<p>ECs listed on app: football, track, was in 2 clubs, and work</p>
<p>Job/Work Experience: did finances that were really receipts at a family friend's company and also had a job there too</p>
<p>Essays (subject and responses): already started so they should be very good- on the hardships that have come down on me the last 2 years, and my dealing w/ them. </p>
<p>Teacher Recs: better than great (but not used)</p>
<p>Counselor Rec: great (but not used)</p>
<p>School Type: Private, does not rank </p>
<p>Ethnicity: Hispanic</p>
<p>Gender:M</p>
<p>Also: Took 3 summer courses at a local comm. college; got A's</p>
<p>You already started your essays? wow....I didn't even do the application until the day before the deadline.</p>
<p>Your ethnicity doesn't matter, and please don't make your essays sound like sob stories. It's a numbers game to get you in the door, and then your character and personality as displayed through the essay really gets you in. At least, that's what I think....I was pretty oblivious to the whole college app thing until seveal months after it was all over.</p>
<p>They don't want to hear some sob story about how you suffered. They want to hear a story that has impacted you and has made you a better/unique person because of it.</p>
<p>Actually ethnicity does matter. A high school counselor who knows the admission office at Berkeley said that they changed the method of admitting students this past year. Rather than admitting all the best in the state irregardless of their school, they are now taking into account the high school itself and all its applicants so you are competing against the students you go to school with. They hope that this method will lead to greater diversity on campus- which means they want to attract more minorities that otherwise would not get into Berkeley because all the "great" students come from a couple of good high schools around California.</p>
<p>They use zipcode to determine which communities have greater minorities. This kid may go to a private school but he may live in a different community - we don't know.</p>
<p>You're a CA resident, 3.8 GPA, and 2100 SAT score...
From Statfinder, Fall 2007 had the following admit percentages:</p>
<p>GPA: 3.80 - 3.99
Total CA Applicants: 6,492
Total CA Admits: 669 (10.3%)
Breakdown of those applicants by highest SAT score (Average from CR + Math):<br>
200 - 499: 63 admits/579 applicants = 10.8%
500 - 599: 158/1,886 = 8.4%
600 - 699: 252/3,035 = 8.3%
700 - 800: 196/985 = 19.9%</p>
<p>Berkeley very heavily considers GPA...raise your UC GPA if you can...your chances will greatly improve. Otherwise you're looking at a 10-20% chance.</p>
<p>In your family, would you be a first generation college student? If so, this would also improve your chances.</p>
<p>Your stats seem on track but WOW, not only are you hispanic but a male hispanic. You are practically in. Get ELC that will significantly raise your admission chances to about 60%. Its also great that you have already started your essays and I would recommend getting them reviewed by many different people.</p>
<p>^ Just to clarify...I <em>think</em> the GPA quoted in the UCFinder stats is overall GPA...It doesn't clarify. If your unweighted GPA is above a 4.2, your chances improve dramatically.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Your stats seem on track but WOW, not only are you hispanic but a male hispanic. You are practically in.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Check out statfinder--you'll see that it doesn't matter that he's Hispanic: they actually have a lower admit rate overall.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Get ELC that will significantly raise your admission chances to about 60%.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>In order to gauge your chances based on admit rates for one single statistic like this (ELC), the event would need to be random; since admissions are not random events, you cannot gauge your chances on that: there are simply too many factors affecting it. When you take more of these factors into consideration, as UCBChemEGrad did in his posted statistics from StatFinder, then it's more predictable and logical to use admit rates to gauge your chances.</p>
<p>Please, don't tell someone their chances are good if you don't honestly know how the admissions works. I'm not professing to be an expert, but the data simply doesn't support claims like yours (and don't feel bad--these sort of claims pop up all over the forums these days).</p>
<p>I'm sorry kyledavid80, I'll consulte you the next time I add a post. By the way, on the official UC website they say that the ELC admit rate was 56.2%, which I know are not his exact chances of getting in but is substatially higher than the average admit rate, for 2008, of 21.5%.</p>