Webinar: Successful Strategies for University of California Admissions

Dive into the University of California admissions process with expert strategies to help students maximize their chances of admission to a University of California school. From this webinar video, you’ll gain critical information about completing the UC application, understand how to effectively approach the UC Personal Insight Questions (PIQs) and learn important similarities and differences among the UC campuses and how major matters at each campus.

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WEBINAR TRANSCRIPT

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Debra Barnett Santostefano: I’m Debra Barnett Santostefano. I used both names because I’ve worked professionally with both names, but my clients call me Debra. So that makes it easy.

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I’m located in California in San Diego, and International College Counselors put together this webinar because we find increasing interest in the California schools and wanted to provide both our clients and our hopefully future clients with some additional information. So what I’m going to do is talk

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probably for about 45 min, and hopefully leave some time for questions. If you do have questions, please put them in the Q&A portion of the zoom, and Aimee will get to them at the end if we’re if we’re able to. If not, you will have my email address and be able to email me questions as well. So we’ll get your questions answered.

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Just to tell you a little bit about international college counselors. We help students from all over the world so welcome from wherever you are, and we really do everything related to educational planning and admission. So we do college and graduate school planning and guidance.

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We help with college school list, selection, extracurricular and academic interest, refinement, essay, editing, and application review.

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And you’ll see this in the UC System in particular, we help students stay on top of changes in admissions and keeping families informed of that, also, making sure that all of the rules are followed for each application, and recognizing that they’re quite different at

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every college. So we are here to help with all of that. We’re a great team located across the United States, and we look forward to learning more about your children if you’re interested in utilizing us in the future.

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A little bit more about me. Again, Deborah Barnett Santostefano

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I’ve been with ICC for three years. Prior to that. I was director of college, advising at Winter Preparatory School in Orlando, Florida for almost 20 years

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and spent a lot of time in that role as either a school counselor or guidance counselor or college counselor. I did that in a school environment which is really relevant in terms of my role here as an independent counselor for students because I know how schools work. And I’m familiar with a lot of different high schools. I actually worked at a boarding school. So we had a lot of international students. And we had a lot of

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students from a lot of different high schools. So I’m very familiar with different school systems and recognize that they’re all different. So they require some really pretty specific attention on your part, as you’re preparing to apply to college. I know there’s some students here and some parents here. Typically, I’ll speak to the students directly. But parents, of course, you know, if I say you, I’m talking about your student.

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Prior to working at Windermere Prep. I worked at Providence College as the Associate Director of Career Services and Internship Programs.

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I’m from the northeast originally. So also very familiar with that area, and I have degrees from USC, Boston College, and Northeastern. So I like education. I also have raised three young men and supported them through the college application process.

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I understand what a roller coaster ride that is, as a parent. So I am here to support parents in that regard as well.

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So speaking of the UC System, that’s the University of California system, there are nine member universities within the University of California. So you’ve probably heard of UCLA. You probably heard of UC Berkeley.

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You may have also heard of UC San Diego, UC Santa Barbara, UC Davis, Irvine, Riverside, Santa Cruz, and Merced, that’s all of them. So it’s a great system with some really great in-state benefits for those of you who are California residents. Each school is pretty different, but there is one application to apply to all of these schools so that can make it a little bit tricky.

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It’s a really one of my goals today is to tell you a little bit more about each university, and it’s really going to be just a little bit, just to familiarize yourself with the system. You may notice there’s not schools on here like San Diego State because that is in a different system. That’s a California State University system school.

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So these are the schools on the California map. I’m pretty visual, so it helps me see how they are kind of clustered.

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A lot of these schools are quite competitive. Some of them have admission rates of 10% or below. That would be UCLA and Berkeley definitely. But one of the nice things for California residents is 70% of in-state applicants are accepted to at least one UC, so one of the things that we’ll do as a college advisor is make sure that our students are strategic when they apply. So with the 10% acceptance rate or below, UCLA was 7% last year. I believe.

