<p>Thanks for your response, @soaringcicada. Makes sense. (Sorry about all the typos in my post – darn ipad typing!) </p>
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<p>@ljmom I really doubt this. Without knowing who they choose to send the email to, we have no way of knowing. That said, I believe they sent the emails to most people. UCLA, on the other hand, is more transparent about who gets their Regents and Alumni emails (specific % of applicants) but some of them still get rejected. So no, I don’t think that getting the invite email is going to mean likely admission.</p>
<p>@ljmom I know of students who had got leadership invite n were admitted but don’t of those who got the invite but were not admitted…if anyone could share abt that bcos that data is more imp.</p>
<p>“I think it is very likely [high probability] that those who received the invite may also get admission to cal…”</p>
<p>I’m pretty sure the two are totally independent. Cal alumni does their thing while admissions does theirs. If admissions decides a student is not admitted, they aren’t going to suddenly re-think their decision just because the Cal Alumni Association decides that a student has outstanding leadership. The leadership award does not take into account grades and test scores. At all.</p>
<p>@soaringcicada acc to u then it is dependent i.e. only the admitted students applications might be sent to Cai alumni association to select & send out invites for leadership awards…is it so???</p>
<p>No. The email invite itself explicitly states “Your receipt of this scholarship invitation does not in any way reflect on your application for admission to UC Berkeley. You are no more or less likely to be admitted to UC Berkeley because you have received this invitation, and your decision to apply or not apply for Cal Alumni Association scholarships will not affect your application status.” I suggest you read that again if it still isn’t clear.</p>
<p>If you still have questions, feel free to contact admissions and ask them yourself. I guarantee you that their answer will not be any different.</p>
<p>Ok! Maybe…anyway let’s hope for the best n wait for the results to be out…</p>
<p>@collegetime18 I did get an email a second time with a different subject- “Are you a Leader”, but the same content inside and the disclaimer…</p>
<p>Hi nimble09 … that’s not quite right. Leadership invites are sent to a subset of applicants. Some of those applicants will be accepted and some won’t. Cal Alumni Association doesn’t know which ones will/will not when the invites are sent, but they have to do it early in order to get through their process so they can give out the scholarships about the same time admissions are announced. So that means their readers end up assessing many essays and the kids won’t even get in. (I say many because Berkeley’s admit rate is 20%-ish. Now, it’s somewhat self-selective, so the admit rate of Leadership applicants should be higher than that. But the only students who can know with certainty that applying isn’t a complete waste of time is Regents’ and Chancellor’s candidates, plus recruited athletes and other special admits.) When Cal Alumni gets the “admitted” list (and they get it before March 27th), they pull all the students that didn’t get admitted (or at least they try to get them all).</p>
<p>I’m not sure how they determine which students to invite and which not to invite. From CC posts, all we can conclude is that they don’t invite all Regents’ candidates, and they don’t invite everyone who checks the “I’ve done craploads of leadership” box. Who knows how the computer picks? But any applicant to Cal can apply. So applying won’t increase your chances or everyone would do it. Being chosen for the scholarship probably means you have shown good leadership so by virtue of that you stand a better chance (Berkeley being holistic and all), but your application needs to pass muster with the admissions office. And the idea is that you wouldn’t know that you’ve got great leadership, but weren’t admitted. Good luck to you/your child!</p>
<p>Received the invite for the third time a few minutes back.</p>
<p>My S too. Guess they really want everyone to apply!</p>
<p>me 3!</p>
<p>Me too…</p>
<p>I have gotten 2 invites now (like most people) and planned to apply this weekend (because I’m short on time atm), but then I decided to just google it for a bit and now I am not that sure anymore.</p>
<p>When I read the invite and their page I got the feeling that there was more to this award than just the money, but after reading here at CC it seems that it is simply a small sum given to very few of the applicants? I read that everyone with a GPA over 3.3 and that ticked some box saying something like “I agree to share my info with 3rd party scholarship givers” get this invite.</p>
<p>For me as an intl student 2000$ is pocket change compared to what I will have to pay for my study in the US. Furthermore, to be able to go to an interview in say London (I live in Europe) I would have to shell out 200-300$ for flight and hotel etc.</p>
<p>Considering that my chances for getting into Berkeley in the first place are slim, it now just feels like a waste of time. Am I right?</p>
<p>You sir, have a point.^
I’m an international too, you see, and am beginning to question if its worth the time?
Also, my board exams start tmw, so I’m not sure if I should deviate now.
@fgblomqvist</p>
<p>For whoever getting both UCLA Alumni and CAL Leadership invitation, it is assumed that he/she would be close
to top 5% of applicants in both schools, GPA and SAT/ACT wise (based on UCLA tradition), since nearly the same pool of top applicants applied to both.
EC, Works exp and Volunteer will be tie breaker factors.</p>
<p>But how do you know its top 5%? Most sources ive checked lead me to believe its a generic email sent to a decent chunk of the applicants</p>
<p>TSchaser
Go to UCLA forum see post of an Alumni who is in the selection committee. It is top 5% (he said about 4%) that receive Alumni invitations. What I’m saying is if he/she get both Alumni (UCLA) and Leadership (UCB) invitations, the UCLA invitation is the 5% indication. And I assumed that top 5% of UCLA is almost the same with 5% of UCB. I can not imagine top guy applies to UCLA without applying to UCB and vice versa.</p>
<p>What if somebody only gets either of the invites? That is either only from UCB or UCLA…</p>
<p>UCLA Alumni invitation: 5% GPA+SAT/ACT wise.
UCB Leadership: Not sure (some low SAT/ACT said they get invitation).
Both are not guaranteed admission, since admission considered EC, Essays, Volunteer…
But if getting both, at least candidate could guess he/she among 5% of the elite group, GPA+SAT/ACT wise. Candidate would get bigger chance than the main pool of applicants.</p>