Chance Me! (UCs I applied to)

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of California - GENERAL
1

Hi everyone! I just thought I’d post and see since I’m currently in that lame duck period between finding out my EAs and the upcoming March madness.

I applied to UC Berkeley, UCLA, UC Davis, and UCSB- I’m ready for people to be brutally honest because everyone is always like “you’ll be fine!!” but I doubt myself ?

[Objective Breakdown]
Majors: Biology (Immunology and Pathogenesis) for UC Berkeley, Microbiology/Immunology/Molecular Genetics at UCLA, Pre-Biology at UCSB, and Global Disease Biology at Davis.
CA Student
3.75 UW/ 4.21 WGPA
Top 15% of class of 747
32 ACT
730 Bio-M, 620 Literature
7 AP’s, 5 Honors, 1 Dual Credit [AP Euro (4), AP English Lang (4), APUSH (5), AP Biology (5), AP Music Theory (4), AP US Gov (TBD), AP Psychology (TBD) + 2 semester credits for a college biotech class]

[Subjective Breakdown]
600+ Volunteer Hours as hospital intern
Nationally ranked pianist (14 years of playing)
Chamber violinist (9 years of playing)
Shaolin Kempo Karate (10 years, quit in sophomore year)
Race/Ethnicity: White/Male (I’m actually half Middle Eastern but it’s all the same to them)
Income Bracket: $150k+
Hooks: First gen American, first gen college, gay, Jewish

[Essay Breakdown]
Essay 1: Talked about my (current) experience working as an executive for the hosptial internship program I’m in (200+ students on two hosptial campuses), and how I took upon the job of completely renovating the communications system last year, and also how I’m managing the entire admissions and training process this year as well- more so trying to explain how my time working up the ladder (Intern → Shift Lead → Department Head → Executive) hopefully will have prepared me for the job itself.

Essay 2: Mostly about my passion for music. Touched upon how mom is a freelance artist and my dad is a (part-time) rock musician and even though they tried to get me to do both I never budged from being obsessed with classical music. Also briefly talked about competing at national level.

Essay 3: Past/Present/Future analysis of my coming out story in 2016- primarily how it dueled with my mental health as I did my best to prepare what it would be like coming out to my parents whom are split religiously/ethnically/politically. Related it mostly through a story of how one of my neighbor’s moms wouldn’t let me play with her son when I was like 9 because she caught me teaching him about fashion shows with his sister’s dolls.

Essay 4: Talked about my innate love for biology and medicine from three main sources- the first being AP Bio. The second was the time period in elementary school when my grandmother became my caretaker because my dad had late-stage cancer and she’s a science-obsessed woman who took me to aquariums, laboratories, and we experienced a 7.0 earthquake together in Maui one year. Lastly the third is my shameless addiction to zombie and apocalyptic movies (hey, natural disasters are always followed by disease).

2

You’d have to come up with you UC GPA (both capped weighted and capped unweighted) to get a more accurate assessment, but given what you presented so far Stats-wise, UCB and UCLA will be a reach, and you’ll probably be close to 50-50 for UCD and UCSB.

The first gen college is pretty much your only real hook, which will definitely help. If you are from a single parent family, that can be considered a hook especially if one of the parents is deceased. Piano, if you’ve won some very significant awards or achieved some fame, might help. If your UC GPA comes in at over 4.0, given you ECs, essay topics and hooks, on second glance it wouldn’t surprise me if you beat the odds and get an offer from UCB or UCLA. They are fairly long odds though, so hopefully you have some safeties as well.

3

UW GPA is kinda low for the UC system and for your major. ACT is slightly below or just about average. Ask @Gumbymom to confirm. ECs are kinda average and don’t really connect with major all that well.

4

@ProfessorPlum168 my UC Gpa is a 3.95 for capped unweighted (not sure about the other one), my transcript has a calculator for it. As for piano I do have major awards but no fame haha. Thankfully, my father is still alive. Thank you so much by the way!

5

@GoBears2023 Thanks for the feedback!

