I have a 1530 SAT
3.8 GPA UW
Good AP scores and I’ve taken 8 AP classes
Also good Extra curriculars
Not from California
OK then that’s a problem, because unless your parents have 260K set aside for your college costs, UCs are out of the picture.
In case they do:
You can add honors points for AP’s only:
https://rogerhub.com/gpa-calculator-uc/
Your SAT score will not be taken into account.
According the website you sent me
Unweighted GPA: 3.92
Weighted GPA: 4.31
Weighted and Capped GPA: 4.31
Congrats!
However my real GPA UW is 3.8 with the A- and B+ system
good job.
Can your parents afford the cost without loans? And if they have 260K set aside for you, why aim for public universities in California rather than private universities where you could get merit scholarships for your curriculum+test score and better learning conditions for the cost? (Serious question)
I think you’d be competitive for UCSC, UCSB, UCD, not sure about UCLA/UCSD/UCB.
@gumbymom knows your odds at each university with a 4.31 weighted/weighted capped.
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Well I heard that UCLA is like the public ivy same with Berkeley. I might add USC to my list. I really dont care if its public or not I just want a like top 75 school at least with good location.
Why would you assume that a private school has a better learning condition than any public school? That’s a huge generalization and definitely doesn’t apply to UCLA and Berkeley whose grads learn a lot, probably more than a lot of private college’s graduates. I didn’t attend either but that’s a pretty strong statement without any evidence.
I think the most practical course of action is to verify first with certainty that it’s not part of your record. Your school must know about the incident, so bring it up with them frankly, maybe with the assistant principal and the teacher. It doesn’t sound like it’s on your transcript, but it can’t hurt to double check.
Assuming it isn’t part of your college application, then just put it behind you. I imagine you have other things to write about. Though it may have been a great learning experience, in my judgment, it’s just problematic to have people thinking about it, and you’re under no obligation legal or ethical to tell anyone about it. If your school felt you were, then they’d put it in your record.
Plagiarism is a serious act of academic dishonesty, and I strongly support expulsion of college students, firing of professors, and firing of journalists who engage in it. But, hey, 9th graders are children. It sounds like you learned your lesson. You know it was wrong, correct? You don’t plan to do it again. You got a 0. I’d say the score is even. There’s a reason even criminal records of minors are expunged. Move on with your life and congratulations on your honest achievements.
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Off topic, but I am always hearing people say nice things about SDSU. When I had a chance to see it, I was underwhelmed. True, I was favorably impressed to find a Trader Joe’s adjacent to campus. Also, the campus architecture is nice. The few people there in the pandemic seemed fashionably dressed. In fact, I’d describe the whole scene as “tony” (a word I rarely use) but it felt so darn small and it seemed like there wasn’t all that much of a college town around it either. Did I miss something big? I don’t know San Diego that well. In the car it didn’t take much driving to get to some seedy areas and I didn’t have time to backtrack.
In retrospect, the Trader Joe’s felt like the highlight. I love TJs, but that’s just not enough to recommend a university.
To me it doesn’t feel like a college campus if your legs aren’t sore after walking from one end to the other, and SDSU definitely doesn’t qualify. OK, I went to Penn State, so maybe it’s apples and oranges. Berkeley feels pretty small to me too, but it has a big town around it, and Stanford is sprawling the way I expect a university to be.
Serious question. Does my impression line up with reality or did I miss something?
Oh… was going to add that UCSD is a world class university, at least for computer science, which is the field I know. Not to knock SDSU (which my son was considering), but I don’t think there’s a comparison academically.
I didn’t say they don’t learn a lot: that would be absurd at topnotch universitieswith highly selected students. I said “better learning conditions”, ie., the conditions in which this learning takes place.
Even Californians, for whom UCs are a tremendous bargain, will readily admit that learning conditions aren’t ideal: very large lecture halls with an overflow lecture hall in some subjects, classes not of 100 students but 500, 600, 700, housing shortages, not enough space in the library, TAs that are overworked/undercompensated, overcrowding. (This would especially be true at top UCs - I doubt OP is thinking of UCR or UCM).
Good private universities will have more resources and therefore a lower student:faculty ratio, smaller classes, allowing for a more personalized education, material that is promptly ordered or fixed, more tutors, etc - that for which people pay more. It’s not a slight on UCs to say they’re not private universities.
And so, why a non Californian student who may have lots of excellent choices, would choose to pay 65k foe an undergraduate degree there, is a legitimate question. Of course, the state of California will be very happy to take their money as a 260k subsidy is always appreciated. 
