@MaryGJ , unless you know more of the story than is posted here, there’s no way you can be sure the OP’s son’s grades were the reason he was denied at UCLA. Elite schools routinely have to deny qualified applicants because they don’t have the space for all of them. Harvard and Stanford, for example, turn away many valedictorians every year and accept people with lower stats to make more interesting classes. In most cases, people have no idea why they were denied and someone with lower stats was accepted.