Before the flood of RD dates coming up, I thought I’d drop an update on D23.
Overall, we’re in a good position. But it hasn’t been easy. Very stressful throughout the first semester senior year. Very… Essays were mostly done last minute, even if they were pretty decent. Grades dipped. Social challenges. But, at least for today, she has options she likes, and hope for more options over the next few weeks, and after spending a weekend visiting a friend at the local UC campus – finally seeing how she’s going to be ready for college.
Her initial list was reach heavy. It remained reach heavy. But as we said, you only need a few real “likely” schools --and we added some based on CC feedback. Since this initial list, she won her local Outstanding Citizen award, kept her weighted GPA just under 4.5, and decided she was not super small schools.
TLDR: Admitted to 3, Deferred 1, waiting on a bucket-load more. But one in-state, one-great OOS flagship, and one with good merit and we feel that it’s good to have options now.
Safety -
UWisconsin Madison (EA) - ADMITTED UC Santa Cruz - ADMITTED
University of Oregon - ADMITTED, Stamps scholar with 10K/yr merit
U.Washington Seattle George Washington Univ.
Hard Decisions no doubt. Early on we were generally freaked out about getting in anywhere given the horror stories/randomness. Still waiting on a lot of decisions, but now D23 has acceptances at UC Davis, Cal Poly SLO, Univ. Washington Seattle as well. In state for CA – just trying to travel to admitted student days is going to be hard!
will be looking for advice on comparing schools I’m sure
My older son is a UCD graduate from the Environmental Science and Management program. His top 2 choices as a CA resident were Cal Poly SLO and UC Davis. He would have been fine at either school, but chose UCD.
More options available in the Environmental Science majors. EMS had 6 concentrations along with several other Environmental Science major programs.
SLO was and can still be difficult to change majors so he wanted more flexibility.
Easier access to UCD from home. 1 hour flight out of Ontario vs train for SLO. Freshman were discouraged from bringing cars to SLO.
Although both schools have the small town feel/vibe, nearby Sacramento allows for city access.
Loved the biking culture at UCD.
Visiting both campuses will hopefully help in the decision. Both are great schools so no wrong choice.
From multiple students and our tour guide, in most cases it is relatively easy to change majors. CS and maybe another engineering are exceptions.
Edited to clarify this comment is for UCD.
We’re also comparing UCD and CPSLO at this point, we’ll see if that changes with further decisions this week and next. Does anyone know if there’s a significant difference in dual credit accepted? My kid is coming in with 64 units of dual credit. The major change potential is something we’re discussing too, though my D17 did successfully change her major at Cal Poly and still graduated in 4 years.
I do not want to derail OP’s discussion but I had both a UC student and CSU student. The CSU’s were more generous with AP credit than the UC’s but if the DE courses are both CSU and UC transferable, then they should be equally accepted at both schools.
My son started off working with the Department of Fish and Wildlife both in Utah and California. Eventually moved into Environmental Consulting. The firm he currently works at has offices all over the country but he is based in Sacramento.
If the dual credit consists of California community college courses, use https://www.assist.org/ to determine what equivalencies UCD, CPSLO, and other California publics may give for them.
It doesn’t. My son’s private school works with an out of state four year university to provide dual credit classes. From previous graduates, it seems like the cal states and UCs and pretty generous with accepting the dual credit. This was one of our concerns with USC, where our son also applied, it seems that they are not as liberal with accepting dual credit.
While Cal can be a bit unpredictable, I wouldn’t be surprised at all if she got an acceptance there. As mentioned above, her profile is very similar to my daughter’s (and probably more academically rigorous), so I think that indicates a pretty good shot.
Yeah, huge congrats on Pitzer and Davis (and UCLA, though it’s awesome that Davis is standing out for her)! Will be hoping for good news on Friday, but it’s been great following along with your daughter’s journey on this, and I’m glad she’s already got some fantastic options in her pocket!
