Campolindo’s College and Career Center held an academy about understanding University of California (UC) applications on January 18. Campolindo counselor Duane Magno, who has been reading applications for UC Berkeley for 13 years, explained the application process in detail.

The academy was filled mostly with juniors, for preparation for the upcoming presence of college applying to college, but sophomores attended as well. Many attended because they wanted more insight into the UC admissions process, including junior Mia Lawrence who “wanted to learn about what the UC’s consider important in the admissions process.”

Magno believes that students who attended the presentation “come from all different levels of understanding and familiarity with UCs and the application process” and wanted to “speak generally so that everyone has at least a baseline of the same information coming out of that presentation.”

This includes information on GPA, test scores, courses, considered factors for admissions, personal insight questions, and other circumstances that should be mentioned on the application, all of which were covered in the presentation. Junior Sonam Mangu learned that the “graduation requirements at Campo are higher than UC’s.”

Magno explained that “the UC schools have become increasingly competitive over the course of time and that trend seems to continue year after year,” so he wants “students to have as much information as they can to know what they should be doing.”

One of the topics covered was student achievements and awards because “the pool of students is becoming more and more competitive, and whatever students can do to show the many facets of their abilities and their interests” are “always going to be to their benefit,” Magno said.