What happened? Waitlisted to 3/5 UCs

Applying to College
1

Waitlisted: UCSD, UCD, UCI
Rejected: UCLA
Accepted: UCSC
Major: Biology

GPA: 3.78 UW/ 4.3 W (I had one bad semester, but after that upward trend aka all A’s)
SAT: 1900
ECs: bio-medicine internship, founder of social awareness club, student gov, varsity badminton, A LOT of volunteer hours
Essays: I thought they were really good. Had a bunch of teachers help edit and they thought they were great (highlighted my interest in bio etc)

I know my major is very impacted, but seriously??? Why did I get wait listed so much? A lot of people from my school with even 1700s got into UCI and UCD for my major-- without any experience in the field. While maybe my GPA is kinda low, I had a drastic upward change in the rest of high-school. idk did i overshoot?

2

Admissions are sometimes funky, unpredictable. UCSC is a good school though so congrats!

3

UCs reputedly do tend to look at GPA more than test scores.

4

Lots of people waitlisted this year.

5

Seems you don’t know, though, that Letters & Science at UCs typically don’t care about your major when deciding whether to admit frosh to the university or not. I know this is true at UCLA & UCSD, you can check the rest.