BearBoarBlarney said:

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Have Cal (or any of the UC's for that matter) published their acceptance rates for this year's applicant pool? I haven't seen anything conclusive.

The only thing I saw is that UCLA congratulated its "16,000+" accepted students. By that math, UCLA's acceptance rate (for freshmen, not including community college transfer students) is probably somewhere around 14% - 14.5%.

16,000 acceptances (estimated) / 113,400 freshman applications = 14.1%

Cal receives substantially fewer freshman applications than UCLA (89,300 this year), but also accepts slightly fewer. Assuming Cal admits 15,600 (as it did last year), Cal's acceptance rate would be 17.5%.

I don't particularly like that UCLA has become, in the past few years, the hardest UC of all to get accepted into, stats-wise. But some of that is surely state demographics, since probably 60% or more of the state's population is now located in the "southland" (think: LA Basin / Inland Empire & other desert cities / Orange County / San Diego.

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The UC also publishes percentile admit breakdowns for every campus. Cal's the most selective campus across every single top percentile area.

4.0 GPA and above
CAL 29.8% UCLA 30.5%

ACT Composite 31-36
CAL 28% UCLA 32.7

ACT English Language Arts 31-36
CAL 34.8% UCLA 41.4%

SAT Reading & Writing 700-800
CAL 26.2% UCLA 33.6%

SAT Math 700-800
CAL 18.2 UCLA 21.2%

SAT Essay 20-24
CAL 25.2% UCLA 25.4%

UCLA gets more applications and turns more people away. Cal is more selective for top applicants.

BearBoarBlarney said:

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Have Cal (or any of the UC's for that matter) published their acceptance rates for this year's applicant pool? I haven't seen anything conclusive.

The only thing I saw is that UCLA congratulated its "16,000+" accepted students. By that math, UCLA's acceptance rate (for freshmen, not including community college transfer students) is probably somewhere around 14% - 14.5%.

16,000 acceptances (estimated) / 113,400 freshman applications = 14.1%

Cal receives substantially fewer freshman applications than UCLA (89,300 this year), but also accepts slightly fewer. Assuming Cal admits 15,600 (as it did last year), Cal's acceptance rate would be 17.5%.

I don't particularly like that UCLA has become, in the past few years, the hardest UC of all to get accepted into, stats-wise. But some of that is surely state demographics, since probably 60% or more of the state's population is now located in the "southland" (think: LA Basin / Inland Empire & other desert cities / Orange County / San Diego.

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Lot of this is due to population and the narrative that the Bay Area is so expensive. Doesn't Cal still have better numbers (GPA and test scores) for those accepted? Edit: nevermind, SoCal answered the question.

A female CS grad from Cal? She's gonna stumble on top tier job offers in the valley.

...not just in silicon valley. SF is rife with tech start ups that are hiring. Lots of Cal CS majors can make money as undergraduates and step into grewat opportunities. Your daughter made the right decision by far! You can learn the same stuff at UCSD but the opportunities for Cal and Stanford students are tremendous.

socaliganbear said:

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BearBoarBlarney said:

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Have Cal (or any of the UC's for that matter) published their acceptance rates for this year's applicant pool? I haven't seen anything conclusive.

The only thing I saw is that UCLA congratulated its "16,000+" accepted students. By that math, UCLA's acceptance rate (for freshmen, not including community college transfer students) is probably somewhere around 14% - 14.5%.

16,000 acceptances (estimated) / 113,400 freshman applications = 14.1%

Cal receives substantially fewer freshman applications than UCLA (89,300 this year), but also accepts slightly fewer. Assuming Cal admits 15,600 (as it did last year), Cal's acceptance rate would be 17.5%.

I don't particularly like that UCLA has become, in the past few years, the hardest UC of all to get accepted into, stats-wise. But some of that is surely state demographics, since probably 60% or more of the state's population is now located in the "southland" (think: LA Basin / Inland Empire & other desert cities / Orange County / San Diego.

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The UC also publishes percentile admit breakdowns for every campus. Cal's the most selective campus across every single top percentile area.

4.0 GPA and above
CAL 29.8% UCLA 30.5%

ACT Composite 31-36
CAL 28% UCLA 32.7

ACT English Language Arts 31-36
CAL 34.8% UCLA 41.4%

SAT Reading & Writing 700-800
CAL 26.2% UCLA 33.6%

SAT Math 700-800
CAL 18.2 UCLA 21.2%

SAT Essay 20-24
CAL 25.2% UCLA 25.4%

UCLA gets more applications and turns more people away. Cal is more selective for top applicants.

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Exactly.

Ever since UC went to separate applications for each campus, UCLA received more applications while Cal continued to be the most selective in terms of GPA and test scores. That is because nearly everyone that applies to Cal as their first choice also applies to UCLA as a back-up, whereas there are many that apply to UCLA as their first choice and have UCSB or UCI as back-up. Most who want to go to UCLA do not waste the cost of an application to Cal.

https://www.kqed.org/news/11657217

bearister said:

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https://www.kqed.org/news/11657217

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You mean they weren't lured to stick around by UC Merced? That's a twist.

UC Merced is the future!