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We want to make sure that we do everything we can to help you get into UCLA. But we also make sure that you have other options. One of the analogies I use when I talk about a 7% admit rate is, if there were 7% chance of rain. Would you bring an umbrella?

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So most people would say no to that. So that helps you kind of frame the likeliness, and how and how challenging it is to be accepted to some of these schools. Again, we’re here to help with that and strategize. We do everything we can to help make that happen, and make sure that all of our students have choices and great fit opportunities.

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So here’s a little more about each of the schools. UC Berkeley. It’s actually central California but everyone calls it Northern California 33,000 undergrads. Most of these schools are around 30,000 students. They’re pretty big. The 2024 admission rate was 11%. One of the things I added to the slide here was just to give you perspective of how we might be able to help.

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The ICC admit rate was closer to 30%. So it’s a pretty big difference. You can see that working with an independent counselor can really provide some definite, definite strategic benefits in terms of making sure that we are doing everything to capitalize on all of your opportunities, strengths, and provide the best opportunities for admission

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You can see the average weighted GPA. I’ll talk more about the UC GPA. later on in this session, and then the common, very

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most popular majors. When I say top four majors, you’re going to see a theme here. Computer science is extraordinarily popular. And right now, so is business administration and engineering. You’ll see, probably, computer science, business administration, and engineering at all of these schools as being among the most popular

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UC Davis. That’s the agricultural haven. Very pretty. A lot of students who are interested in more environmental type of green living tend to be very attracted to UC Davis.

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Their admission rate is there at 42%. ICC’s was 68% in 2025. So the first number I’m giving you is for 2024 admission from the college. But then our number is actually from last year, what our admission rate was from ICC

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Not all of the schools had published their 2025 admissions rates. So I just went with 2024. It gets harder every year sadly.

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All right. You see Irvine

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It’s Southern California, but some people think of it as being more in the middle because it’s north of San Diego. It’s south of LA.

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People think of la sort of as in the middle. But it isn’t.

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UC Irvine has a 28% admissions rate. It’s getting much more competitive. They’re very innovative. They’re in an area that has a lot of research and lots of opportunities for students in terms of internships and industry, really, really a lot of opportunity there. And as you can see, their top majors are biological sciences, computer science, business, and social sciences.

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So I’m going to talk about how you can be strategic with your major, too, in terms of increasing your opportunities for admission while still being true to your actual interests and narrative that will help you develop

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UCSB, that is the coastal retreat in Santa Barbara. It’s very beachy. They have a lot of psychology, brain science and economics majors. Environmental studies, beautiful campus, fewer students there. 23,000

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UCSD, University of California San Diego is called the Beach Paradise. It’s quite close to the beach. UCSD has some specifics about it. They have a very specific residential housing system, and that’s something that is a little bit confusing and challenging to people applying to UCSD.

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There are a lot of similarities, but there are also quite a few differences. And there’s one application for all UC schools. So we want to make sure that there’s the proper amount of research is done, however many of the schools you’re applying to.

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You need to do the research. You do specify a specific major at each school. So within the application, there’s a subset of that. But other than that and the youth and the residential system at UCSD, there, it’s just really the same information.

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And then the final three. These have pretty high admission rate. UC Riverside. Again, very high research area. Lots of research opportunities quite close to LA there as well. UC. Santa Cruz. That’s a very in the woods school. It’s beautiful, great for students who again, like a lot of green space.

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And then UC Merced is the newest UC, and that’s really just growing right now. You can see only about 8,000 students there, and most of them are from California.

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You may have also heard of UCSF. University of California San Francisco. That does exist, but only for graduate school, which we also help with. But I’m not talking about today.

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All right. So in terms of the application process

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within the UCs, there’s a couple of things to consider. They have an A to G course and GPA requirements. I’ll tell you a little bit more about that. They have personal insight questions which are essentially essays, short essays, and they have an activity section and specific deadlines and instructions that are required to follow.

