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<p>You can check if a college uses “level of applicant’s interest” in its common data set, section C7, or the admissions tab in its entry on <a href=“http://www.collegedata.com”>http://www.collegedata.com</a> . The latter indicate that Irvine and Merced consider “level of applicant’s interest”, but the other UCs do not. (However, Merced still end up with default safety students who are ELC eligible but do not get into other UCs.)</p>
<p>However, the Berkeley College of Engineering, which admits by major, says [url=<a href=“http://coe.berkeley.edu/students/prospective-students/faq/prospective-freshman-faq.html]here[/url”>http://coe.berkeley.edu/students/prospective-students/faq/prospective-freshman-faq.html]here[/url</a>] that “Applicants to Berkeley Engineering are also expected to demonstrate interest in the major to which they are applying since we receive far more applications than we can admit.” This probably means that they expect your essay topics and whatever else to be consistent with the major that you are applying to, not that they expect you to play the usual “interest” games with respect to the school overall.</p>