But I have not seen LOR sent to someone whose score, GPA was below the average of applicants - you can find th avg gpa/ sat scores of applicants and admits on the UCB website.
Son was requested
UC GPA - 4.33
ACT - 32
No decision as of 2/23/16
DD got LOR request.
OOS
UW GPA: 4.0
W GPA: 4.7
ACT: 34
Math SAT II: 760
No decision yet.
Requested
2310
790 M2
770 BIO E
WGPA: 4.5
UW: 3.97
requested
2190/2200
800M2
790Chem
770Phy
W:4.49
UW:4.0
OOS
no decision yet
Requested
In-state
1970 SAT
29 ACT
4.33 UC GPA
3.95 UW
Requested back in December
In-state
29 ACT
4.16 UC GPA
3.8 UW
Requested on November 18th. I think I was one of first to get it.
Out-of State
29ACT
3.91 UW and 4.23Weighted GPA. Capped and Uncapped are pretty even.
@CalBearsMom
On your Previous Post, you said they give some credit for overcoming hardships.
I mean, I had a hard time for last four years. My mom had cancer. I had to quit both Racing and Baseball as I came to high school. Before I quit, I was in Summer Showcase Baseball program with Famous Baseball Companies. It was really a big thing I gave up.While other people were doing all activities and academic works, I had to spend a lot of time at home caring for mom and doing houseworks. While I am still a President of one club, and had several math competition achievement, I could not do much things as other excellent kids. However, I have a lot of volunteering service like I am getting close to 1000hours now.
Back to point, on my recommendation letter, my counselor told about my life story. Do you think it can give more credit to my academic and extracurricular performance?
For now, UMICH is my dream school because even though I applied to Berkeley, I thought there would be no way for me to get in to Berkeley. After your post, I am starting to think that there may be some chance I will get into Berkeley Engineering.
Thank you for reading my post.
I believed there would not be anyway I will get into Berkeley. If I happen to get in to Berkeley, I will certainly attend Berkeley. However, I just did not think it would be realistic at all.
I only set UMICH as dream school because I thought there might be some chance.
I am not sure how they want to know more about me two days after I submitted my application.
mywifeisUM I have no idea how they will evaluate your particular circumstances. I just know that there’s a rubric that they used to use which listed various “hardships”. So if a candidate’s application shows that he/she meet Cal’s institutional goals (eg. increase “first generation to go to college”, etc.), then the reviewer could place a check mark there.
Requested. (Out of State)
SAT I: 2060 (pretty low for UCB standards)
SAT II: Chem (770) Bio M (740)
UW GPA: 3.9
Honestly I’m surprised they asked me for letters of recommendation.
@CalBearsMom
Thank you for your reply.
I just hope there would be good result for me. One thing that makes me happy is that even if I don’t get in, I don’t think I would have any regret about how much I tried on academics for last four years.
@CalBearsMom
Just to ask one more thing, Even not considering my circumstance, have you seen anyone with my stats getting into Mechanical Engineering?
Requested Dec 3
SAT I: 660, 660, 670
GPA: 3.82
URM: Hispanic (not sure if 1st Gen but father had some college)
AMAZING EC/Awards and part of a URM Diversity program
Mine were… URM but i was below GPA and SAT’s but have amazing EC’s/Awards etc
1990 SAT
3.82 GPA
LORs are just a pilot program this year. Wont be used in admission decision until next year. They want to test whether LORs are a good tool in admissions process. My daughter heard that directly from a UCB admissions officer at an info session at Berkeley last July. Please don’t think they will have any predictive power this year.
@mywifeisUM To me, your scores do not seem high enough to be competitive, but I’m certainly not an admissions counselor so I really don’t know. Somewhere on College Confidential there was a chart posted of freshman profile stats by engineering major. You could try searching for it. But, of course, the AdComs look at so much more than stats. And I think I saw on one of your posts that you took the AIME, so that will certainly look good on your app.
@CalBearsMom
Really? does AIME look really good on college app??? I did not know that until now. I mean I thought USAMO would be impressive, but not AIME. I also got a third place on one of national math competition. As I was writing my math competition stuffs, I wrote I qualified for AIME. However, for award section, I wrote about being third place for one of national math competition because I thought it was more impressive. Isn’t third place for one of national math competition more impressive than just making AIME??
Also, do you know if SAT Subject Test are going to help even if not all are great??
Math level 2: 800
Physics : 740
Chemistry: 680. Chemistry score is bad, but I just sent it because I thought it would be better than nothing.
To tell you one more thing, I’ve had all A’s in Science and Math related Class. Also, no B in any class in 11th grade. So, grade upward trend happened. Even though I got 29 on ACT, I got 36 on Math Section. Do you think those factors can help??