My son attends a private college prep H.S. in CA. His unweighted GPA is approx 3.5 1st try at PSAT as a 10th grader was 1960 (720 reading; 610 Math; 630 writing) 1st try at ACT w/o studying is 29. He plans to take SAT classes to bring scores up. He takes honors classes in math and Spanish. This year he is taking AP Calculus and AP Spanish IV. He has always had summer internships,jobs, community service and interests — no team sports. Are any of these schools within practical reach?
Not Pomona, not UCSD. His a GPA is too low,
I think the OP’s son is a junior, and so it’s tough to chance without junior grades and scores (especially for UCs). Pomona and CMC are very selective, and CMC famously likes applicants with “leadership” credentials. A huge increase in test scores and a great junior year can change the picture, however. My son got into UCSD from out-of-state (not an impacted department) with a 2060 SAT/31 ACT (first set of scores were similar to OP’s son’s), and a 3.3-3.4 unweighted GPA. His UC-weighted GPA was in the 4.0 range, due to a full IB curriculum with additional APs. I understand that it became much tougher last year than it was for him in '14, however. He was rejected from CMC despite a very solid list of “leadership” accomplishments. Pomona is so selective that I suspect it will be out of reach for the OP’s son. Occidental will probably be a match (my son got in there, also).
I agree with @woogzmama’s assessment. If your son is a Junior, he as another year to bump his GPA and test scores.
UCSD’s average UC GPA (capped) was 4.13 this year with an ACT of 31 and SAT of 2035. With AP/IB credit, his GPA could increase by 0.3-0.4 based on the UC GPA caclulator: http://rogerhub.com/gpa-calculator-uc/
UCSD would go either way.
CMC and Pomona are very selective, so I would say these schools are Reaches. My friend’s son was admitted to Stanford, Princeton and Yale but waitlisted at Pomona 2 years ago.
Occidental looks like a good match.
Good luck to your son.
I agree with the others. SAT and GPA are low, especially for Pomona and Claremont McKenna. Also look at the Common Data Sets, especially sections C9-C10.
https://www.cmc.edu/sites/default/files/ir/CDS_2014-15_Annotated.pdf
http://www.pomona.edu/sites/default/files/cds-2014-2015.pdf
http://www.oxy.edu/irap/institutional-research/common-datasets