USC/UCLA Automatic disqualification?

Does anyone know if a student has 2200 on SAT, a great music audition, a total GPA 4.2, and ecs, but got 2 Cs in AP classes the second semester of Junior year, they are not elligible for admission to UCLA and/or USC? We’ve heard that even if the GPA is in range, Cs on the transcript mean automatic disqualification. This has not been put in writing as far as we can tell, just ranges. Thanks!

You can call the UCLA music admissions office and ask. They are very nice and helpful.

Is that a recalculated UC GPA? Seems hard to get with two Junior year C’s (which will calculate as B’s.) The music school has its own standards as long as you meet the minimum requirement for admission. But @Singersmom07 is right - always best to ask directly.

Thanks. Yes, the rest are As and numerous AP courses. The minimum standards for admission is what we were looking at…I guess we’ll have to call. GPA is still where it should be, but I’ve heard from more than one person that the two Cs make one ineligible, regardless.

It’s the minimum GPA for the UC system is all she has to worry about. EC’s et al are not a big deal. It’s like any other competitive program, it’s mostly about the audition.

The other thing to keep in mind is that with USC and UCLA, they make allowances for kids auditioning into the programs, and the kind of stats you are talking about are otherwise very strong. I am always suspect when I hear things like “Oh, you get C’s, you are automatically excluded”, it sounds more like urban myths among the uber competitive than real information. Even if applying academically, with all the crazy competitiveness out there, a couple of C’s may not kill a student’s chances, because the school will look at the whole picture. If your kid otherwise has A’s in difficult subjects, then a blip like this would matter less then let’s say the kid who has straight A’s, then gets to hard courses and is getting C’s. If your D had a blip in one semester, I doubt very much it would exclude her, like I said, it sounds like urban myth of the kids today who claim any slip is a disaster (good god, the kid didn’t get F’s…). I know it is crazy out there, but I wonder if the people who told you this applied to USC in music, and basically didn’t want to admit they bombed the audition, so came up with the C’s nonsense. I agree with others, for piece of mind, contact the schools admissions department, if any such criteria existed they would tell you that, outright.

More importantly, if she is applying for performance , I would be a lot more worried about the audition. Your could have perfect stats (as opposed to near perfect stats with a couple of small blips) and if the audition isn’t good, they might get in academically but won’t get into the music school, period. Even if she is going for an academic BA in music (theory and the like), I suspect she isn’t anything close to an automatic reject, to be honest.

One thing I have learned about the whole admissions process? In music schools, and academic schools, there ought to be a website that is like snopes.com, to debunk the urban myths out there, and dispel the notion that these days unless you are perfect you will get rejected, it just isn’t true, admissions departments can screw up, be lazy, and do a raft of stupid things IMO, but they also are human themselves, and when they look at an admissions they aren’t necessarily, or even likely, cut from the same cloth as a tiger mom like Amy Chua, and they can see a potentially great student who happens to have a couple of bloops…and expecially if she recovers from them after that, if she goes back to being her usual self, I wouldn’t fret about it. Like I said, the audition process is a lot more of a worry, as good as a student is, a lot of it is a crap shoot.

I if it is just that classes with grades below C+ are not counted. Does your daughter meet graduation requirements without those two classes? I know that when students transfer, many schools will not accept credits for classes with grades below C+.

The admissions offices could tell you what the policy is. For music, after a great audition, things should go well as long as the basic admission benchmarks for the university are met. The music department will have a lot of say in admissions overall as well as for their own program.

Thanks everyone! They both answered that C’s are not automatic disqualification, but show a downward trend instead of upward. They are much more likely to accept someone with two C’s their Freshman year, and A’s after, than A’s before and two C’s Junior year. The classes count, and the GPA is lower than expected (we were thinking first semester of senior year would be included in the transcripts for submission). But, overall stats are still in range of accepted students. Fingers crossed!