We are lucky to have 9 UCs and 23 CSUs in CA. I would like to encourage students to apply to more lower tier UCs, CSUs and OOS as insurance. I see so many kids end up going to CC or local commuter CSU unhappily because they got rejected everywhere else. Here is how it happens.
For typical CS/Engineering kids in Bay Area competitive public high school, they only want to go to top UCs and CSUs: CAL, UCLA, UCSD, UCI, UCD, UCSB, CPSLO, SDSU. On paper, 8 schools is a good number to apply for college. You are already paying about $650 for application after all. They think if they are getting 4.0 GPA, there is no way they will get rejected by all of them. The truth is the odd of getting rejected by all of them is very high.
Out of the 8, UCD has the highest acceptance rate 42%. But this is a general number for all majors. For CS/Engineering majors, it ranges from 20% to 30%. Let’s use 30% to continue our calculation. This number includes both OOS/international and in state students. Since OOS/international students have 60% acceptance rate and they are 15% among student population. Now we are down to about 25% acceptance rate for in state CS/ENG. Now we have to consider 38% in UCD is FGLC students. This further lower our acceptance rate to 16% for non FGLC CS/ENG students.
In conclusion, a typical CS/Engineering kid in Bay Area competitive public high school has 16% chance to go to UCD, which is the easiest among the top UCs and CSUs. Therefore, you should also apply to schools outside of the top 8 UC/CSUs as insurance. Good Luck.