Looking at Berkeley’s Wikipedia page, you can see the number of admitted students over the past years. The average seems to be around 13,500 admitted students. However, this year, the number of freshman applicants accepted for the class of 2020 dropped to 12,226. This, along with the increase in applicants from last year by 3616, has decreased the acceptance rate to 14.8% from 16.9% last year. Is this a policy to make the school appear more selective? Or is it a matter of budget, as accepting less student means saving more money?
I’d guess both
There is political pressure to reduce non-resident enrollment. However, since non-residents subsidize the campus, it is not a given that space freed by reducing their enrollment can be used to add the same number of California residents, who are subsidized, in terms of money flow.
A lot of less-qualified applicants will be coming through the waitlist, so expect the # of admitted students to rise to what it was last year. The 14.8%, to my knowledge, includes only those that were offered regular admission.