Looking for Tips, Resources and Suggestions for Applying to University of California's

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of California - GENERAL
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Okay. The time has come. The eagle has landed etc!

My rising senior daughter is applying to U.C. We’ve read through all the official documentation online. Are there any other resources/suggestions we should be aware of before starting to fill out the application?

She is smart but not one dimensional so her unweighted GPA is 3.84 and weighted GPA is 4.2 mainly because she “only” did 4 AP classes.

Extra curricula activités were club volleyball and school volleyball.

I guess the challenge for her is she spends lots of time in her room doing artistic stuff (painting, crocheting etc.) which doesn’t really show up anywhere.

Some specific questions.

  1. Does anyone have pointers to what is a bad, safe and exceptional essay?
  2. Do the recommendation letters really matter who wrote them or what they write?
  3. Are these essays/letters actually read or just scanned?

Again any general information is appreciated.

If it helps she (at this stage) wants to do pre-med and we are still working through which major at each U.C. to apply to.

Thanks in advanced! Let the journey begin!

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I’ll tag @Gumbymom who can give you more specific advice.

But I will say…your kid can major in anything she wants as an undergrad. She just needs to take the required courses for medical school admissions also. Really…ANY major is fine.

Adding…I would suggest you read again your previous thread about applying to UCs.

ETA…your daughter could get accepted to medical school from Santa Cruz, Merced or Riverside. Really.

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Thank. You guys/gals are terrific. In this post I really wanted to drill down on the specifics of what to put in the application.

Maybe I’m overthinking this and she’ll have no trouble getting into a few schools, but the kid loves CA and want to stay here so I’d hate for her to mess up the application!

We are in the unusual situation that my wife and I are very educated but did all our education overseas and with no family here we are complete newbs when it comes to applying to school.

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This response tells what is looked at on the UC applications. And I agree, some CSUs should be considered as well.

lkg4answersForum Champion

May 1

I’m sure someone else will jump in with the GPA chance stats.

I can’t find where College Board has a UC GPA calculation. You might look at which courses at her HS (some UC approved honors courses may be included) qualify for a UC GPA bump (University of California A-G Course List) and then calculate her UC GPA using courses from the summer before 10th grade to the summer after 11th grade. GPA Calculator for the University of California – RogerHub It may be the same number but just verify that CB calculation is correct.

The UCs use 13 criteria to evaluate an applicant. How applications are reviewed | UC Admissions They look at much more than GPA. If your daughter takes advantage of the Activities & Awards section and Personal Insight Questions , it will help her application.

Many applicants focus on the four PIQ but I would make sure she also spends time on the wording and crafting of her descriptions of her extracurricular activities. They allow for 20 and give 350 characters to describe the organization and 350 to describe her involvement. Don’t worry about winning a championship or volunteer title. Describe her role and how she engaged in these activities.

As a CA resident, you should also look at CSUs.

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UCSB has some very helpful tutorials about filling out the UC application. Here are some links. You can do an internet search for more tutorials.

  1. Some essay topics to stay away from include Mental Health issues, resume of life achievements (addressed in the EC section), Loss/death, privilege and creative writing essays are some topics to avoid.

Below is some recommendations from the UC counselor conference on the PIQ’s:
PIQ tips:

“Students need to think of the PIQ’s as interview questions and respond to them thus”

What works:

• Examples and details are helpful. Examples should be recent (focused on events in high school) when possible. If students reflect on life before high school they will need to explain how that situation impacted them as a high school student.

• The student doesn’t need to add details which place the reader in the moment with them. We don’t need to know that it was Tuesday at 2:15pm when the blue skateboard they were riding hit a green shard of glass and caused a 40 degree angle turn of their front wheel. Details should be about the experience instead (example – ‘I fell off my skateboard and ended up in a foot cast for 3 months walking on crutches.’ The detail here is due to their fall they had three months on crutches.)

What does not work:

• It is important that students understand the purpose of these responses is for admissions readers to get to know them. Literary or descriptive language is not helpful in introducing the student to the stranger in admissions.

• Admissions readers cannot make assumptions about what they read. Therefore, flowery language, metaphors and analogies are not helpful since they create ambiguity.

• Quotes, lyrics and dialogue may note be the students words, thus making them unnecessary as they often detract from the response.

• Students should avoid attempts to entertain or “hook” the reader and should instead use their own words to share their story and voice.

