Isn’t the LOR a borderline indication…doesn’t that mean the individuals he chose to recommend him did not impress the admissions office enough in combination with his UC application? Should he appeal, because he has some new information that he did not put in his UC application…what do you guys think? He seems pretty depressed that (at least as of now, in this dimension) that he is only meant to be at UC Irvine, UC San Diego, and Long Beach State, all of which are outstanding schools. But he applied to a lot of reach schools, I believe like 6 but did not get into any of them. He was really set on Cal and UCLA, but he got denied from both. I think appealing to UCLA would be useless since he did not get any hints (he did get the alumni scholarship, but that’s a different process) but like I said he did get a hint from Cal, but it did not turn out in his favor.
I’m also in the same situation with UCLA and UCSD, I got the supplemental questionnaire from them but I got denied from both. I am planning to do an appeal letter to both since they gave me a hint. My responses were very subjective unfortunately and they were supposed to be objective. I have some new information as well.
I got into Berkeley, UCLA, UCSD, UCI Honors, and UCSB Regents. No supplementals at any of them. The only supplemental I got was from UC Davis, which I thought was my safety… I was ultimately waitlisted there.
For this year, it’s pretty obvious that supplementals aren’t sent out based on stats or chance of acceptance. Getting a supplemental doesn’t mean anything. All it means is that you indicated you went through some sort of hardship/injury and the UC’s wanted to give you a chance to elaborate. A lot of people who submitted sob stories would get the supplemental only to be rejected later on. On one of the other threads, someone who claimed to have only 3.3 and ~1800 SAT received a supplemental from UCLA.
I’m not sure if they were accepted, but I’d bet my left leg that they weren’t.
EDIT: Also, Berkeley LOR’s were completely random.
In the past, the UC’s including UCB used to send out supplementals for Borderline applicants. This year UCB randomly chose 20% of the applicants and asked for LOR’s, many not Borderline.
@hdoan24@yinuos@Gumbymom Thank you for your responses! This really made me understand the process. We will look at our other options, as we are both excited for them. My friend also got into CHP at UC Irvine, so it’s not that bad…plus there is graduate school for the both of us as well. As for me, I will most likely head to San Jose State (maybe Humboldt State but probably not), if any of you are wondering.
Yinuos, I got the supplemental from UCSD and UCLA with a 1460 SAT and a 3.04 UC GPA, but with 12 APs and a few others. My friend straight up told me that if I had higher grades and SAT scores that I would have been admitted. But everything happens for a reason, plus San Jose State is one of my top choices…on the par with UCLA actually because of SJSU’s location. I’m planning to become a Statistician as well.
Thank you so much again guys…I feel like this is the most plausible theory behind the supplemental, as I’ve seen many on here, Reddit, and other websites that were really questionable.
@elefish92 Congrats on San Jose State! And yeah, the UC’s are really fixated on GPA so an acceptance would have been hard to come by with a 3.04. Just curious, that 1460 is out of 1600 (CR+M), right?
@yinous It’s actually overall…yeah I am aware that it is below average, but I took it in two sittings (same score) and had incidents before the test and got no sleep. But I truly do think your theory is the most plausible…there is just no way on Earth that it would be “borderline” admission. I have no idea why people exclaim that they haven’t made a decision yet. I am not sure if that is true because maybe the UCs sent out a supplemental to few applicants for their research. I am just dumbfounded as to why the UCs never gave specific information on what it means.
But I don’t care that much, it’s not like UCLA is mostly an undergraduate school like Cal Poly SLO and Humboldt State. I can go there for graduate school if I really want to…but they are tied for #30 in the nation for Statistics so that probably won’t happen. Plus I initially wanted to get out of SoCal and go to college somewhere else, NorCal at the very least.
However, I may just appeal if I have absolutely nothing else to do in spring break so that I could understand what in the world the supplemental means, or at least get a better idea of it.
I don’t agree with hdoan’s suggestion of nothing. While LORs may or may not be random (we will never know as we arent admission officers), there is nothing to lose by appealing. You already went through the process of filling out pages of applications, the appeal form is at max just one page long (don’t make it too long) of your many pages of applications already.