is there a correlation there?
No. All the schools have different ways of judging applicants.
Both UCLA and Cal have already had regents given out, so even though for me personally I got both UCSB and Cal regents, there is no correlation and I do not necessarily expect an acceptance at UCLA. They’re all separate.
Yes, I think that there is a correlation. There are things in your application that were impressive enough to win you Regents at UCSB, so it stands to reason that you will compete well with the applicants to UCLA and UCB, even though each campus does their evaluations somewhat differently.
Sometimes UC admissions for particular individuals seem very inconsistent. We’ve all read about cases, for example, where someone, got denied by UC Davis but got accepted to Berkeley. So you can’t be sure. But I would bet that in general people who get UCSB regents have a higher probability of being accepted to UCLA and UCB than those who don’t. A few years ago my S1’s UC admissions followed a very predictable pattern. The amount of merit money he was offered correlated directly with the selectivity of the campus. He got Regents and merit offers from the lower UC’s and no frills at all from UCLA and Berkeley. My guess is that people are more likely to report their experience when the admissions pattern seems crazily inconsistent than when it follows the expected pattern.
@BunnyBlue Would you also say there is a correlation between UCI CHP and chances at LA/SD/B?
I’m just guessing. Don’t have any data, but I think UCI uses CHP to try to hang on to someone they think will get accepted to the other UC’s.