50% at UCI? This is outrageous. Boy am I glad she got into USC!
@menloparkmom I would like to see some actual proof regarding that statement. First gen students are often locked out of four year colleges and universities for a variety of reasons, especially students of color. I have no problem with the mission to increase first gen students. (BTW my son is not first gen and is white.)
Nevermind I found the actual data and these numbers are already in action! Good for the UCs.
http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/infocenter/uc-enrolls-diverse-pool-undergraduates
Click on UCs enroll a growing percent of first generation students. UCI is already at 50% which is actually a reduction from the year before. Looks like the data only goes to 2014
@Ballerina016 This was posted on the UCI admissions discussion so you might already have seen it but I think that this shows that the schools do not coordinate. At UCI the CHP students are selected at first from a academic metric and then passed onto individuals in different departments who then select CHP based on a holistic review. Students are compared to other students from the same programs. This means that your daughter was compared holistically to other students from her major which I believe you said was engineering. . My son was compared to others applying to the school of physical sciences. I assume regents was selected from the final CHP group.
Perhaps the school of engineering had especially strong applicants this year. UCI may not be a second tier school for long.
This was pulled from the other board so it is cross posted.
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/19312896/#Comment_19312896
"The majority of CHP students enter as incoming freshmen. The size of
the incoming freshman class ranges from 160-200 students. Incoming freshmen are
selected by the Honors Program Board in early winter quarter from the pool of applicants to
UCI. Students at this level are sought after by many colleges and are difficult to recruit.
Admission to the Campuswide Honors Program is a benefit that helps attract top students to
UC Irvine.
From the total pool of UC Irvine applicants, a sorting formula that includes SAT scores and
high school GPA is used to identify the top 7,000 applicants to UC Irvine. From this pool,
each member of the Honors Program Board receives a list of top applicants to their
particular school. In addition to these scores, the faculty on the Honors Program Board
have within the past 5 years added new data points, including the high school Academic
Performance Index (API Score) and the Admissions “read score.” Honors Program
Board members are also offered access to the electronic application.
Each Honors Program Board member is given a target number of students to select,
which is based on the relative size of the school’s student population in relation to the
university as a whole. In this way, selected students are distributed throughout the university
and are not concentrated in a single major or school.
Thank you for sharing your opinion @LKnomad. My view on situation is different, but we are all entitled to our own opinions.
@Ballerina016 like someone already mentioned upthread, your D may still get into both UCI and UCSB, since only early notifications were sent out so far for the Honors Program at UCI and the Chancellor’s reception at UCSB. Also, I think I mentioned on another thread that S12 got into UCB, UCI(with CHP), UCSB and UCSC when he applied four years ago as undeclared (those were all the campuses he applied to). He was a top applicant with high stats and great essays, but not nearly the number of APs that your D has, because his school doesn’t have that many. He also didn’t have all the leadership and extracurriculars. Things may have changed in the last four years, but who really knows? This whole college admissions thing is truly crazy and it’s hard to say in any given year what the pool of applicants looks like for any given major and what the college/university is really looking for.
You also have to take into account how each school admits into the majors. UCSD admits into the school first then into the major. UCD will admit some majors (Engineering) by departments while some majors are admitted into the specific college (Environmental Science and Agriculture/Biological Sciences) and finally College of Letters and Sciences admits by division. So you can have the same major for all the UC’s, but their admission criteria is different since it is dependent upon how the major is admitted into the University. Too many variables to make any kind of blanket statement.
@Ballerina016 actually I shared fact, but whose counting anyway.
Now I will share opinion.
The reality is that we all believe our kids are special snowflakes, and to us and to others that love them they are. But when looking at college admissions they are simply names on paper with applications that look like everyone else’s. In the admissions office nobody thinks your kid is special. You just have to hope your kid’s essays don’t bore them and that whatever you kid wrote resonates with the actual human person doing the reading. They get tens of thousands of apps. They spend only a few minutes on each student.
They don’t care personally about your kid. It makes us sad as parents when someone doesn’t see how special our child is and we deal with that by trying to explane it away with ideas and theories but that it all they are, theories.
I am sorry you are disappointed your daughter was not selected for the CHP at UCI. But she probably will be admitted in March. She just was not selected for this program upon entrance. If she really wants to go to UCI she can apply to the CHP after admission.
End of opinion
Now another actual fact about UCI. According to one of their press releases
[Qoute]
Freshman applications were up 8.4 percent over last year (compared with a 5.2 percent increase systemwide), at 77,786. UCI had the second-highest number of California-resident freshman applicants, with 57,578.
[/quote]
This is a fact that might explain why some kids were invited and others were not. UCI has become a primary place to go.
