If you are ELC Local or Statewide and get waitlisted or denied at all the UC campuses you applied, your application will be referred to UC Merced.
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Last year (2022) our daughter was waitlisted by Santa Cruz and Davis, along with by UCSB and UCSD, denied by Irvine and UCLA, and was admitted to Berkeley (which she heard from last). The whole thing felt crazy. So, you never know!!!
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I mean the UCS besides merced or riverside lol 
slightly encouraging! thanks for the info
Not at all. Each UC is doing a complex balancing act and you could get in.
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I posted already, but I know plenty of students that were waitlisted or denied at some UC’s and were accepted into others. Best of luck.
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.
• Each campus selects students independently.
I think UC Riverside is as good as UC Santa Cruz in term of academic. Santa Cruz location is better than Riveride, but Santa Cruz has housing problem.
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They are all great schools.
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Sure enough just checked UC SC Portal son just got rejection email. He is around 3.7 Physics so this was going to be hard. He has got into CPP, UC Merced, waitlisted CSULB, he got into another 8 CSU. Waiting UC SB, SLO (we know that’s not a yes), San Diego State and UCR. Our fav continues to be CPP. As an aside I am a bit relieved about Santa Cruz due to housing shortage and cost. Good luck to all
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DS got accepted!
Major: Electrical Engineering
3.94UW
4.3 UC Weighted and capped
6 AP, 1 DE credit
4 years of tennis and various other clubs
Also accepted to UC Davis, UC Riverside, SDSU, CalPoly Pomona, Long Beach State and some OOS schools. Still no word from SLO (his dream school 
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How bad is the housing situation
Bus Econ? Can’t recall at the moment and also no info on waitlist message as per Beth_Thom message
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It’s very tight. I think most first years will be able to live on campus and then after that it gets hard. And housing is expensive and not plentiful in the town of Santa Cruz. They need to build more, but that’s been challenging on a number of fronts.
Hard to figure out method to the madness… Thanks for sharing.
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Is it worse than UCB? At least there are towns around Berkeley. SC seems cut off from the rest of the towns? I haven’t been there in decades, only remember the fairgrounds and a very windy road that would stop me from going there.
D23 accepted.
UW: 3.75
UCW: 4.08
Proposed Major: Computer Engineering
8APs, 1 DE
Also accepted to SJSU, Santa Clara, UC Merced.
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Accepted back in February , 3.44 UC Capped GPA and a 4.1 Fully Weighted
Major: Environmental Science
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Son accepted.
Major: Computer Engineering
College Weighted Uncapped GPA: 4.72
Overall Weighted GPA: 4.47
10 APs/3 Honors
18 Dual Enrollment Community College Units (4.0 GPA)
Varsity XC/Track & Field
Dual Language Certified (Spanish/English)
Accepted to SDSU, Cal Poly Pomona
Deferred EA from USC
Waitlisted at MIT (no high hopes for this but nice it wasn’t a straight out rejection)
Waiting to hear from SLO (not looking good) UCLA, UC Berkeley, UCSD, and Stanford
Given all the uncertainty of this whole process, his plan B was to use AP scores and Community College units to transfer from Community College to a UC after two semesters. Plan B is a huge cost-savings.
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There has been some main stream news articles about SC and Humbolt. I am a worry wart so I did obsessively research. I don’t think it’s easy past first year as there is a housing shortage in SC.
Daughter Accepted - In State - Major Global Economics
UW GPA - 3.96
UCW - 4.3
W GPA - 4.75
AP - 9
Also Accepted - UC Davis, Cal Poly SLO, UCR, SDSU, USD
Waiting - UCSD, UCI, UCLA, UCB, American
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