Female Junior, CA Resident, [civil, environmental, mechanical] Engineering with a (expected) 3.68 UW (Updated version!) [3.91 recalculated for UC]

Note: Since I still have my upcoming junior year and fall of senior year, this is my predicted/goal stats for my whole application! My main goal is to get into a UC and I prefer not to go to a CSU school which is why a lot of my stats below are catered toward the UC application system! This is also an updated version to the one I previously posted which had a lot of responses.

Demographics

  • US citizen (born and raised)
  • State/Location of residency: Orange County, California
  • Type of high school (current college for transfers): Highly competitive high school with varying student strengths, a lot of alumni (at school and in district) have gotten into competitive universities from Harvard to UCI
  • Gender/Race/Ethnicity (optional): Female/Asian/Vietnamese
  • Other special factors (first generation to college, legacy, athlete, etc.): First generation, aerial and circus arts athlete

Intended Major(s) Civil Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Mechanical Engineering

Note from the previous post: I had time to explore computer science this summer and although I partially enjoyed it, I feel more geared towards engineering and plan to pursue that instead!

GPA, Rank, and Test Scores

  • Unweighted HS GPA: 3.68 (including cc classes)
  • Weighted HS GPA (incl. weighting system): 4.12 (including cc classes), UC Capped is 3.91
  • College GPA (for transfers): N/A
  • Class Rank: N/A
  • ACT/SAT Scores: N/A

Note: I heavily struggled with depression in early middle school and the beginning years of high school so my GPA is relatively low (I plan to put in additional info as of right now, not any essays or personal insight questions). I’m hoping the upward trend and progress in my grades give me an advantage in my application.

Coursework
I am currently in my school’s engineering pathway (Principles of Engineering and Aerospace Engineering). I got an A in both semesters for Principles of Engineering and hope to do the same for Aerospace.
10th: Honors American History, Honors Chemistry
11th: Honors English, AP Physics 1 AP Computer Science Principles, AP Statistics
CC: Chinese 1 (required for language creds), I plan to take more (expected total of 4 classes) but will need to decide on which ones still and finish the dual enrollment process! I will probably take digital media classes and business classes!

Awards
High School Mascot P.R.I.D.E Award (Recognized for continuous efforts, demonstrated personal growth, and overall representing my school values) Award is given to 1 student every semester (2 each school year) and all teachers will nominate 1 student!
High School Recognition Award (Recognized for continuous efforts and having a school represented value, drive) Award is given to every 1 nominated student every semester (2 each school year) and all teachers will nominate 1 student!
Presidential Volunteer Service Award Young Adults Gold from The Discovery Cube (250+ hours with this organization)
AP Scholar with Honor (Scored 3 or higher on 3 or more AP exams with an average of 3.25 on all AP exam scores)

Extracurriculars (general desc.)
(Include leadership, summer activities, competitions, volunteering, and work experience)

  • Key Club
    Most involved in and had multiple leadership roles. Became lieutenant governor (hopefully!!) of my division and president of my club. Was also the division communication liaison.
  • Discovery Cube Volunteer
    Had 250+ volunteer hours, teaching science concepts to children and managing learning areas. Led fun activities and got to interact with children and their parents
  • CAD and Marketing Subteam Member, Robotics Team
    Contributed to brand development of team (member of marketing team) and occasionally helped with building the robots. Also contributed to computer aid design for blueprint designs of our robot for competitions
  • Founder of Asian Pacific Islander Student Union
    Founded and was president of for two years of a popular cultural club on campus. Gave students opportunities to represent their ethnic group and contribute to school events. Also fundraised and volunteered for AAPI-related causes with members of the club
  • Ewgis Research Program from Girls in Stem
    Hope to do it next year and hope to explore eco-friendly infrastructure
  • Staff Writer for the School Newspaper
    Hoping to get an editor position in my senior year but am currently a staff writer in the club section and I write and manage any articles specifically for Academic Decathlon. I contribute to article ideas/writing for other sections of our paper as well
  • Sales Employee at Mom’s Company
    Helped with shipments and organization of products before shipment. Also did product development and contributed ideas that went well for the company. Usually, I do manual work at the office or home to help my mom
  • Aerial Artist
    Was an apprentice for 4+ years and trained extensively in aerial apparatuses like silks and circus arts like stilts. Got to perform at multiple venues and volunteered with my school for social media needs.
  • Non-profit founder under local foundation
    Will be applying but hope to start a non-profit under a local foundation that helps high schoolers with a community need. My initiative idea will be called “Build for Beyond” and I hope to help my local communities, specifically elementary schoolers, build small airplanes and teach them physics concepts behind it! Using what I’ve learned from my AP Physics class and Aerospace Engineering, I hope to be successful in this initiative! (If I do not get accepted under the foundation, I will organize doing it myself!)

