<p>Help You Guys :p</p>
<p>I dunno but when you have to give a transcript does it really matter? They'll see the classes you took anyway</p>
<p>Berkeley admissions rep told us at admissions tour presentation that they look at both fully weighted and unweighted</p>
<p>thanks so much you guys. maybe im a little more relieved. is it better to take a lot of AP classes? does it help?</p>
<p>Actually, UC Berkeley looks primarily at a special capped weighted GPA called the UC GPA. The UC GPA is calculated according to four rules.
1. It includes only grades 10 and 11
2. Only grades in classes that fall under the so-called "A-G" requirements are counted in the GPA. Thus, PE grades as well as classes not approved by UC as meeting its requirements do not count toward one's GPA.
3. AP, IB and UC certified honors classes receive a bonus point for grades of "C" or higher. Be aware that most honors classes are not UC certified.
4. Only a maximum of 4 year long courses (8 semesters) can receive bonus points. Thus, if you took 5 year long AP courses, only 4 of them would receive an honors point.
That said, it is probably still to your advantage to take more than 4 honors point eligible classes in grades 10-11 since they will still see all of your courses and be able to gauge overall difficulty.</p>
<p>do honors classes are pointless or what? better to take more or less ap classes?</p>
<p>equal credit is given for both honors and AP classes , as long as Berkeley has recognized the class as a legitimate honors class. Ask you college counselor to check the website that gives them that info.</p>
<p>I don't know how this differs at other high schools, but at my very good public CA high school, the only classes that received the UC honors point other than AP classes were:
1. 4th year of a language (which wasn't AP for us)
2. Jr year Honors English (our school offered AP Eng Lit to Seniors, but there was no AP Eng Lang)
3. Honors pre-calculus</p>
<p>All other Honors classes received no bonus point.</p>
<p>Its very true that the uc system caps ap/honors credit for UC GPA, but in practice at Berkeley, fully weighted gpa is a factor, perhaps through the counting of honors/ap/college courses. Therefore, the more ap/honors/college courses you take, the better the chances for admission.</p>
<p>I remembered about the Berkeley Professor Hout's study of Berkeley's 2004-05 Admissions Process, and have linked it below. While UC GPA capping ap/honors gpa credit is used by the uc system to define eligilibility for admissions, Berkeley is indeed using fully weighted gpa and unweighted gpa in the context of the high school the applicant is applying from. </p>
<p>On page 34, note the example of how applicants from one high school were stack-ranked by unweighted gpa, but with fully weighted gpa beside it and the results of who was admitted, one can see that fully weighted gpa is playing a key role. Some students with higher unweighted gpa but lower weighted gpas were not admitted in favor of those with higher weighted gpas. Other factors are scored by the app readers as well. The highest scores received are "1"s in this scoring system.</p>
<p>It goes without saying that this document is full of valuable info for anyone applying. Page 66 describes significant awards and parameters for significance in ecs. There is info on the admissions readers scoring parameters also, 66-72. There is also info on the coding app readers make on "strong" senior year courses vs. "light". </p>