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So I’ll go through each of those.

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The A To G system is A is an alphabetical system that is assigned to coursework within public high schools in California and matched to the public colleges in California. So what they’re looking for at the UCs is a certain number of credits in English and math and social studies and science and maybe in art.

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So what they do is instead of saying history or social science, they call it area A. So for the A category which is social science. The UCs require two years of history and social science. That’s one of those things that I think two years is kind of light for many colleges. So we tend to recommend four years depending on what the student’s goal is.

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But all that’s required for the UCs is two years, and within those two years you must have a year of US History or one semester of US History or American Government, and then one year of World or European History, or Geography.

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So that that type of information is really important to know early in your high school planning, because

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if you live in a in a non-California state, and you’re thinking, oh, I’d really love to go to one of these UC Schools for college, you need to make sure that you’re planning your curriculum in high school in a manner that will enable you to take these

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classes that are required to meet the A to G system. So this I’m only giving you one example here, the A area. But it goes up to G, so there’s a lot of other examples, and we can help with that.

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The UC system does have a guide with all of this information. It is about 83 pages long. So it’s quite detailed. And they do have a lot of resources on their website and it’s quite significant and thorough. But sometimes it can really be overwhelming. And so we’re here to help with decreasing the overwhelming factor. That’s a big part of what we do, for sure, and one of the things I do is ask my students and parents who I work with to tell me what they’re worried about.

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This is college planning so there’s kind of some things to worry about. This is big stakes. It’s a lot of time commitment both to applying and then later, spending four years of your life for undergraduate. And so I ask families to tell me what they’re worried about.

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And then I also tell them whether I’m worried about that or not.

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There are usually a lot of things that families are worried about that I’m not worried about. I can take that worry off of you and tell you that’s not something you really need to worry about. I’ll take care of it, so that can be really nice to have a partner in this process. Who can take some of that that worry away. And you know it makes sense. This is a challenging process. It makes sense that students don’t necessarily know what to do or what it is, despite the 83 pages of instructions for one group of colleges.

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So the other thing that the UC system has are GPA minimums.

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the GPA minimum requirement for out-of-state students is 3.4, and that’s only counting courses within the A To G category.

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If you’ve taken more than the required number of courses within an A to G category, there are some opportunities to potentially have your GPA calculated just based on the best grades. But it’s competitive, and a 3.4 is the minimum, but certainly not the average. You saw the GPA data that I shared earlier for each school. It’s significantly higher than 3.4. So one of the things that I want you to take away from this webinar. Is that that there’s nothing more important

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Then GPA grades and course rigor.

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So, taking rigorous courses, challenging yourself and getting good grades is the most important thing to enhance your opportunity in the college application process.

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For in-state students the GPA minimum is 3.0 for all A to G courses. So again, these are minimum acceptance rates. They can be higher for most campuses.

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There’s only one application deadline for the UC. So a lot of times, I think you know by now, if you’re thinking about college or the college application process, you recognize terms like Early Action or Early Decision, or Regular Decision, or a priority application.

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All represent different deadlines and different schools have different policies. The policy at the UCs is

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that they have one application deadline. It’s typically November 30 and so far the UC application has not opened yet. For next year it will open August first when the Common App opens.

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And then at that point we’ll know. Is the deadline actually November 30 or is it December 1or December 2? It’ll be around November 30.

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And even though the application opens August 1, students can’t submit their applications until October 1 and then anytime until the deadline.

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You see, decisions come out typically in the month of March typically and vary by campus in terms of when the decisions are made or when the decisions are shared.

