Hello,
My rising high school senior daughter is considering UCs (she is out of state) and her interest is in CS/ Data Science. She has a 4 unweighted GPA and has taken 7 AP courses and 3 honors courses.
She is wondering if she should apply to just 1 or 2 UCs or could she apply to a bunch of them (Berkeley, UCLA, UCSD, UC Irvine, UC Davis etc.) as there are many which have good programs in Comp. Sci.?
Besides that she would need to pay separate fees for each UC college application, would she have to do more work (in terms of essays, recos etc.) to apply to additional UC colleges?
She is trying to limit the number of college applications to 12 colleges, hence the question.
You will pay for each campus you apply to (I think it’s $70 per campus, but I might be mistaken there). There is just one application for all campuses - no additional essays no matter how many campuses you apply to. UCs don’t take letters of recommendation. So, yes, you can apply to as many campuses as you want - you just have to pay for each.
All you have to do for each additional UC campus is check a box, choose a major, and pay the additional application fee.
Is your family comfortable with the out of state cost of the UCs? For 2023-24, the estimated cost of attendance for OOS is $73,626. You can expect this to increase a bit next year.
Before you apply or use your 12 spots, please make sure you can afford all four years - especially when with a 4.0, you’ll have lots of opportunities at wonderful colleges, like Arizona, that after merit aid would be less than half the cost.
No doubt the UCs are fine but many apply without realizing they’ll be on the hook for sticker price. Merit aid is highly unlikely.
Best of luck to your student.
Edit - I see the two previous posts touched on this.
The UC’s are highly competitive for CS and Data Science which are impacted/capped/selective majors. UC Berkeley is the only UC that accepts LOR’s but by invitation only. UC’s are also test blind and have their own specific way to calculate the UC GPA’s.
Essays are not campus specific and you select 4 out of the 8 prompts.
Grades from the A-G course requirements including a year of a Visual Performing Arts course taken the summer after 9th to the summer prior to 12th grades are used for the GPA calculation. 9th grades are considered for completion of the A-G course requirements along with HS course rigor and 12th grade courses are considered for HS course rigor. UC’s do not accept Mid-year 12th grade transcripts and all academic information is self-reported.
Also OOS applicants only get extra Honors point bump for AP/IB or DE UC transferable classes taken during this time and NOT HS designated HONORS courses.
Here is the Calculator and they consider all 3 UC GPA’s in their Comprehensive review.
Below are the 2022 admit rates by campus for CS for all the UC’s and a few Cal states (popular CS programs)
CS admit rates if available
Campus
CS
UC Berkeley
2.9%-L&S EECS-4.5%
UC Davis
No data but <20%
UC Irvine
5.8%
UCLA
3.8%
UC Merced
85%
UC Riverside
36%
UC San Diego
No data but <10%
UC Santa Barbara
No data Historically 5-6%
UC Santa Cruz
60%
Cal Poly SLO
9%
Cal State Long Beach
54%
San Diego State
40%
San Jose State
31%
No data means that the UC does not break out admit rates by major but based on the # of enrolled students yearly and the overall yield, these are estimates.
Data Science admit rates if available. For some of the UC campuses, DS is a fairly new major with very little historical admit information.
Campus
Data Science
UC Berkeley
8.25%
UC Davis
No Data but approximately <30% Capped Major
UC Irvine
7.6%
UCLA
10% Does not admit by major but into College of L&S
UC Merced
Major not available
UC Riverside
67%
UC San Diego
No data but approximately <10% Capped major
UC Santa Barbara
27% admit rate for College of L&S which does not admit by major
UC Santa Cruz
Major not available
For Data Science, you need to check over the course curriculum which could be a Stand alone major in the College of Letters and Sciences, if it is part of the Statistics major or an Interdisciplinary major with L&S and Engineering.
Your previous posts suggests that you may need merit aid to help pay your OOS fees.
Merit aid runs about $2K to 5K per year in a very, very competitive field. That’s only IF you are selected. Very rare to get one of those. That’s not going to knock much off of your yearly tuition and room and board. Plan on paying over $70K per year. As a student, you cannot borrow that much.
You may get into, at least one UC, because the State of California loves those OOS full tuition dollars. CS is extremely competitive.
UW has a very good CS program, as do many of the Washington schools.
If you love California public universities, we, the taxpayers will take your money without a problem.
thank you everyone. this is super helpful.
We are looking at a range of colleges besides UCs. Looking at both public and private - keeping the tuition/ merit aid in mind - as well as ensuring there are enough safety/ target schools in the list.
Public -
UW Seattle
U Maryland CP
U. Pitt
ASU
WSU
U. Minnesota - twin Cities
Private -
Rice U.
Tufts
Northeastern
U. of Chicago
Boston U
Wash U. St. Louis
Additional UC applications beyond the first one are effectively no additional effort (just pay another application fee and choose a major at the additional campus), so if she is trying to limit to 12 applications’ worth of effort, any number of UC campuses counts as 1. Note that the UC application does not use recommendations, but does require the applicant to put in courses and grades in the application (no transcript needed at application; final transcript needed at matriculation).
As others note above, there is no need-based financial aid for non-California residents at UCs, and there are not that many large merit scholarships.
Residence is Washington state. Desired budget is naturally as low as possible Looking at the range of 50K- 60K per year. Daughter’s main criteria is location - strongly prefers cities, urban, cosmopolitan areas.
preferred major is CS/ Data science and looking at joint degrees with economics/ business
UW CS and Informatics are both tippy-top programs; if she can score a direct-admit spot, I personally think it would be crazy to turn that down to pay 70K+/year for a UC. But of course a direct-admit spot is not assured, even for a top student.
Are you limiting apps to 12 to limit spending on application fees (in which case each UC should count separately) or to limit the amount of work on applications (in which case, the UC app is a lot of work, because the format is different and you can’t just re-use your personal statement, so adding more campuses improves the odds of the work paying off)…?
But either way, the OOS cost of a UC is pretty intense (except for Merced, where you’d be eligible for the WUE discount).
Note: ASU offers WUE tuition for those from the western region, but only to some majors. These majors do not include CS or data science, and are all at campuses other than the main Tempe campus.
University of Maryland should be applied early action, since it fills up nearly all of its space in early action; those applying in the regular round are very unlikely to be admitted.
University of Pittsburgh has rolling admissions, so apply as early as possible, since rolling admission schools often get more selective later as they fill up.
However, Washington CS should generally be considered a reach for direct admission – and students admitted to the campus but not the CS major should realize that it is very competitive to change into the CS major after enrolling.
The limit of 12 is to allow for more focus and do a better job on the apps that she does apply to. It is also to drive some focus and it is based on what we have heard from other parents whose kids are in College.
Looking at the range of 50K- 60K per year. Daughter’s main criteria is location - strongly prefers cities, urban, cosmopolitan areas.