<p>Hello,</p>
<p>I'm a rising senior curious about my chances at the UC's-I'm still looking into a few private schools but I have been looking at UCSD/UCLA/UCB especially. I'll try to keep my stats to a minimum, thank you in advance for replies.</p>
<p>Filipino Male, Large public school (800 students for class of 2008 alone) - Not sure about class rank.</p>
<p>GPA (soph junior only): 3.92/4.00 (UW) 4.25/4.33 (W) (capped)
SAT I: 2120 (730W 710M 680CR)
SAT II: 760, 750 (MathIIC, BioE)</p>
<p>Senior year includes HL math and 3 AP's.</p>
<p>EC list is at the best average/not standout.</p>
<p>Do you live in California? If so, you should be in at all the UCs.</p>
<p>Many family friends of mine have proved that UC acceptances are quite systematic, meaning they go by numbers entirely.
They have formulas that they plug in, which factor in SAT's, GPA, EC's, etc.
EC's are very minimal compared to the other stuff.
Think of it this way: while ivy-level colleges screen the students for the basic "requirements" (term used loosely, here I mean decent grades, decent number stats, not necessarily stellar), UC's MAINLY focus on these things.
I had a friend who opted out of many honors classes just so he could maintain a near-straight A GPA (not at my school), he had 0 EC's, and few AP'S. But he did well in the tests he did take (not near perfect tho), but he basically "met the requirements" for the UC's.</p>
<p>Before junior year, UCLA was his dream school along with USC. He got into every school he applied to, including Berkeley and all the other UC's. Moral is, if you stick to the basic "formula", UC's shouldn't be too big of a problem.</p>
<p>Someone correct me if I'm wrong, just my observations from many cases. I'd like to know for personal reference :P</p>
<p>^^
LOL, that's what I basically said.</p>
<p>haha sorry about that, I typed quite a bit, so your post wasn't up when I was posting.
Apologies :P</p>
<p>Hey, thank you both for the replies :)</p>
<p>This is great news, I am instate california. I suppose UC's have to be systematic to some degree because of the sheer amount of applicants...</p>
<p>Anyhow, I hope this is the end case...</p>
<p>you should be in for sure but it depends how competitive ur class is</p>
<p>For Berkeley/UCLA in your case, it really depends on your ECs and essays. You have the numbers, but admission to these is far from formulaic. There's much more than numbers going on -- to be expected, when they receive 45,000+ applicants and have to distinguish among them somehow (though they do weed out a lot of them by numbers). The other UCs are much more formulaic in their admissions.</p>
<p>My D is still in the process but for UCLA and Berekley class "rigor" seems important as is a weighted GPA greater than 4, so any old "A" won't do. Essays, EC's; don't take anything for granted at those two.</p>