6

Also if anyone reads this part, here’s other schools besides the UC’s I’ve applied to:

Georgetown (Deferred)
University of Miami (Accepted)
University of Pennsylvania
Brandeis
University of Washington
Seattle University (Accepted)
American University
University of Maryland (Accepted)
San Francisco State (Accepted)
University of San Francisco (Accepted)
Drexel (Accepted)
ASU (Accepted)

7

You’ve got some good backups there. Don’t know much about Maryland but I know their CS program is one of the tops in the country (which doesn’t help you much but I thought I’d throw that out there). ASU has a really good Honors college if you can get in.

8

I agree with @ProfessorPlum168 ‘s assessment of your chances. UCB/UCLA are Reach schools for all applicants. Your ACT and GPA are within range for all the schools. UCD and UCSB are more likely but not a guarantee. Your EC’s make you stand out especially the piano ranking. You already have some good choices so best of luck.

2018 UC capped weighted GPA averages:
UCB: 4.23
UCLA: 4.23
UCSD: 4.16
UCSB: 4.13
UCI: 4.13
UCD: 4.11

25th - 75th percentiles for ACT:
UCB: 30-35
UCLA: 31-35
UCSD: 28-34
UCSB: 28-34
UCD: 26-33

9

“UCB/UCLA are Reach schools for all applicants.”

I’m not sure about that, especially for certain high schools, applicants with 4.33 capped weighted and 36/1600 have about a 50% chance of getting in either of those schools. And in some bay area high schools, it’s about 75% for Berkeley. That would make them matches.

10

@theloniuusmonk: True some schools probably have a higher than average acceptance rate to these schools but in general applicants should consider both schools as Reach schools. Since this website is suppose to be anonymous, I would not want posters to specify their HS just to show that they attend a school that has had a high acceptance rate in the past.

My attitude is that if you go in with high expectations, some one always ends up being very disappointed.

11

@Gumbymom I agree

12

I’m a bit surprised that you UC GPA came in at 3.95. With 5 APs under your belt, presumably all of them taken in 10th and 11th, yout UC weighted capped should be around 4.05. You literally would have had to have taken 20 a-g classes in 10th and 11th grade in order to have such a narrow gap. I’m pretty sure at most you would have is 12 to 14 classes.

13

@ProfessorPlum168 I had 15 classes between 10th and 11th grade, I don’t know too much about how the UC GPAs are calculated, but a lot of my non-AP classes count as UC honors

14

@ProfessorPlum168 also to be fair I did have nearly all B’s my sophomore year because it was the year I hit my absolute lowest with some personal issues (coming out to my parents and all) and although at least I didn’t fail, I’m going to do some investigation with my UC GPA because now I’m quite intrigued

15

Using the Rogerhub GPA calculator is pretty easy to reverse engineer things. A 3.75 unweighted implies you made exactly 3 times as many As as you did Bs. So say for example, 14 out your 15 classes in 10-11 grade were a-g classes. That would mean 21 As, 7 Bs, and 10 honors semesters, ie AP semesters (chances are you may have more, depending on your HS and how their Honors classes count for extra weight. More on that later).

Plugging into Rogerhub shows that your unweighted was 3.75 and you capped unweighted was 4.04. As long as you had more than 4 APs (8 semesters) of honors, that 4.04 remains. That extra 0.1 could be the difference between getting in and not getting in, especially around the 4.00 mark which is an important border point. Also, UCLA and UCB will take into account you weighted uncapped as well, and that’s where the all the extra dual enrollment and honors and APs can raise the uncapped GPA up.

You can use this site to see what Honors classes count for extra weight: https://hs-articulation.ucop.edu/agcourselist Plug in your HS name. This website also tells you which of your 15 classes are a-g; only a-g counts towards your GPAs. Also, one other thing, dual-enrollment classes usually always counts as extra weight as well.

16

Also, an upward trend in grades, as what you mentioned, will help your cause a bit as well.

BTW the Rogerhub calculator is here: https://rogerhub.com/gpa-calculator-uc/

17

assuming your UCGPA is around 4.0, all of the UCs you applied to are pretty unlikely. UCSC or UCR would have been better bets. Glad to see you applied more broadly.
good luck with the rest of your aps.

18

@NCalRent thank you for the feedback! I appreciate your honesty :slight_smile: