Berkeley acceptance rate relative to other UC's

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of California - Berkeley
1

Can anyone explain why Berkeley and UCLA accept about half as many applicants from the same size applicant pools relative to the other UC’s? Fall 2015 Berkeley and LA accepted about 16% of roughly 85,000 applications, while UCSD, Davis, Irvine and UCSB all accepted about 27% of roughly the same number of applicants, meaning, Berkeley only accepted about 16,000 students vs SD,I,D,SB accepting roughly 27,000 applicants.

Are they trying to downsize in order to improve the education at the two highest ranked schools (also in the Pac 12)? Or maybe they just have higher yield? (Btw, what is the yield rate for Berkeley and UCLA?) And I guess it’s also possible that only 16,000 of the applicants are actually good enough for admission too, implying UCI, UCSB, Davis and UCSD all have lower admission standards (which is also probably true) and a much lower yield rate compared to the two schools in the Pac 12.

2

The same reason the Ivy Leagues accept less people than most other private colleges.

Also, I think some of your stats are not correct. Cal had 87,000 applicants this year. UCLA had 112,000 applicants. UCD had 68,000, a good 20,000 applicants less than Cal and almost half of UCLA’s applicant pool.