The Official Chances Thread!

[jcll2002]

comon now guys!

[laipi14159]

Asian Male in state applying to BIOENGINEERING:

Public HS that sent 2 to Stanford last year, 3 to Ivies, 21 to Berkeley

UC GPA: 4.333
Weighted GPA: 4.750
Unweighted: 4.000

Most Difficult Classes possible were taken. (7 APs by the end of Junior year, 10 by the end of Senior year)

SAT:
800w/780m/760r (2340)

SATII:
800 Math Level 2
780 US History
760 Chemistry

My Extracurriculars are strong, Officer in 4 clubs. I don’t feel like typing everything else out.

I’m confident that if I hadn’t applied to an impacted major (in this case, engineering), I would get into Berkeley. But since I AM applying to engineering... what chances do I have?

[Castel]

@laipi14159: Regardless of you applying for engineering or not, your stats are extremely strong. No worries.

[Cupola]

jcll2002: Match

and yeah, retaking your SAT I sounds like a good idea

[kyledavid80]

jcll2002: your GPA/SAT are strong, and your ECs are okay. Your summer work is strong. The work experience may help somewhat. I'd say high match (60%). What are your SAT II scores? Do you have any honors/awards? If you were to retake the SAT, you should shoot for 2200+, or else it won't make much of a difference.

laipi14159: your GPA and scores are strong. Do you have any honors/awards? Since you're applying to a very competitive major, I'd say slight reach to high match (50-60%), though I'm leaning more on the accept side.

[dmission]

laipai14159:

UCB/UCLA: Huge Reach
UCSD:Huge Reach
UCD/UCI/UCSB:Reach
UCSC/UCR/UCM:High Match

[AznPwyd]

wth are you on dmission?
oh yeah he's talking about laipai14159, and the poster above is laipi14159, so it must not be the same person

[kyledavid80]

^^ he was being sarcastic.

[tkd2009]

Told you it was 50-50. =)

You're one of the very, very, very few people who are 1) OOS, and 2) didn't fulfill all the requirements for admission.

Quote:
the in-state chances are greatly underestimated
Do you mean that we're underestimating the difficulty of getting into Berkeley for in-state students? And that it can still be a reach even for students with over-involvement? (I'd agree with the latter.)

Just wanted to comment saying that I find it disturbing when I read this thread with people who have 2350+ on their SAT's and they are only given match (60%). Most of the time, its more like 90%.

[kyledavid80]

tkd2009: you clearly don't know much about admissions. Cal, for one, does not weight the SAT that much. Notice that it considers GPA, rigor of course load, and essays to be "very important," whereas SAT is just "important."

http://cds.berkeley.edu/pdfs/PDF%20w...KS%2006-07.pdf

As a result, Berkeley rejects many 2300+ scorers. In addition, a 90% = safety; Berkeley is a safety for no one. A safety is one that it would be nearly impossible to be rejected at, and that's clearly not the case with people who have just a high SAT score -- not to mention that a school with a near 1-in-5 acceptance rate is definitely not safe enough. You'd want to go for schools that have much higher acceptance rates for safeties; they're safer (which is the whole point of a safety).

Lastly, those who only get "match" for 2350s have such for a reason -- they could be OOS (it's very difficult to be considered a match for an OOSer), or they could have a weak GPA, or they could be applying to very competitive major, or they could have an overall mediocre application (minus the SAT). Berkeley's admissions are much, much more dynamic and flexible than people like you think.

[rgal]

i applied to Haas, undeclared
I moved to california from singapore in december 2006, and im a senior in high school this year, so its kinda wierd to judge my GPA...

btw im a resident(: so instate!!


GPA(unweighted, because weightage is not a concept in Spore) : 3.67
UC GPA: 4.0 (no weightage sophomore year even though the courseload was HARD)
*VERY competitive private school in singapore

A lot of APs, around 9 now (in 2 semesters)


SAT scores: 2160 total, 690 WR, 720 CR, 750 M
SAT2s: 800math2, 750bio, 800 chem

extracurriculars:

9th and 10th grade
school newsletter(editor)
indian orchestra(violin)
teaching kids with lang barriers to read (4h/week)
teacher at local tuition centre (something like kumon i guess)
tutor
student congress head of outreach
helped to set up international convention of youth leaders (a LOT bigger than you think, it was a whole load of work and GREAT for networking)
research during summer at Institute of molecular and cellular biology, working on virology(:
* at this point in time, I was trying to start my own charity to provide sanitation to slum dwellers in india, but well that kind of fell through because the Indian government wouldn’t give us the permits required… so well, plans got postponed (mentioned this in essay)

