I submitted by UC app 3 days ago and today I received an email inviting me to send 2 letters of recommendation. In the email, it said that they decided to invite me after an “initial review”. How did they pick who got invited since I’m pretty sure they don’t even read any applications before the deadline? I’ve read that these are sent out to borderline students, or ones that are either facing certain acceptance or rejection. I’m not sure what this is saying about my admission chances. Has there been any statement on how they pick who gets invited to send in letters?
Same thing happened to me. I have no idea what it means. I hope it’s a good thing.
I would not think it is a bad thing. There would be no point to asking for letters if they’re going to reject you. There would also seem to be little point to asking for letters if you are a slam-dunk admit. [This assumes, of course, that admissions offices are logical entities.] At worst, you might be on the bubble; at best, UC might just be looking for confirmation that their high opinion of you is valid. You have nothing to lose be asking for them.
Does the request for LOR imply that you’re in the top 20% or borderline? Logically, it should be the borderline case so let’s assume that it is. These LOR requests are going out to students within a few days of their submitted applications, which tells me that the admission committee could not have given these applications a thorough holistic review. But if that is the case, then the initial threshold must be based on GPAs and SATs/ACTs (or the UC score is what they call it I think). However, people on CC are reporting that others with slam dunk combined GPAs/SATs/ACTs are also getting LOR requests. Based on numbers alone, these slam dunk cases should not be borderline. So I don’t think the letters are going out just to borderline cases. They are going out to the top 20% is my conclusion, which would make the process more consistent with that used by other competitive schools. Just my 2 cents.
In my experience, there are no “slam dunk cases” at UC Berkeley, so maybe the answer is that the requests are going out to everyone above a certain quick-review tipping point.
Based on reports, the requests are going out to roughly 20% of the applicants. So they may have set that threshold high enough to achieve roughly 20%. I just don’t think it’s random nor to borderline applicants only.
Could it also be possible that they requested LORs from low-income students with borderline SATs/ACTs/GPAs (who did enter their parents’ salaries when applying)?
I read this article that did mention how low-income students could benefit from submitting LOR.
“Jarich said she thought the letters could help students from large public schools and low-income families who may not receive editing on their essays. Letters can help “point us to the very best kid in the class, even if the standardized test scores are not the highest in the class,” she said.”
http://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-uc-recommendations-20151004-story.html
Okay, everyone that received a request (or did not receive a request) please post your GPA and SAT Scores.
No request received
4.5 UC W GPA
2210 SAT
The only three people who I know received the letter have a high (4.5+) GPA but standardized test scores (SAT/ACT mainly) that don’t back up their GPA.
Request received: 4.4 UC GPA, 33 ACT, strong EC’s, and 8 community college courses (w/A’s) which are transferrable to Berkeley’s CS curriculum. However, since major is EECS those could be weak stats for that pool of applicants.
@belmom Yes I would think that people applying to the engineering college would need higher standardized scores. What did you receive on the math and science portion of the ACT?
EECS acceptance rate from last year was 7% and few 2400 SAT kids got rejected.
ACT scores were good - 35 on math and 34 on science. Also, first place in coding contests and the like should help. It’s hard for anyone to get in, but holistic review and recommendations should help here.
GPA: 3.9 Unweighted (IDK UC GPA, but I think a 4.3 from somewhere I calculated).
ACT: 32 (33 superscored)
No LOR request yet. Submitted on the 29th.
No request received
4.31 GPA W and 3.95 GPA UW
2270 SAT
Requested
4.38 uc gpa
1820 sat
Requested
UC GPA 4.09 (low bc I’m OOS and my honors classes don’t count)
35 ACT (35 E/35 M/35 R/36 S)
800 Math II
800 USH
740 Bio
Requested
UC GPA 4.46
34 ACT (35 E, 35 S, 33 R, 31 M, 29 W)
720 Chemistry
AP Bio (4), AP World (5), APUSH (4), AP Lang (5), AP Chem (3), AP Calc AB (5)
Requested
UC GPA 4.33
2320 SAT (800 CR, 800 Writing, 720 Math)
800 Korean w Listening, 770 English Literature, 720 U.S. History, 720 Math II
AP USH (5), AP Enviro (4), AP Art History (4)
Strong Extracurriculars
International student
34 ACT
800 ML2, 700 P
Really high grades
ECs make me competitive at all the top colleges
Applied for EECS fwiw