I had some rough moments in my early 20s after I moved to U.S from Korea and had 2 C’s and 3 B’s before I really started to study seriously. I have only gotten A’s in my recent semesters but those Cs and Bs are hurting my grade very badly and I am only about 3.55 gpa right now. My major is Mathematics and I believe I will still have a decent chance getting into UCI or even UCSD. However my ultimate goal is to transfer to either UCLA or UCB and those schools are the only motivation that is making me working very hard in my classes. I am in my late 20’s right now who decided to study again seriously and I have a huge passion for Mathematics. And getting into those schools will finally make myself and my old irresponsible myself proud. I am trying my best to improve my gpa up to 3.7 but I know that is not enough for top schools like UCLA or UCB. It is really depressing because my major was Japanese when I was not a good student and I got B’s and C’s from those 4 ~ 5 units Japanese classes which is the main reason why my gpa is relatively low right now. I am trying to get A’s in all math classes because those are my major prep courses, so it would look better even though I have worse overall gpa than others. Also I will try taking honors classes and get honor’s certified to make my chance higher for getting into UCLA. I apologize for such a long post but I want to hear people’s opinion about my situation. Do you think I can realistically aim for transferring to UCLA or UCB after all these efforts or should I just opt to go to other UCs such as UCI and UCSD. I am planning to apply next fall hoping I can get into those top schools. I have a option to go UCI because I tagged to UCI this fall(UCI only requires me to take Calc 1 and Calc 2) but I will most likely stay another year to finish every major requirements&honor’s certified and give it a shot to UCLA and UCB. I would appreciate your opinions about my situation.
UC GPA Transfer admit ranges for each campus and major: https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/infocenter/transfers-major
It sounds like you have strong grades in math. The more math you can take above and beyond what is required always helps. And be sure to explain the earlier setback. If the grades are far enough back (like 5 years) they don’t count them as much. If you can get to 3.65 you’re in the competitive zone for Berkeley, and they will definitely take into account the math course GPA.
@Ohm888 It will be more than 5 years ago by the time i will be applying so that is a good news. However I also have a 1 year gap because I had some financial difficulty along with the depression which was pretty recent. Will it hurt my chance of getting in or I can just explain the gap when i am applying and will it be fine. I will try my best to get near 3.7 for sure and 4.0 for all the math courses. Thank you very much for the comment.
Yes, just explain the gap. Maybe mention financial difficulty.