11th grade
(keep in mind i started school in feb, so its like 5 months of school total)
Smile Club (raising funds for 3rd world kids who need cleft lip surgeries)
Youth Action team (community service. shall explain later)
tutor

12th grade
Founder and prez Gyan Club (going to be expanded to whole district next year, hopefully)
(its a non-profit tutoring business that i started. we basically tutor local kids at 11bucks an hour and we use all our profits to sponsor street children in india. its like a direct relationship between each tutor and kid, and we currently sponsor around 21.tons of groundwork and promotions, but twas all SO worth it(: one of my essays is about this, only its kind of more about helping poor children and education but this is one of the main aspects of what i did to help.)

Youth Action Team Prez
(so the youth action team is a board of highschool students interviewed and selected to organize events that help the community remain drug free etc. its technically a job and everyone else gets paid 10.40 per hour for doing stuff like putting up POSTERS, but sadly enough i dont have a work visa so im doing it for the experience and the community service. i'll basically have like 400h at the end of the year, because we have so many all day events and stuff. really great people and fun experience. my *boss* wrote a stellar letter of rec for me, so YAY in case of scholarships)

Smile club vice prez

Model UN vice prez (its a club at our school, we dont have a class)

CSF(no idea if this has an impact)

research at University of Calif Irvine UCI
(biophysics, around 8h/week,its basically drug research about the phospholipid membrane in the lungs, and its characterizing the molecule to figure out how to make premature babies develop the membrane faster)

other classes:
french 3 at local community college B:’(
French 4/5 at local community college (going on right now)
physics 3A over summer at UCI (my prof invited me to be his research assistant)A
Multivariable calc B+ (with a 93%!!! Curves suck when there are 15 odd people in the class)

so what do you guys think?

[AznPwyd]

^^ he was being sarcastic.

lol, I was also being sarcastic

[rgal]

bumppp, guys please chance me!

[kevster1001]

I know I have very slim chances, but I just want to know what you guys would think about my chances to Berkeley.

Applied for Latin American Studies.

•CA Resident / Asian American
•GPA: 3.4UW/3.6W (approximates)
•Rank: School doesn’t rank
•Very competitive Public school (No.1 in District, one of the 21 Public Elites according to Newsweek)
•Class size: ~550

•SAT: 2060 (650 M, 800 W (12 essay), 610 CR)
•SAT 2: Spanish Language: 760
U.S. History: 650

EC’s:

•Aid for Africa (11-12): Publicist. I was elected as a Publicist when the club first started in my Junior year. I am responsible for creating club flyers, planning for the Club Fair and other fundraising events, and creating designs for club t-shirts.
•Amnesty International (11-12): Member.
•Church Homeless Ministry (11-12): Volunteer. I have multiple responsibilities, including tables/chairs preparation, food distribution, serving coffee, and singing in the choir.
•City's Open Space Nature Preserve (Summer 2006): Volunteer. I mainly worked on trail maintenance and administrative work.
•Tutoring (9): I tutored elementary kids around my neighborhood in Guatemala.
•Soccer instructor (9): I taught soccer to elementary kids around my neighborhood in Guatemala.

Awards:

•Principal’s Honor Roll

Recs:

•Counselor –good. I know her very well.
•English teacher – good. Had her for junior year and have her now too. She knows me well too, academically and personally.

•I lived in Guatemala for about 14 years. I moved to the U.S. for 10th grade. I realized that my current school’s curriculum is way harder/stronger than that of the school I attended back in Guatemala. Although not a straight A’s student, I tried my best to pull a decent GPA while adapting to my new life in the US.

•My essay reflects my experiences during my life in Guatemala and ties with how I chose and want to pursue Latin American Studies in Berkeley. My teachers and Counselor said it was a unique essay. I hope the essay will be the "hook" of my application, since anything else besides it is not that stellar.


Any input will be greatly appreciated.

[kevster1001]

I can't edit for some odd reason. Correction with GPA:
3.4uw/3.65W. I am not sure if these are really correct.
I will verify with GC tomorrow.