Hello all,
The deadline for UC schools is quickly approaching, and I, an OOS student, am finishing up my application. However, I recently discovered a large flaw in my application. I realized that I have not officially taken a “Visual and performing arts (“f”)” class in high school. Every year I have played trumpet for my school’s orchestra. Although not a graded course, every year I have also taken a course called “lunch orchestra”, an alternative orchestra course that my school offers to students with full schedules. Because it is technically during my lunch period, the school district is not allowed to give me a grade. Because of this, I cannot enter it as a course on the UC schools application.
Does anyone have any idea what I can do to show the schools that I have fulfilled the visual and performing arts requirement?
UC-transferable college courses or satisfactory scores on AP or IB exams can also be used to fulfill the visual and performing arts subject requirement.
AP or IB examination: Score of 3, 4 or 5 on the AP History of Art, Studio Art or Music Theory Exam;
One yearlong course of visual and performing arts chosen from the following: dance, drama/theater, music or visual art
AP or IB examination
Score of 3, 4 or 5 on the AP History of Art, Studio Art or Music Theory Exam;
score of 5, 6 or 7 on any one IB HL exam in Dance, Film, Music, Theatre Arts or Visual Arts
College courses
Grade of C or better in any transferable course of 3 semester (4 quarter) units that clearly falls within one of four visual/performing arts disciplines: dance, drama/theater, music or visual art
Some further information from UC admissions about the VPA requirement:
"While the University of California have a set pattern of academic courses that are required for admission, we understand that these subject requirements may be difficult for some applicants to meet due to differences in school curriculum.
All applications for admission are reviewed within the context of courses available to them; if a particular required subject is not available, we will consider the application without it. We would not deny an applicant due to any one single criteria, therefore if the applicant is otherwise a strong competitive applicant but they are missing the VPA course (1 semester or the entire year) we can still admit that student.
There is no single academic path that we expect all students to follow, but the strongest applicants take the most rigorous high school curriculum available to them.
**The Visual and Performing Arts requirement states that a student must take a year long or two semester long courses in one of the four accepted disciplines of Music, Theatre, Dance or Visual Art. If the student opts to take two semester long courses they must fall within the same discipline. For example, a student can take a semester of Painting and a semester of Ceramics to fulfill the requirement. If they take a semester of Painting and a semester of Orchestra they will not fulfill the requirement as the courses do not fall into the same discipline.
If your school does not offer two semester long courses that fall into the same discipline there are alternate ways to fulfill the requirement. The website included below will detail the other ways to fulfill this requirement.
If you find that you are unable to fulfill the requirement with any of the above options you can explain the reason why in the additional comments section. Please be aware that failure to fulfill all requirement will have a negative impact on your application."