@Guppykang. You’re age won’t be a limiting factor unless somehow you showed that you were extremely immature in your essays. I’d say you have a good shot, but since you did apply to CS, (L&S or EECS, doesn’t matter) your chances are up in the air. That said, your grades and extracurriculars are on point, I’d be surprised if you didn’t get into Cal or LA. You should get admission into one or the other at the least. (Assuming you finished LA’s prereqs.
I’m apply to Privates! Thought I’d just send apps out to a couple Ivy’s and Stanford in a “just cause” sense. Taking the SAT again (since my old score is outdated) this Saturday. If I do well I’ll probably apply to quite a few schools, if not I’ll limit myself to a couple,
@Orangered123 That’s good to hear! Yeah, me too, i’m taking it this Saturday again too. What’s frustrating is that we have to wait so long for the UCs to decide.
@andreshuy I’m also applying to transfer next year as a chemical engineering major. Not having differential equations might hurt your application a bit, but you should still apply. If you are able to take it in the Fall (2017), it will still be considered during application reviews. I am not sure about the English requirements. I only needed to take a single English course because of my AP exam scores. I would contact the engineering department or college of chemistry and ask them about the coursework needed to transfer; they always know best.
With EECS a LOT. Most students are coming with a 4.0, so ECs are pretty much everything you have left to be competitive.
The more you have, the better your position. It is really recommended to finish as many classes as you can in your major before transferring - especially those in the strongly recommended section. I've never seen CS61A offered in a CC (maybe a combination of classes), so I think you will be fine with that. But if you can take others, it's really for your benefit since you will be more competitive candidate the more classes you finish towards your major.
Check on Transfer Alliance Project (TAP), it may also boost your chances
@Moshe1010 Hey, thanks for the reply! I have a few follow-ups, if you don’t mind:
How many ECs would be considered competitive?
Is it the norm to take some or all of the strongly recommended courses at another CC? (If not offered at original CC.)
I’m sure these are subjective, however there seems to be a common opinion on exactly how many ECs or additional courses is enough. I’ll look into TAP, too.
@Guppykang You set off some red flags to me. There’s no way you can adequately fit all of those ECs into the week at age 16 while attending school full-time and possibly high school and college both.
I think admissions will get the same feeling I got, that you’re trying to inflate your EC list and/or are listing things you possibly barely participate in. For example you have four tutoring positions listed. From what I know admissions usually adds up the hours in a week and compares it to the hours required to partake in the ECs people list.
None of that means you have a bad chance though. You have great grades and assuming you hit all of the prerequisites there’s always a chance, especially if you got good grades in them at your age.
@guppykang, you sound like you stand a good shot. Your age will be a plus, as far as I am concerned. I don’t really see any red flags with your ECs. Driven ppl do a lot.
@AgentXJP Haha. I am actually all of the above except a high school student now. I don’t have to attend High school anymore because of my advanced level of learning. I only work 15 hours a week, and TA a class that 3 units. Private math tutoring is like once a month, and the robotics team is 2 hours per week on weekends. Just to clarify, it can be done! I was able to work on HW at the tutoring center while waiting for students to ask questions. Lol, and CCC classes are stupid easy, if you pick the right professors…
@Orangered123 Ah yes that is the problem. The only class that I have not finished is the third course of Physics (Waves and Optics). I hope it doesn’t hurt me a lot since my major is CS, I guess. Dunno… Looking at other ppl with CS degrees who are transferring this year to UCB, I am a little skeptical about my chances, but who knows. I would just be surprised if I didn’t get into UCSD with my stats. Good luck with your private schools btw bro.
@Guppykang Yes it can be done, but often not with an adequate level of commitment. Admissions is very good at picking up on people who load up on ECs they barely participate in just so they’ll have things to list on an application. I just wanted to warn you about that, not saying it’s you at all. If you’re not doing both high school and college (what I originally assumed) then it time wise it fits in my opinion.
And yes I think at university or college can anyone make the classes easier by cherrypicking unchallenging professors, but that may be shortchanging oneself. Though ultimately what matters is GPA, especially for lower division classes.
There’s this misconception that a hard grader = a good teacher. Wrong. If you peruse the UCs you will often see many of the best and most renowned profs are easy graders. This old chestnut to not look for good teachers who are easier graders is not anything I would recommend. I used rate my professor through every step of my CC journey, avoiding as much as possible every hard grader (who almost 100% of the time was also noted as not being a good teacher). I enjoyed every one of my teachers at CCC except one old guy - whom i couldn’t avoid - known as boring, confusing, disinterested and (ironically!) a very hard grader.
GPA is king in terms of getting into a UC. I got in after being sure to vet every prof at CCC, and I have a 3.95 at Berkeley so I obviously wasn’t short-changed. Everyone at Cal vets profs too. It’s suicide not to vet IMHO.
@Ohm88 I’ve never seen anyone have that misconception, but if you’re trying to imply easy grader = good teacher then you’re also equally wrong. Cherrypicking unchallenging professors doesn’t necessarily mean you’re picking good teachers. There’s no correlation between how someone grades and how good they are at teaching the material. On the contrary there are plenty of subpar teachers who curve finals and give out ridiculous amounts of extra credit because they want good student evaluations and higher ratings on sites on my Rate My Professor.
@AgentXJP Yeah, I agree. There is a teacher at our school who at the end of the semester makes all his students grade him on Rate My Professor (while looking over their shoulder). However, neither is always true where easy grader = good teacher, or the antithesis. But, I have had the best Physics lecturer and Math lecturer I believe there ever is, but was an easy grader. However, I guess you can say that the harder your professor grades you, the harder you will work to get that A. On the other hand, there can be the worst professors who don’t do anything in class, but still grade hard.
Also, I did not imply that I “cherry-picked” all my professors, lol. Plz don’t that impression.
@Ohm888 LOL. I didn’t know you can “cherry-pick” professors at Berkeley. I guess everybody at CCC all believe UC professors are vigorous and hard.
@guppykang haha not true. There may be a lot of homework, but grading in general is fairly accommodating. And profs run the gamut. You’ll find that out soon enough. You can check out grading in the old schedulebuilder. Most grades are in the A-B range, even in engineering.
Obviously you want a good teacher. My gripe is when people continually equate an easier grader with slackers or bad teachers. You get that a lot up here. Anyhoo, I totally get what you’re saying. Good luck with your admissions.
TAP doesn’t help much with majors like EECS or Haas. Most of its value comes in the additional help you get, not from your application being flagged for a TAP preference or anything like that.
And re: ECs, it’s not about quantity (to be competitive), it’s about quality.
Any English majors out there? I have a question about the Transfer pathway. I know the requirements call for 1-2 years of a foreign language, survey of British lit to 1850, survey of British lit and/or American lit from 1860-present, and two additional UC-transferable English courses. I’ve done everything, except for a second additional UC-transferable English course. My question is if Berkeley (and the other campuses) are lenient with what the additional course is. Next Spring the only such course I can take that would work with my schedule (and is offered at my CC) is Film as Literature, which isn’t really specified under any of the examples listed on the website (such as major authors, genres, or historical periods). If anyone has information I’d be very grateful. The UC admissions told me to individually ask each college I applied to if they’d accept it as a full sequence.
TAP is not going to hurt, and it takes few hours to complete. There is no limit to ECs, it also depend on the quality. Somebody can be a President of some big organizations, and that’s by itself can worth many other ECs that are not as strong. And yeah, go to other CCs to complete as many courses as you can, but don’t overload yourself and get bad grades.