<p>I checked my decision on MyBerkeleyApp last night, and found out I was denied admission into Letters and Sciences’ Interdisciplinary Studies program. 
I’m strongly considering appealing, since I do think that there was significant information that I either glossed over or omitted in my original application. </p>
<p>Admittedly, I did struggle at my first college (a private liberal-arts four-year college in the South)—not because I was unable to do the work intellectually, but because I was in an environment that was racist, homophobic, and generally uncomfortable for me. I’m African American, and the student population was primarily white. People would do say openly racist things, like talking about how they “wouldn’t want a black roommate,” or proudly wearing Confederate memorabilia. This was about nine years ago; I’m a nontraditional student. </p>
<p>I experienced a significant amount of homophobic harassment and bullying, and ended up being too terrified to attend my classes regularly. While I didn’t fail any classes, I did earn mostly C’s and C-'s. During my second semester, my depression grew worse, and it was difficult for me to get out of bed some days, much less attend class. I dropped out after my second semester with a medical withdrawal, so that semester appears on my transcript as a bunch of W’s. </p>
<p>Also, I’m on the autistic spectrum, which I mentioned in my application, but didn’t go into detail about it. One thing that often happens to autistic people, including me, is “shutdown,” which is a low-energy state that is often produced by stress. During shutdown, it’s quite difficult to get anything done. I underwent multiple long-term shutdown periods until 2009. One of the reasons why it took so long for me to recover was that I simply didn’t have access to good services and organizations that could help me deal with the stuff I struggled with, but after getting services in San Francisco, it was much easier for me to get stuff taken care of. </p>
<p>Fortunately, things have got better for me since 2009 or so.</p>
<p>When I decided to go back to college (City College of San Francisco) in 2009, I was in a much better place, and I have mostly A’s with 3 B’s—and one of those B’s was from a non-transferable course. My current community-college GPA is 3.82 or thereabouts. However, since the UCs aggregate all GPAs from all institutions, my previous grades lowered the GPA to about 3.3, which is not reflective of my academic abilities at all, judging by my performance at CCSF. (Incidentally, my first four-year college was less rigorous than CCSF, but I’m not going to mention that in my appeal letter.) </p>
<p>I’m also wondering if I talked too much about sociology (since that was my major choice for all my other campus choices), and not enough about UCB’s interdisciplinary studies program in particular (I wanted my interdisciplinary studies program to have a strong sociological focus, though). However, since this application was sent to Davis, Berkeley, Santa Cruz, and San Diego, I couldn’t discuss UCB’s interdisciplinary studies program to the exclusion of what the other UCs wanted (or, theoretically, I could have, but I only found out after the fact that UCB, UCLA, UCI, and UCM are the only UCs that use personal statements when determining whether a student should be admitted). </p>
<p>I also would have been IGETC certified by the end of spring; my English requirements were finished last fall, and I am now finishing up my math one. Everything else, though, has already been completed. I was unable to get one of the Interdisciplinary Studies prereqs, since City College cut the class over the summer.</p>