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These questions are always awkward because they imply there is some kind of foul play or secret going on with admissions.Admissions are typically far more straightforward than people think. The people who work hard, earn the grades, and stay consistent, get in. Of course, with anything that involves probability, your odds can be improved strategically.Here are nine strategies you can use to better your odds at USC, UCLA, or UC Berkeley.I intentionally picked these three schools. I like to think of them as the trifecta.These are the three you want. These are the three that most people want.My little sister, my younger cousin, and I all attended UC Berkeley. That wasn’t an accident, and there are definitely items that admissions committees look at when accepting students into the new class.As a native of Los Angeles, this was the dream trifecta. People see UCLA and UC Berkeley as the two best public universities in the entire world. Each year, UCLA and UC Berkeley take turns de-throning each other from the top spot. Students see USC as an amazing private school in its own right.Out of high school, I didn’t go to any of these schools. Instead, I went to community college.Out of community college, I was admitted to all three. When I was admitted as a transfer, my sister was admitted as a four-year (out of high school).Unlike other places, there is no general ‘frequently asked questions’ page about admissions. Each school directs you to either a phone number or an e-mail to direct your questions. Those answers are almost always different at each school.Many students are left confused about the process.Making matters worse, a community college or high school counselor will be ill-equipped to inform you on any matters relating to the transfer experience; or, what it takes to get in.I’ve found that my years in community college and high school were great, but the counselors and general guidance was always substantially lacking.Here are the things I strongly believe influence or help in the admissions game:Get assisted with ASSIST.I never see this resource, and it pains me. Assist is a website that tells you every single course you need to matriculate to a four-year UC or CSU school. It’s not a perfect resource, but no resource is.For things related to the engineering disciplines, assist can be a little off. You might need to use a school’s specific matriculation page.Outside of that, it’s a fairly straightforward and painless resource.You get the college you are currently at, the college you want to transfer to, and the year you are transferring.If the current year’s transfer agreements don’t exist, it will use the previous years’. After you find the two schools in the drop-down menu, you’ll be given a list of majors to choose from.That’s right. It will give you courses for any major that you want. Some of them will be empty, since the schools won’t offer the classes that are necessary, or the only requirement will be to follow the IGETC or the destination college’s guidelines.If I choose mathematics, and choose to transfer to Berkeley out of a community college in Los Angeles, it will post this information up:This is in addition to regular courses you need to transfer, which they also go over:Having this information as early as possible gives you the ability to pause and think things over about how to best attack the transfer approach.As my European history teacher used to say in high school:“Never forget the 6 Ps: Prior proper preparedness prevents poor performance.”The honors system.At my community college, they had a set of courses designated as “honors” courses. Most of the time, these courses were the same courses you would regularly take, but they would add on a few more assignments.The purpose of the honors system is a bit ambiguous. It is designed to yield a bit more depth into the coursework, but most students end up ignoring it altogether.This gives serious students a leg-up. You don’t need a perfect grade point average, you need to hold a 3.5 or above with the honors stamp, meeting all of their requirements, and your odds of getting into the trifecta are greatly increased.I think that, for my year, approximately 90% of the students who applied under the honors program got into UCLA.It’s dramatic and underused.Space out the difficult coursework.Everybody knows that classes aren’t built with the same intensity. As classes grow vertically and higher in-depth or horizontally and begin to span more topics, you find yourself with some classes that are much harder than the rest.These are the classes that can destroy a transcript.Specifically, these are courses that way down the entire semester as a whole.In semesters where you find yourself taking two of these classes, you’ll discover that you’ll perform worse on easier courses, too. This is something to consider, as you would want to isolate the courses you anticipate you won’t do as well in so you can balance the rest of your transcript as neatly as possible.I feel strange attempting to gamify and calculate points on a page, but, at the end of the day, college acceptance is a numbers game, and the ones that look the nicest tend to win.Practice min-maxing as frequently as possible.Look up professors before you take their class.Professors are notoriously bad in community college.No, not all of them.Places like RateMyProfessors are great supplements to give students a background for what’s to be expected in a class. Sometimes, you won’t mind if the professor teaches very little but also expects very little from the students for a great grade.Other times, if you’re determined to major in mathematics, you really need a professor to teach you