I can’t answer your question but I will say our public HS in Cali is seeing the same thing. Many high achieving and well rounded students have been waitlisted at UCD this year. Including my D. We only know of one admission thus far and that student has their eye on Ivys.
It’s disappointing for them for sure. The best they can do now is focus on trying to get off the WL. They really shouldn’t take this too hard or personal. With such a huge increase in applicants this year, it was inevitable that so many qualified kids would be rejected or waitlisted. I read on here that UCD had a 30% increase in applicants from just last year.
There are only so many spots available for all these high performing students which are also targeting similar majors so unfortunately not all top students will get into all the UC’s they apply. UCD is very focused on “fit” by their definition. If your student is interested in UCD, then they should focus on their waitlist essay explaining why they would be an asset to the UCD campus community.
Several factors and variables can influence selection. What is most important to know is that selection looks different at every campus!
• Selection can even look different from year to year for the same campus.
• Things like enrollment capacity (campus size impacts how many students can enroll) and enrollment targets for each campus are factored into selection.
• Campuses use multiple factors when selecting students and the way campuses select students varies.
• It is to the student’s advantage to include as much information as possible on the application.
• Every student is considered in the context of their own environment which includes, but is not limited to, school, family and geographic region.
• Students are also considered within the context of the applicant pool for each campus.
• Each campus will complete their own individual review of the application independently of one another, which means that they’re going to review the information in the application and select students without asking what the other campuses have decided.
Hopefully your son—and his friends—will land some place where they could thrive and be happy. They seem to be excellent and being waitlisted is not a statement on their accomplishments. It is just too many excellent students and not enough spots.
Great analogy! I often wonder if UC Davis is the standard for all other positive UC acceptance results. Meaning: Your chances are greater for acceptance into other UCs because of your acceptance into UC Davis. Just thinking out loud. I understand every UC does it differently, but one would have to feel good about the upcoming UC decisions with a UC Davis acceptance Offer already in hand.
i don’t think that typically, UCD is a standard for other UCs. Last year UCD had almost a 50% acceptance rate. Compare that to UCLA.
EDIT: Sorry. I didn’t mean to make this seem as thought UCD is not a selective school. It certainly is, by any metric. I was just comparing it with UCLA admission numbers in an effort to point out that UCD admission/rejection is not a predictor for other UCs.
UCD had specifically a 49% acceptance rate overall and 39% for in-state applicants. OOS and International applicants have a much lower yield rate vs. in-state. It will be lower this year due to the increase in the # of applicants across the board.
Same here. D with 4.0 unweighted 4.29 capped. Biology/Molecular Biology. 3 time Norcal Jr Olympic Gymnastics champion. Full load AP required courses. Essay focused on overcoming chronic illness that she continues to manage. Her goal: to find a cure. WAITLISTED. This was her safety school because acceptance rates compared to other tier 2 UC’s are higher. She also viewed UCD as a good fit for her for the environment. Her classmate with half the AP’s and lower gpa got accepted. So needless to say, she is stressing out getting accepted to other UC’s.
UCD should not be considered a safety or likely school with a below 50% admission rate and a selective/ impacted major in the College of Biological sciences.
Each UC campus works independently in reviewing the applicant’s based on the 13 areas of criteria so each campus will weight these areas differently. They are transparent in what they consider but not how they are weighted in the admission process.
I have been on CC for many years and believe me, your student will end up where they are meant to be.
I’d caution against comparing ourselves/our child to one other applicant and drawing any conclusions from it, as irresistible as that can be. There’s never a one-to-one correlation and we also could never know the details of the other child’s application, no matter how many details our children seem to know. My heart goes out to anyone whose kid at the moment feels like they’re getting the short end of the stick. My experience is that the vast majority of kids land where they are meant to be (and for those that don’t, they transfer). And a Davis waitlist doesn’t mean a waitlist or no at any other UC.
any idea on % of acceptances / waitlists / rejections there were this year ? Is the waitlist likely a 1% type scenario for getting in at this point? or perhaps a bit more realistic if you stay with it ?
In general, I think for the least competitive majors the UC decisions within the same tier of schools will likely have strong correlation.
But, for competitive majors even among peer schools there will be a lot more variance and one decision in one school will not indicate anything with respect to chances at another school.
Check out the UCD Waitlist discussion. You will see there is no specific percentage of applicants that are waitlisted and as the # of applications increase, there has been an increase in waitlisted applicants.
I have no idea if English is a competitive major or not. I just think the more competitive the major is, the more subjective the admission decisions become and you will see greater variability because a PIQ that lands like a dud for one reader can blow away another.
You are correct. What I should have said was that my D felt her chances were greater at Davis than the remaining UC’s that have yet to release. I went through this agonizing wait with my class of 2020 son and he landed where he is supposed to be. I need to stop worrying so much…