Chances of getting into UC schools and possibly others

Unfortunately “8 semesters” of weighting doesn’t mean college-credit semesters, it means high school semesters a.k.a. 4 full-year classes worth of weighting. Having taken more than 4 AP’s still helps you in terms of course rigor, and you can still get credit for all of them if you scored high enough on the test, but the GPA-weighting maxes out at four. Use the calculator that Gumbymom posted up-thread to compute your UC capped/weighted GPA. The trimester thing may make it a little tricky, but try to average it as if you were on semesters.

@aquapt Oh. Well, I haven’t removed my seminar classes from the calculations and I honestly don’t know how to do the trimester thing properly. I’ll wait for my counselor to figure it out for me when school starts. I have a minimum of 4.0 for each trimester, and my individual trimesters are well above 4.0 except for the 3rd one when its seminar time. I don’t know why my UC GPA would be lowered so much… I wouldn’t have a shot. And I am retaking my SAT a 3rd time, but I’m honestly pretty sick of doing the test. 1480 is top 1 percentile of the nation, and apparently it still isn’t enough. Lol.

If you use the RogerHub calculator, one of the options is inputting grades by trimesters. For every trimester AP grade for a course taken 10-11th, you would get 1 honors point. The RogerHub calculator will calculate out your UW UC GPA, the Capped weighted UC GPA (used by all UC’s) and Fully weighted UC GPA (considered by UCLA/UCB).

For SLO, they are the only CSU that uses 9-11th grades in their GPA calculation while the other CSU’s use the UC capped weighted GPA. You do not get any honors points for qualified honors courses taken 9th grade so you plug in your 9th grades into the RogerHub calculator with no addition honors points to get your SLO GPA.

SLO’s CS major has around a 5-6% acceptance rate so it is as competitive as UCLA and UCB. I would apply to Cal Poly Pomona for a safety or San Diego State.

@aquapt Hey! I just remembered- 4.17 GPA is my weighted GPA including my freshman year. Without my freshman year, my weighted GPA is 4.31

What are your GPAs recalculated by the UC method?

Well, hey! That’s a lot better! What UC’s will consider is weighted and capped - so you still have to make sure you’re only counting 8 semesters (or I guess 12 trimesters?) of weighting. But it does look like leaving out the freshman grades is a big help. (I have no idea if this would interest you, but from what I understand, Canadian U’s also don’t look at freshman grades. UBC, for example, has some great engineering programs - and they start with an exploratory Foundation year, so you don’t have to commit to a specialty when you apply https://engineering.ubc.ca/academics/undergraduate/engineering-programs - though CS is a whole different program so you’d still need to apply to either CS or engineering.)

At any rate… you’re going to do the UC app regardless. It doesn’t seem like you’re in such rough shape financially that you need to skimp on application fees. So there’s no point in over-stressing about “chancing” the different campuses. Apply to every one that you can see yourself attending. Write the best Personal Insight Questions you can. Get to know the various campuses and find reasons that you’d be happy to go to each of them.

The only strategizing that should really come into it is when you pick your major. For example, it was foolish for my daughter to apply to CS in the engineering school at UCLA. She might well have gotten in if she’d applied to CS+Linguistics in Arts & Sciences, and she probably would have liked that major better anyway. (She put it as her second choice, and later learned that UCLA doesn’t consider second choice majors in a different school within the university.) So, shop the different options at the different schools, and don’t necessarily just go for the “usual suspects.” UCSC has an optics concentration within EE - maybe that would interest you. Irvine has a very cool Informatics program which is unique in the UC system - don’t assume that you’d like straight-CS better than informatics until you learn more about it. Explore the offerings at each campus before picking which program to apply to - even if it’s not a school that admits by major, your choice still says something about you.

As for retaking the SAT… I hear ya’. Standardized tests and the associated prep are not a rewarding use of time. It’s frustrating… and you don’t have to do another retake. You can go with what you’ve got… you can give the ACT a chance, because sometimes people just have more of a “knack” for one test than the other (one of my kids was like this and also felt that the ACT was a more pleasant and interesting test to take)… or you can do the prep-and-retake thing. Honestly any of these is a legitimate choice. Like you said, 1480/1490 is already top 1%. Whether you need to be in the top 0.7 percent is really a judgment call, because there are other things you could be doing with your time that could be even more valuable.

Just “do you” and you will end up with fine options. At this point in time, getting a start on your essays is probably the most important thing. Figure out how to show the readers your ideas and enthusiasms and aspirations in a way that brings the rest of the application to life, and you will do fine.

@ucbalumnus So I went to rogerhub and relooked at my transcript. I have 20 academic classes in sophomore and junior year, I disregarded seminars, a pass fail, and a PE class. I have 15 A’s and 5 B’s, and 14 grades were for AP classes. My weighted capped was 4.35, weighted uncapped was 4.45, and unweighted was 3.75

You mean your weighted capped was 4.15

You’re applying to some competitive schools. First off, your SAT score would be on the low end for schools like those. Most applicants applying to the schools you’re applying have 1500+ SAT scores. Also, you ECs don’t particularly stand out. You have little to no leadership roles. However, your took a lot of rigorous classes which might help with your application. If you write good essays, you might have a chance. Be aware that the schools you’re applying are reaches for everyone (ie. Cornell, UChicago, Berkely, etc.).

@ProfessorPlum168 The GPA I wrote in the original post included my freshman year. The update is the one for UC schools

15 As and 5 Bs with more than 8 semesters of AP is 3.75 uw 4.15 weighted capped.

The weighted capped GPA is usually 0.25 to 0.4 greater than the unweighted GPA, for 10th-11th grade distribution for the student with at least a few AP and Honors classes.

@ProfessorPlum168 That isn’t what Rogerhub calculated…

@ProfessorPlum168 And my school goes by trimesters

If your school goes by trimesters, wouldn’t that mean 6 terms over 10th and 11th grades, so 20 grades means only 3+1/3 courses/grades per term on average?

That seems to be far fewer than the normal 5 to 7 courses/grades per term.

If you go by trimesters, 20 grades seems kinda low then. Shouldnt you have more closer to 30 grades than 20 grades? 5 classes x 3 grades each x 2 years.

@ucbalumnus We have 5 classes in a day, so 15 trimesters a year. We get individual grades for each trimester. so 30 classes in two years. However, I had 2 off rolls, 7 seminars, 1 PE class, and 1 pass/fail class. So I had 20 academic grades left. 14 of those grades were for AP classes.

@ProfessorPlum168 ^

What were the 7 seminars, and what is an “off roll”?

@ucbalumnus An off roll is a period where you don’t have a class and you are free to leave school. I correct myself, I had 6 seminars within the last 2 years, and the Calc BC seminar was a pass fail class.

What were the seminars and grades?