why did UCLA Alumni Scholarship committee decided to invite more students this year? don’t they only pick 120 students? UCLA is the only school I’ve heard so far. So your information about Alumni committee inviting more students this year is crushing my only hope…
@miiso20 The Alumni scholarship has always been open for anyone to apply. My assumption is that they felt that limiting the number of invitations meant that disadvantaged students weren’t hearing about the scholarship and therefore weren’t applying. The UCs are working hard to ensure that they don’t just admit students from the wealthier areas of CA who are well informed about the process. Similarly the Alumni association doesn’t want to just be giving the scholarships to wealthier students who knew that they could apply.
Of course the Alumni association will also have to ensure they have enough readers for the extra applications they will likely receive. IIRC they received about 3000 applications in past years and shortlisted ~500 for interview. I imagine they could receive 5000 applications this year if more people are aware of the opportunity (though more applicants may then be filtered out by failing to be admitted, since the reading doesn’t take place until after UCLA makes admission decisions).
@miiso20 The majority of people admitted to the school will not get any special invite of any kind. It’s nothing to overthink too much.
Thanks, capcase. Does anyone know of a student who received the Alumni Scholarship invitiation to apply but then got denied from UCLA?
What’s hard is my daughter received the invite for the Alumni Scholarship, so now she’s super excited about going there, but I’m worried now if she doesn’t get admitted she’s going to be completely crushed. We are trying to decide if she should write the extra essays or not.
What’s a few more essays? Besides, writing’s a good way to kill the wait time…!
@CollegeMomCL2024 Doesn’t hurt to try but its so selective that I thought it was a waste. I applied but didnt get it.
@10s4life Does it definitely not affect your chance of admission if you don’t apply for the Alumni Scholarship after being invited? Seems like they must have invited at least 3,000-4,000 students to apply for 150-200 spots. That would be like a 5% acceptance rate for the scholarship.
The Alumni scholarship application is submitted to the Alumni Association not UCLA itself. UCLA admissions don’t see it or even know if you applied.
In past years it seems like there were around 5000 invites and maybe 3000 applications. It’s entirely possible that 10000 or more invitations to apply were sent out this year. If 5000 apply then around 600 will be interviewed for 150 scholarships (maybe 200 will be offered given some won’t attend).
@Sisternight Yeah it doesn’t affect your acceptance
@Gumbymom
Is it possible to get the Alumni scholarship, and not get the admission! Looks like a chicken and egg problem to me.
So a person with low stats but very stellar ECs can win the scholarship, but then get rejected for admission? Or do the two offices communicate(Alumni Scholarship and Admissions)
@Andy280 I’m not Gumbymom but a post recently on the main thread about UCLA 2024 applicants in reply to someone else’s question addresses your question. See post #345 on this thread: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-california-los-angeles/2146624-ucla-class-of-2024-discussion.html#latest
@CAtransplant: Thank you for posting the link. I was going to refer the OP to that discussion.
Reposting here:
The Alumni Association is independent of UCLA admissions. There is only a one way flow of information:
- UCLA admissions give the Alumni Association a list of some subset of applicants for the invitation email. Then the invitation is sent out and people apply for the Alumni scholarship.
- After UCLA admissions have announced their admission decisions, they give the Alumni Association a list of admitted students so they can screen out any scholarship applications from those who weren’t admitted before starting to read them.
The only time information goes the other way is when the Alumni Association tell financial aid about the awarded scholarships.
So there is no impact on the admission decision from any Alumni scholarship application. The fact that there may be correlation (depending on how selective UCLA admissions were in compiling the original list for the invitation email) is in no way causation.
My GPA is 3.45, SAT 1400, but ECs are very stellar. That I was selected for the the email, is in itself a big achievement!!
@Gumbymom sure, no problem.
@Andy280 Congrats!
Received this email twice in the past week. Hoping this a good sign!
Of those that were accepted and also applied for the scholarship, have any of you heard from the committee one way or the other?
I have not heard anything.