Final semester grades for engineering students?

I keep reading all over the place that final semester grades are not taken into consideration for admission (as long as you maintain a 3.0 or whatever). Is this true for engineering majors? I thought it was common for engineering students to take multiple pre-reqs during their final semester at CC. What if, for example, an engineering student has a 3.75 gpa on their TAU, but raises it to a 3.85 after their final semester. Would a second student who had a 3.85 on their TAU have a higher chance of admission even if their gpa were to drop down to a 3.75 simply because they had a higher gpa during the application process?

Btw, I still have a year of CC left so I’m not 100% sure on how the application process works. TAU is when everyone enters their fall semester grades correct?

UCs make their decisions in March-April.

The TAU deadline is the last day of January, and they’ll look at everything you put up to that point. Yes, it’s mostly fall grades but if you’re able to take and complete classes for the Winter intersession (if you’re school even offers it that is) before the deadline, they’ll look at that too. They won’t use winter grades for GPA calculation, but in my case I know for a fact they used my winter courses for admission consideration. Whatever the case is tho, your fall grades do matter so yes, a student who sees a dropoff in GPA from the TAU will hurt their chances. TAU grades, certainly the Fall grades included in it, are put of the “application process” so I’m not sure what you’re asking there.

This year’s rule was complete TAU by Jan 31 - this was a requirement, as usual. Then any updates to it were looked at through sometime in March. There was an actual date noted. The key was the first input had to be in January. In the past they never wrote this “guarantee (?).” It was simply yeah put it up there, hope for the best and email each UC.