UCLA fall 2014 transfer student profiles

Transfer Students UC Transfers
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<p><a href="https://www.admissions.ucla.edu/prospect/adm_tr/Tr_Prof14.htm"&gt;https://www.admissions.ucla.edu/prospect/adm_tr/Tr_Prof14.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>The preliminary figures have been released. Some information is missing, such as admit rates to specific majors, but info has been released on overall admit rates to UCLA's different schools, such as engineering and the college of letters and science.</p>

<p>It was a little easier to get into UCLA this year in terms of average admitted GPA and admission rate. Here's last year's transfer statistics for comparison; note the differences in admissions: <a href="https://www.admissions.ucla.edu/prospect/adm_tr/Tr_Prof13.htm"&gt;https://www.admissions.ucla.edu/prospect/adm_tr/Tr_Prof13.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Thoughts, guys? It seems UCLA was a little more lenient with applicants this year, lol. I find it interesting that the average admitted GPA went down from 3.72 last year to 3.69 this year even though this year's applicants were more competitive. I believe I read on the UCLA news site that they planned to accept slightly more transfer students, and it shows in the data. More students applied this year than last, and with higher average GPAs, but contrary to expectation, it was less competitive this year than last year to get in. :)</p>

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<p>Thank you for posting this. I’m still surprised I managed to get into an impacted major with a GPA that was about .15 lower than admitted last year and with one missing pre-req. </p>

3

<p>@k4201505‌ </p>

<p>UCLA has gotten much less predictable in who it admitted this year. In previous years, similar applicants would always be accepted or rejected with few exceptions and the reasoning behind admitting or rejecting these students seemed robotic and mostly took into account GPAs and pre-req completion.</p>

<p>As I’ve said before, UCLA seems to have gone Berkeley’s way and gotten more holistic in its admissions this year, which is great. I wonder if it’s connected to the slightly lower average admitted GPA of accepted applicants this year, though.</p>

<p>I’ll be sure to bump this thread when UCLA releases more information about this year’s applicants and when they release data on their majors. I think I speak for everyone when I say that I’d like to see which majors got more selective and which got less selective.</p>

4

<p>Yeah,I was surprised to find that out too! I think you said this already, but maybe UCLA’s admission process is becoming more holistic. That would explain a lot.</p>

5

<p>@Cayton “and gotten more holistic in its admissions this year, which is great” I’ve compiled a good chunk of data on the profiles (GPAs, Classes, ECs, etc) of a good number of transfers from both my CC and here online. I disagree that Holistic is good because isn’t what most people think it is. e.x. working a real job means almost nothing to college admissions whereas joining student government if looked very favorably. The fact that admissions GPA applied has gone up but admitted has gone down means a lot of good qualified people were rejected; people that are [more] qualified than those accepted. </p>

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<p>^^A lot of qualified people were definitely rejected, but a lower gpa doesn’t automatically mean less qualified. GPAs definitely tell a large part of an applicant’s academic ability, but it’s not everything. </p>

<p>Some people earn a 3.98+ gpa, and do nothing but school work. Others may have a 3.7, but they also work, are leaders in clubs, are active in their community, or have various family obligations. IMO a person who can manage. 3.7 with added responsibilities and committments has demonstrated that not only are they intelligent, but they are also able to prioritize, follow thru on commitments, and overall they are able to handle what life throws at them. The 3.98 student with nothing added, has only demonstrated book smarts. </p>

<p>Schools need a mix of people. UCLA needs students who are willing to sacrifice their gpa a little, in order to be involved in campus activities, and be leaders in the various organizations. If you think of UCLA as a community, then you have to have a variety of people in that community to make it work most effectively. Everyone brings something different to the table, and that’s part of what makes it an exceptional university.</p>

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<p>^ From what I have seen the 3.98 GPA who does only school work + has joined every single school club is more likely to be accepted than a person who has a 3.7 gpa and has few ECs because they are working a job. </p>

<p>Like I said, i’ve seen a lot of people accepted/rejected and the reality of holistic review is far from the idealized notion. You can read more here:</p>

