#upcat2015

FULL DISCLOSURE: I am by no means an expert so the information I present in this post might not be completely accurate, if at all. Read (and believe) at your own risk. I gathered my data from seminars I’ve been to in the university, the internet, and my own experiences from my one semester in UP. I am not affiliated with the Office of Admissions in any way so my knowledge really is limited. I’m trying.

Every UP campus has a cut-off grade. The applicant should qualify for the cut-off grade first before his/her choices of courses come into play.

Some think that choosing a “non-quota” course can help them pass. The truth is that there is no such thing as a “non-quota” course. These “non-quota” courses actually have quotas of their own. It’s just that they’re less in-demand so the quotas aren’t always filled and choosing them almost always guarantees a slot as long as you pass the cut-off grade of the campus chosen. We’ll get back to this later.

My sister put UP Diliman as her first choice of campus and put BA Business Administration and Accountancy (BAA) and BA Business Administration (BA) as her first and second choices of courses, respectively. She put UP Los Banos as her second choice of campus with BA Economics as her first choice of course.

Let’s assume that the cut-off grade of UP Diliman is a 2.200 and my sister got a UPG (University Predicted Grade, I think it means?) of 2.000. She qualified for UP Diliman*. Now is the only time her course choices will come into play. Say the College of Business Administration can only accommodate 100 incoming freshmen for BAA and 100 incoming freshmen for BA. 

Let’s assume that there are 300 students who qualified for Diliman who has BAA as their choice of course (regardless if it’s a first or second choice). Out of those 300 students, the top 100 will be the ones given a guaranteed slot because even though it’s true that they all passed the cut-off of 2.200, the College of Business Administration can only accommodate 100 students. The next 50 or so will be waitlisted. What happens to the other 150 students? They’re considered for their second choice of course.  If their second choice of course is one that is low in demand, they’re almost guaranteed a slot because the quotas aren’t always filled.

But again, my sister picked two hard courses to get into so I’ll explain. Again, let’s assume there are 300 students who qualified for Diliman who has BA as their choice of course (regardless if it’s a first or second choice). These 300 will be ranked as well and the top 100 will be given sure slots with the next 50 or so waitlisted. If someone with a sure slot has no intention of enrolling, his/her slot is given to someone who is waitlisted.

My sister happened to not be part of the top passers of BAA and BA so what happens? There’s no third choice of course, right? This is why she’s a DPWAS qualifier. Some are waitlisted in their second choice of course but are sure DPWAS placers in the same way that some might be waitlisted into their first choice of course but be guaranteed a slot in their second choice of course. 

A DPWAS placing simply means that my sister passed in her desired campus but didn’t make the quota of the courses she chose for both her first and second choice. Maybe the 100th BAA and BA passers have a UPG of 1.500 and the 50th waitlisted persons have UPGs of 1.7500. We’ll never know. Her (theoretical) UPG of 2.000 got her a DPWAS placing. Note that if she picked a less in-demand course, her 2.000 can very well snag a sure slot. Again, this is because she qualified for the campus already.

So what happens now? Mid-February the letters would have been distributed. If you have a sure slot, then you’ll simply be asked to confirm your intention to enroll so that if you have no plans of enrolling, the waitlisted applicants can have your slot. If you’re a DPWAS placer and you have intentions of enrolling, you will fill up a form with three programs you want in order of preference. You’ll send it back and the final course assignments should come out by March. If you happened to fail the exam, the letter will contain your UPG and you can file for a reconsideration in almost all UP campuses (UP Diliman is the only campus that doesn’t accept appeals for reconsideration). All UP campuses have cut-off grades for reconsideration too which I believe is the same, if not slightly lower, than the cut-off grades they have for passing. However, appealing for reconsideration doesn’t guarantee a slot because each campus can only accommodate a certain number of incoming freshmen.

*Those who don’t qualify for their first choice of campus qualifies for their second choice of campus considering their UPG is within the cut-off and the whole process of quotas in course choices happens then.

UPCAT Trivia: The UPCAT’s passing rate is around 17%. Around 60% of UPCAT takers choose UP Diliman as their first choice of campus and only around 6% of this 60% (around 4% of all UPCAT takers) get in. Note: I got this information from a seminar I attended in UP.

I hope this post helps! If you have questions then please do ask.

Congratulations to all the UPCAT passers!! If you do plan on studying in UP, please prepare your heart, mind, and soul. UP is not for the faint of heart and you will definitely learn to stand on your own here. Use your four-month long vacation wisely!