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I should say the other thing beyond course rigor and grades, which, remember, I said, is the most important thing is also

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activities. The UC application has 20 spots for activities and awards. That’s a little bit different than the Common App. The Common App only has 10 spots for activities, and then they have five spots for awards or honors. Within those 20 spots the U breaks it up into different categories and asks you to enter

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your awards and honors educational enrichment programs. So that would be if you’ve participated in a summer program at a particular campus, that would be something that you would add to this activity section. Also any extracurricular activities, whether in school or out of school.

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They also have you add other coursework that doesn’t fall into the A To G category, but is relevant to your application. So that’s something that we can help you with. iI you get to that point, that’s the type of thing that any people aks what does that mean, and what counts, and what doesn’t count. So we can help with that.

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With regard to what to enter and what not to enter, if you have more than 20, what 20 should we pick? And if you have fewer than 20, is that a crisis? And I can tell you the answer to that is, no. But you do want to have a robust list of meaningful activities.

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And specifically with regard to volunteering and community service, you want to make sure that when you’re talking about community service, you can talk about your impact and your outcomes. And that’s what colleges are looking for versus number of hours.

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There’s much more in number of hours then terms of commitment and this is an important distinction. In many areas you have to have a minimum number of hours for high school. But some high schools also allow you to get hours by like working at the school store or working at the school camp.

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However, unless you’re at an underprivileged high school, those really aren’t the types of service hours that colleges are looking for. This doesn’t mean don’t do it. It just means do that and other things, especially where you can show a commitment to service as it represents helping organizations or people in need.

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Then there is work experience. They want to know about your jobs. And that’s a big one that can really help with college applications. And it doesn’t have to be a job like an internship. It can be a job like

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bagging groceries working as a hostess or a host at a restaurant. So it doesn’t have to be something big and fancy. What they want to see is you’re being productive. You’re being enterprising, and you’re learning skills out in the world. That’s going to make you a more productive college student.

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Okay, so I told you we would talk about major a little bit. I also told you that UCs, the UCs have a lot of resources.

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The UC system helps with this process. There’s something called the UC dashboard that shares admissions data by major at each university. This is pretty key, because it will tell you specifically how competitive each major is. For example, computer sciences at UC Davis versus at UCLA. Or if you’re looking for, and you’re trying to decide. Oh, should I major in psychology or sociology? I’m not sure I kind of like them both.

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And you can see. Well, sociology has a much higher admit rate. That’s where we might look to be more strategic.

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And if you live in California, you may have heard about impacted majors. Impacted majors are majors that aren’t accepting new students because they already have too many. This happens quite a bit in California, unfortunately, with the popular subject areas, because

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there are a lot of transfer students in the system. There are a lot of junior colleges which are called community colleges in some areas. But in California they’re typically called junior colleges.

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And students transfer within the California system from a junior college to one of these UCs and they tend to have priority because they’re juniors and seniors, and sometimes the courses that

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are most popular and subject areas can become what it’s what’s called impacted, which is the same thing as full. So you have to choose something else right now.

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That’s also something we can help with. It’s also very important to do this research ahead of time. Looking at campuses via campus visits, either in person or virtually, that’s a really strategic tip I can give you. So be sure to do your homework, or hire an expert to help do your homework.

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Some examples of competitive majors. Just to give you some. examples of what I’m speaking about. Nursing at UCLA and UC Irvine has a 1% admit rate. Nursing is an extraordinarily competitive major. Across the United States. 118 students were admitted from 12,000 applicants at UCs last year.

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That’s not very many computer science spots. UCLA is a 3% admit rate overall. Their admit rate’s about 7%. So you can see if you were applying in the arts and humanities, you have more of a chance like an 8 to 10% admissions rate. Now, that doesn’t mean that you should say, Oh, well, I’m not going to say that I’m majoring in computer science. And then I’m going to go and just change my major. First of all, that won’t work for a very competitive major.

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because transferring in will be extraordinarily challenging. Also, your background or narrative if you’re interested in computer science is going to be include activities around computer science and hopefully additional coursework around computer science. So the believability factor, if you say you’re going to major in theology or humanities is pretty low.

