Chance Me - Berkeley EECS with mid ECs [CA resident, 4.0 GPA, 4.0 college GPA including CS and advanced math, 1600 SAT, NMSF]

Chance Me / Match Me
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WARNING Rant at Bottom**

Demographics

  • US domestic citizen
  • State/Location of residency: California
  • Type of high school (or current college for transfers): Public
  • Other special factors: First-generation immigrant

Cost Constraints / Budget
Any price would be worth it in my eyes:(

Intended Major(s)
EECS (potentially Mathematics or Nuclear Engineering)

GPA, Rank, and Test Scores

  • Unweighted HS GPA: 4.0
  • Weighted HS GPA: 4.77/5
  • College GPA: 4.0 (at a local community college I’ve earned Associates in Math and CS from)
  • Class Rank: 3/766
  • ACT/SAT Scores: 1600 SAT

Im gonna mention that the reason my weighted GPA isn’t higher is because my school doesn’t accept CCC classes for weighted credit, which dragged down my overall GPA drastically (I’ve been salty about it for years and am commonly made fun of because of it in my circle of friends).

List your HS coursework
I’ve probably forgotten a few but this should be most of my classes:

  • English: English 9, AP Lang, AP Seminar, AP Lit
  • Math: Algebra 2, AP Stats, AP Calc AB, BC, and Calc D (Equivalent of Calc 3 and Differential Equations)
  • Science: Biotech, AP Physics 1, 2, E&M, AP Chem, AP Bio
  • History and social studies: AP World, AP Euro, APUSH, APHG, AP Psych
  • Language other than English: 1 semester of Span 1 (smh)
  • Visual or performing arts: 1 year of orchestra bass as a class + EC activity for 5 years
  • Other academic courses: AP CSP, AP CSA, AP Research

5s on all except AP Lang (assuming all 5s on the APs I took this year)

College Coursework (Transfer Applicants)

  • General education course work: Span 101 and 102, Art 100, Precalc, Public Speaking/Communication, Engl 103 Creative Thinking & Writing
  • Major preparation course work: Linear Algebra, all of the CSIS courses my community college offers (about 5 in total)

Awards
National Merit Scholar
AP Scholar with Distinction
idrk what else to put in this section (I haven’t looked into it that much)

Extracurriculars
(Include leadership, summer activities, competitions, volunteering, and work experience)

School:

  • President/Co-founder of a unique Electrical Engineering/Programming Club at my high school for 3 years (hands-on activities and in-club build competitions)
  • 1.5 years Vice President of Aerospace Club
  • 1 year Officer in Physics and Math clubs
  • 3 years of CyberPatriot - 2 years plat tier and 1 year gold Tier; state SemiFinals all 3 times - vice president senior year
  • 4 years of Science Olympiad (medaled 2 times, made state twice; ik its bad leave me alooone)

Outside of School:
-FTC team founder and lead programmer in my area
-currently interning at a local industrial engineering firm, unpaid
-technically lead a small, separate EE organization mostly compromised on friends outside of school that meets once a month
-Two major passion projects I worked on including an app that helps raise awareness for teenage depression and preventative measures that can be taken against it and an extremely high-powered coilgun (design uses 3D printed parts, micro-controllers, and lots of PCB circuits and electrical components)

Volunteering:

-300 hours of volunteering at a Regenerative Agriculture venture started up by my friend and his dad
-Tutoring at a public library for free every week for 4 hours

Competitions:
-Cyberpatriot (mentioned above)
-Sci Oly (mentioned above)
-AMC: Nationals in 8th grade but not much since then (likely irrelevant for college app)
-USACO Silver

I also had a part-time job junior-senior summer and senior year that helped to pay for the expenses of my FTC and EE school club

Essays/LORs/Other

Assume strong essays and very strong letters of rec from internship director and project manager for my sustainable agriculture club + literally any of my STEM AP teachers

Schools

  • Assured (100% chance of admission and affordability): Any 2 year CCC
  • Extremely Likely/Likely: UCR, UCM + any CSU
  • Toss-up: UCI, UCSD, UCD
  • Lower Probability: UCLA, Georgia Tech?
  • Low Probability: Stanford REA, UCB
  • Not Getting In: MIT, Yale, Brown

Please, guys, try to cut me some slack; this is my first post on this website. In case you couldn’t already tell, not exactly anywhere near good for awards and formal leadership. However, I do truly consider myself passionate about EE and its applications in the real world, and have tried my best to center my classes (for the most part) and extracurriculars around it.

