Chances at berkeley(haas)?

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

<p>I was wondering if any of you would be able to assess my situation in your opinion</p>

<p>Right now, I am a Junior in a ny suburb public school in long island and according to the colleges i would be considered white haha</p>

<p>GPA: 95 unweighted/ most likely a 98-99 weighted</p>

<p>SAT: 1980 ( basically i bombed it) I am retaking it in June so assume that i will get in the 2100-2250 range when you do this review ( or look at both lol)</p>

<p>SATII’s: 680 U.S History, wont know until may-ish i will be taking the math IIc and bio for the other two( took them today predict math:740 bio:680)</p>

<p>APs: 4 on U.S History. This year I am taking 6 AP’s, next year I will be taking another 3-4</p>

<p>Courseload: The hardest available in my school</p>

<p>Rank: school doesnt rank but im on high honor roll and i assume top 10/class of 420</p>

<p>Prospective Major: Business/Economics</p>

<p>By the end of high school I will most likely have 12 AP’s</p>

<p>Other Factors
-until high school attended a gifted school that only let in 15 kids per grade (2nd to 8th)
-State or Country: New York
-School Type: Public
-Ethnicity: White
-Gender: Male</p>

<p>Extra Curriculars/Awards</p>

<p>-Spanish Honor Society (9-12) 11th: Secretary 12th: President</p>

<ul>
<li>METMUNC( model united nations)(9,11,12): board member staff position</li>
</ul>

<p>-National Honor Society(11,12): President( i hear through the grapevine haha)</p>

<p>-Wall Street Investors Club(10-12) President</p>

<ul>
<li>School Newspaper(11-12): head news writer</li>
<li><p>DECA ( Marketing Club)(10-12)</p></li>
<li><p>Fed Challenge competitive team(2 years){ very exclusively selected}</p></li>
<li><p>Student Council (12, School Wide President)</p></li>
<li><p>SING participant</p></li>
<li><p>Community Service Club (9-12):Most likely a miniscule board spot if any</p></li>
<li><p>3 Years of Varsity Spring Track,</p></li>
<li><p>1 Year of Junior Varsity Football, 1 year Varsity Football
{ which makes me a four time scholar athlete recipeient}</p></li>
</ul>

<p>-Recipient of John Hopkins University Mathematics and Verbal Talent Search State Award for being among the highest scoring participants in the competition, </p>

<ul>
<li>METMUNC Honorary Mention Award for 2004</li>
</ul>

<p>-Ketah Torah Recipient at temple for educational excellence

  • 4 years of travel soccer</p>

<ul>
<li>Work as a spanish tutor, worked as a waiter over a summer at a summer camp, UPenn Pre College Program for this summer </li>
</ul>

<p>Hook/ Additional Activities</p>

<ul>
<li>I am currently writing a screenplay</li>
<li>Also I am a songwriter, and am currently working on an album of my own. My music is a mixutre of hip hop and neo soul singing in my opinion</li>
<li>In this, I started up my own record label ( business creation) where i am working on promoting myself through various plans as well as other local artists</li>
<li>My main community service plan is my efforts to found a organization to aid the poverty in colombia</li>
</ul>

<p>If you read all of this, i heavily appreciate it and would like to know your honest opinion
Thanks in advance</p>

2

<p>bring your SAT up, and i should be fine because you are not really applying to haas you are just applying to schools of letter and science with intention of haas. I shouldn't be that bad. however you should work hard so you can get into haas in your jr yr as the competition is relatively competitive</p>

3

<p>soloboe can you explain, haas is the business school right, wouldnt undergraduate start freshman year</p>

4

<p>Your ECs are very impressive, but narrow them down because on the UC application you're only allowed room for like five. </p>

<p>Since you're out of state, it will be difficult. To increase your chances you need to massively improve your SAT/SAT II scores </p>

<p>About Hass, you must apply for it once you're actually AT Berkeley...so don't even worry about that for now.</p>

<p>Good luck!</p>

5

<p>appreciate it, i think i will be able to get 2100+ on the sat in june, is that more the range youre talking about</p>

