Lower UC Acceptances for Californian Applicants in 2014
As news sites like LA Times (“California Students Feel UC Admission Squeeze”) and San Jose Mercury News (“UC admission harder than ever for Californians”) have noted in April, an increasing number of Californian applicants were not accepted to their UCs of choice.
Especially for coveted schools like UC Berkeley and UCLA, competition between applicants was fierce. For Fall 2014, UCLA received 86,521 applicants and UC Berkeley received 73,771. For the state applicants, UCLA only accepted 16.3%, while Berkeley accepted 18.8%.
For a student to be accepted into a UC, they usually are ranked among the top 9% of their high school class or the top 9% statewide. The lower UC acceptance rates have been attributed to a number of causes like the convenience of online applications and the lower college price for in-state students. Higher numbers of out-of-state and international students also add to the crowd of applicants each year.
According to an announcement from UC Berkeley, their admitted class for 2014 included “a ballerina who has danced internationally…Junior Olympics competitors in sports including kayaking, fencing and archery…and an actor in a Disney Channel series.”
For those who were not accepted to the UC of their choice, waiting for spring admission or transferring later to a UC is one option they might consider.
