<p>I am a student at a community college in Washington State. I'm in their engineering program preparing to transfer to the University of Washington in Mechanical Engineering. Getting into UW shouldn't be hard; but I want to know if I could potentially be a candidate for UC Berkeley (where I really want to go :) ). Here are my credentials:</p>
<p>Highschool: 2.87 GPA :(
AP Credits in Calculus AB(4), English Lit(3), Physics B(3) and Statistics(4)
SAT: 1310
4 yrs. French
Honors English 3 yrs. (and then AP senior year)
Had a job consecutively from the day I turned sixteen (at least
20 hrs./wk, never fired ) up until the week before I started college (priorities...)</p>
<p>***Like a lot of people, I didn't realize the opportunities highschool had for me. I thought it was childish and put forth minimal effort. If only I could go back and start all over...</p>
<p>College: 3.58 GPA 1st qtr.(17.5 credits)
-4.0 GPA 2nd qtr. (20.5 credits)
-Engineering Club (building a submarine for an international
competition, will be president next year)
-ASB Senator
-Spending summer quarter in France studying French (15 credits)
-25 credits scheduled for spring qtr.; 20 credits also planned for each
qtr. next year
-Tutoring math spring qtr.</p>
<p>*The 3.58 was due to a B+ in Intro to Engineering and a B+ in Chem I. As these classes pale in comparison to the other engineering/math/physics courses I'm taking will they take this into consideration during admissions?</p>
<p>*While my first qtr. GPA was kind of low, I know that I can manage straight A's the rest of my stay here. I figure/hope for a final GPA around 3.9 so let's just use that number for now.</p>
<p>How do I rank up? If I have a competitive chance what more can I aim to do (mainly extra-curriculars)? I want to take another English course here although they don't require it; would this be a good idea?I also want to note that I'm taking in addition to the required courses extra courses in HTML (the entire series) because it's a personal interest of mine. While they factor this in too? Thanks for any advice, it is greatly appreciated.</p>
<p>honestly, i would have to agree with zagat on that one. Cal hardly accepts "out of state" students. I would go with zagats' recommendations about MIT or Caltech but they are still far reaches. Maybe caltech might be a good match for you.</p>
<p>i would recommend for anyone to go one step lower than people have recommended here (for example, people tell you to apply cal-tech, go for a lower school). by no mean i discourage you from applying, but apply one step lower is more safe.(you do want that acceptance letter right).</p>
<p>you gotta leave a BIG margin of error.</p>
<p>however, i do think you may have a shot at cal, i dunno about cal-tech. MIT? very hard.</p>
<p>MIT???? Oh how i wish... I don't care how selective a school is it seems MIT will always surpass them in the selectivity category. So it's hard to transfer from an out of state?:(</p>
<p>Why is that? Also any advice to increase my chances to get in? Thanks for all the input guys.</p>
<p>About the quarter/semester conversion:
I'm not sure exactly what it is but a standard course is 5 credits in our system and thus 15 credits is called a full load. As you can see I'm taking a lot more than a "full load".</p>
<p>***I hope I'm not insulting anyones intelligence if this is accepted as common knowledge, I've never looked into the conversions.</p>
<p>Sorry, your explanation was not clear, so these calculations could be wrong; however, if my calculations are correct, your "per-semester" course load is not heavy at all.</p>