Demographics**
- US domestic and US citizen
- living in CA (East Bay)
*cost budget max 70k per year
**Intended Major(s) Pure Chemistry or pharmaceutical chemistry
**GPA weighted is between 4 and 4.1. SAT Test Score is 1420
List your HS coursework AP PSYCH, AP CALC AB, AP LANG, AP 2D Art, AP CHEM, Hon chem, AP WORLD HISTORY, chamber orchestra- 10th and 11th courses
- English: AP lang
- Math: (including highest level course(s) completed) AP CALC AB
- Science: (including which ones, such as biology, chemistry, physics). AP CHEM
- History and social studies: AP WORLD
- Language other than English: (including highest level completed) SPANISH 4
- Visual or performing arts: AP 2D art, CHAMBER ORCHESTRA
- Other academic courses:
Awards ALL STATE HONOR ORCHESTRA
Extracurriculars
*(Include leadership, summer activities, competitions, volunteering, and work experience).
RESEARCH LAB WORK EXPERIENCE IN A LOCAL LAB AND UPITT CANCER RESEARCH CENTER
100+ hours a volunteer time in a Senior center helping seniors with their daily activities and game and dance
President of a club that works with autistic kids
Treasurer of the high school debate club
Leadership team in school music department
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Assured (100% chance of admission and affordability): UC Riverside, SJSU
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Extremely Likely: UC Santa cruz, SLO CAL POLY
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Likely: UT Dallas, UIUC, UC Davis, UWash Seattle
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Toss-up: not sure
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Lower Probability: UC Irvine
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Low Probability: UCLA, UCSB, UCD, UCB
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Assured (100% chance of admission and affordability):
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Extremely Likely:
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Likely:
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Toss-up:
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Lower Probability:
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Low Probability:
Calculate your 3 UC GPAs here:
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Welcome to College Confidential. You appear to be a competitive applicant however please note that the UC’s are test blind and do not consider your SAT scores for admissions or scholarship but only for course placement.
Once you repost with your 3 UC GPA’s, I would be willing to give you some admit data and feedback on your list.
SLO uses 9-11th a-g course grades for their GPA calculation with an 8 semester cap on weighted classes so you need to also recalculate your GPA based on SLO standards. You can use the CSU GPA calculator and add in the 9-11th grades.
You have UCD (Davis listed twice as a Likely- which it is not a and a Low Probability). UCD is probably a toss-up. Cal Poly SLO is not Extremely Likely either.
Can you list your Senior year classes and your other a-g courses not just your AP classes?
Thank you.
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The original poster is the parent and responses should reflect that
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Curious about a few things:
- why do you list riverside and SJSU as assured? You’re east bay so not local for either (or are you in the SJSU local admission area?) Similarly, I don’t think UCSC would be “extremely likely”. Maybe likely. Stats are fine but I know people with similar stats who’ve been rejected or waitlisted there. Cal Poly SLO would also be somewhere lower than “extremely likely”. But gumbymom will provide you with the stats for the CA publics on your list.
Same for UW Seattle (in case it’s of interest and you’d consider elsewhere in WA state, I also know someone with similar GPA who got rejected from UW but got a great merit package to Gonzaga.)
- I’d move UIUC more into toss-up category. Out of state admit rate for UIUC is 36%. Your stats seem to fall solidly into the range for arts and sciences but are not a blowout so not sure your chances would necessarily be much of an improvement over that average admit rate (middle 50 is 3.68-4.0 unweighted, not entirely clear what your unweighted is but assume in that range with a weighted 4; and 1390-1520 SAT).
Are there any plans to retake SAT?
You may need more likelies once you reassess your list, so possibly one or two more less competitive Cal states - Cal Poly Pomona for example should be an admit for chemistry with that GPA.
SJSU’s local admission area for frosh is high schools in Santa Clara County, according to Impaction | Admissions . Local admission is worth 200 points, equivalent to 0.25 GPA. In the admission cycle for fall 2025 frosh, chemistry was one of the least selective majors at SJSU, with a 2000 point threshold, equivalent to 2.50 GPA (SJSU admission points = GPA * 800 + bonus for local area etc.). Although the threshold can change competitively each year (so admission is not 100% assured), it seems very unlikely that it will be a lot higher next cycle. But since the OP has not listed the GPA as calculated by the CSU method, it is not certain how much higher the student’s GPA is compared to the recent 2.50 threshold.
CPP admission points = GPA * 1000 + 450 + bonus points. CPP Freshmen Student Profile: Multifactor Admission lists the threshold for chemistry for fall 2025 frosh at 3060, which is equivalent to a 2.61 GPA. This may change from year to year based on how competitive the applicants for the major are.
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Ok, so two very likely Cal State admits.
That is assuming an actually high GPA as recalculated for CSU, which the OP has not given.
Of course, the assessment would be different if the student wanted a popular major like computer science instead of a less popular major like chemistry. Since CSUs admit by major, making assessments of admission difficulty without considering the major can result in large misses.
Surely a GPA around weighted 4.0 is not going to fall below 2.5-2.6 CSU GPA?
And yes, the same CSU can be a both a reach and a highly likely for a given person depending on the major.
