<p>Guyanese / Sri Lankan from Southern California
Attend Oxford Academy (#4 high school in the nation according to US News and World Report, #1 Public school)</p>
<p>UW GPA: 3.7 (Horrible freshman year), W 4.0
Strong upward swing in grades
UC GPA: 4.12
SATs: CR - 720, M - 590(Horrible, but have taken again), W - 720 = 2020
SATIIs: US - 730, Bio - 700, Lit - 660 (only first two for obvious reasons)</p>
<p>I've never been that excellent of a math student, but I'm not going to major in anything close to math, but it makes my SAT score look worse than it really is.</p>
<p>Have taken 8/13 possible APs at my school, including
AP US History (5)
AP Biology (4)
AP Language and Composition (4)
AP European History
AP Chemistry
AP Calculus AB
AP Literature
AP Government</p>
<p>ECs:
Computer Club President
Athletic Publication Comittee: Editor in Chief
Instrumental Music Vice President
Symphonic Orchestra principal musician
Varsity policy debater
National Honor Society Historian
Student Body Senate member
Track and field varsity thrower
Platinum/Gold award for academic excellence
Award for Excellence (2x) AP US History
AP Scholar award
~500 volunteer hours
Work experience</p>
<p>You have a strong chance... write a great personal statement. Include in your personal statement anything you get "points" for (not literally, as they do not use an actual point system at Cal) that is not mentioned elsewhere on the application such as hardship, what led to your strong upward gpa trend, any leadership examples that are not mentioned in the EC/activity section, etc. Good luck.</p>
<p>My essay's pretty good, one's about earning my track letter, and is totally about hardships I faced, and failing multiple times at things, before my first breakthrough, which led to me not giving up on myself. The other is about living in a small city, and how that made me think of myself as a part of a family, instead of a city, and how that caused me to seek out ways to help my city.</p>
<p>Well, I'd say you have a very good chance of getting into L&S, above 50%. And not being good at math, well...you might want to work on that if you are going into the sciences.</p>
<p>L&S refers to the College of Letters and Sciences. If you don't start working on math now, you might not have as many options of majors to go into when you finally do figure out where you're going. If you know you have a weakness, you should not make light of it. Not to sound like some high school teacher, but math is more a method of thought than knowing how to integrate things and memorize functions so being bad at math is a bigger issue than you think.</p>
<p>Letters and sciences, I'm assuming, is humanities and sciences? And yeah, I'm working on my math this year, trying to dissect calculus to a level at which I can understand. Also, by not make light of it, what exactly do you mean?</p>
<p>Yeah, humanities and scieces, or some sciences. By don't make light of math, I mean don't try to rationalize being bad at math or making excuses for yourself abou not understanding certain math concepts. I'm not saying you, specifically, make light of math, but I think everyone has a tendency to do this; I certainly did and I regret it now.</p>