<p>What if almost all I have are grades? I do have some volunteering and extracurriculars, but not substantially. Will good grades, scores, the essay, and maybe an engineering internship over the summer do?</p>
<p>What’s your experience if you’ve been in my boat?</p>
<p>I believe berkeley places weightage for these things in the given order:</p>
<p>1) grades: should be mostly A’s, though a few B’s won’t cripple your application. I had mostly A’s and so got a 4.6 something weighted GPA with 3.96 unweighted. since you seem to be confident with your grades, be sure to discuss in your essay about specific classes you’ve truly enjoyed (and exceled in).</p>
<p>2) essays: your essays should depict you as a unique student since you’ll be competing with many who have committed to 1000+ community service hours, have 5.0 GPA’s, or have entered science/math competitions left and right. talk about hobbies of yours or why you chose engineering. also, if you have encountered hardship during your four years in high school, BE SURE TO ADRESS IT since the UC’s always seem to welcome students who have successfully dealt with problems.</p>
<p>3) as for EC’s, if you don’t have too many science/math/engineering/technology activities on your list, then I’d recommend you do that engineering internship over the summer. also, though it may be too late, form your own club and relate it to engineering. what I did in my junior year was to head a club that fixed and gave out old computers to poor students. not only was I involved in engineering, but also accumulated community service hours. on top of that, I interned at a company over the summer and helped make an electronic subsystem. of course, I’ve participated in community service clubs and all, but I’m certain they weren’t the sole cause for my acceptance.</p>
<p>4) testing: now that berkeley isn’t considering SATII scores (though the college of engineering may require atleast math 2c), bad SATII test scores shouldn’t detract from your resume. since you are applying to engineering, be sure to score well in math and science AP tests, SATI (the math portion should be a 700+), and IB scores if your taking them (I don’t really know much about these). in my case, I got a relatively low score of 2050 on my SAT with 780 in math, but I was still admitted. my AP scores were mostly 4’s.</p>
<p>anyways, good luck for the coming year.</p>