lower-division linear algebra — and to teach it well.I should emphasize that websites like these have an inordinate bias, as the ones that review are usually the ones that did extremely poorly in the class. It’s always something to keep in mind — due diligence is always of the utmost importance.No, the infamous “W” is not going to kill your chances at acceptance.In fact, I know someone who got the Regents award with a “W” on her transcript.A “W” is the mark you get when you have dropped a class after the deadline to drop classes has passed. This usually means the student was doing poorly in the course leading up to the drop.To denote that, a mark in our school is placed. “W” is there to signify withdrawal.However, even though most schools will say they look at them closely, the truth is that nobody is certain about this.I’ve seen applications with multiple withdrawals get into the trifecta. I had a close friend get the highest scholarship award to Berkeley, the Regents.So while it may hurt you slightly, there is a good chance that if you have the following, you’re fine:Good grades.Consistency in your performance.Decent personal statements.Admissions committees are not throwing out students who have dropped a class by automation.Join the student body.Nobody runs for the student body president or any of the cabinet positions. These are deceivingly powerful positions that follow an intense structure and provide you leadership experience you didn’t know you wanted.I joined my Associated Student Union’s cabinet the last year I was at community college. I got to travel to leadership conferences in New York, Washington DC, San Francisco, and Chicago. It was paid for, which was a plus for a poor college student. We would get to interact and meet with other student body representatives across many community colleges. It was also a great place to learn about the way the money flows through the bureaucratic process of our education system. You become a check on the system and a voice that helps the governing process.We got to fly around the country, vote on things that clubs in the school wanted to do, and get a taste for leadership. We also got offices, which was never something to complain about.In college applications, it definitely stands out. You’re representing tens of thousands of students. Your cabinet position is limited to only one person every academic year.Our Student Union president didn’t have the best grades but he got into Berkeley’s business program, which is one of the greatest undergraduate business programs in the entire world.Set yourself apart by doing something nobody else can do.We can argue all day, but the best indicator of acceptance is the grade point average plus good personal statements.I would place more emphasis on the former, too. While personal statements can wow a committee, banking on a stellar writing sample is a poor strategy for acceptance.The first reason for this is obvious: If you’ve been struggling as a transfer to maintain good grades in community college, then you will truly begin to feel the pain at UCLA, Berkeley, or USC. These schools are hypercompetitive, especially in the sciences, and will not fail to neglect students that fall behind.The quota system for grades is a great example of this. Here is an expected outcome for a mathematics course at Berkeley:You’ll be looking at upper-division courses with incredibly bright students where you can expect anywhere from 10–25% of the class to fail.This won’t be a problem with all majors. Majors are generally not built equally and rigor is not reflected in the grade point average until you experience it yourself.But, in other cases, you might want to know beforehand.Your junior college is a scholarship oasis.I’m not including this as a digression, I’m using this to quell rumors on college costs. Students often dissuade themselves from even applying because of the price tag they see for tuition and room and board.These price tags aren’t real.For most, that cost will dilute and simplify to a middle four-digit number that is completely subsidized, per year. That means you’ll have up until a year after you graduate to pay off that loan, interest-free.You shouldn’t be shocked to know that, either. Most colleges will grant you aid on their behalf if they feel that your financial situation requires it.Here’s an exaggerated example: It costs $75,000 a year to attend Princeton. 82% of graduates are debt-free.Big schools have pretty deep pockets. Even your community college has deeper pockets than you realize. I was awarded about $10,000 in scholarships just before I transferred.You need to ask and look around as to where the scholarship details can be found. A student services center might be a good start.High School: You can start early.Just because you find yourself in high school doesn’t mean you are bound to it. I took an art history class to fulfill a credit over a summer. I ended up taking math and statistics that were far more interesting than my high school courses.I needed to take that art history class because I was in Track & Field and Cross Country. It took the place of a class I needed to graduate. I didn’t have a spot for an extra class, and I refused to take a 7 a.m. class because I used that time to get a warm-up run in before school started.Community college enrollment is not bound to a particular age. If you wish to get ahead a bit earlier, you can choose to enroll in it as a sophomore or junior. That way, you can get a head start on your general breadth requirements. You could even find yourself applying to the trifecta a year earlier. Or, you could use that time to figure out what you really enjoy learning. Either way, you’ll be ahead and can plan accordingly.

