<p>My aunt, a UCLA grad who gives me lots of advice about college is close friends with a woman who reads essays for UCLA. As you probably know, there are like a zillion applicants to UCLA each year, so there is not a whole lot of time for each app. This woman firmly thinks that the admissions use little more than GPA for selection. She finds that this is easily the most heavily weighted, and often the essay is practically disregarded....She seems to think schools tell applicants to apply even with a low gpa in order to raise their selectivity rate...This may or may not be true, but it seems to make sense, i was wondering what everyone else thought? Any admissions anecdotes?</p>
<p>This is often the case for most state schools.</p>
<p>Come take a look at my high school's binder of data for kids applying to schools. If you turn to University of Virginia; there is almost an exact correlation of the 4.0's and 3.9's getting in while around a 3.6 people from my school start getting rejected no matter their AP's, Essays, etc. The SAT scores also do not matter much when the GPA drops too much at state stchools. </p>
<p>State schools definitely care most about the GPA first but for the UC system I guess they'd care about the SAT more than Virginian schools do. </p>
<p>All schools encourage applicants to apply; this is no surprise. Why do you think most kids get a WUSTL advertisement regardless of their GPA or scores? Countless sums are spent by colleges for advertising so it should come as no surprise that marketing is a common thing.</p>
<p>GPA is regarded most highly in UCLA admissions. Kids from my HS (instate) in the top ~5% of the class ranked by weighted gpa tended to get into UCLA writing what they claimed to be "mediocre" essays. The UCs tend to be extremely stat based. The trend I saw from my school is that those with the best gpa and class rank easily got into the top UCs. Very few people outside the top 5% or so of my hs's graduating class were accepted to UCLA.</p>
<p>^ Oh I forgot that the Texas school system is probably the most obvious proof that rank/gpa matters the most. The top 10% from a Texas school is GUARANTEED admission into any Texan University; with most choosing UT Austin.</p>
<p>spartan: ALL selective colleges weight the transcript the heaviest in admissions. Lower gpa kids get accepted into Cal, UCLA and UCSD every year, BUT, they have a hook or tip factor, i.e., low income, first generation to attend college or attend inner-city, poor performing schools.</p>
<p>btw: nearly all of our top ~10 were accepted at UCLA, and the top ~5% also to Cal (class of ~400).</p>
<p>I thought it was already an accepted fact that UCLA weighs the UC GPA most heavily. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>you need to understand that essays for the uc schools are used differently (for the most part) than at other schools. Most schools are trying to get a sense of the applicant and the essays are your chance to sell yourself as an interesting person who would be an asset to the school.</p>
<p>At UC schools, its different. With their "holistic" approach the essays are ways to gauge how you fall into the various criteria that give extra points. Read the article about how essays are used at UCSD at <a href="http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/education/20051218-9999-1m18ucsd.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/education/20051218-9999-1m18ucsd.html</a> and you'll see what I mean. While every UC school is somewhat unique, they share more in common than most other schools do to each other and you can bet that at UCLA the essays are treated more or less the same way.</p>