<p>Hi, I'm Parsa. I'm a long-time reader of College Confidential, and first-time poster. </p>
<p>I got lots of useful advice here during my two years of community college, and it helped me get into Berkeley as an EECS major; I'm now finishing my first semester at Cal. </p>
<p>I know that transferring is stressful, and fiscal cutbacks only make things worse. Thus, I have decided to offer my help for anyone who has questions. Of course, anything I say pertains mainly to engineering transfers for Cal, but I can probably help others as well.</p>
<p>I know that "what are your stats?" kinds of questions will come up, so here goes:</p>
<p>When I applied, I had a 4.0 (and one W; Berkeley reps told me that "a couple" Ws aren't a big deal). But, my final semester before transferring, I got a B which brought my overall down to 3.9x; don't remember exactly what.</p>
<p>When I applied, I had 3 core courses (physics, calculus, comp sci) in progress, and 4 more core courses planned for the Spring; thus, even having a lot of important stuff left to the end isn't a deal-breaker, as long as you actually finish them all.</p>
<p>As far as extracurriculars go, I played saxophone in the jazz band (and taught, too), was the IT guy for a local small business, coached a swim team, and had an internship at a software company. Not weak, but not amazing either; Berkeley's admissions seem to be biased towards academic qualifications. I emailed a Berkeley admissions person when I was still applying, and she said that the average GPA of people admitted to EECS was "about a 3.9".</p>
<p>Also, a nice butt-kissing strategy I used is to actually mention faculty's names in the essay. I wrote something like "at UC, I can learn from prolific faculty like Nathan Cheung and John Canny...". When admissions people ask "Why does ___ want to come to our school, specifically?"--and they do--expressing interest in faculty who actually teach there is a nice way to convince the school that they have something that you want that you cannot get anywhere else. You don't have to be completely shallow about it, either; I found John Canny's research interesting, and I even chose him to be my faculty adviser; whenever I have questions, I talk to him!</p>
<p>So... I guess that's about it for now. Ask away, folks. I really want to help you all! Write your essays early, and submit your application SOONER than the day before... you hear this every year, that the server was overloaded at the deadline and people couldn't submit their applications and stuff. That happened to 2 people I knew last year. Don't be one of them!</p>