• Intended Major: Computer Science
• SAT: 1550
• ACT: N/A
• GPA: 3.87 UW (Messed up freshman year…upwards trend though…)
• APs: 7 taken in total, all passing scores!
• National Awards: NMS, VASE Semifinalist, AP Scholar & A Honor Roll
• ECs: NAHS, NEHS, NHS, Mu Alpha Theta, Coding Club, NSHS, Spanish Club, Creative Writing Club, Newspaper, HOSA
• Volunteer: Hospital, SPCA, and mostly volunteering through honor societies (300+ hours)
• Job / Work: S.T.E.M Intern at a nonprofit, Target Cashier, Animal Intern at UT Southwestern (worked with computers & stuff)
• Summer Activites: Coding Camps, taught CS to underprivileged kids & traveled abroad to help the poor
• Ethnicity: Asian — Indian
• Gender — Female
• State: TX
So what’d y’all think? What else should I spice up? I can write pretty good essays…but I don’t know if there’s any “salsa” about my application.
UCB and UCLA won’t care about your freshman year grades.
UCB has EECS and L&S CS. L&S is a bit easier to get into.
You may want to include more of which ECs you were actually outstanding in and/or have leadership positions in.
UCLA and UCB offer little to no financial aid to out of state students, so make sure you run the Net Price calculator’s for both schools and be prepared to pay close to full fees at $60K/year. USC might be a better deal especially if you can get some merit aid.
You are a competitive and well qualified applicant. Hopefully you have some solid Match and Safety schools on your list besides these 3 Universities.
Best of luck.
You are a competitive applicant. Your stats and ECs are great. Write good essays and you could get accepted to any of these schools
Great chance at all
No one has good chance at these schools. You do have chances above average applicants though.
For UCB, you are either admitted as a freshman directly into EECS (BS), or you are admitted as undeclared to L&S and have to get a minimum 3.3 GPA in specific undergrad classes to be allowed to declare CS (BA). Not so easy either way. USC will be about 10K more per year, but, as pointed out, they have more leeway to throw money at you if they want you. D was admitted to all 3 schools (not CS) with 4.0 unweighted, 6 APs. USC threw her no money. UCLA and UCB especially will be reaches for you. Make sure your essays are stellar, and that you have some matches and safeties in the mix.