<p><a href=“Lifting the Veil on the Holistic Process at the University of California, Berkeley - The New York Times”>Lifting the Veil on the Holistic Process at the University of California, Berkeley - The New York Times;

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<p>Very interesting indeed.</p>

<p>2014 UCLA: Average GPA 3.70
Admit rate: 27.14%
Applicants: 19,517
Admited: 5,296</p>

<p>2013 UCLA: Average GPA 3.72
Admit rate: 26.48%
Applicants: 19,272
Admited: 5,104</p>

9

<p>@bomerr‌ </p>

<p>You make it sound as if working in student government is less valuable than working in a paying job.</p>

<p>Putting aside the quantification of the value of a job by how much it pays, I see no reason why the UCs should value one or the other, or even that they do just that, despite what you believe based on anecdotal evidence.</p>

<p>Besides, lots of qualified applicants are rejected every year. Don’t try to insinuate that because UCLA has gotten less selective in regards to average admitted GPA, it has unfairly rejected more applicants who were better qualified. That doesn’t really make sense and you’ve no proof to substantiate that claim. Not every qualified applicant will be accepted and the UCs are upfront in stating that and they’ve been upfront about it for years, if not decades.</p>

<p>I’ve also seen for myself the great public service that the holistic process at UCLA has done for many applicants this year. Some were admitted with mediocre GPAs into highly selective majors because of their extracurriculars or life circumstances. I’m not going to pretend that this process is perfect, but I believe that the benefits vastly outweigh the drawbacks and despite your anecdotes of qualified applicants getting rejected, you haven’t really shown that this holistic admission process isn’t working the way it should or that it’s more harmful than helpful. It’d be advisable not to try and extrapolate general conclusions about the fairness and efficacy of this method of admitting students from a few applicant profiles. That isn’t a persuasive kind of argument.</p>

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<p>I agree that the process is not always ideal, but it is the way the real world works. When you go to get a job, they look at a pile of resumes. They may choose 10 that have the right mix of professional experiences. Then they interview the candidates. It’s not always the person with the most experience who gets hired. Everyone they interviewed had the qualifications on paper. The person who gets hired is the person who fits best within the organization, has the best chemistry with the interviewer(s), and the person they just like better. It’s holistic.</p>

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<p>@ Cayton, I would say a holistic review system would view EVERY aspect of a persons life. If someone has financial difficulties and has to work, so they can’t afford spending hours sitting around a student board room not doing anything, I don’t think they should be punished for it. At the same time if someone comes from a good finical background, especially if they are an international student (who pay more money to UCs than CA residents) and they do have the time to devote 100% effort to school work and school related activities, I don’t think they should be praised for it. But that is the way ‘holistic review’ works in practice and its very different from the idealized nation by 2016candles. If you look at enough people on a case-by-case basis you will see.</p>

<p>As for the great public service holistic process has done. Only 70% of freshman’s and 60% of trasnfers graduate in 4/2 years at Cal (per Calbro’s link) and that’s precisely because they are letting in more unqualified people with holistic review. On a final point, I think it’s really wrong that they pretend to look for the most qualified applicants but holistic review is designed precisely to allow less qualified people to attend. </p>

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<p>My notion isn’t idealized, it’s reality. UCLA and many schools have a loophole that allows for applicant with “exceptional qualities” to be admitted with lower GPAs. This is primarily to allow for high caliber athletes to be admitted. The same is true to a lesser degree in other aspects of the university. They have to ensure that they are admitting people who will take over student government and other student lead organizations. They have to make sure that the people they admit, can fill the needs of the university. </p>

<p>It’s a business. We may all be students, but we’re also part of their business model. Do you really think it’s coincidental that the same year UCLA eases their requirements, Berkley tightens theirs? It’s all part if their business plan. We’re all cogs in the systems, some fit better than others. </p>

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<p>@bomerr‌ </p>

<p>OK, see now you’re repeating claims for which you have little proof: that UCLA admissions officers value school extracurriculars over off-campus jobs.</p>

