Pleased chance me for UCLA + other UCs [CA resident, 3.83/4.17/4.33 UC GPA, low income single parent, computer science and engineering]

Chance Me / Match Me
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Demographics:
Ethnicity: Latino

Gender: Male

Location: Northern California (edited)

School Type: Public (not competitive at all)

Financial situation: Low-income; living with a single mother.

Intended Major: Computer Science and Engineering

Academics:

GPA: UW 3.83, W 4.33, W and Capped: 4.17

Class Rank: 1 freshman year, 3 sophomore and junior year
SAT: Test Optional

AP / Honors Classes: Honors English (10th), AP World (10th), Honors Physics (11th), AP Computers Science A (11th), AP English Lang (11th), AP US HISTORY (11th), AP Mac / Microeconomics (12th), AP Gov (12th), AP Spanish Lang (12th), AP Lit (12th)

Dual Enrollment over summer: Elementary Spanish 1 and 2

Extracurriculars:

  1. Leadership - 2 years, sophomore class president, awarded “best hard worker”
  2. Link Crew - 1 year, mentored freshman and hosted events for freshman
  3. Contra Costa County Elections- worked as a student poll worker helping people with ballots both english and spanish on election day.
  4. BART Police Department - 1.5 years, volunteered for 102 hours
  5. Competitive Mock Trial - 6 months, I was a direct, cross, and opening attorney for my defense team.
  6. MESA - 1 year, team leader of my group for math competition
  7. Elementary Math Tutor- 1.5 year, I completed 108 hours of volunteer hours for tutoring math at a daycare
  8. Cali Short Film Festival - 6 months worked as a director and editor to submit a student indie short film.
  9. Educational Programs: EAOP
  10. Educational Programs: UCB DCAC

PIQS

Creative side: I talked about coming up with fun and engaging ways to teach math to kids while tutoring them.

Talent: I shared how I was recognized by my teacher for my film projects, highlighting the hard work I put into teaching myself how to edit and direct. This recognition led to an opportunity to work on my school’s news team.

Significant challenge: In simple terms, I wrote about my recovery from an eating disorder.

Academic subject inspiration: I discussed how AP Computer Science A motivated me to learn more about Java and inspired me to create my own Roblox game using Roblox Studio.

Other UCS I applied are: UCB, UCI, UCSB, UCR

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This may be helpful, although for the 2023 cycle.

You have a very good application! Congratulations. It’s extremely challenging to get into the UCs in CS, as you know. So looking at it, purely from your grades and pure acceptance rates, both UCLA and UCB seems extremely difficult and less than a 3% chance, UCSB and UCI also difficult, but UCR looks like you have a solid 50% chance. I would recommend applying to other schools as well, including some Cal States.

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I do not chance and since the UC’s do a holistic/comprehensive review, it is very difficult to determine where you will be admitted. Overall you are a competitive applicant. The UC’s are Race blind but will consider your HS location and SES status.

Here are some admit rates for Computer Engineering or Computer Science and Engineering for the UC’s listed. Some campuses are more transparent than others.

UC Berkeley has EECS which had a 7.6% admit rate for 2024 Freshman.

UCLA’s data shows for 2024 CSE Freshman: 2,851 Applicants, 4.1% admit rate and the 25th-75th percentile for the UC weighted uncapped GPA as 4.62- 4.91

UCI’s CSE admit rate was 27.3% for 2024 Freshman.

UCSB posted this: CE Program Statistics (Fall 2024)

  • 2318 applicants | 100 enrolled
  • Average incoming GPA: 4.44

UCR’s CE admit rate for 2024 Freshman was 52.8%.

Do you have any likely schools on your list? UCR is a solid target.

Best of luck.

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Deleted. I misread the OP. :slight_smile:

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OP is in-state. But it is easy to see that North California might look like North Carolina, lol! I had to look more than once to make sure I read it right.

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I am laughing at myself now. Maybe I need more coffee! I’ll edit my post so as not to confuse the student. Thanks!

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Need more coffee here too.

(LOL, I already have to edit this twice as I was thinking out loud about rank and high school. OP is eligible for ELC, but UCs may not necessarily know that this student is at the very top of the class, unless the high school publishes a GPA distribution, which I imagine they would do. So, nevermind…)

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Class rank as determined by the high school is not used in UC admission, although correlates of rank (e.g. ELC) are seen, and UC knows what the (recalculated) GPA distribution is like at each high school participating in ELC.

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Based on your stats, UCR is target and the rest UCs on your list are reach for CS major. Did you apply to other UCs or CSUs? In case you are considering transfer, only UCR and UCM accept TAG for CS. Good Luck.

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Any reason UCM (which has CSE major) and UCSC (no CSE, but has CS and CE) which are both likely are excluded? If this is for fall 2025, then it probably does not matter at this stage.

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