<p>Hello! I have a bit of a complicated situation.. I am hoping to transfer to UCLA's East Asian Studies major next year (and minoring in Media Industry if possible), but I wonder if they'll accept me.. By that point I'll have been in community college for 4.5 years, and during some of the semesters I took a very low load of coursework on account of having to take care of family. I am also worried about how I first was admitted to SJSU and took a semester of coursework there.. after deciding that a CSU really wasn't for me, I transferred to a CCC with intent to transfer from there to a UC, and have been working at it for 3.5 years now.</p>
<p>My GPA is around 3.72. I don't have very many extracurricular activities besides being Honors Vice President for about a year, involvement in a volunteer organization focused towards promoting Asian American involvement in the media (for a few months), and being on planning committees for large-scale Asian pop culture related events (for 2 years now).. will listing these help me or hurt me on account of my experiences being sporadic? Would it look like I lack dedication?</p>
<p>And in case any of this matters at all, my racial background is Filipino/African American, I've just come back from a month's stay in Japan and visited Korea last year, and I come from a low-income household..</p>
<p>Thanks to anyone who takes the time to respond.. it's been really worrying me lately.</p>
<p>Like you I started off at a CSU for one semester, realized it wasn’t for me, spent time at a CCC and transfered to a UC. I highly doubt they’d deny you for that. I think you are competitive enough for UCLA. Just apply and keep working hard. Hope you get in, goodluck!</p>
<p>If your pre-reqs are completed and you maintain that GPA you should be accepted. Also the amount of time you’ve spent in CC as well as your demographics are irrelevant for admission purposes. There’s no advantage to being an ethnic minority or from a low-income household, of which I’m both, unless you write about that in a compelling way in your personal statement. Any extracurricular activity you can list on your UC application can only help you, especially if you write about it well in your personal statement. </p>
<p>From personal experience I would say that many of the things you’re worrying about are going to be inconsequential. I was accepted to UCLA to a more competitive major (Molecular, Cell, and Developmental Biology) with similar stats. I had a 3.67GPA, only one really wothwhile EC, I spent an extra year in CC, and worked part-time as well. I think for incoming freshmen the admission process is much more critical and they do look extremely closely at every aspect of your application including your workload and ECs. For CC transfers their focus for admission seems to be mainly pre-req completion and GPA, everything else is secondary and doesn’t seem to hold much weight when they evaluate those applying to less competitive majors. I think if you were applying to say Business Economics, where in an average year gets around 2000 applicants and the average admitted GPA is 3.9+, any way you can separate yourself from such a competitive pool, like with ECs, is going to be critical. For a major like East Asian Studies that gets very few applicants, only 65 applicants in 2011 and avg admitted GPA of 3.65, they’re not going to evaluate you so stringently. So my advice would be to quit worrying and focus on maintaining that GPA and make sure all your pre-reqs are finished ASAP. If you do, you’re in!</p>
<p>This is just me being noisy, but what do you plan to do with your degree or after UCLA? I’m just always curious about the less popular majors, not in a negative way, but have found that many people go to grad school for something completely different.</p>
<p>East Asian Studies for 2011 at UCLA:
65 applied; 34 admitted(52.31%)
21 enrolled
Average GPA applied: 3.42
Average GPA admitted: 3.65
Average gpa enrolled: 3.57</p>
<p>You are above the curve of admitted student and students that actually enrolled. You have a good chance </p>
<p>There seems to be a trend. It’s getting more competitive every year. In 2008, the average gpa was only 3.36 vs. the average in 2011 at 3.57 of enrolled students. This year might be really competitive.</p>