The University of California admitted 43% more out-of-state and international students than last year, significantly boosting its efforts to reach out to those higher-paying freshmen, according to data released Tuesday.</p>
<p>But it remains uncertain how many of these students will actually enroll since non-Californians are less likely to enroll than resident students, officials said.</p>
<p>UC offered fall entrance to 61,443 California students to at least one of its nine undergraduate campuses, a rise of 3.6% from last year.</p>
<p>It also admitted 18,846 students from other states and countries, up from 13,144 the prior year. Those students would pay an extra $23,000 a year and help plug the budget gaps caused by reductions in state funding. Students have until May 1 to decide whether they will enroll.</p>
<p>UC hopes to raise the overall enrollment of non-Californians to 10% of undergraduates in a few years, up from the current 6% or so, although some campuses like UCLA and UC Berkeley already have much higher shares of out-of-staters.</p>
<p>Because applications from state residents increased substantially and enrollment is not expanding much, it got harder for Californians to find a spot in UC. Overall, the admissions rate for California students declined from 69.7% last year to 65.8% for fall 2012. And non-Californians faced a similar trend: 53.9% of out-of-state students in the U.S. were admitted, down from 60.7% last year, and about 61.3% of foreign applicants, compared with 64.1% in 2011.</p>
<p>UC administrators say that all California students who met UC’s academic standards were offered at least one spot somewhere in the university, even it was not their first or second choice.</p>
<p>“We have the capacity to educate many more students at our campuses,” Kate Jeffery, UC’s interim director of undergraduate admissions, said in a statement Tuesday. “What we don’t have is the funding to admit more California students. Nonetheless, we continue to honor the California Master Plan, finding a space at one of our campuses for all students who qualify for guaranteed admission.”</p>
<p>UCLA once again was the hardest UC campus to crack for Californians, with only 17.7% of them offered entrance at the Westwood school. Next came UC Berkeley, 22.7%; San Diego, 32.1%; Irvine, 33.6%; Santa Barbara, 41%; Davis, 44.5%; Riverside and Santa Cruz, both 61.6%; and Merced, 76.5%.</p>
<p>When non-Californians are included in the acceptance rate, UC Berkeley had a slight edge for being the most selective UC campus, offering a spot to 21.2% of all applicants compared with 21.3% at UCLA.</p>
<p>Eight of the nine campuses increased their number of admissions offers to non-Californians. Only UC Berkeley, which already attracted controversy for enrolling 30% of its current freshman class from out of state, pulled back somewhat, cutting the numbers of such offers by 12.5%.