<p>I'm interested in UC Berkeley, although I've been told that it's incredibly hard to enter out of state. I'm a minority from a middle class neighborhood in NYC (immigrant parents). Do those factors come into play?</p>
<p>The UC's do not consider minority (URM) status for the purpose of admission. Their answer to the URM issue is to automatically admit to a UC (although not necessarily one of the student's choice) any California resident who is in the top 4% of his or her high school class regardless of test scores, i.e., schools heavily populated by minorities are assured that the top 4% can get into a UC. That does not apply to non-residents.</p>
<p>So then what's the policy for non-residents?</p>
<p>The policy on non-rsidents is simple: under state law UC's are required to favor in-state residents over out-of-state; as a result out-of-state residents, particularly for Berkeley, generally need higher than the college's usual GPA's and test scores to have a chance and even then they accept a low percentage of those applicants.</p>