Someone please chance me

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

Hello my College Confidential friends,

Can someone please chance me for the colleges I am applying to?? I know most of you saw these kind of posts probably a million times already, but please do it one more time, I will really appreciate it!!

Academics
*SAT: 1280 (I know this is on the lower side but I am just bad at standardized testing. I am taking one last one soon, hoping to get at least a 1350)
*ACT: N/A (I will maybe take one if my next SAT comes out trashy)
*SAT II: Chinese-790 (Taking the U.S. History and Math II one soon, hoping to get 700+ for both)
*Unweighted GPA: around 3.65 - 3.70
*Weighted GPA: around 4.45
*Rank: 23 out of 850 (top 3%?)
*AP: AP Euro-4, APUSH-4, AP Calc BC-3, AP Chem-2
*IB: my school doesn’t offer this
*Senior: AP Lit, AP Bio, AP physics 1, AP Stats, AP Computer Principles, regular government/economy

Extracurricular
*Key Club: started freshman year, elected as treasurer last year and current president
*Hospital Volunteering: 1 year, currently have 180 hours
*Hospital Internship: past summer, 2 months
*Link Crew: a program at my school that helps Freshmen success
*Science Olympiad: 2 years, but haven’t gotten any awards
*CSF: 2 years
Awards: got Honorable Mention in one science competition, school vocabulary top 100, that’s it ;( I really don’t do that much)
Essays: working on them, my writing is okay, nothing exceptional

Others
*State: California (inland Southern California)
*Country: United States (but I was born in China, immigrated in elementary school)
*School Type: suburban (average high school, around 3600 students)
*Ethnicity: Chinese
*Gender: Female
*Family Income: around $50,000 (single mother)
*Parent(s) Education: My mom went to a vocational school in China

→ As you can see, I am not that perfect. But please chance me! (I am planning to major in Biology, pre-med path)
→ If anyone is nice enough, can you please estimate my tuition cost for some of the schools??
→ Are there any other liberal arts colleges I should apply to?
→ I am from the class of 2019 (so applying really soon, too soon)

the schools I am applying to are the UCs (not Berkeley nor UCLA), higher Cal States (like Cal State SLO or cal state Fullerton), Occidental College (this is one of my top choices!), UT Austin, and UW

p.s. are there any other liberal arts colleges I should apply to? I really like the smaller class sizes (I live really close to the Claremont 5s but my stats are too low for them)

THANK YOU!!!

2

UC GPA capped weighted? SLO GPA which is the UC GPA capped weighted claculation including 9th grade?

Since you are OOS for UT Austin and UW, you will receive little financial aid so most likely unaffordable and Reach schools.
Have yourun the net price calculators for these schools?

3

UT-Austin and UW-Seattle are not going to be affordable for you. The financial aid offered to out-of-state students is minimal - just small merit scholarships that don’t even fully offset the OOS differential. Only a very few state flagships offer need-based aid to low-income OOS students, and these are highly competitive (UMichigan, UVA, UNC Chapel Hill). In terms of public U’s, your best opportunities will be in-state. UC Davis is excellent for pre-health and could be a great target; you should have guaranteed admission to Merced, very likely admission to Riverside, and likely to Santa Cruz.

Outside of CA, you’ll want to look at private colleges and universities with good financial aid, similar to Occidental.

You might consider Whitman, in Eastern Washington. They’ve gone test-optional (which could help if your SAT doesn’t go up) and they meet full need for many students.

If you’re open to a change of climate, St. Olaf in Minnesota could be worth looking at - meets 99% of documented need, and offers great academics with small classes. (Maybe look at Macalester too if you can bump up your test scores.)

In Massachusetts, look at Mount Holyoke and Holy Cross. Both meet full need, and Holy Cross is test-optional.

Rhodes College, in Memphis, is great for premed (with research/shadowing opportunities at St. Jude’s Hospital) and meets more than 90% of documented need. Dickinson, in Pennsylvania, has very good financial aid (meeting 99% of documented need) and could be within reach. Asian students are not over-represented at these schools, so being a student who would add both geographic and racial diversity could help you in addition to your first-gen status.

Fly-ins to apply for:
https://www.whitman.edu/admission-and-aid/visit-whitman/visit-scholarship-program
https://wp.stolaf.edu/admissions/fly-in-program/
https://www.holycross.edu/visit/diversity-programming
http://www.dickinson.edu/info/20255/visit/1058/discover_diversity_at_dickinson

If you have a non-custodial parent, be watchful of the different schools’ requirements in terms of documenting that parent’s income even if they have not been supporting you.

Good luck - hope that helps!

