Oh yeah and I’m also going to be taking differential equations at a community college next fall.
@nomood so far, your UC unweighted GPA is 3.95, your UC weighted capped is 4.35 and your UC weighted uncapped is 4.55. (Don’t include your 9th grade grades, UCs do not look at them. The only Honors class that counts for weight besides your AP classes will be your CC class and most likely your pre-calc class, so I counted 12 grades so far that have weight). With your test scores, you are more than qualified stat-wise for any of the UCs.
However, the UCs are very holistic and if you peruse through the various UC application threads for this cycle, you will see tons of people, especially at UCI and UCSB along with UCLA and UCSD who got denied with really good stats, similar stats to yours. I think sometimes people with high stats take things for granted with essays. Make sure you put a lot of passion and energy into your essays. You should always have a safety or two that you wouldn’t mind going to on your application list as well.
@ProfessorPlum168 thanks! Although I don’t have many ecs, I feel like I dedicate a lot of time to the ones I do have, and I have a leadership position in most of them, so I hope that will be good. If worst comes to worst, I can go to community college and transfer to a uc after two years, which will also save me a lot of money.
Great! Sounds like you have a plan.
Your college admissions process may be quite easy.
I think that most posters above have answered your question about your reach/safety/targets. I would add on a helpful tip that you should now focus on finishing this year, and first semester senior year strong. The rest of your decisions will be based on your essays, and extracurricular activities, and other factors not in your control, but you meet the threshold required to be a strong applicant. I agree with one of the posters who suggested applying ED. Many colleges know that competitive applicants are fickle in nature, and may end up denying their school given the regular decision round, so ED is the best way to go if your particularly a stellar applicant who has a first choice. Note, however that ED is binding, so be careful on making that move.
Did they cover the implications of the intersection of those two topics?
It’s kind of like “The Emperor’s New Clothes” 
https://www.nytimes.com/1982/04/21/us/harvard-plans-to-strip-the-ivy-from-its-walls.html
https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2009/10/02/yale-fights-the-war-on-ivy/
@Mastadon we didn’t specifically talk about the ivy, we talked more generally about invasive species (specifically in the ocean). That sounds like a really interesting topic though, I’ll look into it!
Not sure why people here are telling you not to apply out of state but to apply in other countries or that you shouldn’t apply to US universities outside of California when you’ve repeatedly stated cost is not an issue.
I second the women’s college suggestions and encourage you to look into LACs in general. (Full disclosure: I went to a small LAC and am now a grad student at a top-10 university and I would take my undergraduate education over the individual attention and intellectual stimulation my students are getting for their money 10 times out of 10.) If you decide to look into LACs, though, you should make sure your parents are involved in the process and can see for themselves why that’s an attractive option.
You don’t need to know exactly what you want to do with your life at this point, but I advise you to answer a few questions for yourself before you begin looking for schools: Do you think you might want to go to grad school? Is the most important thing you want to get out of college a well-paying job? Are you open to exploring career paths and academic interests you don’t know about yet? Can you see yourself joining a sorority? Do you want a traditional college experience (frat parties, sports games, school-brand sweatpants, etc.) or something different? Do you want to participate in extracurriculars you can put on your resume or to try out weird things, or to focus on studying or activism or your social life?
Questions like this can really help you narrow down not just your list of reaches but your matches as well.
My advice at this point would be: Apply ED to Columbia or Barnard, apply to the UCs if you don’t get in, consider UChicago, consider LACs (including Barnard, which is part of Columbia). But things could change a lot depending on your priorities and your parents’ input.
Community college is a good cheap option and there are plenty of great teachers and students there, but rich universities have the resources to provide a much better college experience. You seem like a high-achieving student with financial resources, so unless you want to save your college fund for grad school or a younger sibling, or you apply to a bunch of reaches and get shut out (which shouldn’t happen if you approach the application process smartly), I don’t see any reason to consider it.
