@chunklighttuna Really great post, important for people to realize perfunctory participation in the same EC’s everyone else has listed isn’t going to help much. Congrats!
I found out that I got into EECS at Berkeley yesterday and I’m super excited 
I didn’t get an offer to interview for the Regent’s scholarship though, and I’m confused why they notify some applicants who didn’t get nominated for the Regent’s scholarship in February. Does it mean anything that I was notified early?
Are you out of state?
No I’m in state
@mjioa9 Cal tells top applicants early so they have more time to consider the school. It’s an admissions yield technique and the idea is to get you excited about Berkeley, give you more time to visit campus, and have Berkeley be the offer other schools have to beat.
@mjioa9 Do you mind sharing your stats?
@vickyychen Yeah, I received that mail too. Long wait for us, then.
Sure! I applied to the MET program and didn’t get in but I did get into EECS. Here are my stats:
SAT I (breakdown): 1480 (700 English, 780 math)
ACT: didn’t take
SAT II: 730 Math II (oops), 770 Physics
Unweighted GPA 10-11 (out of 4.0): 4.0
Weighted GPA: 4.75
Rank (percentile if rank is unavailable): 2/520
AP (place score in parenthesis): AP Calculus(5) AP Lang(4) AP US History(4) AP Spanish(3) AP Physics(3)
Senior Year Course Load: AP Econ, AP Stats, AP Literature, Calculus 2, Multivariable Calculus (2nd semester), AP Government (2nd semester)
Awards: Congressional App Challenge 2016 Winner; NCWIT Aspirations in Computing National Honorable Mention
Extracurriculars (place leadership in parenthesis):
App Development - Taught myself how to program; coded app that has over 7,000 downloads on the app store
Learn to Code Club (President & Founder)
Web Development - Coded online magazine in Ruby on Rails, HTML, CSS, & Javascript; Managing over 100 writers; Partnered with businesses, Youtubers and celebrities
Soccer Varsity four years; captain Junior and Senior year
Assembled/programmed autonomous robot car in Python
Wrote two books for fun; available on Wattpad
Job/Work Experience: Internship at Achievable (startup company in SF); Paid Internship at Medtronic last summer
Volunteer/Community service: Fundraising for fire victims through my website; Public speaking about girls in CS
Essays: I don’t think I would have ever considered them perfect. I loved two of them (9/10) and the other two I would give maybe (8/10). They showed different sides of me and really gave more insight into who I am and what I love to do.
Other
Applied for Financial Aid?: Yes
Intended Major: Electrical Engineering & Computer Science
State (if domestic applicant): CA
School Type: public
Ethnicity: White
Gender: Female
Reflection
Strengths: Definitely my initiative in teaching myself programming & my projects. Everything I did was because I genuinely loved it, and I think that showed through in my application.
Weaknesses: Test scores 
Please let me know if you have any questions
Is it such that only those international applicants received acceptance notification who applied and interviewed for the M.E.T. program?
@ivyforest Sure! I applied to MET and didn’t get in but I did get into EECS Here are my stats:
SAT I (breakdown): 1480 (700 English, 780 Math)
ACT (breakdown): didn’t take
SAT II: 730 Math II (oops), 770 Physics
Unweighted GPA (out of 4.0): 4.0
Weighted GPA: 4.75
Rank (percentile if rank is unavailable): 2/520
AP (place score in parenthesis): Calc (5) US History (4) Lang (4) Physics (3) Spanish (3)
IB (place score in parenthesis):
Senior Year Course Load: AP Physics 2, AP Literature, AP Statistics, Multivariable Calculus, AP Economics, AP Government
Major Awards (USAMO, Intel etc.): Congressional App Challenge Winner (presented my app to my representative in Washington D.C); NCWIT National Honorable Mention; AP Scholar with Distinction
Extracurriculars (place leadership in parenthesis):
App Development - Taught myself how to program; coded app that has over 7,000 downloads on the app store
Coding Club (President & Founder)
Web Development - Coded online magazine in Ruby on Rails, HTML, CSS, & Javascript; Managing over 100 writers; Partnered with businesses, YouTubers and celebrities
Soccer Varsity four years; captain Junior and Senior year
Assembled/programmed autonomous robot car in Python
Wrote two books for fun; available on Wattpad
Job/Work Experience: Internship at Achievable (startup company in SF); Paid Internship at Medtronic
Volunteer/Community service: public speaking for girls in CS; fundraising for fire victims through my website
Essays (rating 1-10, details): Probably overall 9/10. I don’t think I’d ever be perfectly happy with my essays, but I think they were able to show different sides of me and why I do the things that I do.
Applied for Financial Aid?: Yes
Intended Major: Electrical Engineering & Computer Science
State (if domestic applicant): California
Country (if international applicant): US
School Type: Public
Ethnicity: White
Gender: Female
Income Bracket: 165,000
Hooks (URM, first generation college, etc.): Female in EECS? Though I think that only gives me a small advantage
Reflection
Strengths: Definitely my initiative in self-teaching myself programming, seeking out internships, and starting my own projects. Everything I’ve done is because I genuinely love doing them and I think that showed through in my application.
Weaknesses: Test scores
Please let me know if you have any questions!
Does anyone know how, if at all, the requested letters of rec factored into admissions?
i heard that regents interviews only take place in california… does that mean its only reserved for instate applicants?
^^Out of state Regents is very selective and competitive, but it can happen. My daughter is a Regents Scholar from CT.
