<p>I believe 3.5 is OK for people who is NOT a science major. </p>
<p>But what about people that’s taking Engineering Physics, Calculus I,II,II, and Linear Algebra for their pre-reqs?</p>
<p>I think most people with 3.5+ can get in to B/LA</p>
<p>I wouldn’t have a problem if the TAG was 4.0 for every UC, so long as the change wasn’t made suddenly. TAG should be for exceptional students who would be accepted anyway, as an enticement to get them to apply and to add a bit more confidence in the application process (“I’ve got a 4.0, so I’ve got a great shot at UCLA, but at least I’m guaranteed into UCSD too”). Under the current system some students are granted a TAG who wouldn’t otherwise be accepted.</p>
<p>As for the science majors, they’re all in the same boat. They may not be able to get TAG, and the applicant pool will reflect that. The few who manage to will be guaranteed admission, and most with 3.3-3.49 will be pretty safe. 3.1 will be borderline. If anything, this change will affect liberal arts majors the most–no longer will history majors be able to sneak in with 3.2s, but science majors will probably still have a decent shot with that GPA.</p>
<p>As someone else said, the current TAG system at UCSD was great for students, but was so good it was almost unfair. TAG should provide guaranteed acceptance to exceptional students, not guaranteed acceptance to nearly everyone.</p>
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<p>prestige, or perceived prestige, determines the amount of applicants. This is why UCLA has more applicants than berkeley, because among average people, UCLA is the MOST prestigious UC. Berkeley has a lot of applicants because people well informed in universities know that it is the best public university in the world with some of the highest ranked departments. UCSD is generally regarded as the third most prestigious and hence has the third highest number of applicants.</p>
<p>part of maintaining or increasing prestige is to make academic acceptance more competitive, which they seem to be doing year by year. Both Berkeley, LA, and now UCSD are doing this.</p>
<p>at UCLA at least, i imagine they’ll accept many more students once all those extra dorms they’re building are done. </p>
<p>at the UCs, they’re trying to shuffle people out of the better UCs and shuffle them down towards the lower UCs. So a high-reach applicant that might have once been accepted to UCLA and Berkeley will now probably get rejected from both and get shuffled to something like UCSD, UCI, or UCD. That’s not necessarily a bad thing either.</p>
<p>Most engineering/science majors, if not all, are impacted so TAG wouldn’t matter :/</p>
<p>imo, 3.5 is pretty ridiculous. In most cases, with that GPA and pre-reqs fulfilled, you’d get through regular admissions anyways. Its pretty obvious that UCSD isn’t fond of TAG considering they didn’t give out early TAG acceptances this year even though every other UC did. I wouldn’t be surprised if they just got rid of the whole thing.</p>
<p>OH NOOOOO, now people actually have to work to get into a school</p>
<p>oh nooooooooooooo</p>
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<p>Not until they raise it to 3.7.</p>
<p>I don’t disagree that it is awfully sudden and maybe they should have waited and/or announced it sooner. However, I agree that TAG should be for exceptional students instead of every student. Not that I didn’t TAG, you bet your sweet arse I did. I just think that a lot of people that bothered to do the TAG already had good gpa and were probably going to get into those schools anyway. This could be a completely naive guess though so who knows. I think that all the TAGS should be 3.5. It’s an even amount of B’s and A’s. Not to be so rude, but if you REALLY want to go to these schools, shouldn’t you have to fight and work for them?
