<p>is the number of ap/honors classes you take in high school a major factor in admissions to berkeley or any other top UCs? i took a decent amount of ap honors...ap bio, ap chem, ap calc ab, honors us history, and my senior year i will be taking ap physics, ap stats, and ap psychology. that totals 7 ap/honors classes during my high school career (plus 2 honors classes that are not UC approved). is that too low and will that hurt my chances of getting into a top school like berkeley since i hear people there take 10+ ap/honors courses?</p>
<p>It depends on how many your school offers. It looks good to take as many as you can, within reason. If you attempted that, then that's fine. If you dodged AP English because you suck at writing, that will hurt you. Having said that, it probably won't be a big deal, haven taken 7 versus 10 AP tests.</p>
<p>As long as you get good grades in those courses, you should be fine. Berkeley will look at how many AP's were offered at your school and see how you took advantage of them.</p>
<p>I think you're fine as long as you do well.</p>
<p>I took 10 APs, and like 7 honors, or some crap like that, and I swear it doesn't mean anything. I genuinely feel I put in way too much effort to get into Berkeley. It wasn't really worth all that suffering senior year because there are tons of people here who took less than 10.</p>
<p>Not necessarily. You are expected to take many AP and honor courses if your high school offers a lot. Any those AP credits do come in handy later on, as well as APing out of courses so you can take other courses. So in a way, if your high school offers a lot you are kinda screwed..</p>
<p>when you say i should take a lot of aps when my school offers a lot, how much is 'a lot'? my school offers these ap/honors classes:</p>
<p>Global Science Honors
English II Honors
Euro AP
Bio Honors/AP
English III Honors/AP
US History Honors/AP
Chemistry Honors/AP
Calculus AP
Physics H/AP
Stats AP
English IV Honors/AP
Government AP
Econ AP
Art AP
Psychology AP</p>
<p>By the end of senior year, I will have taken:</p>
<p>Global Science Honors (not UC approved)
Bio AP
Calculus AP
Chemistry AP
US History Honors
Physics AP
Stats AP
Psychology AP
English IV Honors (not UC approved)</p>
<p>also, if a class isn't UC approved for honors credit, do the schools still recognize that I took an honors level class and simply not award me the extra point in my GPA?</p>
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I genuinely feel I put in way too much effort to get into Berkeley.
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<p>Yeah, same here, I only took 8 APs and a college course, yet I am alongside students who had 3.8 W GPAs. Hm.</p>
<p>Yeah... Berkeley accepts many students that go to high schools in the surrounding area because of low-income opportunity stuff, and the students that I've met aren't particularly as strong.. They receive a full-ride scholarship as well!!!! grrr</p>
<p>What The Hell?!</p>
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Yeah... Berkeley accepts many students that go to high schools in the surrounding area because of low-income opportunity stuff, and the students that I've met aren't particularly as strong.. They receive a full-ride scholarship as well!!!! grrr
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<p>Berkeley, from what I've heard, always looks at student in the context of their high school. That means a student that's taken 5 AP classes and gotten 4's and 5's on all of the tests coming from a school that only offers 5 AP classes and whose other students get much lower scores on them will look better than a student from a well-funded school offering 12 AP classes who only takes 7 of them and scores 4's and 5's (when the top students are probably taking all 12). They do this because they can't put the blame on you for your school not offering more AP classes. It's all relative.</p>
<p>My school offered a crapload of APs and also full IB diplomas. So I took as many as I could (something like 13 APs last time I counted, plus a full IB diploma). That's what all the top students did. I could have taken only 5 AP tests, and may have looked good compared to students from south central LA who have never even heard of AP tests. But in the context of my school, I would've looked like a slacker.</p>
<p>I have Oakland friends whom many went to UCLA and UCB with SATs in 1000s and 1100s (former SAT)...</p>
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Berkeley, from what I've heard, always looks at student in the context of their high school. That means a student that's taken 5 AP classes and gotten 4's and 5's on all of the tests coming from a school that only offers 5 AP classes and whose other students get much lower scores on them will look better than a student from a well-funded school offering 12 AP classes who only takes 7 of them and scores 4's and 5's (when the top students are probably taking all 12). They do this because they can't put the blame on you for your school not offering more AP classes. It's all relative.
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<p>Ok, so they're punishing us for going to decent public schools?</p>
<p>It's a bit unfair. </p>
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I have Oakland friends whom many went to UCLA and UCB with SATs in 1000s and 1100s (former SAT)...