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What it does mean is if you are applying to computer science, that in addition to applying to UCLA, you look at some of the other campuses that have a little more accessible

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computer science admit rates, and the schools do have undecided as an option. Sometimes you’re able to go in undecided and then apply into a major later again. It really depends on the school and depends on the major.

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UC Davis is a great computer science example, they have a 19% acceptance rate there for computer science versus the campus average of 42%. So quite a big difference.

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Okay, I’m gonna take a sip of water, all right.

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So now, the PIQs, the personal insight questions, these are the admissions essays for the UC system.

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The goal of these essays is to get to know the student beyond the activities beyond the grades and the coursework. And it’s the students opportunity to tell their story, share more, a little bit more breadth and a little bit more depth. There are eight prompts that students can choose from.

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They must respond to four of the eight questions. They’re all weighted equally. It doesn’t matter which ones you respond to. But this is a perfect example of where some strategy can come into play, and we can certainly help you with that, and help you tell your story more effectively, based on what some of the questions are and how you can best represent yourself.

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They’re teach 350 words, so shorter than the common app essay, which is 650, and that’s the max.

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And here’s a nice little tip. You can use your Common App essay for part of your California PIQs, because they’re not going to see your Common App essay. So most students, unless you’re from California, and only applying to the UCs and the CSUs, which is also perfectly fine. In that case you don’t need to do the Common App. But if you are doing the Common App, the Common App is one application for many different colleges and universities.

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Most of those schools require one essay and the California schools won’t see that. So you can use that in some of your PIQ answers if you want to.

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There’s a lot of advice. For the Common Application personal statement, make sure that your story is well written. It’s interesting to read. It has a lot of context provided, and for the PIQs, the writing is a little bit different for the PIQs You really just want to get right to the point.

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You don’t need to spend time setting up your story with imagery or clever writing. They really don’t care that the clock was going tick, tick, tick. They care about what the message is in this essay. So that’s a pro tip that’s quite different from the Common App.

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The other thing. And this advice would also apply to the Common Application essay is, use specific examples to provide evidence. So it’s one thing to say I’m a very resilient person. It’s a lot different to say. And here are some examples that show that I’m a resilient person. We always say, try to show, not tell, and that can be done through specific examples.

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One of the other things about these PIQs is, you probably know, when you’re completing your UC application, you should know which of the schools you’re applying to. But you can’t say specifically

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at UC Irvine, I’m looking forward to taking the classes in or participating in or enhancing my writing skills. Whatever it is. There’s no reference to individual schools in these essays, and that’s

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different from the supplemental essays that you’ll see at other colleges when you go to complete the Common Application. You have your first Common App essay, and then you have supplemental essays assigned to the other schools — or the other schools assigned to you — is a better way to put it.

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And they want to know specifically, what do you know about our school? What are you interested in? Why are you interested in it? And that’s not a component of the UC Application.

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So good news, bad news. I don’t know just news.

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Some things that the UC does not require that a lot of people don’t realize is test scores. They are test blind.

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That does not mean do not test. Other schools may need the test and test optional doesn’t mean the same as test blind. Only test blind means don’t send your score.

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In very rare instances they may ask for some testing. That’s typically around proof of English fluency. That type of thing, or an academic system where they can’t really evaluate you as well as they want to be able to evaluate you, so they may ask later in the process for your test scores. But it’s very rare. And all the years I’ve been doing this

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I probably I’ve had hundreds and hundreds of kids apply to the UCs. And maybe three got asked for their additional for test scores down the line

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They don’t want…Oh, look at my numbering system does not work very well here, so got to change that the letter. They don’t want letters of recommendation. They won’t read them, don’t send them.

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It’s not necessary, and it’s not helpful. That’s one of the things about the college planning process that is very important is follow the instructions. If they say they don’t want something, they don’t want it.

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It is important to follow the instructions.

