Hi! I am a (female) upcoming junior in highschool from Arizona. My family vacations quarter annually to California and I love it! I know I belong and am dying to go to a UC school - specifically UC Santa Barbara
I have been working hard toward this specifically. UC GPA is sophomore and junior year and sophomore year I got all A’s and took two honors math courses, but when applying from out of state it only grants weight to AP classes. This leaves my UC GPA at 4.0 which kind of has me worried!
My junior year I will take APUSH, AP Physics, and am even tacking on AP Psych for the GPA weight… along with Hon PreCalc and Hon Spanish 3 that won’t be recognized. If I am able to pull off all A’s do you think I will get in!?
EC’s - Heavily involved in volunteering with students with intellectual or developmental disabilities , and have been a peer facilitator in a special needs class last year and will this year, and most likely senior year.
Working family started and owned business
My little sister has cancer and during her treatments I love to braid other patients hair, make cards, play songs on ukulele,etc
Church student ministries
Piano
I love art and have one a few awards for drawing and painting , even sculpturing at my local community center
Yoga
NHS
Unified sports cheerleading (volunteer partner on a special needs cheer team)
Thinking about joining Future Business leaders of America club, and maybe even starting one at my school for women looking to enter STEM field
Volunteering at “Be the Match” Bone Marrow Donor registry booths (Cheek swabs for certain proteins that if matched to a cancer patient , could save their life through a bone marrow transplant - I do this because my sister is in need of a match to be healed )
I hear from some that most spots at UCs are reserved for California residents, and from others that they are lenient to accept out of state kids , giving scholarships even, so that they chose to come but still spend more money than those with in state tuition.
I also plan on attending UCSB Summer Discovery program next summer!!! It’s my dream school
(Sorry if this is a total novel)
First you need to wait until end of Junior year in regards to your UC GPA. Average UC GPA for UCSB last year was 4.09 so you are not the far off. As @“aunt bea” stated, you will also need your test scores to gauge your chances. Intended major will also impact your chances.
Since the UC’s are funded by CA taxpayers, preference is given to instate applicants, but the UC’s can accept up to 20% of OOS and International students.
UC’s offer good need-based financial aid for instate students. UC’s offer little merit aid (scholarships) to any applicants including OOS.
If you plan to apply to UCSB with the expectation of reducing the OOS costs with FA and merit aid, then you need to look else where. As noted in the above post, UC’s do not give FA to OOS students so expect to pay full fees. Make sure your parents are on board in applying with these costs in mind.
In August, the UC website will update their Freshman profiles with the 2017 stats, so you can see what GPA/Test scores to aim for in the future.
Just more info::
Freshman admit rates for UC GPA (capped weighted) of 3.80-4.19:
I know my family could pay, although out of state tuition is very expensive it might be through gritted teeth! My parents see me as the one of four children with an ambition to graduate college and tell me not to worry about the money aspect. I feel an urgency to bring costs down at least a little bit so I plan on applying to numerous scholarships from foundations online and hopefully I get some grants and some help. I am trying so hard to get amazing grades and have been. Would you recommend maybe taking a gap year and establishing residency in CA? @Gumbymom @“aunt bea”
Continuously physical presence in California for at least one year is just one of the conditions to establish your residency. You further have to demonstrate your intent to make California your home. This also includes at least one of your parents, if you are not independent financially or younger than 18 years old. See above link for more information. I’m not trying to discourage you, just one gap year is probably not a viable proposition to go around this issue.
If your parents have 4 kids, burdening them with a quarter of a million dollars for an undergraduate education for one kid because you like California seems nuts. Look in-state, or at WUE colleges for more affordable options.
Or run the net price calculator with your parents on schools like Scripps or Occidental – they may be more affordable than publics as an OOS student.
Agree with @intparent if you are one of four kids and the costs of attending a UC are ridiculous.
CA is one of the hardest states to establish residency. Since you are an independent, your parents would need to move here 1 year prior to applying to any CA UC to try and establish residency. There are so many other great schools out there that will not put your family into debt. Explore those options/suggestions.
Have your parent’s seen the actual numbers? Are you the oldest? The sticker shock is real when parent’s see how much college costs have increased since our generation attended college.
Go to U of A or ASU and move to CA after college. You can easily visit SOCAL in the summer or on breaks. Get an internship in CA for a summer.
You absolutely can get a job in CA with a degree from U of A or ASU if you do well and both have great honors colleges.
You are going into your Jr year, I wouldn’t get too fixated on any particular school just yet. With a 4.0 and a decent SAT, you are likely to get into most majors at UCSC, UCM and UCR. Apply broadly, see where you get in - then decide. IHMO it is foolish to pay OOS tuition for a UC unless your family is wealthy - which doesn’t sound like the case.
