Demographics
- US citizen
- State/Location of residency: California
- Type of high school (or current college for transfers): Low Income Public HS
- Other special factors: N/A
**Intended Major(s): Political Science or Government
GPA, Rank, and Test Scores
- Unweighted HS GPA: 3.87
- Weighted HS GPA: 4.23
- Class Rank: 15/427
- SAT Scores: 1520
List your HS coursework
- English: Eng. 9 Adv, Eng. 10 H, AP Lang, AP Lit
- Math: Integ. Math 1-3, community college (cc) pre-calc and calculus
- Science: Bio, AP Chem, APES, AP Bio
- History and social studies: cc world history, APUSH, Econ H & AP Gov
- Language other than English: Spanish 1, Spanish 3 H
- Visual or performing arts: Band (3 years)
- Other academic courses: AP CSP
Awards
Presidential Volunteer Service Award - Gold
State Seal of Civic Engagement
AP Scholar with Distinction
Extracurriculars
-Created a district-wide civic engagement program that involved my local mayor, city council, assemblywoman, state senator, and congressman that centers around a pen-pal program between the local leaders and students in social studies classes; documented by newspapers from multiple surrounding cities
-1 of 30 HS students selected for my assembly districtâs Young Legislators program
-Interned for my local congressman for 4 months
-ASB President, in Leadership all 4 years of high school
-Volunteered for 1 year in a successful local assembly campaign, 2-3 hours a week
-Member of my churchâs Youth Council, where I was heavily involved in planning multi-city fundraisers and regional youth camps
-Varsity Tennis player (3 years including senior year), was a counselor for tennis camps run by a community college and for my city over the course of 2 summers
-Held regional event and fundraising positions in a community service club
-Marching Band, 1st Trombone, Brass Section Leader, Band Council VP
-co-host of my schoolâs weekly podcast
Essays/LORs/Other
I expect both of my letters of rec to be around 8.5/10âŠOne is from my AP Bio teacher who was also the advisor for the community service club I was involved inâŠMy second one is from my APUSH teacher who implemented my civic engagement project curriculum into his classes and was also my advisor for the school podcast. Both teachers know me pretty well and have written letters of rec for students who have gone on to Yale and Stanford
Schools Iâm Actually Going to Apply to
- Assured (100% chance of admission and affordability): BYU, CSU Sacramento
- Extremely Likely: UC Davis, UCSB
- Probably?: UCSD
- Low Probability: Stanford (RD because I need my senior semester 1 grades to raise my GPA up
)
Thank you all for responding! I want to go to UC Davis because of the opportunities in Sacramento and Iâm pretty sure Iâll get in, but please chance me for Stanford, Princeton, Georgetown for sillies !!!
Or if you have any other colleges that you think I could do well at feel free to give those suggestions here to
Could you list your three UC GPAs? You can calculate them here: GPA Calculator for the University of California â RogerHub
Yes!
UC Weighted and Capped GPA: 3.97
UC Weighted GPA: 4.18
UC Unweighted GPA: 3.76
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Unfortunately, your excellent SAT score and strong letters of rec wonât help for the UCs and, given your unweighted UC GPA, I am not sure you can classify UCD and UCSB as extremely likely. Maybe toss ups. You definitely have a shot, but no guarantees there. Coming from a low income school may give you a boost, though.
Is BYU Brigham Young? Obviously you need not disclose your religious beliefs here, but make sure your are comfortable with a strongly Mormon-aligned educational environment.
CSU Sac is probably a sure thing - if it came to that, would you be happy there? If so, then youâre all set. If you have a true safety that youâre happy with, then the rest is icing on the cake. Shoot your shot.
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For the UCs, this tool might be interesting to check out. The GPAs listed here are weighted capped UC GPA. Freshman admission by discipline | University of California
Keep in mind that UC admission is holistic! So in practice it can be more unpredictable than what you might expect from these numbers. However, these numbers can help to inform how you classify the UCs on your list. Iâd guess UC Davis would be more of a toss up, and UCSB and UCSD would be reaches.
It sounds like you might be interested in colleges near state capitals, in general?
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So there are a lot of great Poli Sci/Government programs that might be both a good academic and non-academic fit for you, but the obvious question is going to be can you pay for them?
Of course if you and your family could comfortably afford to be full pay at places like Stanford, Princeton, and Georgetown, then great, that would make it easy to make recommendations. Iâd basically want to know a little more what you are really looking for in a four-year college experience, and we could go from there.
