UC Freshman Applications Decline for the First Time in 15 Years

The nine undergrad campus UC system saw a 3% decline in freshman apps. Berkeley and UCLA each declined a little over 2%. But don’t worry that the freshman classes are going to go unfilled. Even with the decline UCLA still had 111,266 applicants vying for the 5,700 seats in its freshmen class.

http://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-edu-uc-applications-20190131-story.html

Well all schools will have a decline sooner or later… can’t only go up

The increase for 2018 is probably in some part due to the increase in Golden Dragon kids ie those kids intentionally born in the year 2000. 2019 enrollment would also have some of those kids as well, but a smaller portion, the ones born towards the end of 2000, which may explain the decrease.

The “dragon year” kids would not all be piled into one college application year.

The year in question was 2000-02-05 to 2001-01-23, according to http://www.chinesenewyears.info/chinese-new-year-calendar.php . California requires that kindergarteners be 5 years old by September 1 according to https://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/gs/em/kinderinfo.asp , so (assuming uniform distribution of births through the year) slightly more than half of the “dragon year” kids started kindergarten in 2005, eventually to graduate high school and start college in 2018. The rest, and any “kindergarten redshirts” among the “dragon year” kids, started kindergarten in 2006, eventually to graduate high school and start college in 2019 (i.e. are in the midst of applying to colleges now).

The Dean of Admissions at the school where I work talked at our Department meeting about this book:

https://www.insidehighered.com/admissions/article/2018/01/08/new-book-argues-most-colleges-are-about-face-significant-decline

and the challenges it will bring in the mid-20s for many schools especially in the northeast and midwest.

@ucbalumnus this is nothing in comparing to what is to come … those “golden pig” kids who are now in the 5th grade. I can see an uptick with the international applications from Asian countries in another 6-7 years.

“I can see an uptick with the international applications from Asian countries in another 6-7 years.”
that will totally depend on whether international students will be able to get Visas to study in the US, which I bet is having an influence on the decline in applications to the UCB and UCLA THIS year.

^^I dug thru the data on UCOP, and the drop is nearly all from California ‘residents’ (includes undocumented that attend and graduate from Cal HS).

When I read posts of college freshmen stuck in threes in rooms built for two, I think perhaps a dip in enrollment would in fact be a correction back to the norm. Concerning from a financial standpoint, perhaps, but not exactly a disaster.

Nobody is talking about a drop in enrollment yet, just in applications. Things will have to get a whole lot worse before actual enrollment at the UC declines.

Overall a decline but up for most UC’s. Numbers as follows…

Merced. UP 2.6%
San Diego UP 1.2%
Santa Barbara UP 1.2%
Riverside UP 0.8%
Irvine. UP 0.6%
Davis. UP 0.1%

Santa Cruz DOWN 1.3%
Loa Angeles DOWN 2.1%
Berkeley. DOWN 2.5%

Or it could be that some kids saw UCLA and UCB as far reaches and decided to not apply and focus more or UCSD and UCI

To @ucbalumnus point about Golden Dragon and Feb 2000-Feb 2001, for practical reasons I think most Asian parents (well at least for those in the US) would have been shooting for births anytime in 2000 as opposed to the true Golden Dragon timeframe, so there would most likely be a skew towards there being more students that graduated in 2018 as opposed to 2019. Kids born between Jan 2000 and say mid-Sept 2000 would go to 2018, the rest to 2019. I don’t know if there is such a thing as birth rate by month data out there but it would be interesting to see. Not sure when the Sept 1 rule took effect but I definitely know a few kids born in Sept and even Oct 2000 who were part of the 2018 class.

UCLA has had forced triples for years, and it hasn’t hindered apps to that school.

“California requires that kindergarteners be 5 years old by September 1”.

For these kids the cutoff was December 2, the change took effect for kids born in 2004 or 2005 IIRC. Although many held their kids back if they were born from July onwards. My twins were born in mid-November 2000, they were the youngest in their class and significantly less than 10% of kids amongst last year’s seniors at their school had a Sept/Oct/Nov 2000 birthday.

But it’s much more likely that people are realizing how hard it is to get into UCB/UCLA after so much publicity around the low admission rate and so they are deciding it’s not worth paying the application fee.

@Dolemite , I’m going to look for that book - demographics has to play into it, though it’s usually a slow ship to turn, and at face value those conclusions seem a bit alarmist. Still, at some point there should be downward pressure on applications, and one manifestation might be less pressure for kids to apply to so many colleges. Hoping D26 will face an easier time than D19!!

On the UCs specifically, anecdotal evidence from D19’s (high performing) CA public school is that UC schools that had often been regarded as safeties in the past no longer are, and there seems to be more reluctance to advise kids to just check off every UC on the application. That kind of thinking if even just a bit more widespread may help explain a 2-3% fall in applications. The news article implies that the fall is mainly from in-state students though I don’t think I saw numbers stripping out instate vs OOS applicants? Edit: see bluebayou did this work and confirms it

@parentofsix Golden pig? Why was that year a popular year for having babies? I heard only the dragon years are auspicious, not pig.

Some background about the golden pig year:

http://theseoultimes.com/ST/?url=/ST/db/read.php?idx=4555

Post #14 is on the mark. The cutoff used to be Dec 2 so the Golden Dragon effect is significant. I live in a predominantly Asian community, and everybody was talking about how much tougher UC admissions was going to be for these kids.

I would assume that 2003 birth year kids might have a better chance of getting into college. Year of the Goat/Sheep, which is considered an unlucky sign in the Chinese zodiac (Asian families try not to have kids in a Goat/Sheep year).