My GPA is; 3.86 unweighted but my core GPA with just academics is 4.0 unweighted
My school doesn’t offer AP or IB classes rather it has a really intense more in-depth program of each subject.
SAT: 1130
ACT: 24
extracurriculars: Concert band, jazz band, orchestra, pep band. I am the percussion section leader of my school awarded full tuition 4-year scholarship. Bible quizzing & Drama.
Community service: Helping 1st and 2nd-grade kids improve on their reading and writing also helping the school administrators office.
I am not able to do things outside of school like college courses because I have full working parents and have to watch over my three younger siblings. My dream school is Stanford, but I’m also applying to all the ivy colleges, UCLA, UC Berkeley, UC Davis & USSC. Do you think I will get accepted according to my stats? I believe my essay is really good as well. I just want to know in others opinion. 
You need to greatly improve your ACT or SAT.
You should google the “Common data sets” of your target colleges. And look at section C which gives the stats of admitted freshmen.
Your stats are not even close to being in range for these
Stanford, Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Penn ,Princeton, Yale, UCLA, UCB.
For your information, my kiddo’s HS has an average SAT of 1334. And only a small handful of students get into the colleges on your dream list.
You’re about the 25th percentile for UCDavis and UCSC. They’re still long shots. Please use the SuperMatch tool on the left panel to derive a more realistic list of colleges. Good luck to you but you really need to face the reality of where you stand.
What is your UC GPA? https://rogerhub.com/gpa-calculator-uc/
Intended major?
UC’s are very GPA focused but with said, you still have to be in the ball park for your test scores which I agree are on the low side.
Repost with your UC GPA. Post unweighted, capped weighted (8 semesters of extra honors points) and Fully weighted.
Just based on your posted stats, I agree with @T26E4 that Stanford and the Ivies are out of your league. Unless you bump up your test scores into the 1400+ SAT range or 31+ ACT range, UCLA and UCB are not happening.
Some realistic schools based on current stats would be UCI, UCSC, UCR, UCM. If you are interested in Cal States then Cal Poly SLO (depending upon major), Cal Poly Pomona, Cal state Long Beach, Fullerton, San Jose State, San Diego State. What about some private schools such as LMU, USD, Santa Clara to name a few.
Unweighted GPA: 3.86
Weighted GPA: 3.86
Weighted and Capped GPA: 3.86
So you not taken any honors/AP/IB or DE courses in HS? Are they not offered?
UC’s consider HS course rigor very important for admission decisions.
The following is the admit rate just based on UC GPA for each campus.
Freshman admit rates for UC GPA of 3.80-4.19:
UCB: 12%
UCLA: 14%
UCSD: 39%
UCSB: 49%
UCD: 52%
UCI: 57%
UCSC: 83%
UCR: 90%
UCM: 92%
I would apply to UCD/UCSB/UCI/UCSC and UCR. I would also add some Cal states and if affordable some private schools to your list. The rest of the schools are Super Reaches.
Good Luck.
Those are all reaches. I strongly believe in applying to some reaches, but you need some matches and safeties as well.
Also, in my opinion, it’s not smart to apply to all the ivies because they’re very different (size, type…). Applying to all probably means that you’re just after the prestige, which isn’t a good way to choose a college. You will spend four years of your life there; apply to places that appeal to you. I may be wrong, perhaps you like them all in different ways. Just consider what I’m saying.
Good luck!
My school doesn’t offer those type of courses, sadly. I have taken the most rigorous classes available at my school all four years. Wow, I never realized how dumb I look on paper. Honestly, I know its a stretch, but I have faith in myself and I’m just being positive that I will get accepted into Stanford. This might sound rather dumb to you, but my way of life is manifesting positivity ya know? Well anyways, Thank you for the stats! I think I will apply to UCI and UCR. I have applied to safe schools like Concordia-university Irvine & UOP.
Honestly, I like all the ivies! Except Cornell.
In my honest opinion, unless you increase your new SAT score alot, I think your chance to getting into any ivies is pretty low.
http://ucomm.stanford.edu/cds/2015#admission
12% of admitted freshmen had your ACT range of 24-29. And you can bet 97% of them were athletes.
There’s positivity but then there is disconnection with reality, I’m afraid.
“Honestly, I like all the Ivies! Except Cornell.”
Ahh, I’m sure you’d reconsider that comment if you received an acceptance letter in the mail from them hahaha The winters there aren’t thaaaaat bad.
As the others folks have mentioned, you should -really- increase that ACT score to anything above a 30 to have a slightly better chance[for the reaches] There are plenty of resources online to help you, sparknotes, Khan Academy, etc.
And if you really want to hit it off the park, take two SAT subject tests of your choosing.
Lastly, be realistic with yourself. Applying to all Ivies means a looooot of effort into essays. A wise man once said, “I’d fear the applicant who wrote one essay 1000 times to 1 college much more than the applicant who wrote 1000 essays to 1000 colleges.”
Or something like that.
Thank you. (if you’re being genuine) It’s fine, whatever colleges I get into or don’t get into I know I tried my hardest. I’ve managed to work hard and get straight As all throughout my academic career. & my essays are gonna be killer! Hopefully XD God Bless you guys!
To be blunt, your test scores and your grades don’t exactly align because your GPA is much better than your tests. With holistic college admissions these days, your chances at getting into the schools you listed are not impossible but by no means would any of them be super likely. You clearly are intelligent, but for whatever reason (timing, lack of practice or training, a bad day, test taking skills) you didn’t perform as well as you need to for the schools you listed, at least in statistically the vast majority of cases. And still, you’ve done great in school!
