Do I have any shot of getting in as an OOS? Any advice would be helpful :)

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of California - Berkeley
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<p>Alright, so here it is (APPLYING TO COLLEGE OF CHEMISTRY, CoC):</p>

<p>Background: I got to a pretty competitive high school in CT. We send 3-4 kids to HYPSM and 8-9 more to other Ivies. and like 10 more to JHU, Carnegie Mellon, UVA, Notredame, UChicago, and Georgetown)
-Senior
-Race: Indian</p>

<p>Grades: Our school has a weighted scale, we don't calculate unweighted. I have a 4.504 weighted and my class rank is 20/538 (top 3.7%). GPA of valedictorian is 4.74 (who apparently according to him is guaranteed at Stanford or Harvard which in my opinion is bs)
-I have taken the most rigorous curriculum out of anyone in my grade (will graduate with 9 APs, 2 college courses and 13 AP exam scores)
-My freshman grades had 3 B's and 4 A's (All honors)
-Sophomore: 2 B's and 5 A's (2 APs and rest honors)
-Junior: 1 B and 6As (4 APs and rest honors)
-Senior: All As (3 APs and 1 college course)</p>

<p>Upward trend for sure.</p>

<p>Took Quantitative Analysis (Sophomore/Junior course in College, met 9 hours a week, 5.0 Credit course).
Took Multivariable Calc (met 4 hours a week).</p>

<p>ACT Scores:
32 (34 Math, 31 English, 32 Science, 31 Reading. 12 Essay)
I took it again in October, pretty sure I got a 33
definitely retaking in Dec for a 34+, if Berkeley still accepts it</p>

<p>Chem: 780
Math 2: 800
Bio M: 710 (Not sending)</p>

<p>AP Scores:
Sophomore: 4 Bio, 4 Stat
Junior: 5 calc BC, 5 calc AB subscore, 5 chem, 5 lang and comp, 3 history
Senior: lit-?, physics B-? physics C- mag?, physics C-mech-?, compsci-?, pysch-?, spanish-?</p>

<p>Extracirrcular- Won't be too elaborate here, but I consider by far the strongest part of my app.
-Table Tennis, spent around 1800+ hours training, practicing toward this. Getting "Special talent Recommendation" from President of Berkeley's Table Tennis. #2 junior in state, #43 for my age in USA, won several awards at national and state tournaments. Founder of table tennis club at school. Went to international tournament and my team got 2nd in Division 10.
-Math Team (9,10,11,12)- B team 9th and 10th, A team 11th and 12th. Awarded 3rd highest scoring Junior in Division. Qualified for CSAML (state team) and NEAML (new Englands)
-Science Quiz Bowl (9,10,11,12)- C team 9+10, B team captain in 11, A team captain in 12. Huge time commitment, our school is usually the state champs. (Also was part of my schools chemistry olympiad team, we got #1 in state)
-300+ hours of research at 2 different universities (1 year of research in analytical chem and the second year in Inorganic chem/material science engineering). My research will be getting published in a couple of months with my name listed as a Co-author.
-Chess club(9,10,11,12)- Vice President, 4th place and 5th place for district tournament, co captain of team at tournament</p>

<p>Volunteer- 200 hours + (proctored at MathCounts local and state competition, tutored middle school student each week for 3 years, taught chess to kids at local library during summer, helped kids conduct science experiments in summer at local library, helped at cultural events)</p>

<p>Hopefully you can see I picked a couple of things and went really deep into each one of those rather than doing a lot of things with not much depth</p>

<p>Honor Socieities: Foreign Language, Science, NHS and NSHSS</p>

<p>Recommendations: Berkeley doesn't accept any except for the Special talent rec from the president thing I mentioned </p>

<p>Personal statement: good, for #1 I talked about how my parents and the community I was in challenged me to accept challenges (including skipping a grade and skipping an year in math and science)</p>

<h1>2- very good, i talked about my research experience over 2 years.</h1>

2

<p>“Do I have any shot of getting in as an OOS?”</p>

<p>Yes.</p>

3

<p>^Shrink- A better question: What are my chances at Berkeley? I just don’t want to get my hopes up too high.</p>

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<p>I’m an international and I got admitted to CoC with similar-but-not-so-great stats as you (research, went for conferences but didn’t get published, chem & bio olympiads, couple of 5s for APs, a handful of college courses, got honored for language, bio, chem and music). I wrote about research for #2 too… haha mine was about condensing my research into a 100-word statement understandable by the general public.</p>

<p>You’ll get in. Near 100% unless they forget to read your app. Maybe if you broaden the focus of #1 to include something about table tennis as well? I don’t know how much CoC needs your essays to relate to chem, and how much ‘other stuff’ they want.</p>

<p>CoC is a great place. Nice, tight-knit, and the advisers actually care about you.</p>

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<p>Not a big fan of “chances” threads. I think there are better sources for statistical odds.Can’t find the link right now, but you can sort by many variables for history of admission statistics,if m certain you will do well in the admissions process.</p>

<p>OTOH, I am always curious about why viable OOS applicants want to pay for a UC. I think C of C comes up often.</p>

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<p>^Because berkeley/california is awesome? Duh. :P</p>

