<p>I really want to transfer to UCB to major in Mathematics but I'm afraid I don't have enough extracurricular activities to be accepted.. considering I've done basically nothing except school and sports in high school. I'm doing the "TAG" program with UCDavis just incase I don't get into UCB. I only have a 3.24 GPA as a freshman at a community college but by the time I transfer I'll have taken all the needed courses; GE, basic skills, Calc1-3, Differential Eq, Physics Calc-based, etc. I just don't feel I have anything really unique to offer to UCB, what can I do to improve my chances?</p>
<p>P.S. I was one question away from making the math team at my school (AMATYC Math League). The top 5 scores in the school make the team. I have 2 more chances to compete (they offer it every semester). If I make the team, which I'm pretty sure I will, maybe that will increase my chances of getting in?</p>
<p>If your GPA won’t improve, you’re going to need great ECs (don’t do too much, just do a few really great things) and fantastic essays. Start working on the essays now, get everyone that reads english to give you an opinion on them; the prompts never change. Doing all the prereqs will be necessary as well.</p>
<p>Well last semester I took Precalc (B), Physics1 (B), Stats (A), Philosophy1(B). Didn’t try too hard to get A’s. All that was on my mind was not getting any C’s. Last semester I wasn’t thinking about Berkeley</p>
<p>the amatyc EC probably won’t matter much unless you win it. I say this because the math required for the competition doesn’t reflect what you encounter in upper division math. Obviously it won’t hurt to join the team but there’s more that you can do to show that you would be a good candidate for the math program. I suggest you getting A’s in every single math prereq and make sure you take discrete math as well since it also recently became a graduation requirement for berkeley math.</p>
<p>If you don’t mind me asking, what makes you want to be a Math major? Just curious how you arrived at that conclusion without even having finished Calc I.</p>
<p>If you show an upward grade trend… Then you have a very good chance of acceptance. And it’s never too late to do extracurriculars. Get all A’s from now on and be very studious. :)</p>
<p>^^ in addition to that comment by rpticon i would like to say that the math major is NOTHING like what you do at CCC. you should definately research the major because there are so many people that transfer here as math majors and realize its not what they really wanted to do. This is why i highly recommend taking discrete math to anyone before they make the decision to major in math. A course in discrete math gives you basic proof techniques which will be something you’re going to use for the rest of your math education. In a CCC math class you’re usually asked to compute integrals, derivatives, apply lagrange multipliers, find the eigenvaleus of a matrix, and other computational tasks. There is very little computation in upper division math. the majority of it is you just sitting and thinking about a single problem for a couple hours and trying to figure out things that can help you prove it. The difficulty with proofs are that there are so many different ways to approach a problem whereas with computational problems you merely need to memorize the recipe to solve the problem.</p>
<p>I’ve always been good at math but I never really tried in high school… hence the reason I’m at a CC. I was originally supposed to be put in lower math classes but the CC placement exam put me up as far as Calc1 but i decided to go precalc freshman semester to refresh my skills.</p>
<p>Listen well to Jetforce’s words. I couldn’t agree more with him, he is right on the money. Especially his recommendation about Discrete and the difference between lower (the ones you take at your CC) and upper division classes.</p>
<p>they are similar in the sense that they use many of the same techniques like induction. However the difference is that discrete math proofs are basic and straightforward compared to linear algebra. In a lower division discrete math courses the proofs are still in the cookie-cutter style math you’re used to. For example its pretty straightforward how to prove that 1+2+3+…+n = n(n+1)/2 for all natural numbers. However look at problem 2a from this problem set: <a href=“http://math.berkeley.edu/~mhaiman/math110-fall09/hw09.pdf[/url]”>http://math.berkeley.edu/~mhaiman/math110-fall09/hw09.pdf</a>
the idea for the proof is similar to the discrete math example but it is not as obvious how you would prove it.</p>
Get all A’s from now on and be very studious. :)</p>