The University of California (UC) application for Fall 2026 freshman admission opened yesterday on August 1, 2025, and the submission period is from October 1 to December 1, 2025.
If you have any questions about the application process, do not hesitate to post on this discussion thread.
As always, @Gumbymom and @lkg4answers are here to help all applicants with their specific questions along with other experienced CC posters with their UC specific experience and knowledge.
UCSB offers application tutorials which I have linked below:
Here is the 2025 Freshman UC Capped weighted GPA admit range and Overall Admit rates for all the UC Campuses:
Campus
UC Capped weighted 25th-75th percentile for admitted freshman
I have a general question about UC admissions. For non-high-impact majors, it states that schools like UCSB don’t admit by major in colleges such as Letters and Sciences, yet when I look at the freshman admit data, there are different admission rates based on categories like Business, Humanities, Social Science, etc. Doesn’t this indicate that choosing a major does indeed impact admission percentage? I’m just confused how this works, particularly with regards to choosing an Econ major vs humanitites or social sciences. Thanks for your help!
Are you referring to the Admissions by Discipline on the UC website?
It specifically states:
The data should be used as a general guide to selectivity and not as a predictor of a student’s chances for admission to a particular campus or major.
While freshman applicants to UC indicate a proposed primary and alternate major for each campus on their application, major choice is generally not a factor in freshman admission.
The UC’s collect data for statistical analysis and to help plan enrollment resources needed to meet the demands of the in-coming Freshman students.
Even though they may not consider an applicants major in the admission process, they are going to review the student’s PIQ’s, academic profile and EC’s to get an overall picture of the applicant’s interest and intent when listing a major so they are considering a campus fit which includes intended major.
The UC’s do not expect a HS student to specialize in a particular subject/major and know many students change their mind so L&S admits have more flexibility to switch majors than in other colleges but the overall application should present a cohesive narrative.
My advice is that applicants should always list the major that they would prefer to study.