Weighted GPAs calculated by high schools are often much higher than the weighted capped GPAs given on UC web sites. “My student with a 4.7 GPA on the high school transcript did not get into UCLA” – because that GPA is really 3.5 unweighted and 3.8 weighted capped.
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UC’s state they will review all applications even applications that do not meet the requirements. They can accept students through exception but that is rare. So to answer your question, a review including reading the essays is done on all applications submitted.
With the UC comprehensive review, GPA is not evaluated within a vacuum so all 13 areas of criteria are considered and each UC campus can weight these areas differently so there is an element of unpredictability from campus to campus. And as @ucbalumnus pointed out, what some posters will list as their GPA is not the recalculated GPA’s considered by the UC’s.
In some case such as S24, UC Capped GPA 4.31 is higher than his Weighted GPA 4.19. He took exactly total of 2AP and 2 Honor classes in 10th and 11th grades. No AP nor Honor during freshman.
Thank you for this information.
To add some background: D25 is a great kid, but her capped UCGPA (thanks to you all, I now know how to calculate it) is expected to be around 3.83-ish, although uncapped might be around 3.92-ish (not sure yet - still 6 months to go). But she has taken challenging courses at school and also 4 APs, 1 community college course, and has pretty good (not stellar) extracurriculars. So I was trying to gauge her chance at UCs. She is not eyeing CS or EECS type high-demand majors either. So, based on the data you shared, and the fact that her application will be reviewed by all, e.g. Davis, SB etc. (in addition to UCI and UCR), it gives us hope. Thanks for all the info.
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Curious what you think if a student takes a college course in the summer before 11th grade ---- where does that course get counted for GPA and the 1x honors point? Does it go with the grade below (10th—so subject to 4 honors pts max with other AP/Honors courses a student took in 10th) or up with the 11th grade? It can make a difference.
Just for fun, on the UC website, it says that summer courses before the 10th go with the 10th, summer before the 11th go with the 10th grade, and summer before the 12th go with the 11th grade. But if you try this on the Cal State app (which follows the UC GPA rules except counts college course x2)—the college course is definitely included (for calculation purposes) in 11th (in terms of GPA cal). It is nice that you can actually see the Cal State GPA on the Cal State app.
If the college course is taken the summer prior to 11th, it is counted for 11th grade and for the UC GPA calculation and gets the Honors point if it is UC transferable and at least 3 units or more.
But I did a test in the Cal State application and moved the college course to the summer before 10th (and the student had 2 other year-long classes (4 semesters of AP)) and the Cal State GPA remained the same (as when I had the college course in the year before 11th). So it almost appears as if the college course is NOT limited to the max 4 in 10th but of course is limited to the max 8 overall. Here is what the UC website says:
- Classes taken during the summer after 9th-grade count as 10th grade; classes in summer after 10th grade count as 10th grade; classes in the summer after 11th grade count as 11th grade.
- One college course = one grade = one honors point.
So curious why you said that the college course taken after 10th was counted as 11th. I think my theory is correct. Doesn’t matter when taken if in between summer after 9th to summer after 11th.
My son has taken 17 community college courses (UC transferable) from 8th grade to 12th grade. Five of the 17 were taken before summer of 9th grade. Are these 5 grades used in UC GPA calculation? I understand that UC GPA is calculated based on the grades from summer of 9th grade and summer of 11th grade for HS grades. I am not sure if this rule applies to CC courses.
Only CC class grades (UC Transferable) taken the summer after 9th through the summer prior to 12th will be calculated into the UC GPA’s which is the same for HS a-g course grades.
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