  1. LOR’s are currently only used by UC Berkeley and only a small percentage of applicants are asked to submit LOR’s. Yes, they can matter especially if a student is borderline for admission so they should be written by teachers/counselors whom know the student well and can give a positive recommendation.

  2. 2 readers will be used to review/read all the UC essays.

Your D can use question 2 about Creativity to show her artistic side:

Question 2 – Creativity
The question gives a wide breathe of examples whereby a student can explore their creative side. What does the student define as their creative role or outlet? Creativity should be explained but it does not have to be shown. If a student is talking about their creative outlet being web design we won’t click on a link to “see” that work. We don’t want a writing sample if the student is sharing creative writing as their answer to question 2.

Also she needs to spend time formulating her EC/awards list along with utilizing the 350 word descriptions of these items.

The Activities/Awards list with descriptions along with the short answer PIQ’s should be typed into Word and then pasted into the UC application. @lkg4answers can give you more tips in this area.

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  1. There’s lots of info online about essays that work. Some are straight forward. Some are off the wall. Authenticity matters. Grammar matters. Follow their tips which I’ve linked below.

  2. Hmmm. What kind of question is that - of course they matter and who writes them matters…but not at UC as they don’t read them. They are LOR blind. Please have your daughter review the info they post so you understand the process. However, for schools you’d apply via the common app, it’s a heck yeah.

  3. Really ? Cmon. Sorry to snicker. But why ask #1 if you have this question?

Are you in-state or out of state ? Med school can be $800k so know what you are getting into financially. There are fine universities all over, including in CA that aren’t UC.

Good luck.

https://admission.universityofcalifornia.edu/how-to-apply/applying-as-a-freshman/personal-insight-questions.html

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I will also add, she should calculate all 3 of her UC GPA’s which will be reviewed by the UC’s. Unweighted, Capped Weighted and Fully Weighted based on the Rogerhub calculator.
She will be evaluated within the context of her HS so # of AP classes offered vs. the # taken in regards to HS course rigor.

https://rogerhub.com/gpa-calculator-uc/

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Link is broken

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Fixed the link and reposted.

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I’m not sure how to interpret your post. Are you looking for some quick “do this kid and you will get in” type of info or are you looking for pointers on where she (and you) can do more research? UC admissions are very competitive and regardless of how much one loves California, many, many in-state students are not admitted. Please calculate her UC GPAs so that you know her chances at each UC. Also look at the CSU system as they do not factor in letters of rec, essays or a list of extracurricular activities.

If you have read through all of the official documentation, you should have found that she will be asked to write four Personal Insight Questions. She has eight prompts to choose from. Prompt two asks for students to describe their creative side. As was stated above, she will be limited in words so flowery starts and rambling or repeating should be avoided. She should write her essays, let others read them, revise, rewrite, etc. until she removes any filler and every word/sentence adds value and insight.

Prompts 4 and 5 ask a student to explain barriers and challenges that they have overcome. If she doesn’t have something significant that she feels she needs to share, I would avoid these two.

The UCs use 13 criteria to evaluate applicants. Half of the criteria are not related to GPA/coursework/rigor. To evaluate criteria 7-12, they read the essays and what a student chose to include in the activities/awards section. Each essay is read at least twice. The readers are given a rubric of what to look for in the essays which is similar to the description under the prompt telling the students what to consider in that PIQ.

For one who wants to go into health sciences, she will likely need a year of bio, chem, physics, calculus, along with ochem. Look for majors where the first two years include those courses. At some schools, it doesn’t matter what your major is - anyone can take those courses. At other schools, priority enrollment goes to students in engineering or bio sci. She should do her research and choose a major accordingly.

If she isn’t passionate about being a doctor but thinks that might be something she is interested in, I would strongly encourage her to volunteer at a local hospital to see if it is what she really wants to do. Other health professions she might look into are nursing, physicians assistant, occupational therapy, physical therapy and optometry. UC Davis has a nice pre-health advising website with pre-req charts for each profession. Choose a profession from the “Health Professions” drop down and then look at the pre-req chart in “resources.” Heath care is a long road and a lot of work. Have a back up plan in case she changes her mind and save money for grad school in case she doesn’t.

In 2023, UC Merced will be starting a BS/MD program with UCSF. Preference will go to those from Central Cal but it may not be limited to those students. She does, however, need to apply for it when she applies this fall so she needs to be certain that medicine is the path she wants to pursue.

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