I’m not sure about science majors though, I’m sure it’s much harder and those linear algebra classes sound horrendous, so I have nothing to comment on in that department. I just know that considering how good all of the UCs are, no one should get to skate by into them without good reason for those grades. That probably sounds harsh, no offense to anyone who is skating by, hahaha. Just yokin.</p>
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<p>i think the increased competitiveness of the UCs is occurring naturally. more people want to go to UCs, and less and less room is available. the UCs are then forced to accept less and less students. i wouldn’t say it’s intentional – i don’t think they are reducing acceptances because they want to increase their “prestige” – i think it has more to do with them having to accommodate for economic realities.</p>
<p>as far the last part about “shuffling” people into lower UCs…that’s an interesting idea. maybe a couple decades from now it’ll be more like, “WOW you got into a University of California?!” instead of “WOW you got into UC Berkeley?”</p>
<p>oh yeah, I go to LACC too, high five lol. I also want to transfer to UCLA. Did you transfer already or are you still at LACC?</p>
<p>i do partially agree with you. i don’t think their primary reason for doing this is to increase their prestige but it’s the indirect outcome of what they’re forced to do. They’re forced to accept less applicants and applicants who used to be qualified are now categorized as less qualified compared to other applicants.</p>
<p>who knows what can happen in 40-50 years. maybe UCR will be in the mid-tier UCs, and maybe the midtier UCs will be where the top-tier ones are now, and maybe the top one’s will be top-10. This is still completely possible; UCLA isn’t even 100 years old yet and it pretty much has the same reputation as berkeley (which is 50 years older) although berkeley does have more professional schools open and graduate programs. </p>
<p>additionally, what people believe about a school doesn’t really matter unless they’re your employers/reviewers for grad school. most people are pretty similar to going like ‘wow you got into UCLA’ as ‘Wow you got into UCB.’ but i’d say this also extends to UCSD in terms of academic prestige (which is the only one that really matters)</p>
<p>i’m at UCLA now, my first quarter was last fall. Tbh, i didn’t know about CC or TAG before i applied and i still got in. If you’d like to ask me any questions about it you’re more than free to PM me.</p>
<p>So if I plan on starting ucsd in fall 2012, and I apply in with tag in fall 2011 do I need a 3.0 or a 3.5?</p>
<p>3.5</p>
<p>10char</p>
<p>well I thought this thread was a joke but unfortunately,it’s true…this is quite bad news for those who are science or engineering majors.good-bye UCSD.</p>
<p><a href=“http://admissions.ucsd.edu/TagBrochure.pdf[/url]”>http://admissions.ucsd.edu/TagBrochure.pdf</a></p>
<p>Guys I was just wondering, lets say I have a 3.3 GPA with 45 units completed when I apply in November this year. Will I be disqualified for TAG even if my final GPA will be a 3.5 when I get to 60 units by spring 2011? So in other words does my GPA HAVE to be a 3.5 at the time I apply? Thanks.</p>
<p>“achieve cumulative 3.5 minimum UC GPA by the end of Fall 2011”</p>
<p>well I thought this thread was a joke but unfortunately,it’s true…this is quite bad news for those who are science or engineering majors.good-bye UCSD.</p>
<p>I don’t think it is necessarily a bad thing for science and engineering majors. If anything, it may actually keep them from wasting their time and energy trying to major in a subject that they may not be well suited for. </p>
<p>This may seem harsh, but I assure you some of my buddies would probably be better off if they weren’t guaranteed their acceptances for being so mediocre. If a person can’t handle getting an even number of A’s and B’s at CC, do you really think it is prudent for administrators to guarantee them acceptances into majors where the classes will get progressively harder and where the material they failed to master at CC will be fundamental in understanding later topics?</p>
<p>I am an EE major who transferred into UCSD. The engineering classes I took last quarter were predominantly filled with other transfers. It becomes instantly obvious that a large gulf in the quality of transfer students exist. Unfortunately, there are still boundary classes once you get to UCSD. One of the classes I’m taking now has a 30% failure rate and it is a core EE class that is a prereq for almost all further classes. Although it must have felt nice to get into such a great school in such a difficult major, maybe those students who coasted by with all B’s would have wished it wasn’t that easy. They have now been set up for failure and will probably be the majority of the 30% who fail.</p>
<p>UCH, most of the worst/dumbest people I’ve worked with in my community college math/science classes had 4.0 GPAs. They got them by studying old exams and copying the solutions manual for homework. </p>
<p>I’m not saying all people with 4.0 GPAs are like that! Far from the case I am sure.</p>
<p>Isn’t studying old exams a perfectly reasonable way for studying for an exam? Unless they give you the exact same questions, you still need to understand the concepts and mechanics to perform well on the exam. Almost every class I’ve taken so far at UCSD has provided old exams as study material.</p>
<p>@UChopeful2010</p>
<p>Thank you. I was waiting for this! </p>
<p>After seeing the work ethic and attitude of some of my classmates (note: not GPA), I seriously hoped that they wouldn’t be able to practice in their fields. I like being friends with them, but under no circumstances should a prospective math teacher skip algebra for parties or a nursing student skip biology for rock climbing. Seriously. I’m really sorry.</p>
<p>A 3.0 GPA threshold is too low for all TAG schools as it is.</p>