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The UC Application is In!


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Good luck!! We'll be applying UC in 3 short years! Waiting with bated breath for your news. :-)

 

I just completed a pretend UC application and found it so different from the hard copy transcript I've been working/planning on... Anyone planning to apply UC, you should have a gander at a live application - it might give you some pause on all the a-g requirements and a-g approved providers...

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We found that the application hotline staff to vary by university and by day. UCD seemed to rely upon students, but I was transferred once to an admissions counselor when the student was unsure of an answer.  When dd called Berkeley and UCLA she spoke to a "mature" voice on the other end, and, especially the person at UCLA, they were both helpful.

 

Which campus did you call Sebastian?

 

Eta-I misread your original post - I thought you said that they weren't helpful! I guess my answer agrees with you then! I am still curious which campus(es) your son applied to?

Edited by learners4life
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 I would have relied on acceptance by examination with supporting test scores.

:iagree:  

 

We did fulfill all of the a-g requirements, but not with "approved" providers from their list.  To be sure, we also fulfilled the acceptance by examination requirements at a level more than the minimum required.

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:iagree:  

 

We did fulfill all of the a-g requirements, but not with "approved" providers from their list.  To be sure, we also fulfilled the acceptance by examination requirements at a level more than the minimum required.

 

This was us too. In DS's case, about half of the a-g courses was from CC classes and therefore, "approved". From a PM with another member here, I realized that it is odd that there is no space on the application to indicate if a provider is a-g approved. For schools, I guess it's taken for granted but for homeschoolers, there isn't a space to say where the course was taken unless you assign each provider as a school. So how do they know if a course is from an approved vendor? I suppose one could mention it in the additional comments section.

 

For CC classes, thankfully, that was not an issue. We could easily indicate that these were college classes taken in high school.

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You would think they spend so much time approving classes, vendors, online providers with their whole US Doorways website, that those options would be available to select. To be sure, our plan is mostly SAT II & AP exam route. But not wanting to test for everything under the sun, we have a handful of 'approved' provider courses. But not sure if that's a moot point or not, as who's to say whether they are a-g approved or not? There is no space for that in the application. Weird! I guess like Quark said, you can list that as an addendum in the additional comments section. The whole application was a bit deflating, imo, to condense all the work completed in high school (in my case, planned) whether that's courses, ECs, awards, etc and just narrow it all down to an online fill in the blank. Seemed so inhumane. ;-) But that's just me....

 

Other UC hopefuls, go fill out a pretend application - sign up with an alternative email and see what I mean!

 

So that's 3 of you going for UCs this year so far... learners4life, quark and sebastian (a lady). I had been wondering how many UC hopefuls there were this year. 

 

GOOD LUCK!!!! Your success helps all of us down the road, so wishing you the best. Keep us posted!

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You would think they spend so much time approving classes, vendors, online providers with their whole US Doorways website, that those options would be available to select. To be sure, our plan is mostly SAT II & AP exam route. But not wanting to test for everything under the sun, we have a handful of 'approved' provider courses. But not sure if that's a moot point or not, as who's to say whether they are a-g approved or not? There is no space for that in the application. Weird! I guess like Quark said, you can list that as an addendum in the additional comments section. The whole application was a bit deflating, imo, to condense all the work completed in high school (in my case, planned) whether that's courses, ECs, awards, etc and just narrow it all down to an online fill in the blank. Seemed so inhumane. ;-) But that's just me....

 

Other UC hopefuls, go fill out a pretend application - sign up with an alternative email and see what I mean!

 

So that's 3 of you going for UCs this year so far... learners4life, quark and sebastian (a lady). I had been wondering how many UC hopefuls there were this year. 

 

GOOD LUCK!!!! Your success helps all of us down the road, so wishing you the best. Keep us posted!

 

Thank you! :001_smile:

 

The Common Application was similar IMHO. Good idea to give that one a pretend try too! :001_smile: Sebastian has written helpful posts on how to's.

 

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We submitted two days ago. Dd of course waited until the weekend to start the insight questions, then Sunday sent me her essays to edit and they were just terrible. (Surprisingly, since she is an excellent writer). So we both started freaking - her because she was in her "foggy, stupid" time of the month and couldn't write to save her life, me because, well, I'm her mom. The next night after working for hours she shows me her rewrites and they were just incredible. So as always, she pulled it off at the last minute and still did a fantastic job! Phew!

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For those that submitted in-state - how did you fulfill a-g requirements (if you did)? I know, Quark used DE to fulfill nearly all. How about everyone else?

 

What I understand and how a friend who is experienced with UC advised me is that as long as we do high school level work in that subject area, it is an a-g area being fulfilled, but not a-g approved or accredited. This is what I see from having finished the application as well. If they were super opposed to homeschoolers using other than approved providers, I wonder if they would have mentioned that in the application (but they haven't yet). My guess is most homeschoolers apply with enough test scores to make admit by exam a possibility too and I also suspect many of us will be assessed both ways (if UCs do that, I'm not sure if any or all do).

 

Anyway, not all of the courses DS entered into the application were a-g approved. DS had a very good mix of a-g approved (via DE) and non a-g approved classes. Almost 50-50. It was very important to both of us that we use the flexibility and independence of our PSA to delve deep into passion areas. DS took so many bunny trails too that we decided not to give high school credit for and some of that was listed in the additional comments. Of course, it could all backfire and UCs could reject the kid outright (we have a plan B) but we also did not want to bow down to the must-be-a-g-approved madness and taking classes/ tests just for that reason.

 

Our inherent rebelliousness, willingness to take risks, and my friend's support gave me a lot of courage to pursue this path but I understand how scary it can be when a teen's heart is set on a campus. It was really important to us to not give up the joy of homeschooling though so I hope that will be the case for others too.

 

Edited by quark
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For those that submitted in-state - how did you fulfill a-g requirements (if you did)? I know, Quark used DE to fulfill nearly all. How about everyone else?

 

DD has taken 6 AP exams, 5 of which were through Pennsylvania Homeschoolers.  We mentioned this in the additional comments.  All of the rest of her courses were done at home, and I am of the mind that her ACT and SAT exams (34 and 1550) should be proof of the quality education she is receiving. We did tell a little about our homeschooling path in the additional comments, but looking back now, I wish we had told a little more about the nuts and bolts. We, unfortunately did it the last day (although we had been talking about it), and it would have been better had we taken a few days to do the actual writing.  Can't worry about it now. Again, I think test scores speak VOLUMES!

 

Eta: DD did fulfill all of the a-g requirements.

Edited by learners4life
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