Hey, I’m an upcoming freshman in UCSB, and was in your boat till March, when I found out the admission result, other than that I am in-state.
Your GPA seems fine as far. My UC GPA at Sophomore was lower than yours, like 3.8ish, with one B in Biology, a few honors classes which are not recognized by UCs, and no AP class (I was not allowed to take, to be honest with you. That was my first year at America.)
You have only come through half, and there is one more year to boost your gpa up like I did. You can take several AP classes if your school is offering variously, and if you have taken enough classes prerequisite for AP classes. Three or four AP classes for next year sound pretty decent, if not light a little bit.
Also, it’s really time to study on official tests, like ACT and SAT. People tend to start it a bit later in Senior year, but that sounds pretty unwise for me; You can take the tests as many as you want, unless it was less than four times, and if iyou take it next year, and you somehow mess up, then you will be pressed by time, potentially resulting in smudging
your whole college plan. That said, you better have more time to prepare it for your best
ECs are actually way better than mine, in a way that while I only did a sport for one year, and a few clubs for three years, literally leaving most of the boxes blank on app, it sounds like you can fill out most of them.
However, you really need to talk with your parent. I am not trying to discourage you, but 60k per year seems pretty to weigh much more than your favor of UCSB. It seems that your other three sibling have no plan for and had not attended college, so your parent want to star you out as the only college-child, at lest for me. Still, I am not sure whether 60k for UCSB per year is worth it to try or not. One day, please sit down with your parent on the dinner table, and ask them in a serious tone, “Father, and mother, UCSB would cost more than 55k per year. While I know you said that the money would not matter for me, still is it affordable? Is there any chance of getting loan?” It is not that wise to presume that you would get some scholarships, as stuffs happen unexpectedly, and I hope you to choose wisely.
If you really fall in love with UCSB for ever-lasting, and your financial situation could back you up to the point where the money does not matter significantly, then please go for it. Sometimes you need to favor your own preference to any other circumstances.
There must be a door opening if you look around. I was almost canceling my UCSB offer before by my family situation, but somehow things got better. I wish you luck, then.
Have you taken a look at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo? The OOS cost is significantly less, 37k compared to 60k. SLO is a similar beach/tourist town located 2 hrs north of SB. The schools have similar acceptance rates (29% at SLO, 35% at UCSB) and populations (20k at SLO and 24K at UCSB). The SLO Mustangs are UCSB Gaucho’s main rival, their soccer matches are the most attended in the nation!!
SLO’s acceptance rate may be 29% overall, but they admit by individual majors. Individual major acceptance rates can range from around 8% for Computer Science to 90%+ for Dairy Science. Something to consider. SLO offers no need-based financial aid and little merit aid (1-2K/year) for OOS applicants. Again if you have other siblings that will be attending college, it is important to find out if your parents are willing to fund you to go OOS and still have money left your siblings…
Gumbymom is not quite right on limiting the number of OOS and international student who can be admitted to a UC to 20%. This year alone, at UCI, only 67% of admitted students were from CA. As a CA taxpayer, I can’t tell you how irritating this is.
@CABoyMom: I believe the cap on OOS students was proposed in March of this year, well into the admission cycle for Freshman/Transfers so it will probably be put into effect for Fall 2018.
@Gumbymom I believe it still has to be approved. For the sake of all the high-achieving CA HS students who are being shut out of the UCs, I certainly hope it is. VA limits their OOS students to 10% (I believe); CA should do the same. The proposed 20% cap is a start at least.
Just an FYI on the UC caps, the final plan approved in May was to cap non-resident admission for UCB/UCLA/UCSD/UCI at whatever their enrollment percentage is for the coming academic year. The other 5 campuses will be capped at 18%.
I wondered if UCB/UCLA/UCSD/UCI might try to slide in as many non-residents as they could this year to lock in a higher cap. Berkeley increased their OOS acceptance rate from 16.5% to 22.1% and International from 7.6 to 8.8%. UCLA kept their non-resident admission numbers about the same (while decreasing their in-state acceptances by over 1,000 students). The caps are based on percentage enrolled, though, and we don’t know how that will play out until enrollment is disclosed. The same article discusses the in-state acceptance rates.
You can see the breakdown on admission rates by campus here.
OOS undergraduate enrollment at top Virginia state schools, from College Navigator:
34% UVa
38% William & Mary
30% Virginia Tech
To my knowledge, the only other highly-ranked state university that has capped OOS enrollment as aggressively as the UCs is the University of North Carolina. They have an 18% cap (although they recently hit the 19% level, and are facing fines for it).
Some top-ranked state universities have much higher OOS numbers than the UCs. For example, Michigan is 45% and Georgia Tech is 47%.