I have an extremely steep upward trend and I was hoping berkeley would send me an LOR request hoping they’d want to learn more about me. My UC GPA is only ~3.7 but I have like a 1.5 point increase in my UW GPA between sophomore year and junior year and if they didn’t ask for a rec does that mean I’m not borderline and have already been rejected? I really really want to go here so I hope they’re still sending them out. I applied on the 13th of Nov.
I would say a pretty large majority of applicants get admitted without the LOR request. Such as my kid last year.
Ik, but I’m a very borderline applicant because of my upward trend and I doubt I’d be an admit without an LOR. Nice to see your kid got in, hope he’s enjoying it there if he chose to enroll!
Only a small percentage of applicants will get an LOR request so did you address your grade trend in one of your personal insight essays?
Yeah, that was one of my PIQs and I added some more background/info in the additional info box.
Maybe you explained the situation well enough that UCB did not require any more information.
Don’t read too much into the lack of an LOR request. You have submitted your application - it’s up to the admit gods at this point. Keep busy, finish the semester strong - the end of March will be here soon enough. Until then, it’s ALL possible.
Agree with the above.
I’m not too sure if this has changed, but don’t try to estimate your admissions chances based on whether or not you received a LOR request. At least for the Class of 2020, it seemed that LOR requests were completely random. Many people with great stats and no upward trends received LOR requests, and people who obviously had no chance at all whatsoever of getting in also received them.
I also don’t believe that “borderline” applicants tend to get more LOR requests, seeing as I was a “borderline” applicant myself (~4.1 UC GPA, attempted to explain upward trend in application, 2310 SAT) and never received a request but was ultimately admitted.
When my kid applied a year ago LOR requests were no longer random. I believe when LOR started they were random and they sent requests to half the applicants. They have been fine tuning the program ever since. Last year they looked for certain criteria in applicants, somebody listed the six criteria in one of these LOR threads. Now they limit requests to no more than 15% of the total number of applicants. My kid got the request fairly quickly after submitting her application, definitely in less than a week. Of course this was last years cycle and it may be different yet again.
Just one data point from the previous year. My son, SAT 1560, two subject tests at 800 each, 13 AP tests (almost all at a 5), 9 college level courses, GPA well above 4. No LOR request, got admitted.
@ElenaParent, Congratulations. Was he admitted to the College of engineering or the college of letters and sciences? Thanks
Yeah, my kid definitely would have been borderline in one area last year when he applied, which was his pedestrian 4.05 UC capped weighted GPA. But he great stats everywhere else and he got in (L&S) without a LOR request.
@Ranipetgirl He is a mathematician. So he was applying to L&S.
Thank you @ElenaParent