4

I just used the online calculator to calculate my UC GPA (excluding 9th grade) and it tells me that I have a 3.79 UW and 4.07 W

Thank you for the tips!!!

So Cal State uses the UC GPA with 9th grade? Does honors/AP extra GPA point limit to 8 semesters too??

5

@aquapt THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR ALL THE COLLEGES!!! I will definitely look into them!!!

I’m my Mom’s only child so I want to stay close to where I am but if a college is willing to give me a lot of financial aid, I have no problem with going far away :slight_smile:

My non-custodial father is in a different country and I haven’t seen him in nearly 8 years so it’s very hard to get documents but thank you for reminding me!!!

6

The 8 semesters applies to AP classes, dual-enrollment classes with California Community Colleges, and certain Honors classes. Not many Honors classes usually, except for something like Honors Pre-Calc. Since you listed 4 AP classes, you’re at the capped weighted max, so 4.07 seems pretty accurate. However your uncapped weighted GPA May be higher and is still looked at by UCLA and UCB should you decide to apply there.

You’re in the range for the UCs GPA-wise, but you probably want to get the SAT north of 1400 to have a much better chance.

If you’re thinking pre-Med, keep in mind that the undergraduate school is not necessarily that important, what is more important is the GPA that you get in college.

7

I definitely understand the advantages of staying closer to home. As you say, this has to be weighed against the possibility of getting a great financial aid package from a school farther away - and the advantage “geographic diversity” may give you in terms of getting in, vs. the oversupply of local applicants competing to get into colleges like Occidental and the Claremonts.

Run the Net Price Calculators on the schools you’re considering and see what your aid would be projected to look like. If you feel like you would like a small LAC, compare the financial projections as well as your impressions of the schools. Whitman and St. Olaf both have Early Decision acceptance rates around 80%, much higher than their RD rates. Obviously it’s a big commitment to apply binding ED, but if a school seems like a really good fit and the projected aid looks good, that might be something to think about. Oxy has ED also, but their ED acceptance rate is only a few points higher than RD. Also, Oxy, Whitman, and St. Olaf all have ED2 as well - and those deadlines are after the fly-in weekends. Definitely think about applying for those funded visit programs!

8

Only Cal Poly SLO uses the UC calculation with 9th grades, the rest of the Cal States use 10-11th grades just like all the UC’s.

Here is a link to determine which “honors” courses at your HS get the extra weighting. The course will have a yellow star with UC approved next to it. Usually Honors Pre-Calc, Honors Physics and Honors Chemistry get the extra weighting.

https://hs-articulation.ucop.edu/agcourselist#/list/search/institution

Freshman admit rates for UC GPA of 3.80-4.19 capped weighted and not major specific. If you are applying for a competitive major like Biology which is impacted/capped at many of the UC’s, then expect the admit rates to be lower.

UCB: 12.6%
UCLA: 11.7%
UCSD: 38.7%
UCSB: 53.6%
UCD: 56.5%
UCI: 52.1%
UCSC: 75.7%
UCR: 90.1%
UCM: 96.1%

You will also need to bump up your SAT score to be a viable candidate at many of the UC’s.
25th - 75th percentiles for SAT:

UCB: 1360-1540

UCLA: 1340-1540
UCSD: 1300-1520
UCSB: 1270-1500
UCD: 1220-1480
UCI: 1230-1490
UCSC: 1210-1450
UCR: 1130-1380
UCM: 1020-1280

Best of luck and the UC’s if admitted can be pretty generous for CA residents in terms of financial aid but always run the Net Price calculators. Cal States tend to be less generous since they assume you will be commuting to your local CSU and room/board costs may not be included in their financial aid.

9

^^ “Oxy has ED also, but their ED acceptance rate is only a few points higher than RD.”

That was true for the class entering in the fall of 2016, but fwiw, it appears the ED/RD acceptance rates are beginning to diverge at Oxy. They (recently I think) posted their common data set for 2017-18. Oxy admitted about half of their ED applicants (150/307) for the class entering fall 2017. That was nearly identical to the ED acceptance rate for 2016-17 (admitted 100/211).

The overall acceptance rate for 2017-18 fell to 27% however (about half the ED rate). It had been 46% for 2016-17 (a few percentage points below the ED rate).

Could be a one year blip. But also may be that Oxy has moved toward admitting a higher percentage of its incoming class through ED as the number of ED apps has increased (and/or as a result in a shift in philosophy about building its incoming class). Combined with other factors - including the increase in total number of apps - the trend line for overall acceptance rate went sharply downwards.

Will be interesting to compare to 2018-19 data set when released. Anyway, fwiw as the OP and others consider Oxy and other ED/RD options.

Thanks all.