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We can let you know, if we’re working with you individually, how you might be able to enhance your application.

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Not through a letter of recommendation, but in other ways, because there are other strategies for enhancing your application that fall within the rules, and we can help with that.

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The UCs do not require or conduct interviews. They don’t want additional information like a resume. Some other schools will accept resumes. And they don’t want a transcript.

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So you have to enter all of your courses and grades. Then later, if you are attending the school, then of course, you have to produce proof of your courses and grades and send a high school transcript. But initially,

00:35:02.100 –> 00:35:15.690
you’re doing the data entry. And that is one of the things that’s kind of tricky about the UC System, particularly if you don’t attend a high school in the in California, because it’s not self-evident. It’s the A to G system.

00:35:22.730 –> 00:35:29.530
There’s just some confusing things about it. I guess that’s the easiest way to say it, but we can help clarify that.

00:35:30.670 –> 00:35:49.739
You probably have seen, depending on where you are in the college application process, that entering in your courses and grades is not a completely unique thing. There are other schools that require it. Most of them don’t, but the UCs do, and you do it through their application.

00:35:51.030 –> 00:35:57.039
All right. So those are the five things that the UC does not require.

00:35:57.600 –> 00:36:05.770
Okay, so final takeaways in terms of all of this information, which I know is a little bit like drinking through a water hose. Right?

00:36:16.100 –> 00:36:22.660
The things to take away are: One, apply broadly within the UC system.

00:36:23.370 –> 00:36:43.679
It does cost $80 per application. And that’s for each school that you apply to. So it’s not inexpensive. But you want to make sure that you’re strategic, so that you have options. Understand each campus’s selectivity and their strengths. Also, I would add to that.

00:36:43.970 –> 00:36:52.019
You know specifically what the majors are there and what your likelihood of being able to major in something at a particular school is.

00:36:55.180 –> 00:37:03.650
You need strategies aligned with your interests. And that’s something we at International College Counselors can really tell you more about and help with.

00:37:04.120 –> 00:37:25.460
Use the UC admissions data to help target your choices and craft a compelling authentic application. So one of the words I used earlier was your narrative, particularly if you’re a younger student in high school or parents, if you have a younger student, that’s something to start thinking of now, which is

00:37:25.920 –> 00:38:00.119
frankly super challenging to say, Okay, you’re 14 year old. Let’s start building your narrative, but it really is also something that’s very helpful for young people to figure out who they are and what they want to do, and how and what activities they can participate in, what courses they can take to help build that path and to really tell that story.

00:38:01.460 –> 00:38:18.470
So those are the final takeaways with regard to this particular presentation. So next steps take rigorous courses and earn A’s.

00:38:18.810 –> 00:38:29.540
Start building your activities and your honors early. Don’t wait to be great. Be great early. It’s important.

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Get feedback from mentors and teachers.

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Research and narrow your school list and majors by visiting campuses virtually or in person. I cannot tell you how important that is, and how, I would say, significantly, fewer than 50% of families do it.

00:38:52.280 –> 00:39:19.350
I have no idea why. It’s a big expense to go to college, and it’s a big commitment. So it to me, it certainly makes sense. And because you’re here, I’m going to trust that you will be in the percent of families that do attend virtual information sessions or go on campus visits. It’s realy, really helpful and important.

00:39:19.550 –> 00:39:26.529
Some schools do track that demonstrated interest. The UCs are not among them.

00:39:26.850 –> 00:39:32.740
And so it’s still important to do for you, not necessarily for them.

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And then certainly seek expert help in the admissions process. If it’s in your budget to hire an independent counselor, it certainly is a helpful, meaningful, and efficient thing to do. It also helps parents not have to interact with their children quite as much about these things because we’re doing it instead.

00:39:57.020 –> 00:40:18.869
But we do approach it as a family endeavor. We work together, we share everything with the parents as well. So we want to include the parents. We just want to make sure that we’re taking care of the expert advice and again making sure you know what to worry about and what not to worry about.

