<p>Excellent personal statement.
Excellent personal statement.
Excellent personal statement.
Excellent personal statement.
Excellent personal statement.</p>
<p>God, I'm cynical.</p>
<p>A relative of a co-worker (a known truth-teller, since this is a once-removed anecdote) was rejected by UCLA and accepted at MIT two years ago. One could guess that even the "prestigious" UCs follow their recipe somewhat blindly and his points didn't add up.</p>
<p>^^ UCLA doesn't use a points system. It could have been that he was OOS, also, or that he hadn't fulfilled all of the UC requirements. Or he could have been weak in a certain area and UCLA didn't find that his strengths made up for it. It could have been many things.</p>
<p>I notice that people don't seem to think badly of, say, Stanford when it rejects someone who gets into Harvard. UCLA does reject some students who get into schools like HYPSM; though it doesn't happen often, it does happen, and doesn't mean that they "blindly followed their recipe."</p>
<p>Maybe they were too qualified, so UCLA rejected them.</p>
<p>OP, please don't take this personally, but do you live in a low-income area, are those people minorities, etc? Although the UCs no longer use AA, they do make an enormous effort to help those who may be from poorer, ethnically divided areas, etc., to give them a chance at an elite school. This may be the case with your friends.</p>
<p>As for my experience, I know of someone admitted to Stanford but rejected from UCLA. It isn't just UCLA that has cases like that, every school acceptes students , who, on the face of it, may seem underqualified. Their ECs and essays give adcoms a reason to believe, however.</p>
<p>Absolutely UCLA is overrated in Admissions. It has more students applying than ANY OTHER school in the nation. I know this sounds very bland, but thats the truth.</p>
<p>My daughter was looking at one time at about 15 selective schools, and I spent an entire day looking at the accepted decision threads in CC for each of these schools, to get an idea of the GPA/SAT scores of accepted students. She is high GPA from a high performing N. Cal school, but her SAT is on the lower side (just under 2000 single sitting). So, I was curious how that might play out. I was actually shocked that UCLA, in their accepted students thread had the most combinations of high GPA/marginal SAT scores of any of the schools I looked at. So, my small sampling of the CC crowd seems to support the fact that GPA (and probably rigor) are much more important than SAT/ACT at UCLA.</p>
<p>She applied, so we will see how it works out!</p>
<p>Because of UCLA’s overwhelming number of applicants, it’s impossible to read all the essays over a 2 month period. They primarily base admissions on GPA and SAT. At my school students with rank 1~50 get accepted to all UCs. Great GPA, average SAT, you’re in UCLA!</p>
<p>UC admissions are essentially based on GPA and test scores with a sliding scale depending on the API of the high school. </p>
<p>When scoring the application 1-5, or really 1-4 since 5 means the applicant did not meet minimum stated UC admission standards…1 is the best score.</p>
<p>The personal statement, extracurriculars etc- gives the application readers information of the proper context to consider your GPA and test scores. Because it’s a holistic review, there are no set standards for scoring an application 1-4. It is totally subjective. </p>
<p>Therefore, students from relatively lower API public high schools may require a lower GPA and lower Sat/Act scores for the application to receive a 1 or 2, which usually increases the chances of admission and levels the playing field when comparing applications with students from more competitive high API public and private schools. </p>
<p>After the applications are scored, admission is by tiers and the tiers are either college wide regardless of major as for L&S or by major for other colleges like Engineering. </p>
<p>For example:
If L&S has 10,000 slots and 1,000 applicants are scored a 1, all 1’s are admitted, regardless of major. So are all 2,000 applicants scored at 1.5 and 3,000 applicants scoring 2’s. There are not enough slots for the 6,000 2.5’s so there is further scoring of the 2.5’s and the L&S class is filled. All 3’s, 3.5’s and 4’s are rejected. For Engineering and other colleges, the same takes place for each major.</p>