University of Michigan (1 legacy) EA - Accepted
University of Maryland - Accepted (without a doubt)
UC Berkeley - Accepted? (really hard to say)
UCLA - Accepted? (really hard to say)
Washington University in St. Louis Accepted? (really hard to say)
Georgia Tech - Accepted (strong shot)
Columbia University - really hard to say)
Harvey Mudd College - hard to say
Cornell University (5 legacies) - strong shot
Carnegie Mellon University - hard to say
Johns Hopkins University - hard to say
USC - strong shot
sorry, for a lot i put hard to say because those schools could really go either way. best of luck!
With a UC weighted capped GPA of 4.03, consider that the 2015 application year admit rates for GPA 3.80-4.19 were 12% and 14% for UCB and UCLA respectively. Since UCB EECS and UCLA CS are more selective majors than the campuses overall, they should be considered reaches.
@ucbalumnus Hmm, ok. I don’t fully understand how the UC GPA system works, and I’m not sure if that’s an accurate number. I used an online calculator, which said that the maximum number of honors classes/weighted classes I could have in there was 8. However, I took 32 courses over sophomore and junior year. I got As in 27 of them, and Bs in 5. All but two of them were at or above AP level, since I go to a magnet school. I’ve included an explanation of that in my application. My Unweighted GPA for that period would be 3.78. If essentially all of my classes over that span were AP level, would you expect the way my GPA looks to them, or the way that they treat it to actually be higher than 4.03? I know that kind of circumvents the point of the cap, but might it increase my odds a little bit, purely GPA-wise?
I am fairly confident you can get into USC, UCLA, and berkeley. Harvey Mudd seems like a 50/50 toss up for you.
If you’re not from California, it’s gonna be harder to get into the UC’s. If I were in your shoes, I would add all of the reaches you talked about onto your list - MIT, caltech, stanford, Harvard.
Please do not listen to the people here telling you your UC GPA is too low!
There are some schools using 5.0 for every honors class, kids with 4.9 UC GPA. Honors Prealgebra, Honors Geometry, Honors English, Honors Pottery, Honors Marine Biology. And then there are schools using maybe 4.0 for most classes, with 4.2-ish being the maximum UC weighted GPA.
And then there are private highly competitive schools with no AP classes, no weighted classes whatsoever.
Maybe your school doesn’t weigh O-chem or Linear algebra? Does that mean you’re slacking off? No way.
Yeah, sure, 4.0 weighted UC GPA looks bad if there are kids in your school with 5.0. But I strongly suspect that your 4.03 is due to hard classes not being weighted.
Admissions sizes your GPA up to your school’s available curriculum, not to other schools’ GPA.
@theChinaman Thanks. Actually, calibrating to my school’s UC GPAs may be an issue, since my school essentially amalgamates a bunch of the best math/science kids from my county, which is already a very science-oriented county, so I’m already within a talent pool roughly equivalent to some of these top tier colleges (The average SAT in my program is like 2280). So while maybe if I had my profile coming from rural nebraska (Not hating on nebraska), I don’t. Regardless, I’m thinking about applying to some of those top tier schools. Also, a possible little in to the UCs for me is that I did research there over the summer, and my lab’s PI may be putting in a good word for me. Thanks
You’ve got good chances at Berkeley and Cornell (very good chance), and hopefully UCLA. The only thing to “worry” about would be your GPA, although I would say that it is strong, these schools are obviously very academically competitive. Honestly, everything else looks very strong to me. Good luck!
University of Michigan (1 legacy) EA-Deny
University of Maryland-Accept
UC Berkeley-Deny
UCLA-Deny
Washington University in St. Louis-Not sure
Georgia Tech-Accept
Columbia University-Not sure
Harvey Mudd College-Not sure
Cornell University (5 legacies)-Accept
Carnegie Mellon University-Accept
Johns Hopkins University-Deny
USC-Deny
I am saying not sure for schools with holistic admissions. You said you invented something that was important to your research in Parkinson’s. If it was such a high visibility project and you contributed so much I would consider applying for Intel/Siemens will help your chances significantly at those schools. Although the classes you took were difficult, your GPA is quite low for most Ivys.
Honestly, I think you have a pretty good chance of getting into any of these schools with those stats. Those are some pretty competing statistics that I think would be hard for most schools to turn down.
Just some info on my gpa, since most people say that that’s going to be my weak point; I had some trouble in freshman year, but after that I’ve got an upward trend, my unweighted gpa from sophomore through senior year is a 3.8, exactly. Maybe that will help my chances somewhat?
Stanford recalculates your gpa without freshman year so that will be a help. However, they round up or down to the letter grade so if you have a lot of B+s, it will hurt since they will be rounded to Bs but if you have a lot of A- grades it will help because they will become As. Good luck!
You submitted to Regeneron STS not Intel STS I assume. Good luck!
University of Michigan (1 legacy) EA - In
University of Maryland - In
UC Berkeley - No experience so can’t really say.
UCLA - In
Washington University in St. Louis - In
Georgia Tech - In
Columbia University - Eh not really sure
Harvey Mudd College - I have a friend that got in with less but she was a girl so…
Cornell University (5 legacies) - FYI legacy only helps if u apply ED here - but u should get in
Carnegie Mellon University - I dunno I got rejected ED from here so u decide
Johns Hopkins University - wait listed
USC - In