Chances at Cali schools as an out of state applicant

Chance Me / Match Me
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I am an out of state applicant applying this coming fall to mostly schools in California and I want to know what my chances are and what can help my application.

SCHOOLS I’M APPLYING TO (Ranked by top choice)

  1. UC Santa Barbara
  2. CalPoly Slo
  3. SDSU (Weber Honors College if possible)
  4. Loyola Marymount University
  5. UC Davis
  6. USC
  7. UC Santa Cruz
  8. UC Irvine
  9. Pepperdine

INTENDED POSSIBLE MAJORS / MINORS:

Majors: Political Science, Sociology, International Relations, Economics (I will apply to least impacted major at the specific school if majors are impacted)

Minors: Spanish, Global Studies, Economics, Public Health

STATS:

Unweighted HS GPA: 3.9 (I have straight A’s all four years).

UC Capped GPA: ~4.15

Weighted GPA: ~4.2

SAT: Test optional

AP Exams: only took AP English exam my junior year, got a 5

Classes / Course Rigor:

5 APs: AP English, AP Gov & Politics, AP Calculus, AP Statistics, AP Art

3 College Courses: Upper level Global Sociology, Intro to Ethics, Intro to Psychology

4 years of Math

3.5 years of Science (including bio, chem, microbiology)

4 years of Spanish (reached highest level)

4.5 years of English including global literature and women’s lit electives

6 years of social studies including economics and democracy electives

5 years of fine arts total as a personal passion

EXTRACURRICULARS:

  1. Director of Outreach and Engagement (leadership position) for a student run, statewide nonprofit that advocates for student voice in education policy decisions.
  2. Co-leader and co-founder of an international organization for women’s history education
  3. Part of a Harkness discussion program that I was chosen for at my school, now trained in facilitating community and peer discussions
  4. Volunteer on a local state senate campaign including social media outreach, canvassing, involvement with politics
  5. I have worked a part-time job involving customer service for over a year and a half around 15 hours a week

Please let me know your thoughts on my chances / what I should expect from admissions / how I can strengthen my application!!!

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What’s your budget?

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I’m very lucky to have family support for all these options, I will also apply to scholarships where eligible.

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Calculate your UC GPAs here: GPA Calculator for the University of California – RogerHub

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@Gumbymom can help with admissions data by major/school for the CA publics.

Note for cal poly slo and SDSU, the CSU application does not give you much scope to add information (no essays or letters of rec) - basically you’ll input your grades and courses and can give limited info about your ECs.

Pepperdine seems a bit of an odd one out in that list. Other than location in CA, what factors did you consider in choosing the schools? Are you applying to schools in other states as well?

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This is graded coursework? (Such as a graded course like AP art history?). It needs to be on your transcript.

Oh and FYI, locals don’t use the term Cali. It’s a dead giveaway that you’re OOS. Bay Area, SoCal, NorCal, are used. More common are use of the city names or places: LA, SF, Sac, OC, Silicon, etc.

With the exception of Loyola, USC and Pepperdine, the rest of your schools are public universities, funded by the taxpayers of California. Which means very, very, limited scholarships and expensive UCs.
Most scholarships are about $2000 to $3000 per year if they have any money available. That will just start to cover your health insurance fees.

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My mom put Pepperdine on the list, the only reasons I would consider it is because the campus is gorgeous and I would be interested in the Poli Sci major. I honestly don’t want to go to a school that small and wouldn’t enjoy the more closed off social life.

I’m looking for a bigger school with a collaborative rather than competitive feel, opportunities for closer connections with professors and other students, study abroad opportunities, accessible social life, opportunity for outdoor activities, and attention to student wellbeing and community.

I may apply to a few schools in the states my extended family live in for safeties, but California is my dream! Because I am basically only applying here, I want to make sure my application are as strong as possible.

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Yes, it is all graded coursework and is on my transcript! My main concern is whether it will be a disadvantage that I took so many art classes and don’t intend to study art in college. I did take a lot of other electives though, and had a full schedule every year.

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Got it.

As stated, not much extra you can do for cal poly and sdsu because of the limitations of the CSU application. For the UCs, take a lot of care in answering the PIQs, same for the essays for the others. For the common app schools, look up some hints about how best to present your ECs. You sound like a competitive applicant, but as you already know some of these are pretty competitive schools, though I would think you stand a pretty good chance at UCSC, LMU and probably SDSU and Davis, which have decent OOS admit rates. Definitely have a chance at the others, but their admit rates are trickier. Best of luck!

Btw Davis is a bit of a geographic outlier compared to the others, so you may want to consider that, though if you are interested in skiing its (relative) proximity to Tahoe may offset the distance from the coast compared to the others.

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Davis is an extremely collaborative, green campus.

My daughter loved it there! The small town is quaint. There are over 40,000 bikes on campus. Your professors also bike to class because it is a huge campus and has lots of things to do. Berkeley kids come over to Davis to visit.