Also hoping to do research with a UC Berkeley Graduate that I will be reaching out to in the next year (he specializes in structural engineering)!
Hoping to find a local job at a boba place when I figure out my junior year study schedule and when I get my license!

Essays/LORs/Other (general desc.)
UC PIQ Prompts: (I still haven’t thought of CSU or USC yet)

  1. Describe an example of your leadership experience in which you have positively influenced others, helped resolve disputes or contributed to group efforts over time. Helped organize a large boba fundraiser for our spirit rallies, not only using our raised funds for our key club initiatives but also giving over 50+ key club members in our division a treat for their hard work.
  2. What would you say is your greatest talent or skill? How have you developed and demonstrated that talent over time? Aerial Arts, I was extremely determined in this activity and my love for aerial arts helped me find other interests like dance and colorguard (did both for one year). I had to work a lot harder to gain my flexibility and back strength as I M diagnosed with scoliosis (getting surgery next summer and will unfortunately have to take a break from aerial arts for 4+ months)
  3. What have you done to make your school or your community a better place? Will be talking about Build for Beyond or Asian Pacific Islander Student Union
  4. Every person has a creative side, and it can be expressed in many ways: problem solving, original and innovative thinking, and artistically, to name a few. Describe how you express your creative side. Will be talking about my love for design and how it led me to do community service with design and became a CAD team member for robotics. Or I will talk about my creative writing/journalism!

Cost Constraints / Budget
My parents and I will pay for any school (50% and 50% if tuition is under $20,000 not including student housing, 25% and 75% for anything over)! Since I am staying in-state, almost all the colleges are affordable and I will be contributing to the tuition. USC is probably the only school out of our budget which will result in me probably needing a student loan and extra jobs but I am willing to do that!

Schools
(List of colleges by your initial chance estimate; designate if applying ED/EA/RD; if a scholarship is necessary for affordability, indicate that you are aiming for a scholarship and use the scholarship chance to estimate it into the appropriate group below)

  • Safety (certain admission and affordability) CSUN, SFSU, Community College (IVC, SMC, etc.)
  • Likely (would be possible, but very unlikely or surprising, for it not to admit or be affordable) CSUF, CSULB
  • Match UC Riverside, UC Davis, Cal Poly Pomona
  • Reach UC Berkeley, UCLA, University of Southern California, UC Irvine, UC San Diego, San Diego State, Cal Poly Slo

Out of all of these schools, I want to go to UCI and San Diego State the most!

Also taking feedback from my last post, thank you everyone for letting me know that my entire application does not need to be all about my applied major. It’s def more interesting and fun to write about the activities I enjoyed most (engineering is still one of them!!)

Why are you taking AP Stats in 11th grade? Stepping off the calculus pathway before completing Calc BC is ill-advised for an engineering applicant

Stats is one of my strengths! I understand the material and I’m also not able to take calculus right now. I am also taking integrated math 3 right now which will likely only lead me to take precalculus.

As long as the Meche if that’s what u do is ABET - a CSU or UC will both be fine. It may not be the ‘brand’ campus wise they seek though.

So you are doing both IM-3 and AP Stats in 11th grade? What proportion of your HS take Calculus AB or BC? Most accepted UC STEM students will have already done calculus in HS unless they are from a disadvantaged school/area.

It is hard to judge from the outside how your courseload compares to other students in your school, but that will be an important factor when your application is being considered. You can look up how many students apply and are accepted to each UC from your HS (but note engineering is more selective than most other majors):
https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/about-us/information-center/admissions-source-school

Since you still have 1 more year of courses/grades, it is difficult to determine where you will stand at the end of Junior year. Senior grades will not be considered in the application review but HS course rigor will be determined by your Senior schedule. An upward grade trend will be helpful and you have a unique EC as an Aerial Athlete so that will definitely make for an interesting PIQ.