I know I already posted some of my basic stats earlier, but I thought I’d go into a little more depth about it to give you guys a better idea of maybe what Berkeley is looking for? I don’t know if that made sense. :-/
GPA: 4.00 UW, 4.86 W (no idea about my UC GPA)
SAT 1: 1500 (800M, 700R)
SAT 2: 800 Math 2, 780 Physics
Rank: School doesn’t rank
AP: Computer Science A (4), Calculus AB (5), Calculus BC (5), Physics 1 (4), Physics 2 (5), Physics C: M (5), Physics C: E&M (4), Statistics (5), Eng. Language (4), Eng. Literature (5), Seminar (5), Latin (4), APUSH (3), Euro (4), APWH (4), AP US Gov (3)
Senior courses: AP Research, AP Computer Science Principles, Astronomy, Game Theory, History of Crime, Romance Language Linguistics
Extracurriculars
- FTC Robotics Club: my first exposure to engineering during freshman year of HS, became head programmer of the team, have won a few awards at local FTC competitions
- LaunchX Entrepreneurship Club (Founder/President): students form teams to create their own startups and market their own products/services, talked about the AI startup my team and I are trying to start
- Literary Society (Head Editor): organized the school’s annual literary journal, won a couple awards from Columbia for the quality of our journals (only heard back about these awards after the UC app was due, so they didn’t go in my app)
- National Honor Society: community service organization (as I’m sure you all know lol)
- Youth Symphony Orchestra (concertmaster): pretty self-explanatory
- Arduino/Raspberry Pi programming: I love robotics but don’t have the money to do any larger scale stuff, so Arduinos and Raspberry Pi’s are my way to keep pursuing robotics outside of FTC
Job/Work Experience: interned at a NASA facility last summer to write artificial neural networks for a part of the Curiosity Mars rover
Volunteer/Community Service
- Active volunteer for FIRST (a national robotics competition): I mentored a couple local teams in my city throughout their competition seasons, and I help organize competitions in my city
- TA for AP Computer Science teacher: I self-studied for the APCSA test sophomore year and I wanted to TA for the class the next school year now that my school actually offered the class. I graded their assignments/quizzes/projects, helped the teacher make lesson plans, and taught the class when the teacher was absent.
- Volunteering with a local STEM nonprofit that tries to get better STEM education for local public schools; tasks usually involved doing robotics/programming demonstrations for elementary/middle school classes
- Peer tutor at my school: I tutor middle schoolers in math and physics
- Girls 4 Good: A local community service organization that encourages young girls to be active in community service
Awards
- National AP Scholar
- National Merit Commended Scholar
- AP Capstone Candidate
- Maxima Cum Laude on National Latin Exam
Essays: 9/10 or 9.5/10, I’d say. One of them was just a condensed version of my Common App essay, and the other three were MIT short answers that I expanded on. Basically, I literally just recycled essays for my UC app lol. I felt really strongly about them all, but I know there’s always ways to improve them. I do think they did a good job of showing who I am, both with my passion for CS/STEM as a whole and my interests outside of it.
Applied for Financial Aid?: No, but that’s only b/c I’m OOS
Intended Major: Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
State: Arizona
School type: Public charter college-prep school
Ethnicity: Asian
Gender: Female
Income bracket: $30k
Hooks: female in CS I guess but I feel like that’s not super big anymore
Reflection
Strengths: Definitely my essays. I had them reviewed by my college counselor, English teacher, and peers several times. I think my extracurriculars helped a lot too.
Weaknesses: Probably my non-STEM test scores. I feel like they overall just lean toward STEM a lot. Also, no super outstanding awards.
Please let me know if you have any questions! From looking through the previous posts and other people’s stats, I can definitely see how getting into Berkeley is much more competitive for OOS applicants, so I really feel honored that I could get in. I really hope I’ll be able to go to Berkeley, as it is currently my second choice school (rejected ED from Carnegie Mellon SCS and deferred EA at MIT). Since I’m not really sure how likely MIT is gonna happen at this point, I really hope I can find some way to get the money to go to Berkeley! For those waiting till March for a decision, I’m wishing you all luck! I hope everyone on this forum gets into Berkeley! 
@preppedparent Did your daughter get a request to interview? When did she get notified? I heard out of state folks do not need to interview but get notified end of march. Is this true? thanx
accepted out of state student here. How does Berkeley expect out-of-state students to afford the school? My family is middle class and paying the costs/taking out loans as listed on my cal central finical section is far wayy out of our realm of possibility. Is there anything I can do/ways for oos students to not have to pay upwards of 50k a year??
@stressssss I’m not trying to be rude or inconsiderate, and I do hope that you find a way to make it work, but the UC system not giving aid to OOS students isn’t exactly a secret and you (and all OOS potential applicants) should have given that some thought before you applied, because there really is no clear path if you aren’t going to take loans. Cal expects OOS students to pay the full OOS cost.
If any potential OOS applicants see this, please remember to consider UC system’s financial aid policies before you apply.
How selective is OOS regents, and does it depend on income? I applied with 36 act, 800 math ii, 800 chem, 750 lit, pretty strong ECs, good essays, good teacher recs, and didn’t get an update… Maybe there was something i missed?
Does it make a difference where you interview? Because the San Diego and Arcardia interviews are in the second and third weeks of March. I live in LA, but am able to fly out to Berkeley for the Feb. 22 interview, but if there is no impact on my chances for getting Regents, I would like to save the money and interview somewhere closer.
got that email. dammit i wish i was accepted already ugh