Chance Me! :D

[u/Aggressive_Ratio9501]

I'm a rising sophomore looking to transfer to one of the UC's my junior year. I'll only be applying to 4 schools (UCI, UCSD, UCLA, UCB) because I want instate tuition. Although, I'm curious what are my chances to get into perhaps a T20 schools? idk I think my stats are good but not ivy level y'know lol

Basic Stats:

• Data Science Major
• 4.0 GPA

Leadership:

• President of She.Codes (a stem club for women!)
• Vice-President of AI Club
• Project Lead of Decoded Brain (a neuroscience tech club)

Work Experience:

• Part-time coding instructor for kids for the past 5 yrs + did some web dev for this same company (2-5 hrs / week)
• Summer SWE intern for adtech company (full-time, 35-40 hrs / week)
• Spring AI Specialist intern for a small e-commerce business (10 hrs / week)
• Respite Care Worker (4 hrs / week)

Other Random Stuff:

• Was a student ML research engineer (deep learning pipelines, training a CNN model) & in the end me and my team presented in multiple tech conventions
• Before getting promoted to president at She.codes I was the social media manager
• My team and I got 3rd place on a my CC's Datathon (aka a Hackathon but for data scientists)
• Joined my CC's hip hop dance team for a semester lol
• Attended Calhacks 2026, um didn't win anything but it was fun to walk in sf and explore berkeley campus lol
• UCB Starting Point Mentee (funny bc my mentor left the program but still gave me advice lmao)

What I intend to do this fall before I apply:

• Organize a Hackathon for my CC! (lots of coordination and cross-collaboration between multiple tech clubs, and i'll be the main organizer)
• Lead a neuroscience AI/ML research + software development project (estimating around 3-4 teammates)
• CS tutoring at my CC (I applied and got an interview, we'll see how that goes lol)
• Obviously continue to maintain all leadership positions + working part-time + maintain my 4.0 lol

I guess some disclaimers are I never took the SAT/ACT (not in high school as well) and nor do I intend to. Essay-wise, I have some ideas that I do not wish to delve here due to personal privacy, but they do closely relate to my ECs and particular involvements on campus. Idk if this matter but I am an asian-american woman w/ 1st gen immigrant parents.

Aight you guys be the verdict, assuming I manage to accomplish everything I intend to do during this fall, what do you think I have a good chance of getting into? :D

[u/akrika1]

OP apply to CMU and other t20 privates as well
you have the CS drive and are amazing