BTW, consider also urban Catholic and other colleges in big cities. You are almost certain to get enough merit from many of these schools to make them at least as cheap as the UCs (I’m thinking schools like Xavier and SLU, not Georgetown or BC). Most are smaller than UCs as well.
Not many LACs in big cities. Macalester and Barnard and Reed are. Also Rhodes. Also Occidental in your neck of the woods.
I can identify with that, and it was one reason that I decided to go into computer engineering. Its all electrons and no blood!
Did you know that you can create computer based models of living things? It is easy to change the model and there is no blood and no mess. If you make a mistake, no one gets hurt and no one gets sued. You just sweep the ones and zeros up off the floor and try again. And ones and zeros don’t stain if they get on your clothes.
Computer based modeling skills can be used to perform scientific experiments that advance the fields of human and environmental health and are transferable to other fields as well.
It’s possible to model blood, too, just use a color other than red and everything will be fine!
Because OP did say that cost was an issue when she said her parents didn’t think it was worth going out of state except for an ivy-level school.
Some Canadian and UK schools cost is comparable to a UC instate- about half that of a private school, even for international students. @nomood Check tuition costs at Canadian schools carefully. Tuition cost can vary widely depending on the program. I know that at U of T, international tuition has been increasing at about 10%/year. Tuition alone will be $55K/yr CAD ($41K USD) for students entering this fall. The same program at UBC costs $39K CAD ($30K USD).
If she waits until she gets the decision for an ED application, it will be too late to apply to a UC. UC applications must be filed in November.
Thanks for the application deadline check. I wasn’t sure I had it right.
As for the international school options, most schools in the UK charge overseas students between 20 and 30 thousand pounds in tuition fees, and room and board costs an additional 15 thousand pounds at least. It’s really not substantially cheaper than most private universities in the US. And the parents’ main concern, as far as I understand it, is to ensure the remote school they’re splurging on has name brand recognition; it doesn’t sound like they think it’s worth it for OP to go away otherwise. They’re not going to pay $50K per year for their child to get a degree from the University of Bristol, nor does OP sound particularly interested in pursuing that route at all–especially given that she doesn’t know what exactly she wants to study at this point.
I just don’t see why this is something people are pushing when her options–California state schools or ‘prestigious’ private schools outside of California–are already pretty diverse.
@Ghostt: These days, the top UCs and definitely prestigious privates (especially ones in big cities) are very difficult to get in to, especially for someone without a lot of eye-popping ECs. Even the mid-level UCs aren’t so easy to get in to for popular majors (pretty much all STEM majors). Yet Canadian and UK unis don’t care about that and admissions (outside of Oxbridge and LSE; maybe Imperial and UCL) is quite straight-forward as an American. Meet their minimum requirements and you’re likely in. Depending on goals (definitely not for pre-med/pre-health majors, BTW), pretty much guaranteed admissions to St. A’s/Edinburgh/McGill (roughly equivalent to W&M/UCSD/UMich in prestige, though McGill is massive and underfunded) is nice to have.
Furthermore, undergrad at England unis takes only 3 years so total cost may not be much more than 4 years at a UC (granted, you could possibly shave some costs off at American colleges with AP credits). Durham and KCL may not be so well-known by most in the US (though definitely in academia) and there as well as in the UK, they are probably seen to be on par with UVa/UNC but costing less than the OOS price at those schools even as an American.
Speaking of which, you may want to check out the Natural Sciences program at Durham. You’d have the option to study a few different subjects amongst the sciences and some social sciences/management.
These days, 4 years as full-pay at an American private is $300K.
4 years in-state at a UC is $140K.
$50K/year for a UK uni is $150K at an English uni, $200K at a Scottish one. Quite a bit cheaper than full-pay at an American private. Though I would not recommend them for someone who is pre-health.
BTW, there’s a big difference between OOS publics and privates like Ivies as well. Ivies would cost about $40K more per year over a UC. $160K total more.
