wilsun007

Honestly, UC's are fairly easy for in-state applicants to get into. You'll get in. For Berkeley especially, I have heard that it is more difficult to keep up with the classes than to get in though.

I suggest you ask your guidance counselor how many people from your school were accepted at Berkeley and UCLA last year. At my school, 50 applicants got into Berkeley and 50 got into UCLA, so personally I'm not too worried about the UC's.

GokuKetchum

wow thanks for the info. If I remember correctly, there were about 4 or 5 kids that went to each from last year. Im not sure how many actually applied, but ill definitely ask. Our class sizes are only around 150 students.

nickolai

"They only take your unweighed gpa into account though, is that right?"

No, UC's have their own UC GPA. It is calculated by using the unweighted sum of your grades using a 4.0 scale (4=A, B=3, etc.) of your sophomore and junior years and then adding 8 to them if you have taken 8 or more semesters of AP/Honors courses. So for example, I took 7 AP/Honors classes during my sophomore and junior years combined, so through both years I had 14 semesters of AP/Honors right? But UC's only count 8 semesters of it. So really, using the UC system, they will only recognize 8/14 semester as being given an extra point. Do you understand it? I think what you were looking at as far as undergraduate GPA's is the UC GPA. At Cal, I think last year's average unweighted GPA was around 3.85-3.89 if I was given the correct information by a Cal representative. But anyway, if you have your UC GPA, then I can help you out because then we can compare it to those of the admitted/denied/deferred/etc. Either way, I think that you are competitive enough and the grades are there no matter what.

dina4119

no being in a competitive private school doesn't help. I go to Cal and being from a competitive HS only made it harder to get in, since competitive schools are generally thought of as having a lot of help offered to students (in the ways of studying and SAT practice). I know people here from, frankly, horrible schools who had about a 4.0 and 1700's on SATs whereas people from my HS had 4.3 and 1900's and did not get in here.

dina4119

Also someone said something very important, it is MUCH harder to stay in than to get in, I'm pre-med so it's a bit different, but pretty much no one gets a break ever!

GokuKetchum

nickolai: thank you for clearing that up. I have heard of the UC gpa before, but didn't know how it worked or how valid it was in perspective to unweighed and weighed gpa's. I will have 8 semesters of APs total by the end of junior year, with hopefully a 3.8 unweighed.

dina4119: Thanks for reinforcing the idea, i'll keep it mind that it will be harder to maintain good grades at Berkeley, do you know how low your grades have to be in order to get kicked out (lol)? Also, I can see how competitive schools giving students a lot more prep and personal help would be looked at against you, but I have also heard the argument that doing well in them gpa wise looks good if classes might be more rigorous than some of the same classes at comparable schools, but I really don't know, I'll look this up on my own too. Thanks for sharing with me.

GokuKetchum

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