00:40:21.680 –> 00:40:45.479
Now, if you aren’t currently an ICC family. We want you to become one, of course, and the first step in that would be to schedule a free consultation with me, or with someone else. If you email me, I will certainly be able to ascertain, based on your

00:40:46.340 –> 00:41:13.669
email, what you’re interested in for your child and who to match you with. The best person in our company which may be me, maybe someone else. We have a great client relations team as well. That really helps with that. And we have experts in all different areas. And please keep in mind, this can start in middle school to.

00:41:13.700 –> 00:41:41.420
If you’re applying to college this year, we can help you with that. So we have all different price points. And if you’re thinking about potentially transferring colleges or attending grad school, those are also great times to utilize an independent counselor. So my information is here. I’m happy to respond to you if you email me.

00:41:41.970 –> 00:41:49.579
And at this point we do have a couple of minutes. If there are questions that I might be able to answer. Aimee, are you able to to see any questions in the Q. And A.

00:41:56.890 –> 00:41:58.740
Aimee Heller: Yes, okay.

00:41:59.506 –> 00:42:06.639
Aimee Heller: we have a couple. So someone asked, under what circumstances will the UCs ask for your test scores.

00:42:08.180 –> 00:42:16.799
Debra Barnett Santostefano: The times that I have had it happen were twice. One was an international student, and once was an athlete, a recruited athlete.

00:42:18.030 –> 00:42:37.520
So those are the only circumstances that I’m aware of, or the other one might be if you have an uncertain academic record, and I mean uncertain. Just because you have some, you know, unique circumstance. They may want additional data to from you.

00:42:38.330 –> 00:42:40.420
But it’s again very rare.

00:42:41.540 –> 00:42:42.740
Great question.

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Aimee Heller: Next one? Does UC make admissions, decisions solely based on grades earned in 10th and 11th grades? Can you confirm their use of the weighted GPA, that favors AP or honors courses with their 5.0 4.0 or for A’s and B’s respectively. Okay, so it looks like 2 questions together.

00:43:02.620 –> 00:43:09.700
Debra Barnett Santostefano: Sure. So the UC system, when they’re computing the GPA. They compute it for 10th 11th and 12th

00:43:10.120 –> 00:43:13.150
So that is.

00:43:14.120 –> 00:43:37.179
News might be good news might not be good news. They also don’t add honors weighting for students outside of California. They do add AP. Weighting for students outside of California, and within California. The weighting is dependent on

00:43:37.250 –> 00:43:47.900
your high school not to some extent, but to all extent. So all the high schools have to enter in their curriculum, and then the UCs have it in a system and determine what

00:43:47.960 –> 00:43:58.000
the weighting will be, so that’s if you go to school in California. That’s something to talk to your school counselor about. Specifically, if you have questions outside of California. It’s really, take the most rigorous classes available to you AP or IB or dual enrollment. One of the things that’s very important within the UCs is, if you do dual enrollment, they are going to want to see that college transcript. So don’t do dual enrollment unless you are going to start your college grades positively.

00:44:24.710 –> 00:44:33.080
Particularly in Florida. It’s a very popular to do dual enrollment, but if you’re if you get B’s in those courses, which isn’t a bad grade, but it starts your GPA in college at a 3 0, which is sometimes hard to get out of.

00:44:44.320 –> 00:44:53.939
So one of my sons took toe dual enrollment courses, and got a B and a C. And started his college with a 2.5, which was much worse than his high school career, so it was hard to climb out of.

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Did I answer? I think I answered all of that question.

00:45:07.940 –> 00:45:14.829
Aimee Heller: Perfect. Oh, here’s one about us. So what do you and your organization specialize in in regards to the admissions process.

00:45:15.800 –> 00:45:30.340
Debra Barnett Santostefano: I would say the thing that we really couple of things. One, we really specialize in individualization and personalization. So we’re very tight knit team, even though we’re located around the country.

