not enough to make it equitable with a UC, but if they are continuing along the path of wanting to lure kids STEM kids, there may be $$ there.