Biological sciences is the #2 most competitive and popular major at UCD. Having a GPA of above the 75th percentile does not guarantee admissions. The UC’s use 13 areas of criteria and no one knows how each of these areas are weighted by UCD.
UCD has over 94,000 applicants and most highly qualified so the issue is that there are more students than spots available (impaction).
My advice is that if UCD is a top choice, submit your waitlist essay and explain to them why you would be an asset to the UCD campus community. What do you have to offer that would make you want to attend.
Regarding Yield Protection. UCD does not take an applicants level of interest into consideration as part of the application review so they do not know that they may be an applicants top choice. The waitlist essay can be a way to show you are interested in attending.
All schools do some kind of Yield Management, they have to so they can avoid over enrollment problems.
Several factors and variables can influence selection. What is most important to know is that selection looks different at every campus!
• Selection can even look different from year to year for the same campus.
• Things like enrollment capacity (campus size impacts how many students can enroll) and enrollment targets for each campus are factored into selection.
• Campuses use multiple factors when selecting students and the way campuses select students varies.
• It is to the student’s advantage to include as much information as possible on the application.
• Every student is considered in the context of their own environment which includes, but is not limited to, school, family and geographic region.
• Students are also considered within the context of the applicant pool for each campus.
• Each campus will complete their own individual review of the application independently of one another, which means that they’re going to review the information in the application and select students without asking what the other campuses have decided.
• Each campus selects students independentl
