How much harder is it for an out-of-stater to be admitted into a UC?

<p>I’m looking at the average statistics of admitted UC students (like UC GPA, SAT and ACT scores) and frankly, I’m finding them to be rather too low for my comforts. For example, the average SAT scores of UC Berkeley, the arguably hardest UC school to get into, are in the 600’s range with the average composite SAT score to be in the 2000’s. Besides my CR score, all my SAT scores are higher, like, way higher than the averages of UC Berkeley, let alone the other UC schools. However, I am an out-of-stater so my SAT and ACT scores are probably expected to be higher than the averages that they show on the site. My question is, is it really that much harder for an out-of-stater to be admitted to a UC campus? I know that it is definitely easier for an in-state resident to be admitted to a state university but I still want to know how much higher an out-of-stater’s scores should be than for an in-stater’s to have a good chance of acceptance. Thank you!</p>

<p>All the UCs give preference to CA residents. In general, as an OOS aplicant, you’d want to be comfortably above ‘average’ for each campus. They do consider other factors so, it isn’t that simple.</p>

<p>[Freshman</a> admission profile | UC Admissions](<a href=“http://admission.universityofcalifornia.edu/campuses/berkeley/freshman-profile/index.html]Freshman”>http://admission.universityofcalifornia.edu/campuses/berkeley/freshman-profile/index.html)
Not sure where your stats on UCB came from. As you can see from the link above, the average SAT for UCB admits is very close to 2100 and avg GPA is nearly 4.2. (that’s a somewhat capped GPA- i believe 4.4 is the theoretical max)</p>

<p>If you are well above that mark, congrats! nice work.</p>

<p>Also, remember that all SAT scores must be from the same sitting. UCs don’t superscore.</p>

<p>I thought that recently OOS applicants were preferred (although the UC people won’t directly admit it) because they can pay higher tuition and so the colleges can get more money out of them</p>

<p>65% of UCB admits were CA residents. Clearly, there’s some preference for in-state applicants.</p>

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<p>That’s not necessarily true. What percentage of applicants were from California?</p>

<p>I’m not sure if this pertains to the UCs, but generally speaking, large state schools HAVE to give preference to in-state students (even though a school such as UCB has had some cutbacks from state funding), because some of their funding is from taxes. Therefore, they have to meet a certain quota of in-state students before selecting out-of-state and international applicants because they owe it to the taxpayers to pick more in-state kids. It’s the case for most state schools. </p>

<p>OOS students have their UC GPAs calculated differently too. Honors classes for OOS are not weighted as they are for in-state students. Only AP classes are weighted. That can give an advantage to in-state students.</p>