That being said, OP still hasn’t answered the “budget” question.
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how do i bring it up with my principal? what should I say in the email. idek what to type. Yes ofc i learned from it. i have done every assignment on my own and worked very hard to get where I am
I dont know a good private school besides USC in california. And USC is low acceptance too 
I really need to know…why are the ranking SOOO important to you? You seem more concerned with college prestige than actual criteria and fit for you.
If you are not a CA resident, can your parents afford $65,000 a year to send you to college?? UCs won’t be giving you a dime of aid if you are OOS.
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Time to get a Fiske guide.
Off the top of my head, for a full-pay top student… CMC, Harvey Mudd, Pomona, Stanford, Chapman, LMU, Santa Clara, Occidental.
However I meant “private university” in general.
You still haven’t answered the “budget” question. It’s much more likely to impact your college choices than a mistake you made freshman year and didn’t repeat since.
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I think you’ll have to figure it out. Can you start with the teacher in question? I mean I realize it is really hard to open up old wounds. I would not feel very comfortable doing it either. In my opinion, it’s better to talk to them first than to try to leverage it into an admissions essay topic as some have suggested.
The other option is just assume that it’s not on your record, because it sounds like it’s not. It really depends on what kind of risk you want to take. If I were your teacher, I’d be impressed by your maturity in revisiting something like this. But I’m not your teacher, so I can only guess.
Good luck. I am sure you’re do fine one way or the other.
You don’t - if your transcript is all As, etc. move on. Even if they write something in the counselor report, there’s nothing you can do. And they won’t. Those reports are more about the school profile including how many APs are offered so they can say you took 8 but 30 were offered…ehhhh. Or you took 8 but only 11 are offered - that’s better. Many colleges are stat based and not even reading these.
You want to be at a top 75 school - so you have no issues.
But you are mentioning top 20 and hard to get in schools. Whether you cheated or not is irrelevant. Apply to schools - reach, target, and safety…like anyone else. The three you are mentioning are reaches.
So you buffet that with - you want to be on the left coast - ASU (with Honors) - which is better than most. Or a Pitt (safety), Florida, Florida State (great for merit), Syracuse (safety), William & Mary, UGA, U Miami, Purdue, etc.
btw - top 75 is a terrible strategy. You need to find the right fit - a rank is just a formula (not even a good one) used by whoever is ranking). But since you said - and if you are using US News - note they don’t include the liberal arts colleges in that rank - that’s a separate rank.
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prestige does matter in business/finance. The jobs are competitive and also those schools = better connections for that area of work. + I also want a nice location. I have U Miami as a top choice just because its location is so nice and it’s not really that prestigious.
Im not sure about my budget. My parents pay full tuition for my two sisters. One attends Stanford and the other attends Duke. However they are basically broke now and we struggle financially. So I’m not sure how it will be for me on money.
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thanks for this. Well my other factors besides prestige include good social life, good city, good food and dorm life and good teachers/education.
I want to frame my point a little bit differently since the OP asked how to bring it up.
The fact that OP committed plagiarism is sensitive information that can potentially affect future opportunities. It’s 9th grade, so maybe not, but it could. They’re entirely right in guarding that information closely as some people might guard a medical condition or anything else about them that others might judge where they cannot control the reaction.
The thing is, there are at least 5 people who know about this if I’m reading it right. OP, their teacher, their assistant principal, and their parents (assuming both). So there’s no harm in bringing it up again within that group and it may work to reassure OP that the information is being handled as sensitive.
If I were a teen and nervous but wanted to open up this conversation, I would go in order of trust, which would start with my parents (who won’t know the answer but can advise), move on to my former teacher, and beyond that to the assistant principal if necessary to resolve the question of whether this information is confidential or somehow visible in college applications.
To repeat, I would definitely not mention it in admissions essays. It’s a liability. It might not hurt. In some very long shot scenarios I suppose it could help, but there just have to be better topics. So treat at as private information that poses a small risk and limit it to the circle where it has already been disclosed.
Assuming this is accurate, they could have planned things a little better. This seems like a topic to bring up with them. What can they afford and what kinds of financial aid are available to bridge it. While I think Stanford is probably worth breaking the budget if you’re able to get in, I am not as sure about Duke, though clearly it is prestigious. Even if my kids could get into Duke, I’d insist they go for a top public university unless they could make up a lot of the difference in merit scholarships (again, totally hypothetically and not a real consideration for them).
Anyway, this is irrelevant to the original question. Sorry your parents’ allocations are unfair.
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