Please brutally honest chance me Vanderbilt or Rice (ED1 possibly), Emory (ED2 possibly), UCLA, UCB, Georgetown

Chance Me / Match Me!
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Demographics

  • US domestic (US citizen or permanent resident) or international student: US Citizen
  • State/Location of residency: California
  • Type of high school (current college for transfers): Competitive Public School
  • Gender/Race/Ethnicity (optional): Asian
  • Other special factors (first generation to college, legacy, athlete, etc.): None

Intended Major(s)

GPA, Rank, and Test Scores

  • Unweighted HS GPA: 3.73 UW (had to take care of older relative for 9th grade and grades plummeted with 5 B’s and a C, have no B’s after 9th)
    UC GPA: 4.41 capped
  • Weighted HS GPA (incl. weighting system): n/a
  • Class Rank: n/a
  • ACT/SAT Scores: 1580

Coursework
(Have maxed out all STEM courses at my school and have taken almost all honors possible)
AP Micro: 5 ; AP Macro: 4 ; AP Chem: 5 ; AP Bio: 4 ; AP Stats: 5 ; AP Calc BC: 5
Pending: AP Psych, AP Lit, AP Physics 1

Awards

ECs: (vague so I can stay anon)

Research w 3 publications

Tennis Varsity Captain (our team is current league champion)

ChemE internship

Tutoring organization head officer

DECA Chapter Officer and placed as a world finalist twice, 2nd at states once

Founder of Biology/Chem Club at my school with large presence on campus

Private tennis coach

Amateur Film Maker with Official Film Competition Prizes

Shadowed physician

Commercial laboratory assistant

Essays/LORs/Other

Essay: talking about how I spent an entire school year mentoring a special needs kid inside and outside of school and expressing some of my own personal traits, spent about a month on it and made it a narrative format. not comfortable to rate.

Additional Info: Talking about my situation with freshman year.

English Teacher LOR: Not comfortable to rate, but we have a wonderful relationship and she takes writing LORs very seriously(in a good way).

Math teacher LOR: Same as above, not comfortable to rate.

Tennis Coach: Not comfortable to rate, he’s like a father to me and we’ve literally been best friends all of high school. Expecting a good letter and he will mention my 9th grade situation.

Cost Constraints / Budget
No cost constraints.

Please brutally honest chance me:

ED1: Vanderbilt or Rice not sure yet
ED2: Emory

RD: UCLA, UCB, Georgetown, Northwestern, Stanford, WashU, Cornell, etc.

Dont worry, I have safeties as well!

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Your ECs are interesting - research, film prizes and tennis. And leadership galore.

Perhaps that will pull you through.

Otherwise, I don’t see you getting Vandy or Rice. Perhaps you get deferred. It’s not impossible though.

Don’t forget, all these schools are reaches for everyone. You certainly have what it takes. Good luck. But when schools say they don’t just look at grades but the entire student, this gives you an edge for sure!!

PS - I’ll let someone else comment on the UCs. You’ll definitely get into many UCs. In this case, 9th grade doesn’t count. On the other hand, either does the 1580.

Good luck.

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Thank you for the response! I was assuming my circumstances freshman year could partially explain my lower GPA, which is kind of a bummer atm. I have a 9th grade 3.42 UW n/a W, 10th 4.0 UW n/a W, and 11th 3.92 UW 4.59 W. Would Vandy and Rice not care about my additional info section?

Also, do you think ED1 Emory would be doable? Kind of weighing my options atm. I don’t have an issue with the cost for any of these schools, but I also would prefer to go to UCLA. I intend on going through the premed track, and I know schools like Rice, Vandy, and Emory are all a bit better than UCLA for premed due to their class sizes.

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I think it’s part of your record and you can explain it. Are they looking - I’m not an AO. You could have had a perfect first year and still not get into Vandy or Rice - they are reaches for everyone.

Your ED1 sould be to where you really want to go. This is not a game. You have life and financial consequences tied to it. Emory would be better, especially if you included Oxford but perhaps WUSTL is the one with a large ED bump.

