Extracurriculars: Varsity soccer (team captain, league championship) & club soccer, Fashion design work and awards, BSU with lower leadership positions. Also listed guitar, her paid job, and summer volunteering as of junior year.
In State, LA area
First Generation? No.
Strengths: great writer with engaging essays, very busy with ECs.
Where else were you accepted/waitlisted/denied: Accepted UCSC, Cal Poly Pomona, SJSU, CSUN, Otis, SCAD, Drexel, Pratt, Parsons, Emerson. Rejected CSULB and SDSU. Still waiting for UCLA, Cal, USC, NYU, and FIT!
Comments about course load (including senior year): High STEM rigour.
Work experience: internship (summer plus continued paid work)
Awards: represented high school in state and national science exhibitions 2 consecutive years. Many regional and district awards for passion projects representing high school. 1 international award for Chemistry competition,
Physics Research paper presented at National conference for physics research (India).
2016 India national English spelling bee finalist
EC: founded Tinkering lab in high school. Assistant tutor for lower grades. Science exhibition club VP. Sr high Lab lead and instructor. Indian classical instrument player and a cook.
Voluntary/community service:
STEM tutor at NGO in rural areas for 2 years (grade8-10).
Accepted: UT Austin, UIUC, Purdue, Schreyers honor at Penn state, UW-Madison, A&S honors at Cu Boulder, UCSD(3/14)
Thanks. Hard to predict results for sure - not sure what they are looking for?!? We are lucky he got two other acceptances yesterday that are very exciting so this wasn’t too disappointing.
if anyone is reading this and wants some hope.. I had a 3.72 unweighted gpa and 4.0 UC gpa.. I got into a stem major .. I think a lot of this could do with my extracurriculars.. I just genuinely enjoyed high school and didn’t stress over being perfect and more of enjoying what I loved. I showed my passion through my ecs and essay. It’s not always about being perfect.. it’s about the passion. It’s okay to not have a strong idea of what you want to do.. you’re still young and have time to decide. Make sure you do what you love.. enjoy the process of everything and be in the moment. Life’s too short to worry about rejections. I used to think that I was not capable to get into a top school and it was really toxic during junior year. Going into senior year I just took a deep breath and reminded myself whatever happens happen. no matter where I go I will do my best in whatever I pursue. So please don’t feel discouraged with whatever happens.. life will guide you and YOU GOT IT !!!
Waitlisted for 3.5GPA at UCSD is not bad.Sound like you have some good options.Where are you leanign to?
I have a child coming up with exact same stats as your child and I am lurking on this site to understand what are her chances. So stats like this is very useful. I am curious though what happened at UCR and Merced. Did you not apply?
My D25 has identical stats to yours and was also accepted undeclared vs Mech E. It’s a tough call to make: do you love the university more or your intended field? Because the message of getting in undeclared is that you’ll possibly be treated as a second-class citizen and come in having to prove your value or right to stay, which isn’t ideal.
If others have direct experience about getting into Mech E from undeclared, that would be valuable. But it certainly takes the shine off of UCSD, which had been her top pick.
Your kiddo has a great list—wishing her success.
UCSD has a new selective major change process which I would review before enrolling that starts this summer. An enrolled applicant can only try to change majors once each year so nothing is guaranteed. As a newly admitted Freshman they can only apply for the major change prior to Fall 2026.
Same for S25. It seems to me they did a cut-off mainly (strictly?) based on capped GPA, which then seems was around 4.35 for Mech/Aero this time and gave undeclared to all others who had good stats but did not meet the 4.35. UCSD wasnt a top choice and undeclared just takes it out of running. From what I have gathered, UCLA and Berkeley go for fully weighted and rigor, which may work better for such cases (just my opinion)
wish they were more transparent on the role capped gpa plays in admissions. For instance, my S25 has capped gpa of 4.14 but did well in UCI (cse+honors) but not at UCSD where he was waitlisted.
This is the general information on how UC’s utilize the UC Capped weighted GPA:
The UC system aims to fairly compare students from different high schools, some of which may have varying grading systems or course rigor so they are trying to standardize the process.
The capped weighted GPA is used to determine if a student meets the minimum GPA requirement for UC admission, which is 3.0 for California residents and 3.4 for non-residents.
The capped weighted GPA is the main GPA used for statistical analysis and reporting UC admissions data.
There was a post from, “Ask Ms. Sun,” where she mentioned two UCs that use the WC GPA, the rest primarily use UW and Fully Weighted. I understand it creates some confusion when UCs report the WC GPA. For the individual campuses, on their applicant profile, for example UCLA, they report the UW and Fully Weighted GPA of the previous cohort.
Yes, I agree - getting Undeclared instead of Mech Engineering definitely took the shine off of UCSD. My D looks at it like a rejection instead of an acceptance. She has other good options, so she’s fine with it. Best of luck to your D!