6

<p>yea, you have to be at berkeley and take the core classes needed for haas, then you apply again. If you are not good enough, you won't get in. I mean they are #3 in the nation for biz.</p>

7

<p>2100+ might be the cut off. you will want to score even higher. but again you are applying to schools of letters and science not engineering like me</p>

8

<p>You seem to be very optimistic about test scores. While Berkeley is probably the least dependent on test scores of all the UC's, it is a strong factor. Is your public school any good? There are many students who go to underperforming schools and delude themselves into thinking that they can obtain any scores at will, and I hope you don't fall into that category. I was in this situation and I thought that I "bombed" my Psat's, "bombed" my Sat I's but then I had to accept, at some point, that I wasn't going to be a 1500+ scorer.</p>

<p>If Berkeley decides to accept you come next April, then it will be primarily from your extracurriculars. Being student body president is a big deal, but I don't see how you can couple that with being president of all these other clubs. In my experiences, those who find themselves in this situation (president of multiple clubs- let alone school president) generally woefully underperform at leading their clubs because they simply can't put in the effort demanded of them for each club. On top of that, you hold all of these random awards and distinctions, including "Recipient of John Hopkins University Mathematics and Verbal Talent Search State Award for being among the highest scoring participants in the competition" and yet you can't handle the SAT's? There is too many descrepancies and your extracurriculars are all over the map. Perhaps this is a case of a student prematurely labeled as "gifted" attempting to be "well-rounded" by doing anything and everything.</p>

<p>The honorable thing would be to step down from some of those posts as president. Be student body president and have most of your activities stem from there. Focus on ONE outside activity and make that a success (I love the Colombia thing, but it takes a lot of work, no?). You shouldn't be one-dimensional, but you should be focused. Berkeley admissions officials don't want students who think they can save the world, only ones who know they can help make the world a better place. Best of luck!</p>

<p>TTG, '09</p>

9

<p>You typically apply for Haas after your sophomore year at Cal. The acceptance rate into the program for Berkeley undergrads is a little below 50% I believe, so over half the people who apply to get in don't.</p>

10

<p>ttgiang i appreciate your critique although i think you jumped to a couple of unfair conclusions or generalizations about who i am? I really dont see how my stats are bad with a gpa of 4.0 uw taking a course load of all ap's, and im not trying to save the world lol i just have a lot of interests. I had a bad test day what can i say and its not even that bad its just below what UC Berkely expects on their average.</p>

<p>"There is too many descrepancies and your extracurriculars are all over the map. Perhaps this is a case of a student prematurely labeled as "gifted" attempting to be "well-rounded" by doing anything and everything."</p>

<p>haha chill yourself sigmund i did poorly on the verbal section anyway i appreciate you at least taking time to say whast on ya mind</p>

11

<p>You're hecka in. Be sure to apply to University of Pennsylvania - Wharton too. :)</p>

12

<p>Wharton and Haas undergraduate degrees are comparable anywhere you go in NY, SF or LA. I would say that it would depend more where you would rather spend the most impressionable years of your life. </p>

<p>A lot of rich students with connections to Asia, Silicon Valley, or tech are at Berkeley undergraduate... (their parents buy houses in California under their names etc...) But most of them are very very humble, and live life as chill people and enjoy it. If you are interested in the aspects of global business (after all, the global economy is booming in Asia), then Berkeley economics could be a better choice as well, not just Haas. UPenn's name is not as prestigious globally. But in the US, both undergraduate degrees carry pretty much the same weight, slightly changing depending on which region you want to end up.</p>

13

<p>sleep thanks i am but hecka in i wish lol
and west side good info but id probably prefer domestic</p>

14

<p>Hello again,</p>

<pre><code>Well, you just asked about what your "chances at berkeley (haas)" were so I did my best, as another rational human being (and berkeley student), would view it. I guess I was interested in answering your "chances" was that, from what I could discern, we have a lot in common. You're right that I don't know much about you, but then again don't expect the admissions officials to either. I'm not sure about how Berkeley officials view the apps, but with UCLA they are distributed to alumns who help determine who should be in or out- in other words, regular Joe's and Jane's (sort of like me?) looking at your info/stats/etc. It should definitely be viewed that way and only that way. The fact that you are here and already interested in such a great school like Berkeley is a testament to the fact that you are already college material- which one (school), in particular Berkeley, is what we're all trying to help you find out.
</code></pre>