By car, it’s 20-30 minutes to the State Capitol if you’re interested in Poli Sci internships.

Tuition and fees and all costs put together will run your parents about about $88K a year.

Out of state students are called “cash cows” because you bring in the cash to our state coffers.

Make sure that you and your parents are aware that this is a very expensive state everything.

Forgot to add two things; firstly, Davis has free tutoring in all of the dorms. You don’t even have to attend to your professor’s lecture tutoring session because students will find the exceptional grad students tutors who know how to explain the material, in your lectures, and have met and meet frequently with each of the professors in that subject.

Secondly, Pepperdine is an extremely religious school. It’s gorgeous but that is only a part of being able to fit the school. It does come with some limitations. I forget how often you have to attend chapel, but I know you have to attend.

Because Pepperdine is in an area where development is restricted by environmental needs, there are things to do but, it’s a little secluded away from the main metropolitan areas. You’ve already mentioned that you don’t want to really see yourself at a small school but you need to be aware of that.

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Yes, I’ve thought a lot about geographical locations, Davis is a bit of a different option but definitely good to have a little variety.

Thank you!!

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Good to hear about Davis! I have a family friend going to Davis this year and they are very excited! Did your daughter find that it felt a little closed off socially at all because it’s a smaller town?

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As @aunt_bea said, students do tend to love Davis. It’s not too far from the bay area (where I live, and my neighbor is actually a prof there) but I think it’s pretty hard to get places without a car (or without friends with cars). Traffic on the freeway (including to Tahoe on a Friday evening in ski season) can be an issue though.

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These are majors for which some form of graduate school is relatively common. Do you have plans with regard to what you might do after getting a bachelor’s degree in one of these areas? Is law school for example a possibility?

Does your family support include the cost of whatever graduate program you might have in mind? Can you do this without debt?

What universities are you applying to that you would consider to be a safety?

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If you have 40,000 bikes on campus, then you have at least 40,000 people on campus.

The campus is the social center. NAPA wineries build and supplement donations to fund new buildings.

Yes there are cows on campus.

And, the beer making and wine making courses have waiting lists.

My daughter tried to get into the tractor-driving classes but since she wasn’t an agricultural major, she and her friends didn’t have priority. There’s a huge waiting list for those classes too.

The thing about Davis is that the professors want to give A’s to all of their students so they encourage collaboration in all of their courses. They don’t want you to fail and they teach fun courses, (English courses to interpret origin of fairy tales) but there are difficult courses: at least 1000 of my daughter’s classmates were all going to try to enter medical school. She did get in because they have phenomenal clubs and support clinics.

The professors there really want you to learn and to learn in collaboration because that’s how your future employers will know how you network in Silicon Valley, Redondo Beach, La Jolla, San Francisco, Lake Tahoe, Yosemite, etc.

The train goes directly to the center of town and the kids take it to get to Berkeley and the Bay Area. I can’t remember if they had taken it into Sacramento, but I’ll have to ask my daughter. She participated in a lot of activities while there. We live in San Diego so about 15 minutes from the coast so she wanted to experience the mountain and snow regions of California.

Davis is in the middle of farmland and the students really like that because they are experiencing different environments but can get to anything from there. When they have to drive somewhere, the professors encourage carpooling for the kids who don’t have cars. The professors know who drives and who doesn’t and they’ll put little field trips together and for the shy students, they pair them up.

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I don’t have one career I’m aiming towards, but these majors align with what I care about most and studying one of these topics will lead me to a more specific path. I’ve mostly considered some sort of policy work with nonprofits or NGOs. I don’t intend to go to law school currently, but grad school is certainly a possibility and I should have a conversation with my parents about it because I guess it’s something we hadn’t thought ahead to yet.

Given the fact that I’m an OOS applicant and don’t have like 10 APs or a crazy SAT score, none of the schools are truly safeties but I feel good about my chances at UCSC and LMU in comparison to the other schools based on the research I’ve done.

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All the California publics are test blind, so for most of your list that won’t matter.

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Yes which is great for me, my lower # of APs compared to other applicants is my main concern bc I’ve read that course rigor is the top factor for a lot of these schools. I definitely want to have a reasonable and not super risky list of schools

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The town has phenomenal restaurants with great wine lists, but your friend will find out about that when she turns 21. She will be biking into town. There are bike parking spots everywhere.

So your friend will bike everywhere;

to In-N-Out Burger
Dutch Brothers Coffee, Trader Joe’s, CVS, Lululemon, True Value hardware (Very Cool shop) Target stores, Safeway grocery stores, etc.

Edit: You can’t bike to the Costco in Woodland, which is right off of the 5 freeway, going north from the campus (about 15 minutes by car), but there’s almost always someone in the residence halls and dorms who asks if anyone needs anything from Costco or, if you want to carpool with them.

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Religion is a significant influence on campus life at Pepperdine. Is that good or bad for you?

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