I’m pretty sure the Dragon kid phenomenon is real. At my kid’s HS which is probably 70% Asian of which 35% are East Asian, in 1999 the graduating class was about 500, then in 2000 (my kid’s class) it was over 700 and this past year it was 600+. The level for next year is back to the more normal 500-550. I would expect a drop in applications across the board for all the top UCs for next year.
@ProfessorPlum168 I really hope you are correct! There certainly was a small drop in total UC applications in 2019 compared to 2018 (176,530 vs. 181,918), a 3% drop (-5388). Hope that trend continues.
Heck, I think you got accepted into a CSU back in the 80’s if you could breathe. Now even many of them are hard to get into.