The heart of Trump Country, (take two)

Cal and UCLA Collude to some degree to ensure great yield. Depends on which private/public school one went to. This year Cal took more students from Tracy's public school compared to nearby Pleasanton's Foothill school. I am in the profession of advising HS students. More and more California students are going out of state and unwilling to come back. Don't blame them.

Bear8 said:

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I am curious as to why Santa Cruz is not held in higher esteem? Any opinions out there?

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On 4/20 UCSC is held in the highest esteem. The other 364 days of the year, not so much. Their Astronomy Dept. does have some cache nationally though.

The chancellor recently spoke to staff and faculty and let it be known that this year's acceptance rate for the incoming class was 13%. She also frame it as a negative in regards to the university's mission to provide access to qualified residents, which seems to be consistent with the way Sacramento is looking at it.

At any other top-tier university, a 4% drop in the admission rate would be met by bound enthusiasm and celebration.

ajm9191 said:

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The chancellor recently spoke to staff and faculty and let it be known that this year's acceptance rate for the incoming class was 13%. She also frame it as a negative in regards to the university's mission to provide access to qualified residents, which seems to be consistent with the way Sacramento is looking at it.

At any other top-tier university, a 4% drop in the admission rate would be met by bound enthusiasm and celebration.

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Interesting comment by Chancellor Christ.

Given that UC Berkeley received 89,294 freshman applications in 2018 for approximately 6,379 (based on 2017 enrollment) a 13%-13.5% acceptance rate implies that Cal admitted a mere 11,600-12,000 applicants, a yield rate of 55%-53%. For comparison, in 2017 Cal admitted 17.1% of its 85,045 frosh applicants, and enrolled 6,379 for a 44% yield ratio, the highest of the UCs, with UCLA at a 37% yield ratio.

I would expect the yield ratio (percentage of students accepting an admittance offer) to improve for all of the top tier UCs (Cal, UCLA, San Diego,Irvine and Santa Barbara) in 2018 as I expect admit rates to decline at these schools as applications rose @ 10% at most of the UCs (excluding Cal).

My son who had a weighted GPA of 4.4+, and a 1470 SAT on his one and only sitting was accepted at Irvine, Davis and Santa Barbara, wait-listed at UCLA and rejected by my (and my sister's and brother's) alma mater.

He has notified Santa Barbara of his intention to register after spending a day on campus on a beautiful spring day. He is very excited about joining two of his good friends from high school and even though I would have loved for him to go to Cal, I think getting a couple of hundred miles away from home makes great sense for his personal develpment.

The 13% is prob only fall frosh.

Some more anecdotal notes.

My sons have attended a quality public school in a upper middle class (non-coastal) area with about 50% minority enrollment (Korean, Chinese, hispanic). Academically oriented school.

The counselors have a pretty good handle on how things vary from year to year and the school uses a system called Naviance. Among other things, Naviance tracks the admissions statistics for students at the SAME high school going back many years. So for example, a student considering where to apply can look at the GPA/test scores of past students from that high school who were admitted and those who weren't. Pretty cool actually.

So here is what I've been told. For the past several years (since 2015) UC had "over enrollment" which means that admitted students accepted at higher than expected rates. Each year has had a cascading effect, though for Class of 2017, they were expecting things to improve because UC was reducing foreign enrollment and generally increasing class sizes. However, things did not get better in 2017 - at least at my sons' school (but we heard similar from lots of other schools). Statistically speaking students with GPAs/test scores that in prior years would have been admitted Cal, UCLA, SB, SD, were not getting admitted.

Interestingly, there has been a definite trickle down effect. It is now much harder to get into SDSU, Cal State Long Beach, Cal State Fullerton - lots of unexpected rejections at those schools as well.

Watching my kid apply was one of the most stressful things I've ever gone through. So much worse than applying myself all those many years ago. Maybe it's the times and maybe it's because we care so much more about our children's futures than our own, but this was no bueno. Thank God I'm never going to have to do it again.

Sebastabear said:

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Watching my kid apply was one of the most stressful things I've ever gone through. So much worse than applying myself all those many years ago. Maybe it's the times and maybe it's because we care so much more about our children's futures than our own, but this was no bueno. Thank God I'm never going to have to do it again.

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The prospect of grandchildren may be far off for you, but going through that in the last three and next two years. One at G'town, one at UDub and two in the process. It has gotten over the top tough, but the biggest thing is that there are NO fixed parameters. So many new nuances have been introduced (parents college, economics, etc.).

socaliganbear said:

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The 13% is prob only fall frosh.

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That would be my assumption as well; I only have access to fall freshman statistics.

https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/infocenter/admissions-residency-and-ethnicity

swan said:

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socaliganbear said:

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The 13% is prob only fall frosh.

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That would be my assumption as well; I only have access to fall freshman statistics.

https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/infocenter/admissions-residency-and-ethnicity

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Admittedly, if we were a private school, this is the number we'd publish everywhere. And we could even go a step further and defer a larger chuck of those admits to spring and game our acceptance rate to single digits in a single year.

That's a neat chart. In 2017 we took the same number of white admits as UCLA, but way fewer black and latino students. That % in POC discrepancy at Cal is taken up by roughly 770 Asian more students than enrolled in LA.