UCLA,USC,UCI Chances?

Each of the universities that you're interested in has a website with their admission requirements. Look on them to see if you qualify. Fortunately for you, colleges love engineering students, especially ones that are born in the USA, since the USA doesn't produce enough engineers. Math, math and more math is what you need to focus on.

Perhaps you may notice that this is the LA TRAVEL forum, not the college admissions forum. Looks fine to me, but I'm not on the admissions committee.

Just apply to all. You have nothing to loose if you do not.

Your UC GPA is calculated differently than a typical GPA, have your college counselor calculate it for you. It's basically your 10th and 11th a - g grades, weighting on certain classes (AP, approved Honors). USC and UCLA have similar admitted freshmen admission stats, about 23% admits, about 3.8 average unweighted GPA, but USC's average admitted freshman SAT is 100 points higher, 2130. USC has a more competitive applicant pool, high percentage of kids from top private and public schools, everyone applies to UCLA. You can check out the freshman profiles for all of the UC's here: http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/admissions/campuses/index.html Click on a Campus name > Freshman admission profile UCLA 2011 detailed freshman profile: http://www.admissions.ucla.edu/Prospect/Adm_fr/Frosh_Prof11.htm USC 2011 freshman profile: http://www.usc.edu/admission/undergraduate/apply/fresh_profiles.html Click to download the PDF. Your community hours are fine, but won't give you too much of a boost, competitive applicants typically do 100 - 200+ hours every summer, plus more during the school year. You might have a bit tougher time being admitted to USC, it has a more competitive applicant pool, and they look at freshman grades, whereas UCLA doesn't, so your UC GPA should be higher than your typical GPA, considering your freshman year. UCLA is a bit of a crap shoot, not as much as it used to be, but still, admission is not based solely on grades and test scores as much as with other competitive colleges. There are things that are considered that you haven't addressed in your post. Write a great personal statement, it will really help, ask the college counselor for advice on what UCLA wants to see. If the college counselor really doesn't know, see if there is a community center workshop on writing personal statements. It's worth the time. UCI admits about 48% of applicants and you likely have a good chance with your stats. UCI's UC GPA average for admitted freshmen is 3.97, UCLA's is 4.11, UCI's avg SAT score is 1849. Don't worry about what you did or didn't do in the past, you can't change that, just try to mitigate the damages by writing a great personal statement, and be conversational and yourself in interviews at the colleges that have them. You should definitely at least get into a good UC. Good luck!