<p>And as for the lower graduation rates at Berkeley, there are any number of reasons why they are the way they are. You assert that it has to do with holistic admissions, but you haven’t actually established that that is the case. Even if you can, it doesn’t mean that Berkeley and other UC schools with comparable graduation rates shouldn’t abandon holistic admissions. Rather, they should do a better job informing their students about the resources made available to them on campus to help them graduate on time and perhaps improve those resources as well.</p>

<p>Holistic review isn’t designed to merely admit more “unqualified” applicants(By the way, admissions officers decide whether an applicant is qualified or not, not disgruntled applicants such as yourself). It’s designed to treat applicants as more than the sum of the numbers in their application(GPA, number of pre-reqs completed, how many units completed, etc) and looks at the less tangible qualities in their profiles. If a group of admissions officers collectively decide that one applicant’s life circumstances and off-campus activities are more impressive in conjunction with their academic accomplishment than another applicant in the same major, then one will be admitted and the other may not be. Again, it isn’t perfect; I <em>acknowledge</em> that, but to expect it to be perfect is to expect too much of admissions officers who are only human but whose judgment is, I like to think, reasonable. Holistic review benefits those who may have earned what would appear, outside of their respective contexts, mediocre GPAs. But if, for example, an engineering major gets a 3.3 GPA but happens to be a parent who works 30 hours a week to support his family, I believe he should get admitted to UCLA/Berkeley, and from the looks of how holistic admissions work, UCLA/Berkeley admissions officers will agree. A 3.3 GPA in such a major in such circumstances is impressive no matter how you spin it. Accepting applicants like him may seem unfair to you, but, truth be told, it’d be far more unfair to reject him because his GPA is low without considering the circumstances behind such a low GPA. It would reduce the applicant to his GPA and number of pre-reqs completed, and it is wrong.</p>

<p>Of course, such a student should receive extra assistance upon transferring to good schools such as UCLA and Berkeley, and the resources to make that possible exist, although perhaps they could be better managed by those schools. Regardless, holistic review is here to stay and it remains my conviction that it is more helpful than harmful. Would you rather do away with holistic review? What is your preferred system of admission?</p>

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<p>“But if, for example, an engineering major gets a 3.3 GPA but happens to be a parent who works 30 hours a week to support his family, I believe he should get admitted to UCLA/Berkeley, and from the looks of how holistic admissions work, UCLA/Berkeley admissions officers will agree. A 3.3 GPA in such a major in such circumstances is impressive no matter how you spin it”</p>

<p>Too bad they won’t get in. I’m not sure if you remember this guy but he got rejected.
<a href=“Wanna play a game? - #37 by UCLABounded - UC Transfers - College Confidential Forums”>Wanna play a game? - #37 by UCLABounded - UC Transfers - College Confidential Forums;
UCLA: “Engineering major with 27 units in a semester, working full time with engineering experience? No, no reject. We’ll take the 4.0 guy who served on honors council instead.” That’s the reality of holistic review. I don’t think there are a lot (if any?) people more qualified than him. </p>

<p>As for the people with 3.3s and what not getting in, from what i have seen a lot are sobers. </p>

<p>like i said, the reality of who gets in is VERY different what you want to believe. FYI I haven’t listed all the other BS critia evaluations, I just picked two, school involvement which is HIGHLY overemphasized and work experience which is HIGHLY underemphasized and possibly even harmful. </p>

<p>Hollistic review is a misnomer because it’s more like affirmative action review or stereotyping review. It was only implemented because they Cal wanted to get around the ban on ethnicity in evaluating applications. I would prefer a system that is actually fair instead of one that claims to be fair. </p>

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<p>I don’t really have an argument for or against holistic review, however, I think you guys should take a look at the 5-year trend for ucla.</p>

<p>2009 - 5,457 admits (32.50%) / 3.62 gpa
2010 - 5,505 admits (28.98%) / 3.69 gpa
2011 - 5,492 admits (27.46%) / 3.70 gpa
2012 - 5,451 admits (28.54%) / 3.71 gpa
2013 - 5,104 admits (26.48%) / 3.72 gpa
2014 - 5,296 admits (27.14%) / 3.70 gpa</p>