Please read this definition from the FAFSA Help pages:"The response (saying Yes to Homeless) indicates the student was determined by the director of an emergency shelter or transitional housing program funded by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to be an unaccompanied youth who was homeless or is self-supporting and at risk of being homeless at any time on or after July 1, 2015.Homeless means lacking fixed, regular and adequate housing, which includes living in shelters, motels, cars, or parks, or temporarily living with other people because the student had nowhere else to go, including situations in which the student is fleeing an abusive parent who would otherwise provide the student with financial support and a place to live.Unaccompanied means the student is not living in the physical custody of his/her parent or guardian.Youth means the student is 21 years of age or younger or the student is still enrolled in high school as of the day he or she signs the application.Yes means:The student was determined to be an unaccompanied youth who was homeless at any time on or after July 1, 2015"Is Student an Unaccompanied Homeless Youth as Determined by HUD?So I do not see that you can declare that you are homeless at this time. This is a very particular determination by a HUD authority and you will need documentation that you were determined homeless. Also I do not think the aid office will see you as independent if you have financial support from the parent, and paying for college is financial support. Although if they do declare you Independent for any reason you can accept money from parents and just have to list that on your FAFSA.It is possible that you can ask the colleges you applied to for Professional Judgement for a dependency override. You will also need documentation for this. People who might provide documentation of letters to support your claim would be: Police reports, social worker, doctor, therapist or psychiatrist, school counselor, principal, teacher, clergy. If you have not turned to these resources perhaps you should consider it. If you are declared homeless or were in foster care or get an override, then you will be Independent for financial aid and just file FAFSA based on your own income and assets.I think you should show your mother a sample of the types of aid you might receive for filing FAFSA. Run a few Net Price Calculators at schools you applied to. Those will show the cost of the school and the aid you should get. Most people are not in a position to turn down free money, so maybe she will see the light. If you are not declared homeless or given a dependency override then you will not get any grants. They cannot know if you parent is wealthy and just doesn't want to pay unless they see the FAFSA numbers. You can get merit aid that does not require filing FAFSA. Otherwise you will only get a loan, likely, if you speak to the financial aid office. Dependent freshman may only take a loan for 5,500. They may require that your mother sign a form that states she refuses to file.FAFSA is pretty simple to file for most people. Filing FAFSA doesn't mean the parent is required to actually pay for anything, it is just a means to determine what level of aid you will be given. What the parent will pay is still up to the parent. Also if you don't file FAFSA you can't get work/study job either.Note that claiming you or not on taxes is not the primary determination of dependency status for aid. All students are Dependents for FAFSA until they are 24 unless they meet one of the Independent criteria. That is regardless of the parent claiming them on taxes.

Thanks for the A2A.This topic gets a fair amount of coverage from the media. Tom has provided some good links and they are what I would call a representative sample.I will add a couple of links and quotes and then talk more specifically about my personal experience with the issue and then raise some points that might be pertinent to your question.Of 381 college admissions officers who answered a Kaplan telephone questionnaire this year, 31 percent said they had visited an applicant’s Facebook or other personal social media page to learn more about them — a five-percentage-point increase from last year. More crucially for those trying to get into college, 30 percent of the admissions officers said they had discovered information online that had negatively affected an applicant’s prospects.http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/10/business/they-loved-your-gpa-then-they-saw-your-tweets.html?pagewanted=allIf nearly a third of admission readers check social media, then students need to be careful about what they post. I would say that this caveat might be even more important for those seeking internships or jobs.What The Times article leaves out, however, is the drop in the negatives as far as social media affects admission officers:Despite the growth in online checking, however, there’s been a dip — to 30% this year from 35% in Kaplan’s 2012 survey — in the number of admissions officers reporting that they’re finding something that negatively impacted an applicant’s admissions chances. And notably, in a separate survey of college-bound students**, more than three-quarters said they would not be concerned if an admissions officer Googled them. In response to the question, “If a college admissions officers were to do an online search of you right now, how concerned would you be with what they found negatively impacting your chances of getting in?” 50% said they would be “Not at all concerned” while 27% said “Not too concerned.” Only 14% of students said they would be “Very concerned” while the remainder said they would be “Somewhat concerned.”Kaplan Test Prep Survey: More College Admissions Officers Checking Applicants’ Digital Trails, But Most Students UnconcernedWhile more admission people report looking at social media, more students seem to have done enough to make sure that their on-line presence will not hurt them for admission. What neither article does in any systematic way is to give a list of things that students have done that negatively impacted their chances of admission. The Times article points out a student tweeting terrible things about a school she applied to, and this would of course hurt anyone’s chances.But what are the things that might hurt besides trashing a particular school? There are a few things I can think of that would be certain to sink a student: racist, homophobic, sexist, xenophobic comments or postings would doom anyone. But I doubt this happens much, in part because if the student did post such things there would likely already be consequences at his or her secondary school. These kinds of things would inflame at least some students at any school and it usually does not take long before someone talks about it to the school.I also think that students have heard from the media and school officials to make sure not to put anything that would hurt them in life or in the admission process. But kids still do dumb things, and so do the rest of us too.Let’s assume that almost all students now don’t post things that will doom them out of hand. Are there other things that might hurt them? My answer is yes, but I base this on hearsay rather than hard evidence.Let’s assume a student has just celebrated an 18th birthday. He or she posts a photo showing the brand new top of the line BMW that they received from mom and dad. On the face of