<p>Like other top schools, it's getting more difficult to get into Berkeley.</p>
<p>We went to the Cal Day visit on April 11. The admission office presented the admission rates for different colleges and the university as a whole to the newly admits. The College of Engineering has the lowest admission rates of 9%. Several colleges in the mid teens. A couple of colleges (L&S as one) are slightly over 20%. Very impressive.</p>
<p>Surprisingly Berkeley’s acceptance rate is lower than UCLA’s</p>
<p>I guess Berkeley’s super tough now</p>
<p>These figures belie the actual acceptance rates; they purposely admit fewer students to guard against over-enrollment. Now that can be mitigated by a higher overall yield but I’d still wager that quite a few people will get in off the waitlist. </p>
<p>Berkeley has traditionally had a lower acceptance rate than UCLA, it’s only in recent years that UCLAs acceptance rate has been lower. </p>
<p>UCLA has a lower acceptance rate for Cal students, and Berkeley has a lower rate for out-of-state and international.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.ucop.edu/news/factsheets/2014/fall-2014-admissions-table2.pdf”>http://www.ucop.edu/news/factsheets/2014/fall-2014-admissions-table2.pdf</a> </p>
<p>I’d like to see Berkeley lower its undergrad student population to around 10k to 12k someday to achieve a high ratio of faculty-to student. (1:8 is ideal.) That would hopefully make the “college experience” at Cal more meaningful and something that the students would long for for the rest of their lives. If the admit rate continues to fall, it would hopefully reach that stage. </p>
<p>Isn’t part of this increasingly low admit rate due to the massive numbers now applying (to college generally and to the UC’s)? UCLA gets 100,000 applications–double what it used to receive. Berkeley gets about 80,0000. I don’t believe the schools have gotten any better and maybe the opposite with California’s budget troubles.</p>
<p>Yes, the admit rate is lower because of more applicants. It’s a public school, so I don’t think it’ll ever get down to 10,000 students.</p>
<p>There are public schools with far fewer than 10,000 students, but shrinking Berkeley to that number of students would mean having significant unused (wasted) capacity, making it more expensive per student to operate.</p>
<p>^ They can increase the grad student body to augment the number lost at the undergrad level. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>It’s actually due to both. </p>
<ol>
<li><p>The number of applicants has increased. and,</p></li>
<li><p>The number of admits has decreased, from 14k++ a year ago to 12k++ this year. </p></li>
</ol>
<p>Take a look at the numbers one more time: <a href=“http://www.ucop.edu/news/factsheets/2014/fall-2014-admissions-table2.pdf”>http://www.ucop.edu/news/factsheets/2014/fall-2014-admissions-table2.pdf</a></p>
<p>It will end up being more than 12k++ admits but it ultimately depends on their enrollment target</p>
<p>USC has more graduate students than undergraduate. Berkeley can do the same, although given the strength of the grad programs at Berkeley, they want to make sure their reputation remains intact with the increased enrollment. I’ve heard the new Chancellor wants to focus on the quality of the undergraduate experience. An example of the strength of their grad program is below.</p>
<p>Top 5 academic institutions that hire Berkeley Ph.D.s
University of California System
Stanford
University of Washington
MIT
Harvard</p>
<p><a href=“Berkeley Graduate Student Profile - Berkeley Graduate Division”>Berkeley Graduate Student Profile - Berkeley Graduate Division;
<p>^ USC is bad example. It isn’t as prestigious as Berkeley. </p>
<p>Stanford also has more postgrad students than undergrad students (6,980 undergraduates and 8,897 potgraduates). And, Harvard? 6,700 undergraduates vs. 14,000 postgraduates. Even MIT has more postgrad students than there are undergrad students – 4,384 undergraduates vs 6,510 postgraduates. Yale, Caltech, Columbia, Chicago, to name a few, have more postgrad students than undergrad students. So, why couldn’t or wouldn’t Berkeley do the same?</p>
<p>One common thread of all the school you mentioned is that they’re all private schools. Berkeley has a public mission to serve California students (despite the fact that only 13% of expenses are covered by the state), so it may be difficult to limit the undergraduate admission too much. They could probably turn private if they wanted, but it doesn’t look like it’ll happen.</p>
<p>^ I have that in mind. However, the New College of Florida is a public school too yet it only has less than a thousand students. Both UVa and UMich are publics and each one of these school’s student body has an over 30% OOS. Berkeley can have 10k undergrad students (or even lesser) and a 50%-50% in-state - OOS/Int’l students. I think that wouldn’t look bad for Californians, given that only 13% of the school’s budget comes from the State.</p>
<p>I think Berkeley would have to move very gradually in that direction, and they are, by admitting more OOS students. When they started this couple of years ago, there was a big uproar about how UCs, especially Berkeley and UCLA, are not serving the state, and this year isn’t any different. If politicians attempt to assuage these angry parents, Berkeley may at some point be forced to go private similar perhaps to the UCLA and UVa MBA programs that went private recently. I believe many top public schools will be faced with this choice soon, although the Berkeley history may work against it somewhat. Below is an article on LA Times today.</p>
<p><a href=“California students feel UC squeeze”>California students feel UC squeeze;
<p><a href=“Bloomberg - Are you a robot?”>Bloomberg - Are you a robot?;
<p>Although Berkeley has been increasing international admits, they’re still far below where they could be, and lot lower than UCLA. I don’t quite understand why Berkeley limits the number of international students so much.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.ucop.edu/news/factsheets/2014/fall-2014-admissions-table2.pdf”>http://www.ucop.edu/news/factsheets/2014/fall-2014-admissions-table2.pdf</a></p>
<p>^ I think because Berkeley’s enrollment yield rate for international students is very high, something like 50%, whilst the overall enrollment yield rate for the entire university is something like 38%. </p>