Don’t worry, though! My best advice is that you apply to top-notch test optional or test flexible schools. More and more colleges are realizing that a standardized test doesn’t always measure a student’s true aptitude. Wake Forest, Bates, Skidmore, Bowdoin, and Wesleyan are just a handful of the prestigious of test optional schools, and your GPA makes you have a good shot at any of these schools. Best of luck!
Extremely low. Your GPA is only a 3.86 without any AP/IB. Most applicants to these schools have unweighted GPAs in this range with 16+ AP/IB classes. Weighted, they are around a 4.2-4.35 after junior year (the time to apply).
Also, your test scores are well below what is needed for these schools. You’re going to want at least a 30, preferably a 33+ or at least a 1400, preferably a 1500+. You don’t appear to have any SAT IIs which could also be an issue given your unimpressive GPA and other test scores.
EC - band
Service - minimal
I would advise not to apply to any of the Ivies or Stanford. That’s a lot of time and money you could save. I would still go for UCB/UCLA as reaches, but make sure to have safeties. Nonetheless, Good Luck!
Please don’t waste your money on applying to Ivies. Unless you are an Olympian or a Jeapordy champion you will not be admitted with those scores. Concentrate on schools that are more likely to accept you, so you won’t be disappointed.
I rarely jump on these chances threads, because like 80% of the people on this board, I’m not really qualified to say with any degree of confidence.
What I do know with a fair degree of confidence, and only because someone who does this for a living has told me this time and time again, is that the large public flagships tend to be less test-focused than selective or elite privates, as a general matter.
Also, elite privates tend to really dig in and understand what your GPA is made of. You can’t get into Dartmouth with a good GPA that is made out of nothing. You need to show rigor. Again, the large publics don’t generally demand it to the same degree. It cuts both ways though. Where a low GPA with amazing rigor would have a shot at a selective private, it won’t cut it at a selective large public. However, a high GPA lacking some or even any rigor (just regular classes, no AP, no IB) has a fighting chance at a good public, even w/ a lower score.
In Washington, more times than I can count, have I heard counselors advise kids, “If UW Seattle is what you really really want, then you need to hit a 3.7 however you can get there. Being in the low 3s even with an insanely rigorous schedule won’t get you in.” And in my experience, that’s generally been the case. And we are very aware of plenty of those 3.7 kids who are at UW Seattle whose HS schedules were a joke. Kids who wouldn’t have a fighting chance at getting into Reed or Whitman. That’s just the way it works.
I’d focus on some solid publics, and while you can shoot for Berkeley or UCLA, even with greater GPA emphasis you’re not getting in with a 24. You could conceivably get into UW Seattle with those numbers. But not the crown jewel of the UCs. UC Santa Barbara might be a more logical UC reach.
And I hate to sound like some posters here, but unless you are an athletic recruit, there is no way on earth you get into Stanford or any of the Ivies with a 24. It ain’t gonna happen; I wouldn’t waste the app fee quite candidly. I rarely say that to anyone, but those schools will put your file in the reject pile as soon as they see the 24. That’s reality.
One thing you should consider are the really nice array of choices among the test optional. Here are just a few very selective and some very elite schools that are now test optional: Bowdoin, Conn. Coll., Wake Forest, Wesleyan, Skidmore, Bryn Mawr, Mount Holyoke and Smith College. Middlebury and many others are test flexible and I predict many will flip to test optional in the near term. Something to think about.
As usual, @Gumbymom was right on the money with her review of the California schools in posts #3 and 5. Hopefully, the OP followed her advice and applied broadly to the UCs and CSUs.
It does not sound like the OP applied to the UW (the deadline has passed), and admission would have been unlikely. Unweighted GPA is good (overall average is 3.78; above 3.8 for OOS freshmen), but rigor of coursework is considered “very important” to admissions, according to the Common Data Set, and the current ACT is in the lower 15% of the class.
OP will surely find a good school to attend if she applied to some of the matches and safeties mentioned throughout this thread.
@UWfromCA , I think there are two concepts of “rigor of coursework” that come into play: (1) absolute rigor - you got it or you don’t; and (2) the rigor you had available to you - you did your best to make it hard or you didn’t. My distinct impression, and that of at least of few counselor types I know, is that the large flagships will treat #1 and #2 equally, and that, say, Dartmouth or Williams, will not. For whatever that’s worth.
And then there’s my own cynicism, for which there’s no real substantiation, that the large publics don’t do a very deep dive on what comprises the transcript. Some of my cynicism is informed by inference, some by word of mouth and some by good old fashioned negative thinking on my part.
Also, I don’t put too much stock in the UW’s (or any large school’s) common data set “check the box” that rigor is ‘very important’. I mean, what school really says otherwise, right? I’ve looked at hundreds of those, and I don’t recall any that didn’t have that column checked.
I think if the applicant were from WA (it seems as though he/she is in Cal, but I don’t recall reading that), coming from a HS with a good relationship with UW admissions, I think he/she would have a good shot with a high GPA and relatively low ACT. I think their odds would be worse if it were the other way around.
Anecdotally, we know a lot of kids who attend UW who had relatively avg. test scores. The common thread is high GPA. (3.7 or better).
With your stats you will probably not get into any of the schools you listed, test scores are very low. I’d say you have a chance at davis though, if your essays are good, that’ll definitely help.