Building an Alternative Transcript

Hey ACNGuy,

I did 2 classes at UCLA Extension and I am currently enrolled in one at UCSD Extension. The two classes I took at UCLA Extension were Calculus and Math for Management (which was mostly financial modelling). I am currently enrolled in Statistics. My reason for taking these courses was a little different. I hadn't taken maths in 13 years (last course was in high school because I tested out of my freshman year) and I felt like there was a big, gaping, hole in my educational profile. In response to your questions:

1) I went with UCLA Extension because it had been recommended online some place and I'm located in Los Angeles (one of my instructors was in NM, though). They issue a formal transcript that I uploaded to all the R2 schools. I got my grades a little late for it to make a difference for R1, but I managed to update 2 schools in time, Anderson and Ross, who waitlisted and accepted me respectively. When I approached them about sending in the grade (basically supplementing my app right before decisions came out) they were both open to it, which makes me think that they do consider these types of efforts. If your girlfriend is going to go this route, make sure she keeps track of timing and gets everything done before she applies-I feel like it might have made a difference to Chicago Booth if I could have showed them my As in Calculus and Math for Management but by the time I got the grades they had already issued their decision.

2) The courses are about $500-600 each. Bitter aside here, I spent my bonus on Extension classes, which makes me feel sad and pathetic everytime I think about it!

3) The classes go on year round but you have to sign up for them when they start. As in, they have start and stop dates, you can't just register whenever you feel like it. Also, some courses are very popular. Math for Management filled up quickly. I'm now at UCSD because UCLA's Stats class was full by the time I got around to trying to register.

4) I would recommend Stats, Calculus, Accounting and Microeconomics. My Calculus, Stats and Micro grades are the ones I've had to explicitly declare on some of the applications. If I could go back, I would drop M for M for Micro because it killed me everytime to write in "D" for that one (fortunately, my transcript shows that the class average was C-, I didn't go to a GPA padding type place). Fortunately, I wasn't making up for any bad grades in math, I just didn't have any.

I think that what I managed to show was a good faith effort to address some of the issues the adcoms might think about (no math grades + non quant job). If your gf is trying to rebuild her resume, that mightbe a guiding point.