Hi, sorry, I know I’m coming into this a little bit late, but I was wondering similar things. I was invited to interview for regents at UC Berkeley, however, I was not excepted into UC Irvine early. That was a bummer, seeing as I would really really like to do nursing at UC Irvine, but I know that it’s very competitive. However, my twin brother did not hear anything from Berkeley, but got into the campuswide honors program at UC Irvine. So do I just assume that UC Berkeley saw something in me that UC Irvine didn’t? Do I still have a decent chance of getting in in March to the nursing program? Berkeley doesn’t have nursing 
@kgiesch nursing probably has everything to do with it. Remember UCI’s early admission was for CHP. According to the UCI website, for the 2015 program UCI had a 3.5% admission rate to nursing.
http://www.nursing.uci.edu/programs/bs/freshman/
Since the CHP early admission is done by program, your have some tough competition. This does not mean you didn’t get accepted to UCI for nursing. It just means that you didn’t get early acceptance. Don’t lose hope!
It is terribly frustrating, I know. My son didn’t get an early to Berkeley, even though his classmate, who has lower stats did. He was the only one he knew who got the UCI Regents from his own school. Also, at his school, he and his classmate (who got Berkeley) are the only two who have heard from any UC early at all. Hang in there.
@kgiesch - what other nursing programs did you apply to? Why did you apply to UCB if you want to pursue nursing?
Just curious- I am also waiting to here from UCI 
@Lovemyjob I applied to ucla, upenn, Azusa pacific, and UCI for nursing, University of Washington with the intention of nursing (it isn’t direct entry), and then UCB and ucsd w/o nursing. I am into Berkeley with a regents interview and APU with nursing and honors and the potentitial for a full tuition scholarship, but we’ll see haha. I applied to Berkeley and San Diego kind of just for kicks and giggles, but also in case I decided that nursing wasn’t something I wanted to do before I had to commit to a school. Thus far that hasn’t happened, so I’m definitely disappointed, but hopefully things will look better. What about you?
@LKnomad thank you for your encouragement! I was a little confused at the start because it says that the average SAT score for nursing is a 1925, and I have a 2210 and the 34 on the ACT but I understand that it is very competitive, I just hope this doesn’t count me out. A girl from last year said that she got into regents and nursing on April 3, which seemed weird because it said that we should know by March 31, but maybe everything just comes out for nursing later? I’m not sure in any case, I do hope that everything works out, but it was definitely a bummer that UC Irvine didn’t want as much from their nursing applicants as UCLA did. UCLA had us fill out two letters of rec, a resume, and a long essay, whereas UC Irvine wanted barely any information and only 200 words of an essay
@kgiesch I think the whole state of CA needs to step up their game on nursing programs. It is a high paying field that will have a mass retiring soon and nurses are always in demand, but our public higher education system has not kept up with that demand and has created a situation where many great potential nurses get locked out due to lack of space. This has opened up the state to the for profit health science schools (I know, I used to work for one) to come in and and provide more expensive options to students. That should be the responsibility of the public system. I have always felt frustrated when I learn about students trying to get into nursing schools because we simply need more of them - schools and nurses.
I wish you the very best of luck. Nursing is a noble field and I am rooting for you.
@LKnomad thank you so so much!!! I really hope it all goes okay, I want to be a neonatal nurse practitioner and I have such a passion! I really appreciate your encouragement
@kgiesch it sounds like you have some solid options. I have been accepted to USF direct entry nursing as well as Univ of Portland and Seattle Univ- all for nursing. I also got in to Chapman and Cal Poly but with a different major for the reasons that you stated. I am positive that I want to do direct entry nursing now so just waiting to hear from the other Cali schools before I make my decision . The waiting is killing me now…I hope it comes out soon!!
@Lovemyjob CONGRATS!!! Would you mind sharing your stats? That’s incredible!
@kgiesch I sent you a PM
For the life of me I cannot imagine that UCLA would ever imagine they could read her mind, or those of tens of thousands of other students. That seems like an absurd assumption.
I don’t think your analogy of the UC campuses to the Ivy League issue of years ago applies. The UC system is ultimately a single entity with branch locations. As a state actor, they would be perfectly free to compare applications if they wanted to, unless there is some state law or other regulation in place barring it, which I doubt. Penn State, for example, routinely takes applicants to the main campus who they have denied and admits them to branch campuses, even when they didn’t apply to them.
But I think you hit the nail on the head anyway in pointing out that logistically it is nearly impossible for them to manage yield or anything else by trying to coordinate the application pools. Just not going to happen. If the OP wants to believe they do so, so be it. But I think that she then must not have given any thought to how impossible that would be, given the numbers and numerous variables involved.