if your child is committed to UCLA, then not worth going. Large crowds, horrible parking, and generic information. Better wait for move-in day.
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My son is inclined to go to UCLA. But we came to know that AP credits cannot be applied towards any general requirement courses. Would that increase the work load and can they be completed in 4 years?
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I don’t think that will hamper your ability to finish in 4 years. My son seems like he’s on track. Remember that some students are coming in with no credits, so they wouldn’t design it to be a barrier to completing your degree. Depending on what APs they are, they may get you out of some university-wide requirements (like foreign language, writing 1, etc.). Plus get you access to higher level math series from the get-go.
One thing that seems different at UCLA vs some campuses is that AP credits don’t count for your status with respect to enrollment time. So for example our son was almost a sophomore in terms of credits when he started, but that didn’t reflect in his enrollment priority bc the AP credits don’t count towards that. Whereas on tours this week at UCI and UCSD, my daughter was told that the AP credits would contribute to her standing for enrollment times.
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Thank you for the information.
My older one is a sophomore at UCSD. He joined the college with sophomore standing. That gives him priority enrollment every quarter. I think his AP credits helped him to fulfill few general requirement classes(need to check with him).
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I think UC Davis is the only other UC that doesn’t allow AP units to be applied towards GEs. They also do not allow AP units to impact enrollment windows.
UCSB took away priority enrollment from their Regents and honors students.
I believe the intent is to create equity.
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In reviewing the grid as to what would count for her college GE requirements, it definitely seems like APs will help! Her brother at UCLA definitely seems like he’s still on track, and the APUSH, AP Lang, and AP Spanish did get him out of some things. But he’s definitely still in that phase where he is fighting for the courses he needs during enrollment. I think that’s about to get better next year when he’s a third year. He wouldn’t trade his experience at UCLA for sure. He’s really happy there!
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We haven’t yet gotten up to do the Davis visit yet, but that’s really good to know! I’ll make sure she asks about that. I was pleasantly surprised to see how much the APs would help at UCSD.
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The pass times at UC Davis are less random than they are at UCLA. They are based upon units completed at UC Davis. They don’t include APs but do include transferable community college courses. Taking an extra 1-2 unit seminar class or a summer class can help a student get an earlier pass time at Davis. At UCLA, I believe they group students by class (ie. 45-89.9 units) and then assign pass times randomly. Is that correct?
https://registrar.ucla.edu/registration-classes/enrollment-appointments/enrollment-appointments
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Yes, that tracks with my son’s experience I think. He’s gotten a little unlucky with the random times.
AP foreign language is by far the most beneficial, as it means you can avoid taking a year of foreign language in college.
On one occasion in freshman year, S had a horrible second pass time. He got a friend with a better pass time (and enough spare credits in their schedule) to hold the class spot he wanted and then coordinated with them to release it later so he could grab it one second later.
This definitely has worked for people he knows. His girlfriend tried to help hold a class for him (she’s a year ahead), but the problem with that can be that if the friend isn’t a pre-major for that subject or otherwise qualified with the pre-requisites, they can’t reserve it either. She’s a mech engineering major and he needs required econ courses, so that didn’t work. But he did get off the waitlist a few days before the quarter started! Sometimes you just have to use Coursicle and the other apps to know when things open up and then jump on them right away.
My D22 has enough AP credit to be a sophomore, but whenever I comment that this should get her some kind of perk, she shrugs and says, “Everyone is a sophomore by units because of AP credit. That’s how we got in here.” Good point, I guess. (And yes, she is exaggerating to make a point.) She’s had decent luck getting her classes but she always has a bunch of backups and she’s a humanities major, so there’s less competition for the math/Chem prerequisites that a lot of friends who are stem majors are taking.
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Is foreign language requirement one year or 3 years?
It’s typically a 3 course sequence (3 quarters ie 1 year) unless you take 1 higher level course:
https://registrar.ucla.edu/academics/foreign-language-requirement
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Mine didn’t take AP French (or any language her senior year) and, after a placement exam, she tested into French 3 at UCLA. She took it last quarter and now she has satisfied the GE language requirement.
Congrats! But I wonder how someone can possibly get 4.8 unweighted GPA? that means a kid needs to take nearly all AP/Honor/BI at 10th and 11th grade and get nearly all As on those classes. This case is even never possible in most CA high school districts because of severe limitation for students to take classes (eg: many school districts allow only one science class per semester and competition for AP/honor class is extremely difficult). In most CA public school districts, it is simply not possible to take all classes as AP/honor/BI in 10th and 11th grades. Maybe some charter school or private school can possibly achieve this. Without standardized tests, I am sure each HS will learn to bump up their students’ GPA as much as possible in the very near future. We are in complete mess soon.
Summer DE/AP/CC courses can boost that up. Also if you’re able to pad non-academic courses 10-11th (i.e. PE, Cooking, Cooking, Health, etc.), you won’t be able to plug those in to your UC app (gives you an error so you have to add them in the EC section), further bumping your UC fully-weighted GPA up. However, this strategy may risk lowering your a-g rigor so you have to be careful on how you plan this (e.g. load up on a-g required non-AP courses 9th and 12th grade).
And you’re definitely right on your speculations. My niece in a SF-bay area public HS was allowed to take 4 AP courses her sophomore year. CA counselors are definitely tuned in to what’s going on.
My daughters GPA is 4.91 with one semester to go. She’s in language immersion so all her electives are advanced language courses.
As colleges become more competitive this will likely be even more common.
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What scale of GPA does your school use? How H A and AP A are converted into numeric scales?
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Honors and AP classes are 5 point classes. The rest are 4.
Her high school offers more AP classes than the other schools in our district. The language immersion students have the option of all AP and honors classes with only a few exceptions during their four years in high school.