Thank you IBG,
It seems last year the students who declared their intended CS major through LAS were disadvantaged as compared to the years prior. Hopefully this will not be the case this year even though students are asked to declare their major.
I would expect L&S CS and EECS admit rates to be quite similar this year. People interested in double majoring in say CS and Math, (or) interested in humanities (or) not interested in the EE curriculum should apply to L&S. People who applied last year weren’t necessarily disadvantaged. They were applying to an oversubscribed major with well-known enrollment challenges. And to some extent, the wisdom of the crowds to apply to L&S rather than COE meant that a whole lot of people pursued the same strategy which obviously wil translate into lower admit rates.
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Yep. And at least from our local high schools, there were many in the crowd applying to L&S simply to try to have better odds at getting into CS. I’ve even seen this strategy spelled out by a consultant online. This of course has contributed to the over crowding of that major so I’m glad it is being addressed, also for the good of the CS majors who truly want a more interdisciplinary degree and access to more humanities and aren’t just trying to game a ‘back door’. I think they’ll have an easier time standing out now.
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So I asked my counselor why Berkeley sends LOR requests to certain applicants and here is what he said below. Do you guys think that’s accurate?
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I mean, I think the letters can only help in most cases. It’s hard to know what’s going on in their minds - as mentioned above, some people got the requests within a day or two of submitting, which makes me doubt that the applications had been thoroughly read (maybe the basic stats, but I doubt there could have been a careful reading of PIQs in that short amount of time, etc). But who knows. And maybe it’s somehow connected to the new thing about applying by major to the high demand majors in L&S (such as CS), or maybe the backdoor some people have been trying to take to L&S by applying to CNR, or maybe the housing situation, or maybe…We don’t know this year, imo. But I do think in most cases the letters will help, not hurt (assuming they are positive, as they should be).
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@Avtrite I know you are anxious about UCB admissions, and I truly empathize! It looks like this is your 18th (?) post on this thread related to the LOR request that you received. It’s probably best to try to resist over analyzing why the LOR request was received and what effect it may have on your admission chances. Nobody here really knows all the details, but we can assume the LORs have potential to help, or UCB would not have requested them. All LORs have now been submitted and all we can do is wait for results and hope for the best!
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LOL, I blame Cal - it’s a LONG wait until decisions, it’s hard not to obsess just because there’s nothing but time to fill. I feel the same way - it’s hard not to think about it, even overthink it in the meantime, just because there’s still such a long wait until any further info will be known.
Yeah, I think the letters would overall help most applicants. However, some will still get rejected even after getting the LOR request as we’ve seen in previous years. About 58% of people who submitted LORs in the 2021 cycle were accepted. Even my counselor said that some students were accepted after sending LORs but not all.
Yeah I know I’m pretty anxious lol, I was just sharing what my counselor sent to me, just in case it could help someone who had any questions relating to it.
58% is pretty good odds, all things considered. And it may be different this year because other things are being done a bit differently this year - although no way to know if that will make things better or worse in specific cases. And some LORs suck - even if “positive” they can be so vague as to be useless. So for some people, they won’t really help much at all. Good LORs should help. Will they make a huge difference, enough to tip the scales? No idea. Obviously I hope so as much as you do.
Yeah, I agree. I guess we’ll have to wait till march to find out.
Hi! I posted this a few weeks ago. A video of UCB faculty presenting findings of “an experiment in the 2016-17 admissions cycle in which applications were scored with and without their letters.” If anything it was an interesting peek into the UCB admission process and use of LORs.
Hang in there! 
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Thanks! I’ll check it out.
and basically we’re waiting until April, because UCB will hold out until the afternoon of March 30th.
It was interesting - thanks!
Do you think they’ll release decisions earlier? Like last year it was March 24.
Anyone seen the USC release today? Applications up 20 percent. School will admit fewer this year because yield was higher than expected last year. Gonna be a sub 10 percent admit year there.
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Yikes. I’ve heard that anecdotally about a few of the top schools with EA…
Have the UCs released application numbers yet for this year? Seems like a lot of programs are up (again!).
Haven’t seen a release from UCs yet. Common App said applications on their system were up 20 percent
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