Any but Merced or Riverside is fine. Business / ecology major. Currently a senior.
UC GPA:4.23
SAT:1160 600Math 560English
Captain of Varsity Volleyball, volunteered at Food Bank. Creating volleyball club in Boys and girls Club. Tutored Math to academically struggled kids.
I’d say my EC are ok but not stellar.
My SAT is what really throws me off. I looked that the UC freshmen profile of last year and I am below the 25% percentile and it’s giving me no hope. I received a supplemental letter from UCLA not sure what that really means but I gave my heart to it. About how many get the supplemental?
Thanks guys feel free to ask any questions!
Lost all hope to all the UCs I’ve applied to after looking at the freshmen admit profile. Any chance
UC’s are very GPA focused so your GPA will help your chances. Getting the supplemental is a good sign since it shows that UCLA is still considering you.
According to some statistics posted for last year around 6% of applicants got the supplemental but the UC’s are limited to 15%. I believe you have a good chance at Santa Cruz and possibly Davis and Irvine. Riverside is actually a good option for Business so do not discard it that readily. All the UC’s will give you a good education. Did you apply to any safeties such as some Cal states?
Hello and thanks for your reply.
Yes, I applied to SFSU SJSU Cal Poly SLO and Pomona. Already got accepted into SFSU. Doesn’t UC compare you to your school? Everyone in my school has “inflated” grades as some say. Most of my friends have 4.10-4.3 UC GPAs.
You said you’ve lost hope for all of the UCs, yet you exclude the UCs that could admit you.
No one cares where you graduate, as long as you graduate.
I excluded those out because I reside in San Francisco but Riverside and Merced is too far from where I live. It would be the best to attend a school within a raidus. What I am really hoping for is Davis Berkeley or Santa Cruz
There is nothing “magically” about the UC’s. You will get a good education at all the schools on your list. Where you go for Undergrad will not define you,
it is what you do with the opportunities you are given.
I do agree with your statement, however it’s the pressure from my parents that I have to attend a good UC. All that’s doing for me is mentally stressing me out because all they do is compare me to my cousins or her friends.
The single most important admissions factor at UCs is GPA.
You say that your UC GPA is 4.23.
For Fall 2017, UCSC accepted 93% of applicants with GPA of 4.20 or above.
Those don’t seem like bad odds.
Source: https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/infocenter/freshman-admissions-summary
OK, but what about your SATs?
The Fall 2017 UCSC admit profile has 580-670 Reading, 590-710 Math
You’ve noticed that your scores seem low, at 560 Reading, 600 Math.
Source: http://admission.universityofcalifornia.edu/campuses/santa-cruz/freshman-profile/index.html
But consider some other numbers for Fall 2017:
Number of applicants accepted at UCSC: 27,125
Number of enrolled applicants (SIRs) at UCSC: 4,396
Yield (SIR rate): 16.2%
Source: http://ucop.edu/institutional-research-academic-planning/_files/factsheets/2017/frosh_trsirs_table1.1.pdf
The low yield (below Riverside at 19.7%, and only slightly higher than Merced at 14.9%) strongly suggests that many applicants are using UCSC as a safety. Sure, UCSC admits tons of applicants with 650-700+ SATs. But do those high-stat admits actually enroll there? Let’s check the Common Data Set for the stats of enrolled (as opposed to admitted) UCSC students.
Fall 2016 enrolled student profile:
520-630 Reading
540-660 Math
Source: http://mediafiles.ucsc.edu/iraps/common-data-set/common-data-set-2016-17-revised.pdf
So how do your test scores look now?
My guess is that UCSC will be impressed by your GPA, and will see your test scores as perfectly acceptable. The same logic could apply at UCD as well.
@Corbett thank you so much for your detailed feedback! In this case I can either get accepted or waitlisted in SC since it’s a safety for most. Thank you for all these statistics as it really helps me understand where I stand with other applicants. For Davis Im not 100% sure because the top 5 got rejected from Davis. Davis seems pretty hard to get into now a days. My friend got a supplemental for Davis but I didn’t. She also got one for UCLA.
Many Bay Area people don’t seem to understand that Merced is actually pretty close. Right now (Sunday afternoon, so low traffic), Google maps says travel time from SF City Hall to UC Santa Cruz is an hour and a half. To UC Merced, it’s two hours and 15 minutes. OK, it takes longer to get to Merced – by 45 minutes. That’s not exactly comparable to Riverside.
In a few years, there should be commuter train service between the Bay Area and Merced. The plan is to extend the Atamont Corridor Express line, at which point it should be easy for UC Merced students to reach Pleasanton, Fremont, or San Jose, even without a car.
Yeah, Merced and Riverside are too far but Irvine and San Diego are not? Ok, then. I understand that you are looking for prestige. It’s fine, I see your parents are exerting pressure, just don’t play the distance card.
my guess is that UCR, UCM and UCSC accept you. I think you will go 1 for 3 with UCD, UCI and UCSB - which one is hard to say. LA, SD and B are pretty unlikely but, not completely impossible - especially if you have compelling essays and are a first gen applicant.
Good luck.