Hmmm @kaylan, I wonder what your counselor meant by that. They have to guarantee admission, assuming you fulfill the TAG requirements. That’s the hard and fast rule, and UCSB follows it.
UCSB has a few specific TAG rules that other UCs don’t have, and counselors miss them a lot, thereby making an applicant ineligible. That does not make UCSB wishy-washy. It means the advisors weren’t on top of it and didn’t do a final verification TAG print out before submitting a student to the UCSB TAG. It’s unfortunate the advisor chose to word it that way. My take - get another advisor.