As finals is approaching I’m just really stressing over my grades. I’m a sophomore in HS and I’m wondering what I can do to get into good UC’s (preferably UCLA or Berkeley). I’m currently at a 3.5 right now, taking APUSH, the only AP class sophomores at my school can take. I know my GPA isn’t great, it’s been a rough year for me so far but nothing I can really do about it (both of my grandfathers passed away in September and November). My PACT freshman year was a 24, however my brother got a 21 when he took it freshman year and with some tutoring, nothing crazy, ended up with a 31 (he’s at UVA now). My PSAT was something around 2000, not sure about the specifics as I haven’t looked too much into it. I read somewhere that UC’s don’t look at freshman grades, is that true? My freshman grades were horrible, 3.2 and 3.6. For extracurriculars, I play football, track, 4 other clubs that aren’t anything special, although I am going to work on that this next semester (the clubs are peer tutoring, community service based-club, etc.). I’m nothing amazing at football or track, but I still am pretty good, I’ve been told I could go D3 for football although my heart isn’t really set on it. I don’t really have a hook which is why I’m worried (that and my grades :s…). However, one thing to note is that the school I go to is very academically rigorous, ranked 3rd in my state. Numbers wise, we had a kid go to northwestern with a 3.8, no legacy, athletic or anything special. One kid got into Stanford with a 4, again, nothing special. My brother also got into UVA, as I stated before, with a 3.68 UW 3.91 W. Also, I do not live in California. Thanks for reading and sorry for any grammatical errors and general disarray, I’m really out of it.
The most important criterion for UC admission is the weighted GPA. Berkeley and UCLA have average weighted GPAs in the 4.3-4.4 range, which is calculated with 10th-11th grade courses and adding bonus points (A = 5, B = 4, C = 3) for AP courses. This isn’t easy for most students to achieve, since even with straight A’s, around 30-40% of your courses would need to be AP.
Freshman grades are required to determine if you meet the UC a-g course requirements but are not used for the UC GPA calculation. The UC’s only use 10-11th grades in the a-g courses for the GPA calculation giving 8 extra honors points for Honors (in-state), AP/IB or DE classes taken 10-11th. UCLA and UCB will also use the UC GPA calculation with non-capped honors points. http://rogerhub.com/gpa-calculator-uc/
You want to aim for a UC GPA of 4.1+, SAT score of 2100+/ACT of 31+, have good leadership in your EC’s and excellent essays to have a good chance at UCLA/UCB. Work hard, keep up your grades and course rigor and show consistency with your EC’s.
Just an FYI: As an OOS student, you will receive little to no FA from the UC’s, so expect to pay close to $55K/year.
The UC Board of Regents approved language in the UC budget proposal Thursday that would “phase out” the need-based aid currently provided to out-of-state undergraduates and use the savings to fund a targeted enrollment increase of 5,000 undergraduate Californians in 2016-17 and a total increase of 10,000 in the coming years. Continuing out-of-state undergraduates will still be eligible for institutional financial aid, but incoming students will no longer receive any funds.
http://www.dailycal.org/2015/11/23/to-fund-enrollment-boost-uc-will-phase-out-out-of-state-financial-aid/
Good Luck.
@Gumbymom Does UCLA/UCB look at capped UC GPA or uncapped? Because I took all AP junior year with all A’s and 1 AP with honors sophomore year, which would max out the 8 semesters, so it lowered my UC capped GPA. Point is I would get a higher UC GPA by taking less classes. Is this a good strategy? Just wondering, or does UCLA?UCB and the other UC schools look at uncapped as much as capped.
UC GPA(capped) 4.25
^uncapped for UCLA and UCB (read post #2 carefully)