Hello.
I am an upcoming 2nd year Chemistry/Materials Science major at UCLA and being bored on Sunday night, I came back to visit good old College Confidential to see what was up with the site. Nothing much has changed, it is still the same old anxious high school students terrified about University applications.
I’ve been there. I did my own separate “Chance Me” threads about two years ago now, counting my hours, making a list of “extracurriculars” comparing my GPA and stats to others. Its terrifying, I know.
After being here for a year, I can easily say that UCLA has a HUGE diversity of students that come from very different high school backgrounds and capabilities. However, that being said, there is one consistency among the student body, and that is everyone here cares about something. Everyone here cares about improving something, whether it is themselves, their families, their communities, “the world”.
High schoolers are still teenagers. Your brains are not quite developed now. People are going to change 100% and are going to learn a lot about themselves. You’re probably going to experience drugs now if you haven’t before and do idiotic things that you might regret. You might get into a relationship quickly, you might struggle to make friends.
The person you are now is not the person that is going to come out of UCLA in 3-4 years. You’re going to grow up in University.
What UCLA looks for is someone who is going to grow up and begin their adulthood on the right step, with greater emotional intelligence for handling the world. They care about growing someone into an intellectual weapon that is going to beat down stupidity around you. Seriously. UCLA is an academic bubble and when you step out and enter the real world you’ll wish you were back. (If you don’t notice, maybe UCLA isn’t cut out for you). So when UCLA looks at admissions, your numbers only tell one part about you. However, in the personal statement, they look for students who are motivated to change and grow up.
As a personal anecdote, my personal statement discussed struggles with making friendships and my concerted efforts to change that around in my Senior Year. It isn’t much compared to someone who won at ISEF, but I think my GPA was what gave Admissions signs of my potential. Since then, I’ve gained much more emotional maturity and passion for improving myself and a passion for science.
I think people always wonder what the difference between UCLA and a top tier Ivy League is. UCLA takes in more people that have not yet quite figured out what they like, and who they are, but show potential to be as powerful as someone from an elite college. Ivy Leaguers and Stanforders probably already figured out a long time ago what they like and who they are. To be fair, the difference is really only in the undergraduate experience they offer. Graduate school wise, UCLA is definitely up there at the top.
So when you do your “chance me” threads, I think you should already know the answer as you type. If you’ve always tried to work hard and take advantage of what your school offers you, perhaps subconsciously, then you are looking to be UCLA material. I’ve known people in high school who lacked passion for anything. I at least was obsessed about my classes, but others failed to manage the GPA, and neglected anything that the school offered. You might not know what to do, perhaps you did volunteering because “you were supposed to”. I sure did.
This is a bit of a rambly post, but it’s intended to offer words of comfort to future high school students, I hope this becomes more visible.