Publics that are strong in STEM like Wisconsin-Madison, UIUC, and Purdue would cost $10-$20K more per year over a UC and that is without scholarships. Someone like the OP would very likely get enough merit scholarships to make Purdue (and IU and OSU) cheaper than a UC.
@PurpleTitan Where do you get those costs at UK universities from? I just picked a subject at random, mathematics, at Durham and Edinburgh. Per annum tuition and catered accomodation at Durham is GBP 26,300 x 1.31 = USD 34,190 x 3 years = USD 102,570. London colleges I am guessing will be around $120,000k. Edinburgh tuition and board GBP 27,800 x 1.31 = USD 36,418 x 4 = $145,672. So about $50k cheaper than your estimates.
I see it. Those cost estimates are way off.
http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/university-california-general/2127392-faq-uc-historical-frosh-admit-rates-by-hs-gpa-2018.html may help you with this table of 2018 UC admission rates by *UC recalculated weighted-capped GPA/i:
Campus 4.20- 3.80- 3.40- 3.00-
higher 4.19 3.79 3.39
UCB 37% 10% 1% 1%
UCLA 41% 9% 2% 1%
UCSD 70% 34% 7% 1%
UCI 75% 38% 7% 1%
UCSB 80% 41% 8% 1%
UCD 89% 52% 14% 3%
UCSC 92% 70% 33% 12%
UCR 96% 84% 49% 15%
UCM 98% 95% 82% 45%
Note, however, that some majors at some campuses are more competitive than others. In particular computer science and engineering majors should be considered more competitive than these admission rates suggest – apparent matches should be considered reaches for computer science and engineering majors, for example, and apparent likelies or safeties may be match or even reach for computer science and engineering majors.
You seem like you’re well-positioned for UC admissions. There are some good options in the CSU system too, particularly the Honors College at SDSU, which IMO has a better urban location than any UC except perhaps UCLA. It could be worth considering which of the UC’s you’d choose over SDSU, and which you wouldn’t. Cal Poly also draws a lot of students away from the UC’s, but nobody would call SLO urban.
I agree with @PurpleTitan’s expanded list of elite schools that deserve at least due consideration over a UC. If you love Columbia, take a close look at Barnard, which can be a best-of-both-worlds option. Barnard’s Early Decision acceptance rate is 31% - more than double Barnard’s overall acceptance rate and nearly double Colubmbia’s ED rate.
Rice is another elite U in an urban setting that attracts a lot of CA students who could have gone to top UC’s. They are drawn by the smaller size, the undergraduate focus, the inclusive campus culture shaped by the thriving residential college system, the unparalleled flexibility to take classes throughout the university and change majors at will, and the very high quality of academics especially in STEM. The fact that the “sticker price” is about $15K/year cheaper than most other private elites also doesn’t hurt. However, the recent change in financial aid policies, making aid for middle-income families the most generous in the nation (on a par with Stanford’s) has attracted a flood of applicants and driven the acceptance rate down under 9%. They’re filling an increasing share of the class Early Decision (with a 15.5% ED acceptance rate).
Also consider the Claremont Colleges. You’d have a solid chance at merit from Scripps, although merit decisions are “holistic” which is to say unpredictable. (And best-case it would still cost 10-15K/year more than a UC.) The consortium has amazing resources and being able to choose courses from throughout the five colleges provides offerings akin to a mid-sized university while preserving the advantages of the individual small LAC’s. Claremont is solidly suburban, but students do get to take advantage of the urban part of LA.
Also take a look at the science majors within the College for Creative Studies at UCSB. CCS is unique within the UC system and very much worth considering if the research focus appeals.
If that is your search space, then your problem is pretty simple.
Just apply to all the UCs (with a single application) plus Columbia, and to any other Ivies that strike your fancy. Save the serious hand-wringing for after results come in.
By all means consider some of the other schools suggested above, if you are so inclined.
However, in my opinion, there’s nothing wrong with an “Ivies + UCs” strategy for your situation.