I low-key feel like I have reached a mental state in which I would be more than willing to go to a 2 year CCC because my willpower is completely gone and I’m surrounded by veritable Young Sheldons at the public school I attend (I feel like I have no chance at even like UCR sometimes, let alone Berkeley or UCLA).

Lemme know what you think my chances are in the comments

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Congratulations on your achievements.

Calculate your UC GPAs here:

https://rogerhub.com/gpa-calculator-uc/

@gumbymom will have some UC acceptance data to share with you.

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So are you saying you could pay the net price for all of the schools on your list? Please do the net price calculators on those websites and make sure you can actually pay the net costs at these schools.

Why is this? Many of the schools on your list require two years at least, and recommend 3 or 4.

I agree with your list above in terms of chances of acceptance except I’d move GA Tech and UCLA to the lower probability group. I will defer to @AustenNut who can give you their opinion.

You have a fine high school record…no need to complain about it…at all. So please don’t.

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I’ll leave the chancing to others, but please do not list “National Merit Scholar” as an award. This level is not awarded until next spring. List “National Merit Semifinalist” if you are one.

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Congratulations on all of your achievements in high school! You’ve built a strong academic record.

Do you have fluency in a foreign language that you did not enroll in in high school? If you can pass something like a seal of biliteracy in that language, that would be really helpful to counter the one semester of a foreign language.

Private schools generally have more flexibility in admissions with respect to recommended/required classes. Fortunately, it looks as though Georgia Tech will accept your CS credits as a foreign language requirement, as they require two units (source):

Required High School Credits

The University System of Georgia (USG) requires minimum academic courses of all first-time students, though most applicants exceed these in at least one area. USG requirements include:

  • English - 4 Units
  • Math - 4 Units
  • Science - 4 Units
  • Social Science - 3 Units
  • Foreign Language or American Sign Language or Computer Science - 2 Units

What was your score on AP Lang?

@hebegebe may have additional thoughts to share about your application to the schools on your list.

In terms of my own guesses as to your chances, I will yield to @Gumbymom with respect to your chances at California publics. As far as the rest of your list, I would categorize them as low probability schools (less than 20%), though I might be a bit daring (for me) and classify Georgia Tech as lower probability (20-39%).

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Congratulations on a competitive academic and overall very qualified profile.

Here are the CS/EECS admit rates and GPA admit range for all the UC’s and some of the Cal states. The GPA range is the 25th-75th percentile and for UCLA and UC Berkeley I have included the Weighted uncapped GPA range also since they tend to focus on this GPA over the Capped weighted.

You can compare where you stand in terms of GPA after you calculate your 3 UC GPA’s: Unweighted, Capped weighted and Weighted uncapped using the Rogerhub calculator.

Campus CS
UC Berkeley 1.9% CS - 7.6% EECS/ UC Capped weighted GPA 4.20-4.30 Weighted Uncapped 4.31-4.65
UC Davis 19% Selective Major/ UC Capped weighted GPA 4.19-4.30
UC Irvine 16.8% Impacted Major/ UC Capped weighted GPA 4.12-4.29
UCLA 3.1% Impacted Major/ Capped weighted GPA 4.25-4.32 Weighted Uncapped 4.62-4.87
UC Merced 90%/ UC Capped weighted GPA 3.59-4.15
UC Riverside 32% Impacted major/ UC Capped weighted GPA 4.03-4.28
UC San Diego 12% Selective Major /UC Capped weighted GPA 4.19-4.31
UC Santa Barbara 10% Impacted Major/ UC Capped weighted GPA 4.23-4.31
UC Santa Cruz 60% Impacted Major/UC Capped weighted GPA 3.96-4.26
Cal Poly SLO 9% Impacted Major / SLO GPA for Engineering College 4.14-4.25
Cal State Long Beach 31% Impacted Major/ CSU GPA Avg. 4.07 for CS
San Diego State 28% Impacted Major/ CSU GPA SDSU Campus Avg. 4.04
San Jose State 31% Impacted Major/ A CSU of 4.3 needed to meet 2024 Impaction threshold without other factor points.