Note that Cal Poly SLO will use 9-11th grades in their GPA calculation while the UC”s and the rest of the CSU’s will use 10-11th grades for their GPA calculation.

https://rogerhub.com/gpa-calculator-uc/

You are a competitive applicant for many schools, but reality is that under a 4.0 Capped weighted UC GPA will make most of the UC’s difficult admits for Engineering.

Here are some overall admit rates based on the Capped weighted UC GPA and of course, competitive majors like Engineering will be have much lower rates. Updated 2023 admit rates will be available in February.

You should familiarize yourself with UC website which can helpful to determine your chances. I like to look at the Freshman profile with the overall admit rates and the 25-75% percentile Capped weighted GPA range. IE. UC Davis GPA 4.03 - 4.27. For competitive majors, you want to be at or above the 50% percentile for the best chances.

https://admission.universityofcalifornia.edu/campuses-majors/davis/freshman-admit-data.html

2022 Admit rates based on the Capped weighted UC GPA.

Campus 4.00+ 3.70-3.99 3.30-3.69 3.00-3.29
Berkeley 17% 3% 1% 0%
Davis 58% 20% 5% 2%
Irvine 35% 10% 3% 0%
Los Angeles 13% 2% 1% 0%
Merced 97% 97% 95% 85%
Riverside 95% 83% 42% 17%
San Diego 37% 8% 1% 0%
Santa Barbara 41% 8% 3% 0%
Santa Cruz 69% 45% 16% 4%

I have some admit rates for ME and Civil which I will list below. Engineering is a marketable degree so you do not need to go to a selective school to succeed. As noted by @tsbna44 if the school is ABET accredited, you will be fine attending the CSU’s.

UC 2022 CS admit rates if available and only a few selective CSU’s are listed

Campus Civil Engineering
UC Berkeley 16%
UC Davis No data but <30%
UC Irvine 23.6%
UCLA 8.0%
UC Merced 91%
UC Riverside No major
UC San Diego No data but <20% Structural Eng
UC Santa Barbara No major
UC Santa Cruz No major
Cal Poly SLO 38%
Cal State Long Beach 51%
San Diego State 48%
San Jose State 64%

Mechanical Engineering 2022 admit rates

Campus Mechanical Eng
UC Berkeley 7.3%
UC Davis Extrapolated <30%
UC Irvine 15%
UCLA 5.5%
UC Merced 90%
UC Riverside7 56%
UC San Diego Extrapolated <20%
UC Santa Barbara Extrapolated <25%
UC Santa Cruz N/A

Some Cal States admit rates:

Campus Mechanical Eng
Cal Poly SLO 19%
Cal State Long Beach 50%
San Diego State 50%
San Jose State 61%

No Data for Cal Poly Pomona, CSUF, CSUN

No data for Environmental Engineering but for several schools, Environmental Engineering is an emphasis under the Civil Engineering major.

What the data does not show is how competitive the applicant pool was upon admission for each major.

I agree with your Safety schools: SFSU, CSUN or CCC
Likely: CSUF
Target: CPP for Civil
High Target: UC Riverside, CSULB
Low Reach: CPP for ME (Need a minimum CSU capped weighted of 4.1), SDSU
Reach: UC Davis, Cal Poly SLO
High Reach: UCSD, UCLA, UCB and USC

If you are not happy attending a CSU as your Safety/Likelies then you need to find other schools in which you would like to attend. Arizona State would be a good Safety if affordable.

Good luck and knock your grades out of the park this year so you can make some of your High Targets and Low Reaches into solid Target/Match schools.

2 Likes

Cal Poly is weird in that each applicant is only judged against the rest who apply for the same major. As such, it’s difficult to put the whole institution into a safety, match, reach, high reach hierarchy.

If your stats end up as projected, I would say ME for sure will be a high reach, and environmental likely will be too. Civil will be a reach.

Not having even AB Calc will also impact your competitiveness.

Good luck.

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CPSLO is not that weird among California publics in this respect. All CSUs admit by major, although if non-impacted majors at a given campus all have the same campus baseline thresholds. UCs admit by major in some cases (more common for engineering majors).

The OP not being able to reach calculus due to middle school math placement will prevent gaining the added bonus points for calculus in the CPSLO admission formula.

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A lot of people are taking calc as a junior or senior defs. I am hoping I will be able to reach calc ab by senior year but I have had graduated friends get into UC schools (who got to precalc by senior and not calc) for engineering. Ofc their app is completely diff and that will not mean the same for me but I think it’s possible!

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