@gumbymom are they officially notified by a certain date if they get in? Alternatively are they ever “rejected” so they know there is no longer any hope ?
@DStepler: Usually Waitlist acceptances and rejections come out around May 15 or later.
last year, UCSD had waitlist offers extending out all the way into the middle of June.
Definitely SIR to a school that has accepted you, and if you choose to, you can wait to see if waitlist clears. If on the unlikely event that you do get off the waitlist, you usually only have a few days (5 max) to decide.
@montanatocali Congratulations to your son! He is wonderful!
My child who has W GPA 4.4 and ACT 34 with fairly good essays got wait listed at all UC schools.including uCI
I have no idea what went wrong.Its weird. His friends with worse grades got in UCSB UCSD …He is rated 23 in his class of 700 Makes no sense,
Any ideas?
@latinart Many students are in a similar situation as your child. UC admission is incredibly tough and can appear arbitrary, but you should know that UC application readers are tasked with evaluating thousands of applications and are painstakingly trained in the reading process. While it is natural to compare your child’s stats with others who were offered admission, the numbers do not paint the entire picture. The responses to the Personal Insight Questions are very important, as are the quality and consistency of extracurricular and community service activities. The information in the PIQs can give a student with a lower GPA and less competitive test scores a chance for admission that others with less detailed or less compelling responses may not receive (and your description of “fairly good” is telling). In addition, being waitlisted is better than the alternative: many, many strong students were rejected outright and are now looking at community colleges since they did not apply to more accessible colleges. I have a son who graduates in May and many of his classmates are reeling.
*If your child is a California student who attends a school that participates in the Eligibility in Local Context program, he/she is eligible for a spot at UC Merced since he/she is in the top 9% of his/her class. UC Merced gets a lot of sneers because of its location, but it is a UC and has the prestige with that label, it is much smaller, and it has a very strong sense of community that other UCs lack.
UCSD worth applying to waitlist for if I got into USC? Engineering major.
@thatinvisibleman If you want to go to UCSD, then go for it. If not, then no. Let someone else have the spot.
I was accepted as a biology major for both UCSD and UCSB, but I want to change my major to economics or business.
Which school is better/easier to change majors at? Which school has more internship opportunities for Econ?
@AsianStarvation: Neither school has a Business school. Econ at both schools are capped/impacted so neither is an easy switch.
https://economics.ucsd.edu/undergraduate-program/entry-to-the-majors.html
https://econ.ucsb.edu/undergraduate/how-to-declare-a-major
Also internships are really up to you by visiting the Career center to see the postings doing your own job hunt/research and making some connections. Both schools will give you a good background to get the internships but no school is going to hand them to you.
UCSD does have business psychology and international business, which are related to business. They also do have business minors.
@genesmasher Congrats to your son and don’t listen to haters. He worked hard and deserves to be there!
@hopemom thank you so much - same to you! 
@ProfessorPlum168 I saw this on UCSD portal “Students admitted from the waitlist will have five days to accept the offer of admission through the Applicant Portal”, I assume decision will be released after 5/1?
@alohalivin thank you kindly!
@mango1980 yes, they wait until after SIR day to begin accepting people off the waitlist
@mango1980 yes, it will be after May 1 when waitlist clearance occurs, and chances are it could be well after May 1. Last year they went into mid-June.
so update now he got wait list at UCI and wait list at Vanderbilt,Something is off how could these schools so different both wait list,Its a joke now.
@latinart I got waitlisted to Vanderbilt and full on rejected from Boston university, colleges can be very random (I also got accepted to UCSD and UCLA)
Does anyone know the # of applicants put on wait list? I read somewhere that it is in the 10K which is really silly. I guess it’s better to receive waitlist news than straight out rejected. But with the latter, one can easily lick the wound and move on.