In the 2017 – 2018 college application cycle, there was a noticeable change in the admissions process. According to Inside Higher Education, there were multiple personal accounts from college counselors that have noticed significant shifts in the caliber of students that were accepted. Much of the speculation as to what impacted the admissions process has been attributed to the increasing pool of applicants to the universities along with the incident that occurred in UC Irvine last year, in which the university ended up having too many students accept their admissions offer.
When looking at the admissions rate for several of the universities under the UC system, it is evident that there is a dramatic trend upwards of applicants to all of the schools. There has been a consistent increase of freshman applicants in the UC system, with schools such as UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles) noticing an increase of 7,900 applicants especially from groups that have been traditionally underrepresented on campus. The chart below shows the exact numbers that were published by the University of California – Office of the President around July 10th:
The significance of the figures is that in all UC schools, admissions rates have dropped to their lowest percentiles. While specific schools such as UC Irvine had their admissions rate impacted heavily due to admitting less applicants between 2017 and 2018 (accepting 3,769 less applicants, thus a decrease of 7.8% in admissions rate), other universities such as UCLA percentiles were mainly influenced by a larger increase in applicants to the university (accepting 474 less applicants, but having a decrease of 2% in admissions rate). It is evident that while the issue that UC Irvine faced last year did significantly affect the admissions practice conducted at this specific university, this is not consistent throughout all of the UC system.
After analyzing the data based on percentile admission of freshman on Race / Ethnicity in each respective university, there has been no significant change. This means that as a whole, the applicant pool to these schools has become significantly more competitive due to increased size and diversity. It is anticipated that percentages for admissions will only continue to decrease. It is because of this I strongly recommend that upcoming seniors take into consideration that they should be applying to more universities within California and start considering more out-of-state campuses which is especially important for applying to “reach” schools. Also important for consideration is that while applying to schools, seniors should absolutely apply to a healthy mix of “safety” schools as a safeguard. Because of the increase in the number of applications that need to be done, I also encourage seniors to begin their application preparations early and start filing for financial aid, prepare application material, and write their essays in the summer.