But if you are going to need aid at places like that, then it would help to know what your budget actually looks like, and maybe what, say, Princeton says if you run their Net Price Calculator.
Continuing on the decision tree, if Princetonâs NPC looked good, you could keep running the NPCs at any other college of interest. If it did not look good, your alternatives would include looking at colleges where full pay was on budget, or it might be with reasonably attainable merit. And the people here could help identify colleges like that as well.
But basically, we canât really get started on any of that until you explain more about your budget.
I would say that you never know about the UC Schools. I would not say UCD or UCSD as being likely or targets. Itâs extremely difficult to say with UCs. Davis should be a target but SD is just unknown. Daughter has a 3.96 UW, 4.55 W, 4.18 UC gpa, was in the top 9% and was waitlisted from UCSD and never got off.
As other said, your UC Cap WGPA is below average for the UCs on your list. I wonât consider any of them likely. You may want to add more UCs such as UCR, UCSC and CSUs such as CPSLO, SDSU to your list as targets. This way, you will have more choice on May 1st. You would rather pay $80 now, then sorry later. Good Luck.
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@QueenTarzanofCanadia Iâm just going to ask you this again
It seemed to me that was a theme in your college list, above?
Possibly some people here would even be able to suggest some good schools for poli sci majors, located in state capitals, that would appreciate OPâs ECs, LORs, and SAT! (as well as OPâs infectiously cheerful attitude!)
Thank you all for your insightâŠI havenât really looked at how my UC GPA fits into all of the UCs, so this was really eye-opening and valuable! To answer some of your questions, I would definitely need aid to attend schools like Stanford or Princeton, but the UCs are probably close to the amount Iâm able to pay for. Mainly I was just asking about those schools for fun, but this has actually been a lot more insightful than I was expecting it to be 
Overall in a school I am looking for it to be in a quieter town (like not in a big city). Palo Alto and Davis are great examples of the size of town I am looking for (65,000), but a town the size of Modesto (150,000) would also be fine too! Also, schools in or close to a state capital are great because I really would like to get involved in internships and/or jobs during the semesters as soon as possible. Ideally I wouldnât have to wait until the summer to travel to opportunities.
You might look into Willamette in Salem OR, a pleasantly smaller size state capital. Itâs a small private university and has merit scholarships. Iâm sure others here will have more ideas though
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Davis is by itself, while Palo Alto is contiguous with various other cities that may seem to blend together. Note that most of the Stanford University campus is in unincorporated Santa Clara County, not the city of Palo Alto (though it is contiguous with the city of Palo Alto).
Some WUE region schools in or near state capital cities:
University of Alaska Southeast
Arizona State University
University of Hawaii - Manoa
University of Nevada - Reno
University of Utah
CSU Sacramento is in the state capital city, and is a non-impacted CSU where political science is not impacted, so it should be a sure thing with a weighted-capped GPA of 2.5 with a-g course work completed.
You might look into Michigan State. It is in East Lansing, a town of under 50,000, but adjacent to Lansing, the capital of Michigan, a city of a little over 110,000. I am mentioning it specifically because it has good OOS merit, and a really good Poli Sci program.
Union College is a very nice LAC in Schenectady, NY, a city of a little over 65,000. I am mentioning it because it is only about 20 miles from the NY state capital, Albany, and has merit aid.
Maybe off the mark -but what about a school like George Washington for a student interested in Polsci? That GPA might put them in shooting distance? It all comes down to budget -but if they are low income, they might get need based aid? Might be worth running the Net Price calculator at least? I mean you do have Georgetown on the wish list â GW might be a nice more realistic shot? (Again -assume NPC comes up happy).
If they would be willing to consider DC schools, I would definitely check out both GW and American.
Loyola Maryland would also be an interesting option.
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But note that AU does not like to be a âsafetyâ behind GWU and GU, and probably GWU does not like to be a âsafetyâ behind GU. AU in particular considers âlevel of applicantâs interestâ a âvery importantâ factor in admission.
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Good point -but if the OP did some research -they might actually find they like GW a lot. It does have a lot to offer for someone interested in PolSci. And then they could make it their mission to âexpress interestâ!
Correct, although kids in our feederish HS have succeeded in applying to more than one, as long as they do in fact demonstrate serious interest (like as in visit, go to college fair booths, and so on).