CHANCE ME for psychology major, international student applying to UIUC and UC Davis (3.75 GPA)

Demographics

  • International student (Indonesian)
    -Private school

Intended Major(s)

  • Primary Major: Psychology
  • Second choice : Communications

GPA, Rank, and Test Scores=

  • Unweighted HS GPA: 3.75 / 4.00
  • Weighted HS GPA: N/A
  • School does not rank
  • Duolingo english test 140/160

HS Coursework

  • English: English Language from grade 9-12
  • Math: Mathematics from grade 9-12
  • Science: General Science in Grade 9 and Physics, Chem, Bio in sem 1 sophomore year
  • History and Social Studies: General social studies in grade 9 and Geography, Sociology from grade 10-12
  • Language other than English: Bahasa Indonesia from grade 9-12
  • Visual or Performing Arts:
  • =Other Academic Courses :Business from grade 10-12

Awards

  • Exemplary Merit Award in Grade 10
  • Best in Music Subject Award in Grade 10
  • Won school’s speech competition
  • Gold Medal in English ICAS by UNSW
  • 2nd Place in National Psychology Competition
  • 3rd Place in International Essay Competition by Goi Peace Foundation, Japan

Extracurriculars

  • Student Council:
    • Grade Representative in Grade 10
    • Social Media Administrator in Grade 11
    • Election Committee in Grade 12 (Leadership Development and Training for uprising student council members)
  • Community Service:
    • Organized donation drives to local orphanage with Student Council in Grade 10 and 11
    • Taught underprivileged students basic computer skills in Grade 12 (1 hour 15 minutes per week)
  • Conferences:
    • Generation Global International Conference on Women’s Rights
    • BYLS National Conference on Recent Global Issues and Trends
  • Clubs and Interests:
    • Head of Content for the school’s SDG Club
    • Head of UN Day Event Organization with Student Council
    • School’s Singing Club in Grade 10 (ive been singing since elementary)
    • After Effects Video Editor for School’s Broadcast Club in Grade 11 (4 years of experience in ae video editing)
    • Instagram editing account
    • Horse riding/equestrian as a personal hobby

Essays/LORs/Other

  • Essays: quite solid??? i focused on personal identity and extracurriculars
  • Letters of Recommendation (LORs):Not required for UC Davis and UIUC

Schools

  • UC Davis
  • University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC)
    other schools im still deciding so idk my safety would probably be Rutgers and my Reach is NYU

What is your budget?

1 Like

Im applying for my government’s scholarship soo i dont have any budget rlly

Ok, if that scholarship will pay $80,000 a year for 4 years then you’ll be fine.

Have you converted your GPA to a 4.0 scale? If yes, please post your original scores/marks so experts like @MYOS1634 can assess your academic strength.
I’m also tagging @Gumbymom for UC Davis.

Best wishes.

1 Like

Woah ok sure i’ll work on that!! do u also have recommendations of other uc schools that i should try applying to? im also interested in applying to ucsd but idk

OH and i also forgot to mention that i took civics and islamic religion studies in grade 9

What’s your rough class rank compared to your neighborhood/city’s age cohort or where are you likely to rank nationally at the end of senior year?

Does the national scholarship cover any costs? Does it only cover study at specific universities - if so, which ones?

Why Rutgers?

2 Likes

Welcome to College Confidential.

Does your HS grading system follow the US system or did you convert your GPA?

Do you have AP/IB courses?

One of the UC requirements is a year of a Visual/Performing arts course but they understand that different countries have different HS curriculum’s.

The UC’s normally use 10-11th grades for their GPA calculation and give extra weighting to AP and IB courses taken during this time.

Can you calculate out your UC GPA’s if possible using this calculator? UC GPA calculator

Psychology can be studied at any of the UC’s so if you are interested in other campuses, definitely apply. What is your career goal with a Psychology major since you are most likely looking at attending Graduate school and those costs should also be considered in your decision especially since the UC’s offer no financial aid to International students.

Since you only list your UW GPA, it is difficult to determine where you stand since the majority of the UC’s only list their Capped weighted UC GPA.

During the UC counselor conference, UC Davis stated the UW UC GPA admit range was 3.8-4.00 so you are below this range but not by much so I would put UC Davis in the Toss up category.

UC Davis had a 51% admit rate for International students however a low yield rate and the UC’s have capped the International student enrollment so the admit rate does not tell the whole story. UC San Diego in comparison had a 22% admit rate for International students.

Edited: Social Science majors overall had a 38% admit rate.

Good luck.

3 Likes

So my government’s scholarship covers the tuition, dorm, and living costs!! so basically a full-ride? and they cover the costs for NYU, ucla, ucsd,ucd, university of pittsburgh, rutgers, harvard, stanford, uiuc, babson, william and mary, brown university, university of texas at austin, texas a&m, purdue, indiana university-bloomington, University of Massachusetts Amherst, university of maryland-college park, and university of nevada-las vegas.

Sadly, my country doesnt have a ranking system. I will try to ask my councelor if she has my ranking in my school’s batch? Anyway, Rutgers is actually my safety school because they have an HRM major so it would be a solid backup for getting into the hr field?

Which of these schools are best known in your home country (since you’ll very likely be returning home after graduation)?

2 Likes

Definitely the top 10-20 schools like nyu, stanford, etc. but in my country, most of the students who signed up for the government’s scholarship applied and were accepted to uc davis, uiuc, and uc berkeley

I did take visual arts but im pretty sure it’s not considered as a core subject in my school? do i still need to put it in the uc gpa calculator then?

Yes, the UC’s consider a Visual arts/Performing arts class a core subject.

These are the UC a-g course requirements: A-G courses

1 Like

My UC GPA is 3.64 but i didnt put in my history grades? i mean i do have some indonesian history in my general social science studies in grade 9 and i also had some indonesian history in my civics class. I also recounted my normal average gpa which is a 3.70. I also want to clarify that, in addition to my ‘main’ subjects, I took several other courses throughout high school. I studied Visual Art from Grade 9 to the first semester of Grade 10, and Music in the second semester of my sophomore year. I also took Javanese Language, Islamic Religion, IT, and Civics from Grades 9 to 12. While PE was part of my curriculum, it doesn’t factor into my UC GPA. I initially didn’t mention these courses as I thought only my main subjects were considered for university applications.

does anyone know my chances of getting into uiuc??? i really like their psych program so any feedback would be appreciated!

wait can geography be under history in calculating my uc gpa? bcs if it does count then my uc gpa is 3.69

For UIUC, your GPA is probably in range but international students are hard to chance, especially without a SAT/ACT score.

1 Like

Geography would a History/Social Science. Javanese Language would probably be a LOTE (Language other than English). IT could be a College prep elective (Category G) and Civics would be a History/Social Science.

Do your best to match your courses to the a-g courses I linked.

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