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.
UCSB does not publish that information for all majors. I have seen data for EE and CSE. Search the major websites to see if the information is available.
UCSB is set up differently than other UCs. They only have three colleges - the College of Engineering, College of Creative Studies and College of Letters and Sciences. The vast majority of majors are in L&S, including Biology, Chemistry, Econ and Communications. It is very easy to change majors within L&S but virtually impossible to change into Engineering or Creative Studies.
I’m wondering if anyone knows how selective the physics department is at SB? It’s the largest physics department of any of the UCs… I’m trying to decide if that will be advantageous for my son. He’s in at Davis, Santa Cruz and SLO, waitlisted at Irvine and SD, rejected at UCLA. I know from SBs website they have a target of 200 freshman physics majors. But I don’t know if there’s any data out there on how many apps they get for the major.
My daughter is in almost the same boat as your son except she is a Sociology major.
In at Davis, Santa Cruz, and SLO, waitlisted at Irvine but rejected at SD and UCLA. Good luck to you all!
Hi Eric - would you be willing to share if you were an ELC?
My son has high stats (3.97 UW, 4.28 UC Capped, 4.54 UC Fully weighted, 4.23 SLO (9-11 capped), 4.67 fully weighted) - and according to the guidance counselor, he just missed making ELC at an insanely high performing large public high school in the Bay Area.
My current hypothesis is that for Engineering at UCs you must have ELC or game over. He has applied aero-engr everywhere (except UCSB, applied mech given no aero). On the UC forums, haven’t seen anyone accepted to Engineering that was not an ELC (except for non-residents of course).
I don’t know about the selectivity for Physics major, but I would like to suggest that he consider switching to the CCS Physics major if accepted: Physics | UCSB College of Creative Studies - it offers wonderful opportunities. Although the priority deadline has passed, applications are still considered on a rolling basis.
Hope he gets news of acceptance tomorrow!
