Records > Spazzamy's Records
2020
Enrolled
Spazzamy
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 (1)
Test Scores
1500 — I only got this through sheer willpower, as that was definitely not the score I started out with.
Subject Tests: 720 US history, 690 Literature. I went into these tests completely blind bc I didn’t care about them. IMO they don’t matter much
School Grades
GPA: 3.93 UW, 4.23 W, 4.36 UC GPA
APs: 12 courses - Got mostly 5s on all the exams (English Lang,  Lit, US History, World History, Env Science, Psych, Comp Sci , Calc ab, Microecon, Macroecon, US Gov and Politics, Comp Gov and Politics), 1 dual enrollment
Special Qualifications
social justice project coordinator
varsity debate
environmental legal/policy analysis intern
city council budgetary board
national & local political campaign advisory board
Red Cross
social media manager
art projects school committee
youth council
Comments and Reviews
I manifested my acceptance to Cal. Thank god for holistic admissions.

essays matter a lot lot lot and have the power to save you. I wasn’t confident in the rest of my profile at the time so I thought I had to overcompensate by putting everything into my PIQs. And it worked. I will say though that a lot of the mid-tiered UCs are kind of stats based, and even UCLA. I have friends who were rejected from UCs but got into Yale and other T20s. They do be random tho

I think the best thing for me was the fact that I went into it all not really expecting anything, but just doing my best, doing what I was passionate about, not putting all my hopes into an unattainable dream school. And at the end, I got exactly what I wanted, my dream school (berk!) I am very happy with my results :)

Looking back, I had a lot of bad advice shoved down my throat by family members who went to these top schools—people telling me from my freshman year to join clubs and work my way up to be president. To create clubs so that I can get a board position. To start a nonprofit organization. But none of those things actually mean anything if you yourself don’t care about it. I had no interest in starting meaningless clubs just for my resume. I didn’t want to start a nonprofit that would die after I graduated high school. It all seemed so shallow to me. Playing that game can work for people—I’ve seen it, friends who started 5 different clubs to be president in, getting into T20s—but I just knew that personally I would’ve regretted spending that much time doing something I didn’t truly care about. Plus the feeling of doing all that and not ending up at a school you set your expectations for, would’ve been heartbreaking.


I got accepted to GWU with a $20k academic scholarship, but the school is still so unreasonably expensive.
UCSD was a curveball. I got waitlisted at first and then accepted but at that point I didn’t care. Accepted into my first choice college Muir. Was surprised bc Muir is the hardest to get into.
UC Irvine I got accepted early into the honors college with a $32k merit scholarship.
UCLA I waitlisted. I’m just gonna blame this one on the fact that UCLA cares about gpa, and gpa solely, so incredibly heavily. It’s fr 4.0 or bust, disregarding everything else like ECs or your essays. Or maybe not. Didn’t opt into the waitlist after Berk.
Vanderbilt waitlist too. I didn’t do the interview bc I didn’t take it seriously, which was in hindsight a mistake.
NYU waitlisted also. Only spent 30 minutes writing my supplemental essay.
Brown rejection was to be expected. Interview was mediocre. My letter of recs weren’t that great either.
Comment (1)
Anonym

Congratulations on your dream school!!

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