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<p>Are they athletes? It's a legitimate question too. The only person I know at Berkeley who scored that low is an athlete who was recruited. He is kind of struggling at Berkeley though.</p>
<p>They are not recruited athletes, and many of them are Asians. Many of them took 1-3 AP courses in their high school career (the high school offers ~10 APs) and their SAT scores are just sub par. </p>
<p>They come to UCB with some opportunity scholarship giving them 4 years of free education. by that I mean they receive however much the budget for that year is (like this year is 24k to attend). but we all know that the budgets for transportation, books, etc are WAY overbudgeted so in a way, the students are paying PAID to come.</p>
<p>Wow, that kind of irritates me...considering how much harder the rest of us had to work...just because they're from Oakland? How are they doing at UCLA and UCB though?</p>
<p>I've met a few of these free-ride students at Berkeley. two students changed from intended business administration to intended economics, and one student downright decided against becoming a doctor after taking chem 1a....</p>
<p>lol...ok, I'll admit, I swear I am the only person who was intended economics the entire time, and not intended business. I actually finished the prereqs for Haas because they're similar to Econ's and got a 3.75 in the prereqs and decided NOT to apply to business school. But yeah..not all Econ majors are Haas rejects! Just the majority are, but yeah....am I the only person who did this?</p>
<p>I have a friend who majored in econ, but in her 3rd year she decided to double major in bus.ad because she was taking so many business courses already and doing so well in them.</p>
<p>anyways... i wish i was paid to go to college.</p>
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Ok, so they're punishing us for going to decent public schools?</p>
<p>It's a bit unfair.
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<p>No, they're punishing you for not taking advantage of what's offered to you. If someone offers you the opportunity to take 10 AP classes and you take 5, that shows a lack of initiative or a lack of interest in learning (assuming that there are students at the school that frequently take all 10). That's not what a college wants. If a student is offered 5 classes and takes all 5 (and his/her classmates don't all take 5), that shows initiative.</p>
<p>BTW, I know a lot of free ride students, since the free rides are typically provided by the R&C scholarship, and I'm in RCSA. None of the RCSA people I know are undeserving.</p>
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No, they're punishing you for not taking advantage of what's offered to you. If someone offers you the opportunity to take 10 AP classes and you take 5, that shows a lack of initiative or a lack of interest in learning (assuming that there are students at the school that frequently take all 10). That's not what a college wants. If a student is offered 5 classes and takes all 5 (and his/her classmates don't all take 5), that shows initiative
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<p>I still disagree with this slightly. For example, my school offered 12, and I took 10. Say that your school offers 16, and you take 12, then it's worse than a person who takes 5 out of 5 because of the percentage taken? That's ridiculous. Many high schools do not let kids take APs until junior and senior year, and since you take 6 classes a year, then you can max take 12. There's a limit to how many you can take even if your school offers more.</p>
<p>Regarding the RCSA, the majority deserve it, but I do know a guy who got a 1590 out of 1600 on the SAT, 4.0 GPA, took tons of APs, ranked in the top 3, and was rejected the scholarship. What's the deal with that? The RCSA is not completely based off academic achievement, am I right? ( I was actually feeling his pain..and I don't know him that well.)</p>
<p>Of course not. It depends on your application first, and then if you quality for an interview, you are given an interview and you may or may not receive the scholarship based on that interview (the interviewer decides your fate). If the guy you know is poor at being interviewed, that could explain it. If he blew his essays on his application, that could also explain it.</p>
<p>A friend of mine from high school who had comparable stats to mine (even a better GPA than me, I think, though I believe I beat her SAT score) didn't get the scholarship. We both went in for interviews and I came out with the scholarship.</p>
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I still disagree with this slightly. For example, my school offered 12, and I took 10. Say that your school offers 16, and you take 12, then it's worse than a person who takes 5 out of 5 because of the percentage taken? That's ridiculous. Many high schools do not let kids take APs until junior and senior year, and since you take 6 classes a year, then you can max take 12. There's a limit to how many you can take even if your school offers more.
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<p>It obviously depends. But if the top 5 in your class took 12 and you took 8, how does that look? The kid that took 5 of 5, how many did his classmates take? 2-3 normally? Then he looks better than the guy that took 8. It depends on context always. How many your school offers, how many students are your school normally take--those affect how your numbers look. That's as it should be. Obviously it isn't always the case that taking a smaller percentage of total offered will look worse, I'm just saying that it is best to take as many as possible, to challenge yourself above and beyond what your peers do. That always looks good.</p>