<p>There are grounds for hope. A friend of a friend of my daughter’s (gpa 3.6, sat 1550) was accepted to all UCs including UCLA and Berkeley. She wrote an essay on how she had to fight against her family’s Afghan culture to participate in school and thus had no extracurricular activities. I know that UCLA calculates a “hardship” score based on the essays. That I believe is added to scores based on GPA and SAT. It may be that yours was above the threshold to trigger a request for more information. It may also be that one or both of you are destined to learn and thrive somewhere else. It sounds like you are pair of smart, tough young ladies and will do well wherever you go.</p>