It’s just so tough seeing so many students with perfect grades in 15 AP classes, leadership in sports and multiple clubs, did research or participated in STEM competitions, and more who get denied from almost every UC. The UCs are meant to be accessible and not exclusionary for Californians, so what do they want?
UCs are absolutely, positively in the business of giving preference to CA residents - as it should.
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I know a ton of top in-state students who get denied from the UCs. My point is the UCs are too hard to get into for Californians. They do not give enough preference.
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Which Invariably means they were denied by UCB, UCLA, UCSD, and didn’t apply to UCM. Even the top performing student isn’t “owed” a spot at a particular campus.
Regardless, your initial question is too broad; LA and Berkeley each have their own - and different - priorities in admissions
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Here is what UC itself says how it reads applications:
Because “every UC” can mean that they applied only to UCB and UCLA, even though they would very likely have gotten admitted to UCR and UCM (or actually did get into UCM through ELC or some such).
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@Gumbymom wouldn’t these students get accepted to Merced or Riverside…or both.
If the student is in the top 9% of their HS class or top 9% statewide, their application will be referred to UC Merced and sometimes UC Riverside for free, if they are not admitted into their UC of choice. This year UC Merced and Riverside did an early outreach to students that did not apply directly to their schools and waived the application fee so students could apply.
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The UC Regents has established a cap on the number of enrolled OOS and International students at 18% so 82% of the enrolled students are California residents. That said, many of the UC’s are getting 90-100,000 applications for 6500-7500 Freshman spots so there are more qualified applicants than the campuses have room to admit. Also many applicants will only apply to what they consider the top UC’s so limiting their options and completely disregarding the other California school options such as the Cal states. With 9 UC campuses, 23 CSU campuses, over 200 Private Universities and the Community college system, there is a school for every California HS student that wants to study here.
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I would argue the Cal States are even more unfair in admissions since they don’t use essays. Cal Poly accepts less than 5% of applicants for many engineering majors and have zero transparency on how they evaluate applicants.
I know a ton of top students who got denied from UCI, UC Davis, and UC Santa Barbara.
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Cal States use grades and some even have published thresholds.
They’re often actually much easier to figure out than most other states’ universities save for those like Iowa with the Regent Index.
Another issue is that applicants concentrate in a handful of majors: Biological sciences/premed, CS/Data Science, Psychology, Engineering, to a lesser extent Economics. Being R1 universities the UCs conduct topnotch research in all fields and want the brightest students in a variety of fields - History, Communication Disorders/Speech Pathology, Environmental Science, Spanish…
So the issue becomes whether they applied to all UCs and chose a variety of majors around their favorite subjects and not just the one obvious subject. UCs have hundreds of majors yet applicants focus on just a few…
For instance Biology vs. Human Development or Global Disease (all good for premeds but only one is oversubscribed)
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The cal states haven’t published any thresholds in recent years. I know straight A students in 10+ AP classes who got denied from SDSU
@BatteryPower939 are you a parent or a student?
Student
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SLO lists their selection criteria here: Selection Criteria | Cal Poly
Yes, not all CSU’s are transparent on their admissions criteria but I believe that many students do not consider that CSU’s give priority to local in-service area applicants vs. UC’s. Several CSU’s are very transparent such as SJSU which lists their Impaction index calculation and major admission thresholds. The CSU’s are mainly stat’s based so yes, a student with outstanding EC’s and compelling PIQ’s are at a disadvantage. There is no perfect system but unfortunately California is a very populous state with many excellent students but not enough spots for all the schools these students want to attend.
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I also know one student got accepted to UCSD, UCI, UCD, UCSB, UCR, CPSLO, SDSU, waitlist CAL. Because each UC and CSU admission office is working independently, you should see each UC and CSU as independent school. For your original question, each UC wants different thing from students and as long as they accept the set percentage of CA students, we cannot complain. Good Luck.
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But you’re saying too kids don’t get in.
But it’s supply and demand.
And there’s Pomona and Humboldt.
It’s no different than North Carolina or Illinois or Wisconsin or New Jersey or New York.
So many have so many campuses with the intent of supporting residents.
Btw U of California is one thing. It’s the public that’s created this hierarchy. But the intent is they are one.
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The problem is they all use the same application, so you have to craft an application that satisfies all of their wants. And despite what others have posted, the admissions sites is incredibly vague. They want people with high grades, leadership, talent, and so on just like every other school.
Yes, but they are filling up - it’s supply and demand - so what do you suppose - not admit the people they have?
Then those people would complain.
I am just frustrated by how damn hard it is to get in, and there is so little advice out there for standing out on in high school
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