You should find the right college for you, not just who lets you in. You still have a great shot with the UCs.

Unless you have a true #1, you shouldn’t ED.

You didn’t list a major - that will impact things as well.

Dont’ forget, we are all amateurs. You asked an opinion. It doesn’t mean it’s right.

Vandy admitted 6.7% - so you could cure cancer and still be a reach. Your SAT will help because 56% applied with a test score (44% TO) but only 39% of admits were TO.

Good luck. And find the right school - don’t ED just to get in a top school, especially if it’s not he right school

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My preferred major would be Chemistry.

You do raise a good point. Thanks for the reply. I do feel like I’m sometimes searching for a school that would just accept me instead of a #1, but the truth is I do love all 3 of these schools equally. That is, if I were to take one and forget about the other two I would have no regrets. I have seen the campuses, student livelihood, and opportunities at all 3 and don’t see anything one provides that the other two don’t.

I know I have a better shot at UCs, but the only one I could really see myself at would be UCLA. Not just because of prestige, but the campus, opportunities, and friends I have attending there. Apart from the ED decisions I’m also thinking of applying EA to UNC Chapel Hill and U-Mich. How much of a reach do you think those would be? Are they realistic reaches?

My preferred major would be Chemistry.

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UNC is near impossible OOS. A reach is that - a reach.

You should look at Arizona and ASU, both wonderful Honors Colleges. UF is strong in Chem as is UCSD.

You’d have better success with a Case Western or Wake Forest…still not safeties.

You need to put some easier to get into schools so you don’t get locked out.

Good luck.

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I have all of those on my list apart from UArizona and Wake Forest. I’m most likely going to get National Merit due to my AE score submission so I think that covers tuition for UF, or ASU? Alright thank you, I’ll work hard this application season and your advice has definitely helped.

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Calling @Gumbymom for all things UC.

Because there is a huge difference between your grades in your freshman year and the rest, it is difficult to figure out your chances. I would guess that it depends on how much weight a college puts of freshman grades. So at the UCs, which do not consider freshman grades, you will do well.

I also have a question, and a few comments.

and

If you had to take care of you elderly relative, even though you were only a teen and in high school, that would tell me that your family could not afford to pay somebody to do so. So how can there be no cost constraints?

The highest capped UC GPA is 4.40. If your GPA during 11th grade was 3.92, then your maximum capped GPA would be lower than that.

If you are in California, every Honors course is considered for weighting, so if you took almost every Honors course, you should have weighted GPAs for Freshman and Sophomore years.

Looking at your GPAs, I think that your overall GPA should be higher than 3.73. Unless your class load in your Freshman year was higher than that in the other two years, it definitely should be higher.

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When calculating my weighted gpa, I only weighed APs and not honors to be safe since my high school does not give us a weighted. Our school allows us to take APs starting 11th.

As for my freshman year situation, both my parents worked full time and between that time constraint and the cost of enrichment classes my brother (12th) and I (9th) were going to for our classes in school, they were not in the position to hire someone. The reason I don’t have any cost constraints now is because my brother (junior in college) has started working recently as well. He has agreed to help pay for my college so tuition at any school would be covered for me between both my parents and my brother.

I have calculated my UC GPA to be a 4.41 multiple times using my grades from A-G courses. I have 16 A’s, 1 B, and 8 courses weighted (capped). The reason it is higher than normal is because my second semester of 10th grade wasn’t counted due to covid and credit no credit.

My transcript says 3.73 UW overall with 3.42 UW 9th (2 semesters), 4.0 UW 10th (only 1 semester), and 3.92 UW 11th (2 semesters).

Hopefully UCs do work out for me, but judging by how they went this cycle it seems very uncertain. My current top 2 choices are Rice and Emory so I will probably end up EDing to one of them.

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Fyi Emory drops 9th grade grades and recalculates your gpa.

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The UC’s consider 3 GPA’s; Unweighted, Capped weighted and Fully weighted. As a CA HS student, you can look up which HS Honors classes will get the extra weighting here:

UC GPA calculator here: GPA Calculator for the University of California – RogerHub

Any AP or Honors classes taken 10th grade 2nd semester as Pass/No Pass, the weighting cannot be counted in the calculation.

