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<p>You may be right about the OOS applicant pool being stronger. I’ve never seen a comparative breakdown of the stats of OOS and in-state applicants at Berkeley. If you’ve got the data, I’d love to see them. </p>
<p>I would note, however, that the Berkeley in-state applicant pool is also highly self-selective, far more so than for most state flagships. In the first place, only about 15% of California HS grads meet the threshold eligibility requirements for the UC system; a few ineligibles apply anyway, but most don’t as their GCs would steer them away from applying to any UCs. Second, of those who do apply to the UCs, Berkeley actually gets fewer applicants than UCLA, UC Santa Barbara, UC San Diego, or UC Irvine. This may in part reflect local preferences, but it almost certainly also reflects a “why bother?” view among applicants who meet the minimum UC eligibility requirements but know they won’t be competitive at Berkeley. </p>
<p>I also wonder how many of the OOS applicants are rejected out of hand because they’re ineligible. The UC system has a highly arcane set of eligibility requirements, with which many OOS applicants are likely to be unfamiliar. One reason for the lower OOS acceptance rate may simply be that a lot of otherwise-qualified OOS candidates fail to take the right HS courses or otherwise get tripped up on eligibility, and consequently are never seriously considered. </p>
<p>I did find the 2008 Berkeley entering class breakdown, by the way: 22% acceptance rate in-state, 17% OOS (US), 22% international—the first time the international admit rate exceeded the US OOS rate.</p>
<p>Just two points about that: First, a 22% admit rate (Berkeley’s in-state rate) is extremely low by any standard. Only 17 schools have lower rates: all the Ivies, MIT, Stanford, Caltech, WUSTL, Pomona, CMC, Williams, Swarthmore, Bowdoin. I’d say any school with that low a rate has to be considered a “reach” by anyone. Especially when its admit rate is 22% of the 15% most highly qualified HS grads in the state.</p>
<p>Second, as for the OOS rate: yes, 17% is extremely low. But it’s roughly double Harvard’s rate, and well above Princeton, Yale, Stanford, Columbia, and MIT. It’s also above Penn, Dartmouth, Brown, Pomona and CMC. It’s the same as Caltech and WUSTL (both 17%). And it’s just slightly below Amherst (18%), Williams (18%), Swarthmore (18%), and Bowdoin (19%). I’m sure Berkeley’s OOS applicant pool is self-selecting and on average very well qualified, but I doubt it’s significantly more qualified than the self-selecting applicant pools of these other schools. So I just want to challenge the conventional wisdom on CC that’s it’s pretty much pointless for OOS candidates to apply to Berkeley. No one says that about these other highly selective schools, even those that are significantly more selective than Berkeley OOS.</p>