<p>@bignerd</p>
<p>Honestly I applied to UCB and UCLA for the sake of it but honestly Irvine was my first choice in terms of colleges I could actually get into. I have a 4.22 UC GPA and an 1850 SAT only two real ECs with no leadership or job experience. I only have like maybe 50 hours of community service and my essays were just decent. From 10 -11th grade I only had 3 weighted courses (2 of them AP). From what it seems your app is probably better than mine in every way so maybe the Merced thing might be nothing since there are a lot of changes this year to ELC</p>