<p>Bassmon, I don’t think any of us know what your “UC GPA” would calculate out to. You need to translate each class which fits into the UC “a to g” academic categories which you took your sophomore and junior years into an ABCD 4 point grade scale, add points for up to 8 AP classes, and calculate your average on a 4 point scale. Grades are very important to UC - they carry a lot more weight than SATs do compared to the policies of other schools such as USC.</p>
<p>An option which probably would be available to you is to enroll in a two-year California community college, take all of the required lower division breadth courses, and transfer to a UC in your third year of college. You will need to do very well in CC, but then, if you’re UC material, you should be able to. There are a number of California community colleges which have residential opportunities for out of area students; you might check out Cuesta College in San Luis Obispo, (near Cal Poly) Santa Barbara City College (near UCSB), Butte CC near CSU Chico, or Grossmont or Mesa in San Diego, for example. Also, there are some community colleges which have a history of sending lots of their two-year graduates on to certain UC campuses, although they tend to be local commuter schools. The community college to UC route is an inexpensive option, but requires self-discipline.</p>