What you have posted in regards to grades is correct since it will round up to a 4.4 capped weighted.

UC’s are test blind so your excellent SAT score will be not considered for admissions or merit scholarships but can be used for course placement if submitted.

Overall you are a competitive applicant. The specific admit rates by GPA for the UC’s 2021 are not yet available but I will post the 2020 admit rates and also the overall and CA acceptance rates for 2021.
2020 Freshman admit rates for UC GPA of 4.20 or above capped weighted and not major specific:

UCB: 37%

UCLA: 38%

UCSD: 78%

UCSB: 81%

UCD: 86%

UCI: 60%

UCSC: 92%

UCR: 97%

UCM: 98%

Overall Admission Rates:

UCLA: 10.8%

UC Berkeley: 14.5%

UC Irvine: 29.0%

UC Santa Barbara: 29.2%

UC San Diego: 34.3%

UC Davis: 49.0%

UC Santa Cruz: 58.9%

UC Riverside: 66.0%

UC Merced: 95.6%

Admission Rates for California Applicants:

UCLA: 10.1%

UC Berkeley: 16.8%

UC Irvine: 20.1%

UC Santa Barbara: 28.0%

UC San Diego: 28.5%

UC Davis: 39.0%

UC Santa Cruz: 54.5%

UC Riverside: 64.0%

UC Merced: 99.7%

Best of luck.

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We are in CA and at our school there is no weighting for Honors English or History freshman and sophomore year. The enhanced math II (which I would consider an honors class) is also not weighted.

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UCOP website for CA HS students and which courses are given the extra Honors weighting: University of California A-G Course List

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Huh. That’s interesting. Any reason that these particular courses are not weighted? It seems that the school is biased against kids who do not want to focus on STEM.

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I think your odds for Vandy and Rice are just as tough as they are for everyone else. BUT, I would not let your situation from freshman year stop you from applying. I actually think it makes you a somewhat interesting applicant and says a little about your character. I’d be sure to ask your counselor to explain the situation well in his or her recommendation letter.

My daughter goes to Rice and while it’s a tough admit they seem to like somewhat unique stories. They are also very big on their “Culture of Care” (https://admission.rice.edu/life-rice/community). It’s a real thing at Rice and I think you helping out your relative says a lot about you and that perhaps you’d fit well into their culture as well.

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My daughter’s high school has the same situation. I don’t understand why the accelerated math is not weighted. Getting the UC honors designation involves several bureaucratic hurdles that her high school wasn’t willing to do. They got just enough approved for the 8 semester UC cap.

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I forgot to add that our honors bio is also not weighted. So it is pretty evenly balanced that frosh/soph honors stem and non-stem aren’t weighted. So when people rattle off their stats with huge Wtd GPAs and kids in our schools have the same courses and have lower wtd gpas- it kind of honestly worries me that comparisons aren’t fair (and then offer suggestions here online of lower reach schools😀) But I am pretty sure the adcoms see that (hopefully!). I always worry our public high school (regarded as one of the best in SoCal) hurts the kids’ chances. Plus we have major grade deflation and only 1 AP offered for the first 2 years. It always amazes me to see kids with more than 10+ APs on here. At our school it is pretty much impossible to do.

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Weighted GPAs are really only for the high school. That is how the rank, assign to honor’s list, or for graduating Cum Laude. As a rule, colleges do not care about the weighted GPA, except in cases like North Carolina, where the weighting is standardized across all public high schools, or for the UC system which has its own way of weighting the GPAs of incoming students.

AOs at the colleges on the OPs list look at the unweighted GPA and at how rigorous the course set was, and both of these are done in the context of the high school.

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UCs do care, very much, about weighted GPA. They compare students at the same high school, current and prior years. You also hope that the school profile, etc describes the system.

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Vandy loves a high score. I think ED you may have a shot since your SAT is great. As for gpa, you have shown the upward progression and your grades after 9 are very strong which shows you can handle college level work