<p>You should be proud of your 4.0 gpa, but I had that too. I attended one of the identified underperforming schools in California, and there are reasons it's regarded as such. I breezed through freshman and sophomore year- with the toughest schedule- with a 4.0, on track to valedictorian, but I only did 15 minutes of homework each night. =/ That's why I asked you how competitive your school was. As to the SAT's, I felt I had a bad day too. Even the second time around, when the scores didn't rise, I also blamed it on a bad day. I sincerely hope you do better next time, but if you don't, it's best to be realistic and just take it for what it's worth. And finally, with regards to this statement:</p>

<p>"There is too many descrepancies and your extracurriculars are all over the map. Perhaps this is a case of a student prematurely labeled as "gifted" attempting to be "well-rounded" by doing anything and everything."</p>

<p>... it is, again, not out of the realm of rationality for me to think this way. A Berkeley admissions offical probably sees hundreds of kids like this who come to Berkeley and don't succeed. I'm not necessarily saying that you're such a case, it's just that the randomness of your activities can be construed in such a manner. You don't have to do anything different at all (if you genuinely enjoy each activity), but it is to your advantage to focus on a couple of items next year, grow madly in love with it, talk about it on your application, and the Admissions officials will reward you handsomely! =)</p>

<p>We're all on the same side here. I hope you make it out here to California, and I'll do my best to give my honest opinions to help you out (seeing is how we are discussing this through a "what are my chances" online forum). Lastly, I appreciate you appreciating me "[for] least taking time to say whast on ya mind." You're a class act. Best of luck!</p>

<p>TTG, '09</p>

15

<p>hey ttg thanks for clarifying things up, i felt a little attacked by your original comment but im glad you cleared things up. i get exactly what youre saying. my school is a public school but it is regarded as a pretty competitive school. long island in itself is very competitive as you probably know. regarding the whole sat things, i would hope im not delluding my self from the truth. when i took practice tests i did honestly breakin that 2100 range each time so when recievin my score i was taken back but i mean 'what ifs ' and alla that MEAN GARBAGE unless i back up my words with actual doing it, so yeah thats the plan and thanks for the appreciation of my appreciation to u HAHAH 1</p>

16

<p>I think we are answering 2 separate questions here. </p>

<p>The first question is whether you can get into Berkeley in general. And i think ttgiant15 and others have answered that question fairly well.</p>

<p>The second question is, can you get into Haas. Remember that you apply to Haas in your sophomore year, either as a current Berkeley student, or as a transfer student. In either case, very little that you've done before college matters. Haas isn't going to care that you did this-and-that in your high school days. They're only going to care about what you've done in your first 2 years of college. </p>

<p>Also, f you come to Berkeley as a freshman hoping to get into Haas, there is the distinctly strong possibility that you won't get in. About 50% of Berkeley students who apply to get into Haas are rejected. And that's just those who apply. There are plenty of other Berkeley students who would like to get into Haas, but don't apply because they know they won't get in (i.e. they know their Berkeley grades are too low). Let's face it. If you have straight C's, you're not going to apply to get into Haas. Hence, the "true" rejection rate (if everybody who wanted to get into Haas actually applied) is far higher than 50%. </p>

<p>The point is, if you come to Berkeley hoping to major in bus-ad at Haas, you ought to think very carefully about what you will do if you don't get into Haas. </p>

<p><a href="http://www.haas.berkeley.edu/Undergrad/statsucb.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.haas.berkeley.edu/Undergrad/statsucb.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

17

<p>good stuff sakky thats true</p>

18

<p>go to wharton or sloan, so you will never have to apply again</p>

19

<p>haha soloboe if they took me trust me id be there</p>

20

<p>so maybe u want to just start working hard now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! well and plus you are from ny, nyu has a pretty good biz program as well</p>