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Some high schools have very heavy weighting, so you can never be sure unless the weighting system is specified.
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Overall, your list of schools seems to cover all categories: Safety, Target and Reach.
Since you plan to apply all UCs except UCM, no point to define which UC is likely, which one is not. Most CA parents use this strategy, paying $80 rather than sorry!
SJSU should be a safety, but not sure about UCR. CPPSLO should be treated as mid-tier UC for admission purpose. Your kid may want to add couple more safety, so they may have more choices on May 1st.
I like your OOS picks. If you want to save money, you may want to consider Ohio State and Oregon State. They both offer good merit for S24.
Finally, S24 applied to most of the schools on your list and here is the result:
ELC, 4.0 UWGPA, 4.31 UC CAP WGPA and 1460 SAT, Aerospace Engineering major
UCs on your list: Rejected by all of them except UCR and waitlisted at UCD (later came off)
uDub: Accepted with $4.5 merit/year
CPPSLO: Rejected
Good Luck
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Thank you for the response!
Using the UC GPA calculator, Weighted UC GPA is 4.18, Unweighted is 3.36 and Weighted and capped is 4.09.
Using CSU GPA calculator, GPA is 3.56
Complete course list:
10th grade - AP World History, Regular English, Honors Chamber orchestra, Honors chem, Regular Pre-calc, Spanish and Sports med elective
11th grade - AP Chem, AP Eng Lang, AP Psych, AP studio Art, Honors Chamber orchestra, AP Calc AB (outside of school), Regular Statistics (At school), Regular History
12th grade - Current course request but most likely be granted - AP Gov, AP macroeconomics, Deconstructing Race (English), Honors Physics, AP Calc BC (at school), Honors Chamber orchestra
Hope this info helps!
Thank you for the information but need some clarification. The UC Unweighted is 3.36 or that is 9-11th grades unweighted? The CSU GPA is the SLO GPA for 9-11th grades?
- Extremely Likely: UC Santa cruz, SLO CAL POLY
- Likely: UT Dallas, UIUC, UC Davis, UWash Seattle
I can’t comment on the out of state schools, but as a fellow Bay Area resident who applied this cycle and had lots of friends apply to UCs, I’d be more cautious about your expectations for Davis and SLO. Your kid sounds very accomplished, but Davis and SLO are very competitive, especially for a STEM major. I have a friend who got into Irvine, but was waitlisted at SLO and rejected from Davis. Admissions can be super hit or miss.
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Agreed with @squidink on the hard-to-predict nature of Cal Poly. Using these admission projections and assuming they admit 3x their desired target number (as their yield across the whole school is around 33%), you can see that of the 840 expected chemistry applicants (1st number column), to get their target number of 47 chemistry majors (3rd number column), they’d probably admit around 141 students (47 * 3). That gives an admit rate for chemistry of ~16.8%, which is significantly lower than Cal Poly’s overall admit rate. It’s up to you how you want to parse that, but for our kids, we placed schools in the <20% range as “reach” schools, regardless of GPA / other high stats.
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2024 Chemistry admit rates for the UC’s and some of the CSU’s:
| Campus |
Chemistry |
| UC Berkeley |
Physical Sciences 15%/ UC Capped weighted GPA 4.17-4.30 Weighted uncapped 4.31-4.65 Unweighted 3.89-4.00 |
| UC Davis |
37% / UC Capped weighted 4.00-4.26 Unweighted 3.80-4.00 |
| UC Irvine |
40% /UC Capped weighted GPA 4.07-4.27 Unweighted 3.83-4.00 |
| UCLA |
11% College of L&S does not admit by major/ UC Capped weighted GPA 4.23-4.32 Weighted uncapped 4.50-4.77 Unweighted 3.95-4.00 |
| UC Merced |
89%/ UC Capped weighted GPA 3.59-4.13 |
| UC Riverside |
91%/ UC Capped weighted GPA 3.75-4.18 |
| UC San Diego |
Estimated 32%/ UC Capped weighted GPA 4.13-4.30 Unweighted 3.84-4.00 |
| UC Santa Barbara |
32% College of L&S does not admit by major/ UC Capped weighted GPA 4.15-4.30 Avg. Unweighted 3.90 |
| UC Santa Cruz |
65%/ UC Capped weighted GPA 3.90-4.25 |
| Cal Poly SLO |
Projected 17%/ SLO GPA 4.12-4.25 |
| SDSU |
31%/ SDSU Campus Avg CSU GPA 4.06 |
| Cal Poly Pomona |
3060 CPP index requires a 2.6 CSU GPA without other factor points |
| SJSU |
2.5 CSU GPA required to meet Impaction Threshold |
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Yes, that is correct. 3.36 is the unweighted GPA for UC.
CSU (SLO) GPA was calculated using 9th-11th grades.
I guess I was living in an Utopian world!
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If the UC UW GPA is 3.36 then mathematically the Capped weighted cannot be 4.09 using the 8 semester Honors point cap. At the most it would be around 3.8 so something is off in the calculation.
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Maybe I was using the GPA calculator tool incorrectly. I possibly added the wrong number to the number of weighted grades.