UC LA/Berkeley Pre-Med GPA Questions and Chances

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of California - GENERAL
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This is the profile of my student:
UC a-g (till 11th grade):
UW 3.96 W (uncapped): 4.5

12th grade has 4 more APs with total of 11 APs.

Student interested in premed.
Wants to apply to Human Biology and Society Major in UCLA as first choice; Cog Sci as secoond coice.

UC Berkeley has Integrative Bio as the (only) choice.

Pretty robust research experience in UC Berkeley full year chemistry program; and Stanford AI summer camps. Misc. volunteering experience in the domain.

How good are the chances? Any changes to the majors that can improve the chances?

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UCLA and UCB should be considered Reach schools regardless of qualifications however I would say the applicant is highly competitive and they are Reachable Reach schools.

What is the Capped weighted UC GPA? In-state or OOS? UC’s only use 10-11th grades for the a-g courses.

https://rogerhub.com/gpa-calculator-uc/

The majors listed for both UCB and UCLA are in the College of Letters and Sciences which do not admit by major.

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Is she in Ohio or California?
If she’s not instate for the UC’s it will be expensive.
If she’s instate, LA and Berkeley are tough admissions.
Biology majors need to have a back-up plan since there are thousands of students with Bio degrees who aren’t really getting an ROI since “bio” jobs are lacking.

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We live in CA. So this is in state. Thx for the feedback, really helpful!

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Thx for the reply.
So uw: 3.96
w (capped): 4.27
w (uncapped): 4.5

Used the calculator you linked.

Generally decent research in UC Berkeley year long Chemistry program and a summer AI program with Stanford. Plus attended Stanford Science Circle in the bio track before Covid shut it down. No hospital volunteer experience as student’s age was below 16 before covid struck, and after covid they did not entertain any. SAT will not be reported. 11 APs in total (7 in 10th to 11th grade).

Seems with 4.5 student is at the 50 percentile point for UCLA admitted students. This is way risky for us, esp since pre-meds will attract even higher GPAs. Seems UCs expect you to walk on water :wink:

Student applied to a few pre meds out of state, will apply to few BS/MDs programs too. But UCLA followed by UC Berkeley are top choices.

We are in state for CA.

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Just going to list some admission statistics for both schools. She looks like a competitive applicant but no guarantees.

2020 Freshman admit rates for UC GPA of 4.20 or above capped weighted and not major specific (2021 Data not available yet and this is for all applicants (In-state, OOS and International):
UCB: 37%
UCLA: 38%

Admission Rates for California Applicants 2021:
UCLA: 10.1%
UC Berkeley: 16.8%

California is a tough state for Medical school applicants due to the large population and not enough Medical school seats. The majority of CA Medical school applicants will end up at an OOS schools. In previous cycles, only about 16% of applicants were able to matriculate to a CA Medical school and around 25% to an OOS. Nationally only about 40% of Medical applicants get admission to any Medical school.

https://www.aamc.org/media/6016/download

Wishing her the best of luck in a very tough field and make sure she has a backup plan.

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Our daughter just graduated from her med school program at UCSF. No, they don’t expect you to walk on water, but they expect strong experiences focusing on patient care with the medically indigent. Fortunately, our daughter had great experiences, and LOR’s which we believe is what got her into her class of ~< 130 students.

If she gets into, either LA and Berkeley, your daughter will be in a very competitive field for resources and EC’s. Volunteering with low-income clinics, medical agencies and lab positions, requires interview panels, just for volunteer positions!

Our daughter went to Davis which has very strong pre-med advisors. Her Davis class graduated 1000 students in the College of Biological Sciences. (That’s just one quarter/semester!) So she had to stand out in some way.

A number of her classmates were bio majors who didn’t get into med schools- re my previous comment about bio majors because there just aren’t enough seats for all of the students who want to become physicians. Our daughter was an NPB major. (Davis has it’s hospital in Sacramento).

Being fluent in Spanish and ASL may have helped.
The majority of her UCSF med classmates were non-native speakers but were fluent in multiple languages other than English (Spanish, Tagalog, Vietnamese, Mandarin,Taiwanese Russian, Persian, French, and ASL). It was an impressive roster.

Be prepared to spend $300K+ (minimum) for her med school basic costs. That’s not including the fees for tests and supplies. Her roommates were all on loans, loans, and more loans.

Your daughter needs to become adjusted to blood, bile, and other bodily fluids which can reek in smells and damaged bodies and remain calm and professional when speaking with traumatized loved ones.
I wish your daughter the very best of luck because it was a very stressful road, as parents-especially when Covid hit.

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They don’t admit by premeds as an actual major so I wouldn’t worry about that. I would look at the data that @Gumbymom provided to gauge your chances.

Your daughter has a great set of stats so she’s competitive for any UC but UCLA and Cal are just reaches for any kid.

They’ll look at the whole application package. My S21 got into Cal with slightly lower UW and fully W GPA compared your daughter but he had a lot of activities, leadership, volunteering. He did not get into UCLA (did get the alum scholarship invite email for later references :)). My gut feel is that you gotta have at least a 3.9 GPA for UCLA unless you’re super special. He had banked on his perfect test score as a buffer to help, but alas, test-blind. I’m not saying my son didn’t deserve UCLA, but his friends who got in were the perfect candidates for UCLA and with their greater emphasis on leadership roles, I felt they had that differentiated factor. Like the other parent said, UCLA and Cal can be competitive for research, premed society/clubs (and i don’t believe UCLA has premed advising). If your daughter doesn’t make it into those schools, the other UCs are just as great for the similar premed education, especially the ones with hospitals nearby. Before his final choice was made, he actually chose Irvine over Cal because of those other factors.

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UCD is probably better for premed than UCLA or UCB, and definitely seconding 1° Spanish and ASL or Spanish to a high level of fluency + something else 2° don’t major in Biology :wink: - biostatistics or bioinformatics would have the best ROI but there’s a wide range of choices beside “biology”.

Note that last year almost all applications to the UCs were concentrated on a few fields only, including Biological Sciences, and those applications got the worst admission results of all.
Expand the field and, in particular, look into what majors Ag Colleges offer:

Finally, if your child is determined to apply to Biology related majors, apply to WUE universities, add a few OOS colleges you can afford that don’t admit based on major (run the NPC on Lewis&Clark, Whitman, UPuget Sound, Occidental, St Mary’s, Santa Clara, LMU?)

FWIW,

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She might want to look at UC Riverside and the Thomas Haider program.

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And the information session happens to be tomorrow!

It’s for UCR juniors and seniors but there’d surely be lots of interesting info for a would-be premed.

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