<p>EC: Academic Decathlon, Key Club, Spanish Club, International Student Mentor/Tutor, Worship Team Leader, Vice President of ASB, Lead Asian Representative for Asian/American Alliance. He volunteered at his church a lot and helped out at a hospital. His SAT and GPA were incredible though! His major was Undeclared Biological Sciences. At my school, no student has ever been accepted to Ivy Leagues, MIT, Cal Tech, Stanford etc… UCs were basically the most prestigious ones that very few students got accepted to. This year only four students in my class, out of the 114 who applied to UCLA, got accepted there, and my salutatorian friend was the only one who got into Cal, out of the 83 who applied.</p>
<p>@silas6070</p>
<p>Oh, my God. That’s absolutely ridiculous.</p>
<p>With your GPA, one might suspect that there’s grade inflation at your school.
However, it didn’t seem like the case as you also have excellent SAT, Subject, and AP test scores.</p>
<p>You mentioned that 4 out of 114 and 1 out of 83 got into UCLA and Cal respectively this year.
Do you have the numbers from last year?</p>
<p>@StevenToCollege Because I was an office assistant to the college adviser I actually do have the numbers and I memorized the numbers to help me with applications. Last year, for the Class of 2017 at my school, 64 students applied to Cal Berkeley, but no one got accepted. Out of the 92 who applied to UCLA only one girl got accepted and she was the class Valedictorian. Plus she was the Captain of our Girl’s Softball team that went to CIF championships. Her major was also Undeclared Biological Sciences. I knew her well because she went to my middle school with me. According to my school files, including my friend this year, only three students at my school have been accepted to Cal Berkeley ever.</p>
<p>@silas6070</p>
<p>I remembered seeing somewhere that you are of Hispanic origin, is that correct?
Sorry, man. I really feel bad for you.
With your stat and background, I suspect that you would get into Davis, Irvine, and Santa Barbara or at least Riverside.</p>
<p>@StevenToCollege I am Mexican-American, but that would not have helped me at all with the UCs, since in the late 90’s affirmative action was banned from them. Because of that, the number of admitted Black and Hispanic students dropped dramatically, and the number of Asian students increased over the years. However, I have heard of several cases from my other friends high schools that hint at affirmative action being involved in a student’s admittance to UCLA or Cal Berkeley, but I can’t be too quick to judge. I got into the psychology programs at Davis, Riverside, Irvine, San Diego and Santa Barbara, but was rejected from the engineering programs. I am not going to lie though, high school was very rough since I was competing against a lot of intelligent students. My social life was pretty much non-existent in order to maintain a high GPA, to study for SAT, ACT, and Subject Tests, as well as be involved in my clubs and help out at the organizations I volunteered at. </p>
<p>@silas6070</p>
<p>Based on the US News, do you know the ranking of your high school?
With so few admits to Cal and UCLA, I was wondering if it has anything to do with the school ranking.</p>
<p>@StevenToCollege I don’t actually know my high school’s ranking. It’s a small Christian school, that barely has 600 students combined. About 62% of our students are international students from Vietnam, China, Japan, and South Korea. Then 30% are Caucasian, and the remainder are either Latino, African-American, and other races. The school is very nice and the teachers are very helpful with one-on-one sessions and the academics is excellent. It’s just competition at my school is fierce. </p>
<p>@silas6070</p>
<p>It’s because of this reason, my son’s high school is getting rid of ranking next year. For example, one student takes nothing but honor and AP classes, and another might take other regular classes while having the same honor and AP loads. The latter’s weighted GPA suffers as a result.</p>
<p>@SteveToCollege That’s sad to hear. The first 20 students ranked at my school had GPAs in the 4.0 range while the next 80 ranked from 3.6-3.9. Although some colleges do not care about rankings.</p>
<p>@SteveToCollege do you have any idea what colleges your son is applying to? UCs, Harvey Mudd, Ivies?</p>
<p>@silas6070</p>
<p>Still struggling… The original idea is not to apply too many schools.
However, we might have him applying to more schools after hearing some horrible stories.</p>
<p>As long as he has safety schools to fall on in case worse comes to worse. But whatever you can afford.</p>
<p>Something must be odd about your school, since Berkeley is not impossible to get into, based on the summary of posted admission results: <a href=“Berkeley Frosh Class of 2018 decision summary - #10 by ucbalumnus - University of California - Berkeley - College Confidential Forums”>Berkeley Frosh Class of 2018 decision summary - #10 by ucbalumnus - University of California - Berkeley - College Confidential Forums;
<p>It is, however, the case that applying to most Berkeley College of Engineering majors means a higher admissions bar than applying to Berkeley College of Letters and Science.</p>
<p>Still, it is odd for you not to get into Riverside, regardless of major applied to.</p>
<p>@ucbalumnus Riverside sent me an email saying they accepted me into psychology since their mechanical engineering availability was limited. UCLA and Cal Berkeleys rejections were not surprising since their engineering programs are very competitive to get into.</p>
<p>silas, was this recently or was this a while ago. One of your posts, you stated you were rejected from every UCs. It’s very confusing.</p>
<p>@DrGoogle This is the same situation. When I said I was rejected by all the UCs, I was talking about not being admitted to any of their mechanical engineering departments, since Mechanical Engineering is my primary major. I was accepted to Riverside, Davis, Irvine, San Diego and Santa Barbara for Psychology (an alternate major I put down on the application for those schools). I didn’t put down an alternate major for UCLA or UC Berkeley since those two were my top two choices for getting into the engineering programs.</p>