<p>Percent Change
2009->2010 - +0.88%
2010->2011 - -0.24%
2011->2012 - -0.69%
2012->2013 - -6.37%
2013->2014 - +3.76%</p>

<p>I believe I did the math right, but take the above data as you will. I personally interpret the data that ucla has clearly an upward trend on how difficult it is to get accepted into ucla. The gpa differences are very minimal (aside for 2009 -> 2010) and the more significant changes are the number of admits. Observing the trend of number of admits per year, we can clearly see there is a significant change in 2012. I believe 2012 was an exclusive one off thing. Not sure what happened that year, but they couldn’t admit as many students as they use to. Saying that ucla has become more holistic by just only comparing the previous year I think is jumping to conclusion. Again, I’m not sure what happened in 2013, but I think that’s and exception to the overall trend for ucla.</p>

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<p>If you look at the engineering stats for UCLA in 2013, 171 got admitted whereas in 2014, 300+ got admitted. HOLY… there is no pattern, well there is but 2013 is an outlier for some reason.</p>

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<p>@bomerr‌ </p>

<p>That’s a shame. It seemed like he should’ve gotten in. Of course, I can point to an example of someone who got in under a STEM major(I believe it was chemistry) because of his life circumstances and how he adapted to them, even though his GPA was about 3.0~3.1 and he would’ve normally needed about 3.4~3.6 to be competitive. I can’t prove that his situation was what got him admitted, but in light of all the other info he presented, I think it’s reasonable to say it was the only reason he got admitted.</p>

<p>One wonders why this person was admitted and the engineering major wasn’t. You claim that it has to do with circumventing the affirmative action ban put in place in the mid-1990s. I don’t know if that’s true, but it’s worth noting that the example you cite of the rejected engineering major with a 3.79 is interesting because he stated that he was <em>hispanic.</em> Now, we have a problem with your example and a big one at that.</p>

<p>If you think holistic review is merely illegal affirmative action, then I wonder…why did UCLA reject this hard-working, hispanic student with a somewhat competitive GPA for his major? Maybe they don’t care as much about race as the conventional wisdom would tell us, in which case your argument may be severely undermined.</p>

<p>If they <em>do</em> care a lot about someone’s race, even though they’re not supposed to, why did they reject this person? Maybe there was a glaring flaw in his academic profile or other part of his application that he didn’t reveal to us on college confidential. If UCLA cares as much about race as people think, then I’m sure that UCLA very reluctantly decided to reject this person. And by the way, as usual, your arguments are not as precise and airtight as you would like them to be; you haven’t established with reasonable certainty that there’s a causal relationship between working off campus and having a diminished chance of getting in to UCLA as opposed to being in a school extracurricular. You can’t really justify your certainty that your argument is correct. As I said before, you have to stop trying to extrapolate general conclusions about what UCLA wants in the extracurriculars of its students from your very small sample size. For my argument, it’s already known that UCLA and the other UCs will make GPA exceptions for applicants who are otherwise qualified. And yes, this holistic review benefits white applicants, too.</p>

<p>Now, if this minority student was rejected from UCLA with decent grades, that leaves us with only two explanations as far as I can tell: they either don’t care as much about race in holistic admissions as you think, or, they do care, but it doesn’t automatically get you in if you have decent grades and happen to be a minority, even if you work, are low-income and a first generation student, and do other stuff, as the student you cited was. Either way, it seems, your argument is undermined. Perhaps I’m wrong, but at best, you’ve convinced me that the holistic review process may be in need of minor adjustment, not that it should be abolished and definitely not that it favors minority applicants.</p>

<p>@chaoscuber‌ </p>

<p><a href=“UCLA Transfer GPA Question - #7 by Dagoberto - UC Transfers - College Confidential Forums”>UCLA Transfer GPA Question - #7 by Dagoberto - UC Transfers - College Confidential Forums;

<p>This will answer the question of why 2013 was an outlier for UCLA engineering admissions.</p>

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<p>@jonjon03 Good point!</p>