<p>Considering how large the applicant pool is for a public undergraduate institution like UCSD, I would be really surprised if there was any kind of yield protect strategy going on here. Particularly due to the fact that the UC fee waiver all but guarantees that most Cal/UCLA students will be cross-applying to UCSD as well.</p>
<p>There are some signs that UCSD has been slightly less stuck to the numbers this year (having moved away from the point system to a ‘holistic’ approach), but most of the rejections and waitlists have been weak in one or more areas (low UC GPA, mediocre SAT I / II, limited EC, OOS, etc). There are some surprising ones, but sometimes there are factors that weren’t listed in the posting that had an impact or the self-assessment of EC/PS strength was improper. </p>
<p>Basically, I’d caution future applicants against overreacting too much to apparent outliers in the decision threads. With over forty-five thousand applicants, the process will be mostly numbers based (this includes quantifiable measurements of EC like hours involved).</p>