My Chances At UC Berkeley

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of California - Berkeley
1

Hi all, I am an anxious senior hoping to get into Cal for Computer Science through the college of Letters and Science. Here are my stats:

SAT: 1510 (720 Reading/Writing, 790 Math, 20/24 Essay)
ACT: 34 (35 English, 35 Math, 34 Reading, 31 Science LMAOOO, 10/12 Essay)
Subject Tests: 800 Math II, 790 Physics
Unweighted GPA: 3.92 excluding senior year (4.0 excluding PE, idk how of all the classes I took I got Bs in PE lol)
UC Weighted GPA (Capped from Sophomore and Junior years): 4.35, Uncapped from Sophomore and Junior Years: 4.61
Weighted GPA (overall excluding senior year): 4.31
Rank: School does not rank but I know I’m def top 9% because I got the letter
AP: Computer Science 5, Calc BC 5, AB Subscore from Calc BC 5, APUSH 5, AP Phys C Mech 4, AP Phys C EM 5
IB: N/A
Current Senior Year Course Load: AP Lit, AP Stats, AP Chem, Spanish 4 Honors, AVID Tutor, AP Gov, AP Microecon (will take next semester)
Major Awards: Nothing major. AP Scholar with Distinction, Won a Hackathon, Eligible for Volunteering President’s Award, Synopsys Science Fair Honorable Mention, helped my swim team win a tourney

Extracurriculars: Speech and Debate (Parliamentary Debate), STEM Club Member (applied through Synopsys Science Fair via that club), Internship at EA Sports, JV Swim Team and Competitive Swimming, Coding Club officer/VP
Volunteering: Mentor in Hackathons, Hosted hackathons with my programming club, Volunteer at a special needs daycare, AVID Tutor, AP Physics C Teacher Assistant
Other Stuff: Built various Android apps in free time/hackathon and engineering project

Essays:
Think they are decent essays, two of them are pretty good, one of them is aight, and one of them I don’t like

Other Info:
In-state student
School Type: located in Cupertino (so as you know, pretty competitive, mostly Asians and Indians), medium-large (graduating class size is 610 students)
Gender: Male, Asian Indian (so… yeah)
Income Bracket: Double income, both work in IT (so… yeah), live in Bay Area/Silicon Valley
Hooks: First one to go to college in USA (both parents got degrees from India), on H4-B visa

2

Your chances probably are above 75%. The only gating factors would be your essay and the competition in your school. Assuming you go to Monta Vista, if you look at the stats, every year around 300 kids apply to Berkeley, and around 20-25% get admitted. So if you are say amongst the top 50 in your class GPA-wise, you should be ok.

3

@ProfessorPlum168 thanks so much for ur feedback.

4

Good chances since you’re not applying to CS for the Engineering school.

@ProfessorPlum168 I wouldn’t guess on OP’s current high school-got warned by one of the moderators for this on another post. But it’s true that MV and Mission San Jose send 50+ to Cal every year, so barring something unforeseen OP should be in.

5

Btw I go to CHS not MVHS, and last yr CHS sent like 38 students to Cal. So the dilemma now is that I may do better with my stats in a slightly less competitive high school but at the same time idk if i’ll make it to top 30.

6

I wouldn’t worry about it too much. My kid went to a school last year with a somewhat similar profile as CHS where around 35-40 enrolled (not sure how many were admitted), and there were quite a few in the 1450-1500 SAT range and 3.8-3.9 unweighted GPA.

You stats probably would have wound up in the top 40 at my kid’s school - keeping in mind that a decent number of the top students went somewhere else. To wit, we had 50 NMSF and I believe only 8 or 9 went to Berkeley.

7

I agree your profile looks very competitive for Cal L&S. In context, I’m just a parent who had kids applying in 2014, 2016, and 2018. All my kids were accepted to Cal. No hooks. High stats and grades. Routine ECs. Strong essays.

8

Thanks so much for the feedback, and I was also wondering if y’all could chance me for UCLA as well. I also applied for Computer Science but I had to do it via college of engineering because there was no option under UCLA lns. So idk if its gonna be harder for me to get into UCLA than Cal.

9

You have the stats for UCLA but CS could be considered a high match/low reach just because of how competitive the Engineering school is.

As a backup/safety, consider UCSB or UCSC. Stranger things have happened in UC admissions to be honest.

10

@Hamurtle I agree and also the thing is that it is kinda hard to pull a 3.3 GPA in the 3 classes to declare Computer Science major at Cal, so maybe UCLA (if I make) is a better option?

11

@uncleran2 I wouldnt worry about getting a 3.3 at Cal. It looks like you have the academic chops to handle a rigorous classload.

Given your GPA/standardized scores, have you thought about more academic reaches for CS? Schools like Carnegie Mellon for example.

12

CS at UCLA will be very tough to get in. I not sure if your SAT and ACT score will be enough. The competition is fierce and supply greatly exceeds openings, people with perfect ACT scores routinely get rejected from UCLA Engineering (as well as Berkeley Engineering). I’m going to guess that last year’s acceptance rate for CS will be well under 10%.

13

@uncleran2, For UCLA CS admission: The admit rate for CS for the fall of 2018 is 8.2%. The average CS ACT score is a 35 and the SAT is a 1550 average.

14

@Hamurtle I have considered other options as well. CMU is one of them, then I applied to all the UCs, UIUC, U Mich, etc.

15

@ProfessorPlum168 yea that’s true. I don’t know if my GPA may make up for my low standardized test score or if that’s just wishful thinking from my part cause maybe other CS students at UCLA are gonna have the same GPA as me.

16

It doesn’t hurt to try. You never know. You’re in the same boat with lots of others that’s for sure.