To be eligible for consideration, applicants must have a minimum transferable cumulative GPA of 3.4. However, admission to HSSEAS is very competitive, and for most majors, you need to have a major prep GPA of 3.8 or better to be competitive.

To be competitive, you should complete all of the required major prep courses by no later than the end of the spring semester prior to transfer (i.e. Fall 2018 applicants should finish all major prep by the end of Spring 2018). In some majors, it may still be possible to be admitted if you are missing one major prep course, but students who complete all of the major prep will be given priority over students who are missing a course.

Courses taken the summer immediately prior to transfer (i.e. Summer 2018 courses for a Fall 2018 applicant) are not considered to be part of the application and will not be considered towards fulfilling transfer requirements. However, if you are admitted to HSSEAS, any transferable courses taken prior to matriculation may still count towards satisfying a graduation requirement.

HSSEAS will accept the full IGETC certification, but it is not required nor will it affect your chances of being admitted. While we do not discourage completing IGETC, we recommend that applicants to HSSEAS focus primarily on completing the major prep courses first. To be eligible for admission, we require at least one General Education course in either the Humanities, Arts, or Social Sciences. We do not accept partial IGETC.

Any courses that were taken towards the IGETC certification will be evaluated on an individual basis, and depending on the subject matter of the course, it may still be equivalent to a UCLA course and satisfy one of our GE categories.  For example, if you take an American Government course, it will be evaluated for credit, and that course could be equivalent to UCLA’s POL SCI 40, which fulfills the Social Analysis GE area.

As long as there is not an excessive number of “W” grades in the major prep courses, it should not affect your chances of admission. If you have more than two “W” grades in the major prep, you may want to explain the situation in one of the essays.

Repeats of courses in which you earn a “C” or better are not allowed, and only the original grade will be considered. If you earn a grade below a “C” in a major prep course and you repeat it, both the original grade and the new grade will be calculated into the major prep GPA.

We make our decisions primarily on your performance in the major prep courses. However, students who are borderline cases can be helped by strong essays and extracurricular activities. Activities that demonstrate a strong interest in engineering will be the most helpful to your application. Overcoming obstacles and life challenges will also be taken into account, as long as the academic performance is also strong.