<p>government internship at san jose city hall, taking a asian american leadership class at local Community College, ASB at old school in IL + new high school in CA.</p>
<p>undecided major </p>
<p>Specific question: Should she spend a lot of her time studying and retaking SATs, or would it be wiser to take an extremely rigorous course load next year and not worry too much about them?</p>
<p>For UCB and UCLA u might need to raise your scores because of your mediocre gpa. I think you should do both just to give yourself the best chance at getting into UCB and UCLA.</p>
<p>No UCLA and Cal will be a stretch with a 3.6 and a 2080. UCSD she SHOULD be fine but ive seen ppl with stats higher get rejected. This years admissions process is deemed to be even more competitive. My gf had a 2120 and a 3.84 uw with tons of aps and she didnt get in likewise many in her general area of scores. </p>
<p>am i saying she cant get in? no. but its not as easy as everyone is making it out to be.</p>
<p>3.6 means nothing to UCs. They look at weighted for gpa calculation.
GPA is still a but low though. A 4.15ish is what they are most looking for. So raise ur SAT a 100 or so points.<br>
And the only 2 ucs that really care about ecs are UCLA and UCB, and they really do care.</p>
<p>A 2080 is barely above the average of Berkeley's SATs, and a 3.6 UW GPA is far below its average. Contrary to popular belief, a higher SAT won't make up for a weak GPA at Berkeley/UCLA, though it would at many other publics. ECs are important. They do look at UW GPA and UC GPA. The average UW GPA for Berkeley is a 3.9.</p>
<p>Berkeley/UCLA: reach
UCSD: match - slight reach</p>
<p>It would be wiser to take a more rigorous courseload than to study for the SAT again. The rigor of courseload is much more important than SAT score at Berkeley/UCLA.</p>
<p>^^ they'll see what your UW GPA is when they calculate your GPA, not to mention it's on your transcript, but they only use UC GPA in decisions. It's like freshman year -- they don't use the grades to calculate your GPA, but they see them.</p>
<p>On top of that, UW GPA and UC GPA are going to show the same thing: a 3.6 UW is weak for Berkeley, as is a 4.0 UC GPA.</p>
<p>It is my understanding that both UCLA and UCB use a holistic review of the application, and that requires depth in ECs---not necessarily quantity in ECs. they also look at A_G gpa, overall GPA and ranking...ucLA had over 50,000 applicants this last year, and is expected to be roughly the same this year.
If she is ELC, which I am guessing she is not, then be sure to include 1 or 2 more UCs.
When you ask if she should spend more time studying to retake the SAT or take a more rigorous course load, the easy answer is to do both. But with the applications, and extra homework in the APs...that may not be realistic. How did she do on her AP exams? Did she get 5s? 4s?...then I would say take the more rigorous courseload, and forget retaking the SAT...if she got 3s or less...then the As she got in the the advance classes will not match their expectations. She might be better served by taking the SAT over. My 2 cents--APOL--a mom</p>
<p>The 640 reading is not going to help. Nor is the GPA.
4.0 weighted is kind of low for Berkeley. </p>
<p>UCLA is a reach and so is Berkeley. I HAVE seen people with mediocre scores get in, but their GPA was high.
UCSD is a match though... I think...</p>
<p>yeah, but barely. so his gpa is down from the average by like .2, which i would say in any public school, being down.2 can easily be made up by test scores...so he'll have to raise them a bit.</p>