i think i'm screwed.

[terrili]

i pretty much went through my entire junior year not realizing that it was extremely important. so i finished both semesters with a GPA of 2.0 (3.0 because of honors). i haven't done ANY extracurricular activities, gotten awards, done community service or CAS hours. yep, and i had no idea that we're supposed to apply to colleges by this fall !!!

but it's extremely important that i go to UCI.

on a scale of 1-10, 1 being not screwed at all and 10 being screwed, how screwed are my chances of getting into UCI?

and how less screwed would i be if i tried to redeem myself senior year?

[Sandwich]

I don't know about UCI buttttt going on what I know of all Unis, I'd say you're pretty screwed if you are aiming for any competitive course as you've pretty much set yourself up to be outgunned. How did you not think about doing things to get into Uni?? I really feel for you in your situation, but seriously, hard to miss!

Your best bet (IMO) is to sign up for something extremely impressive, pronto (like one of those 4 weeks of building shelters in impoverished countries sort of things) and have a very solid list to put on your application. Start up some sort of club so you can show leadership skills, even if hardly anybody attends, and salvage your situation You can still mention all these things as pending intentions which you've already organised, or are going to achieve, so you're not entirely sunk. You can still pull it back to some extent, but it's not going to look so good on an application especially compared to somebody pulling their weight for the whole two years. Perhaps you can mention it without a timing part to it? Like "I lead.. book club or whatever... yadda yadda", skipping out the part where book club was only started by yourself a couple of months before.

Also I was under the impression CAS hours had to split evenly between the years? Then again schools seem to do everything differently, and it may have changed for 2010. We couldn't get our CAS points if we didn't have at least 25 hours of everything per year. Perhaps you should double check that sort of thing, because you can still make it up over the summer and count it for your first year.

Ouch. (And good luck! You should kick your careers people and teachers, too, for not advising everybody properly, or telling you where your predicted grades are coming from!)

Edited June 27, 2009 by Sandwich

[master135]

I don't know about UCI buttttt going on what I know of all Unis, I'd say you're pretty screwed if you are aiming for any competitive course as you've pretty much set yourself up to be outgunned. How did you not think about doing things to get into Uni?? I really feel for you in your situation, but seriously, hard to miss!

Your best bet (IMO) is to sign up for something extremely impressive, pronto (like one of those 4 weeks of building shelters in impoverished countries sort of things) and have a very solid list to put on your application. Start up some sort of club so you can show leadership skills, even if hardly anybody attends, and salvage your situation You can still mention all these things as pending intentions which you've already organised, or are going to achieve, so you're not entirely sunk. You can still pull it back to some extent, but it's not going to look so good on an application especially compared to somebody pulling their weight for the whole two years. Perhaps you can mention it without a timing part to it? Like "I lead.. book club or whatever... yadda yadda", skipping out the part where book club was only started by yourself a couple of months before.

Also I was under the impression CAS hours had to split evenly between the years? Then again schools seem to do everything differently, and it may have changed for 2010. We couldn't get our CAS points if we didn't have at least 25 hours of everything per year. Perhaps you should double check that sort of thing, because you can still make it up over the summer and count it for your first year.

Ouch. (And good luck! You should kick your careers people and teachers, too, for not advising everybody properly, or telling you where your predicted grades are coming from!)

I dont think IB requires CAS to be evenly split between the years - its up to the school.

[moneyfaery]

I dont think IB requires CAS to be evenly split between the years - its up to the school.

It's not. I did about 70 hours during IB1, of which about 56 were A, and 140 during IB2. Obviouslyyyyy, I'm still getting my diploma.

[terrili]

I don't know about UCI buttttt going on what I know of all Unis, I'd say you're pretty screwed if you are aiming for any competitive course as you've pretty much set yourself up to be outgunned. How did you not think about doing things to get into Uni?? I really feel for you in your situation, but seriously, hard to miss!

Your best bet (IMO) is to sign up for something extremely impressive, pronto (like one of those 4 weeks of building shelters in impoverished countries sort of things) and have a very solid list to put on your application. Start up some sort of club so you can show leadership skills, even if hardly anybody attends, and salvage your situation You can still mention all these things as pending intentions which you've already organised, or are going to achieve, so you're not entirely sunk. You can still pull it back to some extent, but it's not going to look so good on an application especially compared to somebody pulling their weight for the whole two years. Perhaps you can mention it without a timing part to it? Like "I lead.. book club or whatever... yadda yadda", skipping out the part where book club was only started by yourself a couple of months before.

Also I was under the impression CAS hours had to split evenly between the years? Then again schools seem to do everything differently, and it may have changed for 2010. We couldn't get our CAS points if we didn't have at least 25 hours of everything per year. Perhaps you should double check that sort of thing, because you can still make it up over the summer and count it for your first year.

Ouch. (And good luck! You should kick your careers people and teachers, too, for not advising everybody properly, or telling you where your predicted grades are coming from!)

wow thank you so much. this was very helpful O_O ! i don't think i can spend 4 weeks in an impoverished country building houses, but i'll try to do something equivalent to that here X(

[Pretty'nGeek]

Terrili! UC Irvine, correct?

UC Irvine is one of the Californian universities most known to accept students with lower GPAs but high SAT scores. If you managed to get an SAT score in the 2000's, you would have a fair shot. Especially with the added extra curricular activities and etc that you are trying to manage as of present.