Just curious, from those of you with personal experience, what kind of a boost does a 2200-2300 range SAT give someone at a place like UCB or UCLA? Specifically, someone with pedestrian ecs and a high 3s, but not 4.0. I know it's very unpredictable., but i hope someone has input on this.
Eh, I don't know ;/ I feel like the UC's are so w-h-a-c-k at times LOL. I really believe it's GPA first > everything. I know a girl with a 1200 (3.9 GPA) who got into UCSD. And my friend got a 1650 (3.9 GPA) got into UCLA & Cal.
But your SAT is way higher than theirs, so I'm sure you have a shot at one of them if not both :-)
have you tried looking at the UC acceptance/rejection threads? you might be able to get a sense of how frequently people with similar stats to yours (lower gpa but higher SAT) got in from them.
thanks to both of you. I know my score gives me a good chance, but I think I speak for a lot of others as well in saying that I wish there was some kind of formula for these schools, just so we knew what to shoot for.
Assuming that the formula is more or less linear in GPA and SAT scores tends to work well for the UC's I think. For example, i think it would generally be a bad idea to think that an improvement from 2100-2300 would be more helpful than the one from 1700-1900, even if it might be considered more impressive or distinguishing.
What I'm saying is how ridiculous this is. I mean, look at it this way: About 10% of graduating seniors in California go to UCs. UC Davis is certainly in the top half of the campuses, but not even top three. Yet, they routinely reject people with 3.9-4.0s who happen to have SAT scores in the 97th-99th percentile. At the same time, they admit countless 3.7/1800 students. The discrepancy in ecs, recs, essays, etc. can explain some of this, but I don't think that UCD can in good conscience reject someone who has both proven them self academically and has scored better than 99 percent of people. This is why admissions to these schools are so nerve-wracking. I mean, they're HUGE state universities. Not Brown and Yale. Why the holistic approach? Thoughts?
