Submitted 11/26 and received the email request 11/28.
34 ACT
750 Math 2
780 Bio/E
4.0 UW GPA
Applied Pre Haas
This was the most recent source I could find that talked about the LoR policy form Berkeley.
"Berkeley retreated partly for this fall and probably will invite letters from just 20% or so of this year’s applicants, mainly those whose prospects are between certain acceptance and rejection, according to Papadopoulos, a mechanical engineering professor.
I am interpreting this as they are requiring letters of rec from applicants they are strongly considering for admission and from applicants they are almost sure to reject. Since they are only asking from 20% of the applicants, I think they are using this year’s LoR’s as a test for when they ask for LoR’s from all applicants in the coming years. My guess is that they want to confirm that the information in the LoR’s support their initial thoughts when they first look at applications (stats and scores). Although they can be asking from borderline students and I can be entirely wrong. I’ve attached the full article below. Any thoughts?
@cpretiz your applying to EECS probably decreased your chances a lot. I’ve heard of 2400 SAT kids qualified for ivies getting rejected from there.
My friend (who is international) applied to L&S though, and they haven’t received a request yet with 2170 SAT, 4.0UW GPA w/ quite rigorous courseload, and really good ECs/awards. They sound like a borderline applicant to me… not sure what UCB is thinking.
@treker205
33 ACT
800 Math II, Physics
I’m doing the full IB so I’m not sure about my GPA, but I have 7s in the 3 most relevant HLs
Mediocre ECs + some national honors and awards
I like my essays though
Probably my ECs are too mediocre but my test scores and grades pushed me towards the borderline?
They’re sending the letter request to 20% of applicants, which also happens to be around the percentage of students admitted in the past few years… I’m guessing it’s a bad sign if you didn’t receive the email. =/
lol my stats aren’t that great, but I got a LOR request… (maybe cuz I’m female doing engineering? Maybe they liked my essays? maybe the process is random? who knows )
I applied engineering undeclared thinking it wouldn’t be competitive, turns out its among the hardest to get into ^^
2150 SAT(780 M 700CR 670 W) 32 ACT (35M 34 E 30S 30R)
Math II 800, Physics 780
I’m an international applicant (even though I’m an american citizen) so dont have gpa… my IB predicted with a hard subject combination is 39/42 (English 6/7 spanish 7/7 math HL 6/7 physicals HL 6/7 Chemistry SL 7/7 Computer science HL 7/7)
i received no LOR request and my scores are very “borderline” so i’m a little scared. but since it’s an “initial read” they probably just skimmed through the application and requested from anyone they were intrigued by. i doubt not getting an LOR request means a rejection because they will read through our applications in depth later.
I think @sicklord is right in that they’re experimenting and trying to see if LORs really adds anything substantial to an application. So they probably chose people who they thought LORs would enhance their application.
oh man…
I’m freaking out because I’m an out of state applicant and I realized that I put in honors level (HL) for several classes in the application that should have been just NH because I am out of state. Wonder if this is the reason that I received an email because my gpa would definitely not look spectacular without those extra HL points.
Okay this may be a silly question but where are is everyone calculating their UC gpas? I can’t figure out what mine would be as I’m out of state and have a whole ton of dual credit courses…
your applying to EECS probably decreased your chances a lot. I’ve heard of 2400 SAT kids qualified for ivies getting rejected from there.
it’s just that that’s what I reallyyy want to study haha. Could you chance me for UCLA, UCSD and UCSB?