it, this might not seem like a negative but for some in the world of admission and the world at large it would be. Most admission people are not in the 1% of the economic spread. Not by a long shot. Seeing students who jet off to Paris for the weekend, or get presents that most could never afford, and who generally come across as spoiled may well, at some level and to some extent, hurt their chances of winning over an admission officer. There are at least some in the world of admission who think rich kids have too many advantages over the rest of the population and anything that comes across as reveling in wealth might be a negative, either consciously or not.The other example I will bring up is even more sensitive and likely to raise some comments (I hope this is the case actually). A long while ago, when paper applications were still the norm and things were far different than today, applications often came with a little space that said: photo (not required). The thought was that seeing the face, typically a yearbook picture, helped to humanize the applicant. You could see who was submitting an application. Then, however, people said tha photos should not be a part of the application process as they could bias a reader. Now on the Common Application (and virtually all other applications), a photo is verboten.Social media now undercuts the effort to take looks out of the picture (pun intended). Facebook or even Google search comes up with images pretty quickly. Let’s assume that an admission reader pulls up a Facebook page of a young woman whose profile photo shows her at a debutante ball. And it shows that there are hundreds or even thousands of photos of herself posted. This might lead some readers to think the young woman is too preoccupied with prestige, class, looks and herself. (For some it might unconsciously bias them to give her a plus as studies show that how someone looks alters how we perceive them.) Will this show up on a survey of admission readers? Probably not, but it is something worth considering.On the other hand it may be that a social media page might help a student. A Quoran in secondary school recently posted photos of her efforts to collect books and donate them to under-privileged students in a low-income school district. If I saw this while reading an application I would count it as a plus.In terms of personal experience, I don’t have many to share. A while back I asked some current undergraduates to create a student group, The Mainland Student Network. Its mission was to interview students from China and also to examine the activities and things they said they did outside of the classroom. In one case a student said on renren that he/she had written a book and posted the book title there. The MSN student did some detective work and found out the book had been written by someone else.I mention China in particular as it brings up another issue. Do some schools really want to know that much abut students. The ones awash in applications certainly do as choosing among an exceptional group of students is difficult. (It is also incredibly time consuming.) I can’t imagine many readers at schools that have huge applicant pools spending much effort investigating social media. There just isn’t time to get through all the materials already submitted by the applicants. Most who send in extra stuff to supplement the application will be sad to know it rarely gets looked over at a number of schools.Most schools in the US, however, are not all that selective. The selective schools get the most press, but the number of them is small. What many schools are looking for are reasonably good students, and reasonably good students who can pay. Many schools in the US import huge numbers of students from China. They have great transcripts, high scores, strong recommendations and essays. The problem is a lot of this is fabricated by paid "agents". They get paid a lot to write essays, and recs, alter transcripts etc. Many schools know this but often don’t put resources into checking these credentials. This leads me to believe that most schools, which need students, will not often deny a student based on a somewhat sketchy social media post or photo. If a student is reasonably good by the numbers is it worth cutting them out if they are holding what looks like an alcoholic beverage in a photo? I doubt it in most cases. Fraud fears rocket as Chinese seek a place at any priceI mention the alcohol photo as it too raises issues. A person looking like they are having a great time at a party might be holding a to go cup but it would be inviting a lawsuit to turn in that student. Even if they are holding a bottle of hard liquor that does not prove they actually consumed it. Would schools want to go to court over this? I doubt this too.I think most of what is put up about social media and schools looking things over falls into the category of providing a useful service. Telling students to take care what they post is useful. Telling anyone the same is useful too, but I don’t think it affects as many students as the surveys suggest.The last thing I will mention is that there are now businesses that offer student a chance to submit their social media profile to them so they can go through and edit out anything that might look bad. I have no idea how any might use this but I am sure there is at least some interest in this. It means that that is yet one more way that parents and students are paying for others to help them in the admission process.*******************************************************************Please read this wonderful set of comments and questions about this post from Jack Nelson, He made these comments on LinkedIn, and has given me permission to post them here.Jack is the Director of Recruitment for Graduate Business Programs at Hofstra UniversityAlways enjoy your posts, Parke. I think you're right on the money. I do wonder, though, how many of those admission counselors who answered "yes" to that survey actively went out and took the time to find students' profiles. I can't imagine there's more than a handful of schools for which that is a normal part of their review process. As you say, there simply isn't time for it. We have a few ways admitted students can interact with each other through Facebook, but the conversation belongs to them. We've actually used Facebook for over six years, back before absolutely everything had its own Facebook page. Back then, students could interact with "Admission Counselor"- a profile we set up to have a social media presence, way back in the day. If a student had messaged me there or now if they engage through Facebook, it was and is incumbent on them to carefully manage their privacy settings, IF they have anything they don't want visible to us and IF we clicked on their profile after they contacted us. That said, they are the ones who reach out to us. If they don't, we're not taking the time to find them on Facebook. My long-winded point is: for us, Facebook functions much like the interview. It is not required, but when a student goes out of their way to engage with us and start a conversation on social media, as in any other method of communication, we appreciate their engagement and welcome their comments or questions. Of those survey-takers who answered yes, I wonder how many actively sought out students on Facebook and for how many the students had already opened that line of communication with them.