I was just rejected by UC Davis and waitlisted by UCSD. I was in shock, because I had assumed Davis as one of my safety schools. Does this mean I’m gonna get rejected from UCLA & Cal? My scores were:
SAT: 2190
Subject Test: 800 on Math II
Gpa: 3.79 unweighted
I’m Hispanic, & I chose Computer science in college of letters & science as my major. I also thought my essays were good. What happened?
It sounds like you didn’t fit the needs of the schools and they did not offer you a spot. The college process is a roll of the dice.
The UC’s can’t use ethnicity for admissions because it is against the law in the state.
UC’s cannot be considered safeties; they are unpredictable, especially in impacted majors like CS.
Sorry for the news 
What did your guidance counselor recommend?
UCs don’t practice affirmative action; that’s what happened.
^lol
But in all seriousness OP, if you lurk the UCSD decision thread, you’ll realize that there are plenty of people with better stats than you who got axed, while people with worse stats got in. Competitve university admissions can just feel like a lottery so don’t worry. Maybe you might end up at Berkeley while getting rejected by all other UCs… who knows.
None of the mid-tier UC’s can be considered “safeties”. As stated above, the UC’s can be very unpredictable especially for highly competitive majors. Each campus reviews applicants based on their own criteria, so you just did not “fit” into school profile that these campuses were looking for. This not a reflection on you or your accomplishments. As stated by @beepybeetle, how knows UCLA/UCB may be in your future. Hang in there and good luck.
For UCB/UCLA: What’s your UCGPA, capped and uncapped?
Where else have you applied?
What’s your budget for college.
What is your UC-weighted-capped GPA?
UCs tend to weight GPA more than test scores. So if your UC-weighted-capped GPA is not among the highest, high test scores may not make up for it. You also applied for a major that is probably significantly more selective than the school overall.
The practice of heavily weighting GPA in admissions is so ridiculous that it makes me discourage my kids from even applying to state schools…and…it is why cheating in our high schools is so prevalent.
At my kids’ school, less than a quarter of the kids in AP Calculus get an A in the class yet over 75% get a 4 or 5.
Our friend’s daughter, who attends a local public school got an “A” in AP Calc but followed that with a 2 on the test.
My daughter’s best friend got a B in APUSH and put a lot of effort into it but was rewarded with a 5 on the test.
The UC schools are very competitive this year. As everyone else said college admissions is a random crapshoot. Sorry but that’s just the game 
Years ago you would’ve gotten in no problem. That being said with your resume you can definitely do well wherever you end up
@dragonmom Given that there are over a quarter million freshman applicant between UCLA/UCB/UCSD alone, it’s not difficult to see why these schools look to expedite the process. ECs are pretty subjective, test scores are still important but if you put in hours of work, you can inflate your performance on them, whereas I doubt you can cheat/BS your way to a 4.0.
“test scores are still important but if you put in hours of work, you can inflate your performance on them, whereas I doubt you can cheat/BS your way to a 4.0.”
Aside from slacker school grade inflation as well as cheating, isn’t GPA itself nothing other than hours of work to improve “inflate” performance?
Isn’t that the kind of effort and determination the colleges are looking for?
As least the standardized tests are standardized.
@dragonmom3 Curious but why do you keep toting the whole ‘GPA is bunk because of cheating’ meme?
Also, yeah GPA is just the end product of hours of work, but how many hours? I highly doubt someone can just decide to study for a few weeks in the summer leading up to their junior year, then proceed to pull straight As in AP classes, whereas it’s not difficult to see how someone could put in a few weeks worth of time to study for the ACT, then take the test when the prep is still fresh in their mind to pull a 32+
"it’s not difficult to see how someone could put in a few weeks worth of time to study for the ACT, then take the test when the prep is still fresh in their mind to pull a 32+ "
I’m certainly not “bunking” GPA because all five of my kids have worked very hard for theirs.
On the other hand, it is ridiculous to have absolute cut-offs for scholarships as well as valuing one school’s GPA the same as another. As I mentioned we have a friend who got an A in AP Calc as well as other AP courses, graduated with an unweighted 4.0 and never got above a 3 on an AP.
That would never happen at my kids’ school where kids who get 4’s and 5’s often have B+'s or A-'s.
AND
if someone could get a 32+ on the act with a “few weeks of studying” then the average would surely not be 20.