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<p>I hope your essay says more than that! …In what way?</p>

<p>But seriously; is there nothing comparable in undergrad chemistry for 50k /year? That’s pretty remarkable’</p>

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<p>No lol that wasn’t on my essay, it was directed towards you. But, I was just kidding. </p>

<p>To me, after looking through the research and reading some abstracts of what the professors are doing CoC, I definitely wanted to go there. Research is one of the big things I want go there for. Furthermore, Berkeley gets a lot of top companies to recruit each year. In my opinion, those are 2 things that are unmatched by any other undergrad institution in the US.</p>

9

<p>you have a great shot, definitely apply</p>

<p>dont let Shrinkrap make you feel unwelcomed. cal has its flaws but for someone like you that knows the program and faculty it will give you a lot in return. hope to see you here next year!</p>

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<p>“dont let Shrinkrap make you feel unwelcomed.”</p>

<p>Did I do that? Sorry!</p>

<p>Here is the source/link I was thinking of.</p>

<p><a href=“http://statfinder.ucop.edu/statfinder/default.aspx[/url]”>http://statfinder.ucop.edu/statfinder/default.aspx&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>^No…you didn’t. I already looked at that site-it confused me :?</p>

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<p>Have you calculated you UC GPA, or know how many “AG’s” you have taken?</p>

<p>Hopefully this link displays
Fall applicants( in and OOS), fall admits, fall enrollees, admit rate, yield rate for fall applicants, first-time freshmen by years of UC approved A-G/A-F courses taken, high school GPA-weighted, capped, total SAT Reasoning score: 2009, Berkeley</p>

<p><a href=“http://statfinder.ucop.edu/statfinder/drawtable.aspx?track=1[/url]”>http://statfinder.ucop.edu/statfinder/drawtable.aspx?track=1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>With 25 a more A-Gs, above UC GPA 4.2, and 2100 SAT, you have a 78% admit rate to Cal, statistically independent of the “holistic” stuff…but you probably won’t end up going there!</p>

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<p>Im not sure how to calculate this UC GPA Thing. Can someone calculate mine? </p>

<p>For sophomore year I had (Bio and Stat were a B+ but I removed the +):
Honors English: A
Honors Spanish 4: A
Computer Programming (Regular, 0.5 credit, counts as a math course according to our school): A
Computer Programming 2 Honors (0.5 credit, math course): A
Pre Calc Honors: A
AP Bio (1.5 credits): B
AP Stat: B</p>

<p>Total Credits for this year: 7.0</p>

<p>Junior Year:
AP US History: B
AP Calc BC: A
AP Chemistry (1.5 credit): A
AP English and Comp: A
Spanish 5 honors: A
Advanced Research Honors (1.5): A</p>

<p>Total Credit: 7</p>

<p>Senior:
AP Physics B (2.0 credit):A
AP Lit: A
AP Spanish Language: A
Current Issues (History regular course): A
Advanced Research (1.5): A
Art (FOR VISUAL PERFORMING ARTS REQUIREMENT): A
Quantitative Analysis (College Chem course, 5.0 Credit): A</p>

<p>Total credits: 12.5</p>

<p>If the credit isnt indicated above, it is 1.0</p>

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<p>All your courses are A-G except I’m not sure about Advanced Research…</p>

<p>UCs cap weighted classes at 8. Only do soph and junior year: take the number of As you have and multiply by 4. Add this to the number of Bs times 3. Add 8 (for the 8 weighted classes). Divide this number by the total number of classes soph and junior year, and that’s your UC GPA.</p>

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<p>Wait, is it 8 weighted classes? Or semesters because each class is 2 semesters long.</p>

<p>also, advanced research is a science course which is an A-G course, I only listed A-G courses here.</p>

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<p>“No more than 8 honors points can be awarded”.</p>

<p>Here is a UC GPA calculator. </p>

<p>[CaliforniaColleges.edu</a> - Calculating Your GPA](<a href=“http://www.californiacolleges.edu/admissions/california-state-university-csu/gpa_calculator.asp]CaliforniaColleges.edu”>http://www.californiacolleges.edu/admissions/california-state-university-csu/gpa_calculator.asp)</p>

<p>Do not make assumptions about getting points for honors classes, as it is typically said OOS students cannot. But a student recently posted that he spoke to UCLA, and was told he could get honors credit for his OOS classes.</p>

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/1024079-what-my-chances-these-ucs.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/1024079-what-my-chances-these-ucs.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>AP extra points can be assumed.</p>

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<p>Ok I used only extra points for AP Courses. It says I have a UC GPA of 4.08 Does that decrease my chances by a lot? Geez never knew 3 Bs in AP classes could bring you down by so much.</p>

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<p>Your weighted UC GPA is 4.08? If you calculated that correctly, I’m not sure if that’s high enough for an OOS.</p>

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<p>^ Why would that be? The only OOS requirement is 3.4. OOS admission rates seem to be higher than instate.</p>

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<p>I think I calculated it properly. Oh well, that’s fine.</p>

<p>Anyway, what is the average GPA for an OOS? I mean my GPA is quite good within the context of my school (top 3.7%), but I guess it isn’t competitive enough for Berkeley.</p>