For the CSU’s, you need to calculate out your CSU capped weighted GPA which will be different then your UC capped weighted since the CSU’s count your CC/DE course grades twice in the calculation with only 1 Honors point bump while the UC’s count the grades once with a 1 Honors point bump.

One more thing to consider is that many CSU’s will use your CSU GPA from HS courses only to determine admission decisions so you might also want to calculate your CSU GPA without the college courses. SJSU specifically states that will only consider College courses if they are used to meet the CSU minimum eligibility requirements.

If applying to Cal Poly SLO, they use 9-11th grades with the 8 semester Honors point cap so you have to recalculate your CSU GPA using 9th grades also.

UC’s and CSU’s are test blind so your SAT will only be used for course placement and not for admissions or scholarship consideration.

Best of luck and you will have opitons other than community college.

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Great student- but this doesn’t really matter.

What matters is what your family can afford.

Have that discussion with your folks.

PS - the UCs won’t see your 1600. They are test blind.

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Your weighted GPA is 4.77 and your class rank is 3. Seriously? I hope you are being facetious here. If not, please don’t include any such statements on any applications and please don’t let your saltiness come through. It’s a bad look.

I think the college coursework in Spanish covers it?

See college coursework.

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Was your college coursework used to satisfy high school graduation requirements?

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OP has taken second semester college Spanish, which in California is generally seen as equivalent to third year high school Spanish.

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OP you have a good chance for UCM and UCSC. And decent chance for UCR, SDSU, SJSU, CSULB. Rest of your list are mostly reach, since their acceptance rate are less than 20% for CS and UCs are test blind.

I would add more OOS besides GTech such as Purdue, UIUC, Ohio State and UMD because of your 1600 SAT score. Some of them offer merit and COA can be similar to UC in state. Finally, don’t count on CCC transfer to higher rank UCs for CS major. Only UCM and UCR accept TAG for CS major. Good Luck.

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UC Riverside also still accepts TAG for CS majors.

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Thank you. I corrected my post.

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I didn’t understand what you meant here @worriedmomucb. Could you explain?

I am confused is because that was roughly the GPA and class rank of the third highest GPA student in one of my children’s graduating class. It would have been the val in my other child’s class.

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Congrats OP on a very strong profile.

I won’t chance you regarding the UCs because other posters have much better visibility into these. I do agree that Stanford, MIT and Brown are high reaches. Yale is a slightly lower reach because they want to recruit talented STEM students (they are the only HYPSM to give likely letters to strong STEM students).

I think applying to Georgia Tech makes a great deal of sense, but pay attention to the “Why Georgia Tech” essay. Michigan also makes a great deal of sense if it’s affordable. And have you considered colleges like USC, RPI, or Rochester where you are likely to get merit aid?

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You need a better circle of friends but as another poster noted this reads rather facetious.

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If you are struggling with your mental health please seek help from a professional. Reach out to your family. You are a strong academic with a bright future.

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Op was making excuses for his “low” GPA (saying it would have/should have been higher but his CC classes weren’t counted as weighted). I think it would be a very bad look for someone with a 4.77 to make such excuses on his applications - his GPA is obviously excellent, and the fact that he is ranked 3rd means it is one of the very top in his class. To complain about it not being higher would, I believe, not go over well with many AOs. I am hoping, however, that the OP was being a bit tongue in cheek and not seriously complaining about a GPA of “only” 4.77

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But also, high school weighted GPA is typically not very relevant outside the high school, since UCs recalculate GPA, and many other colleges either recalculate GPA or look at high school record holistically.

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Yes, and especially relevant in the case of the weighted and capped GPA for the UCs.