I am a sophomore at UNC-Chapel Hill. My current GPA is 3.55/4. UC Berkeley has been my dream school since day one but didn’t get in my first time. My extracurricular activities are decent. I was checking the transfer profile the other day and saw the students’ GPA range was from 3.66-4.0 so I was a bit worried about my GPA. I am going to apply to be a psychology major and my major GPA so far is 3.8+ so that is good. What should I do to make my profile look more competitive? Should I put the emphasis on my psyc major?
It is way too hard to tell what will make yourself look more appealing to admissions. However, your best bet is to go onto the UCB Psychology website and look at the mission of the school. Also, check out their admissions process page and figure out what they are looking for in an applicant.
Play to those cards. You should put emphasis on whatever you feel is more important to you in your application.
It is incredibly difficult to get admitted as an OOS transfer student. Even those with higher GPAs get rejected. For Psych, the average GPA for admittance is around a 3.7-8 - and understand that most of those are in-state.
They will want you to have completed their 7-course pattern (check the Berkeley website) and as many prerequisites to the Psych major as possible (check the Berkeley Psych website).
All that being said, applying is worth a shot. For the personal statement, they’ll want to know about you as a person (so talk more about personal growth than your experiences themselves), and definitely provide a compelling reason to transfer.
It might help if Molisha stated what her major was. Is it impacted, like psychology? Or is it 17th century heirloom literature that sees 20 applicants per year.
@Molisha Good to know. I was under the impression that it would be incredibly difficult to get into impacted majors as an OOS applicant, as briank82 pointed out.
Last year I got into each UC as a chinese major, but after taking this year off I’ve decided to be a poli sci major, so I’m pretty nervous about getting in or not!!!
so its possible my gpa was only 3.6