00:45:30.340 –> 00:45:47.189
We meet at a minimum of 3 times a week as a full team. And we talk about trends. We talk about the latest things that are happening in the news. We talk about students, and we present students to each other. And we

00:45:47.190 –> 00:46:12.030
share strategies and expertise. So that’s one of the reasons I actually chose to work with ICC is because of the team and recognizing that we all have areas where we excel, and areas where we may have gaps in knowledge. If I have a gap in knowledge, I know in who my teammate is who will have be able to answer those questions.

00:46:12.160 –> 00:46:28.410
So I really think that that is what differentiates ICC is the team approach and the very significant personalization. So you would be working with one counselor, but you would have the support of the entire team.

00:46:30.360 –> 00:46:33.759
Aimee Heller: Great how many more you want to take? There’s a couple more questions.

00:46:33.760 –> 00:46:34.840
Debra Barnett Santostefano: Let’s do two more.

00:46:37.756 –> 00:47:01.740
Aimee Heller: Could you comment on submitting AP test scores? My understanding is that they will accept them, and it can provide further proof of competency in certain subjects, given grade inflation.

00:47:02.100 –> 00:47:10.510
Debra Barnett Santostefano: Yes, there is a place on the application to enter your AP test scores.

00:47:10.620 –> 00:47:28.379
You don’t submit them. You don’t necessarily send them when you apply, but you can enter them, and yes, you know that if you have fours and fives definitely, I would say, add them to your application, and if you have ones and twos, don’t.

00:47:28.570 –> 00:47:31.020
Threes let’s discuss and consider it within the context of the student.

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Aimee Heller: Okay, and for everyone whose questions we don’t get to remember, send it to send it to Debra. Here’s another one. This one’s kind of a short one. Does having a parent or grandparent with a UC School as an alum help.

00:47:50.040 –> 00:47:51.979
Debra Barnett Santostefano: Alma mater, yeah.

00:47:56.250 –> 00:48:12.149
It will help you with your familiarity with the school, and that helps you be, you know, present your more genuine voice in your application. But again, remember, you’re applying to

00:48:12.390 –> 00:48:21.740
I mean, very few students only apply to one school. You might, but even so, they really don’t want you to target your application to a particular school.

00:48:23.200 –> 00:48:38.630
So being a California resident does help. They do accept a certain number of students from California. So that is a benefit and a lot of times, if your parents went to one of the schools you might still live here.

00:48:40.730 –> 00:49:03.679
So I work with students in California. I work with students in different countries and on the East Coast and the Northwestern States. Each of us doesn’t work with a huge number of students in each grade because we want to be able to provide that individualization as well.

00:49:04.049 –> 00:49:13.390
A counselor could certainly get full.

00:49:14.380 –> 00:49:37.580
However, if a counselor doesn’t have any more space, because they’re working with a certain number of students. We do really try to be mindful of making sure that you have all the time we need. I also want to give a shout out to Aimee, because Aimee is our essay specialist, and she’s here helping with the webinar which we really appreciate. She also writes our blogs, which can be very helpful to you

00:49:37.580 –> 00:49:55.200
As the essay expert, when we have situations like, if I have a student struggling in telling their story. Aimee will meet with them, depending on the package that you purchase. There’s the comprehensive package has no additional charge for that. We also do interview prep Which there’s no additional charge for with the

00:49:59.620 –> 00:50:07.300
comprehensive package. Just a little plug, all helpful things.

00:50:08.430 –> 00:50:27.330
So I’m going to wish you very good luck with this process. I hope to hear from you if you have questions, or would like to meet for a consultation, and learn more about our services, and enjoy the rest of the summer. Isn’t it going by much too fast?

00:50:27.470 –> 00:50:35.189
Stay safe. And thank you so much for joining us today.

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Bye, now.