I’d also like to add that I was looking at the numbers for those admitted to UCLA in previous years:
There were around 22,000 applicants to UCLA from 2016-2018. In years 2016 and 2017, UCLA admitted around 5500 applicants. This year with 23,000 applicants, they admitted 3200.
There has been an increase in the number of applicants to UC’s in the last couple of years.
A theory that has been circling around is that if you were rejected from UCLA, you might have a good chance of being accepted to Cal. The reason being that the top UC’s will want to maintain a low acceptance rate in correspondence with a high enrollment rate. ie: if you were accepted to both UCLA and Cal, you’d only be able to attend one school. Therefore, if you chose Cal over UCLA, then UCLA’s enrollment rate will be lowered.
Berkeley has had around 19,000 applicants for the last couple of years, accepting around 4500 students. It is possible that Berkeley will also reduce the number of admitted students this year. However, it is also likely that if top students were not given admission at UCLA, they will receive it at Cal.
In addition to these numbers, I have personal anecdotal evidence that may also put this theory in favor. Haas has around a 6% acceptance rate. UCLA’s version of Haas is Business Econ, with an 11% acceptance rate. However, most of my transfer class into Haas were only admitted to Haas, and not admitted to UCLA’s business econ. There were a few who were admitted to both, but were part of the TAP program, like myself.
Good luck to you all.