<p>no other school gets more apps than UCLA, and while there are many factors that lead to this, i think ucla being a reach, match, AND safety has helped its numbers go up. </p>
<p>reach- many kids in california, especially in the LA area, would love to go to UCLA, even if its a reach for them. and when it comes to reaches for average applicants, berkeley seems to be too difficult and too academic, while UCLA offers academics and a much sought-out social life. so UCLA gets some apps here. </p>
<p>match- well, ucla is a natural match for many top honors kids, as it isnt as competitive as an ivy but isnt as easy to get into as some other UCs. many honors kids have the stats to qualify as a typical ucla applicant, and many kids apply because they want to go here. this is where UCLA gets most of its apps</p>
<p>safety- while it isnt top-notch, it certainly is respected, and kids who aim for ivies, stanford, etc. would tend to still apply to UCLA (and berkeley) as their safeties/safe matches. but usually no lower; the applicant crossover rate between, say, ucla and stanford, is much higher than ucsd and stanford. so ucla gets some more apps here.</p>
<p>i dont think there is any other school that can claim itself to be THE reach/match/safety. top privates and sometimes berkeley are considered too high of a reach for most kids to even apply, and schools below ucla usually arent as respected enough to be considered a safety by ivy-caliber students. what do you guys think?</p>
<p>I enjoyed reading you posting. A few things.</p>
<p>1) UCLA is no one's safety school...no one. Even if you have an 1800 SAT, 5.0 GPA, EC's out the wazoo and a recommendation from the President of the United States, nothing is 100% certain and that is what a safety school is.</p>
<p>2) Berkeley and UCLA are nearly identical as far as applicant to acceptance ratios are concerned. I think the difference this year was .2%. I consistently read many postings where people who apply to Ivies also apply to UCLA, more so than UCB. (This second part is of course not very scientific, just anecdotal)</p>
<p>3) If UCLA is perceived as a reach by a student, why wouldn't they apply? The only thing standing between a student applying to UCR and UCLA is $55...and maybe some common sense..but you have to try. It is not as though any special effort is required beyond coming up with an additional $55.</p>
<p>I see what you are saying but there is just one reason why UCLA gets as many applicants as it does..population.</p>
<p>UCB doesn't get the same amount of applicants because the population has changed very little over the years, despite the dot-com boom. The area around LA is the most populated in California, so it stands to reason they will get more applicants. It's a numbers game more than anything else. </p>
<p>So population plus all the reasons you mentioned are why UCLA gets the most apps.</p>
<p>What I would love to see is a ration of population to applicants for each UC. I would be willing to bet there is a correlation between the two.</p>
<p>1) true, ucla isn't a safety school for anyone, but ivy-caliber students who need a fallback treat it as a safety (even though its more of a safe match). </p>
<p>2) but many perceive berkeley to be the higher reach because the students who end up matriculating to berkeley tend to be more academically-focused, and while the stats dont quite seem to say so, i think there are more very bright students at berkeley and more hard-working types at ucla. this reflects the applicant pool; berkeley and ucla may have similar acceptance rate, but berkeley is accepting a higher ratio of top-notch students in proportion to its class size. </p>
<p>3) what im saying is, kids would rather check the UCLA box than the berkeley box if they wanted to apply to a reach school. this helps ucla get more apps. </p>
<p>but i do have to agree with you that population is a factor. i hinted that on my original post, "many kids in california, especially in the LA area, would love to go to UCLA." and because the LA/OC area is so densely populated, you get many apps flowing from ucla's home base. its partly also why USC can get ~30,000 apps/yr, even though its only the 3rd best private in california. maybe because its the private that is a match to many applicants, but also because many kids in LA and southern california in general want to go there.</p>
<p>I have to agree with kfc4u on this one... except for UCLA being a safety. The name "UCLA" happens to be well recognized among all demographics, income brackets and ethnicities - it's the same reason behind NYU's name recognition. You can't say the same about USC... back East they thought I was talking about University of South Carolina.</p>
<p>"What I would love to see is a ration of population to applicants for each UC. I would be willing to bet there is a correlation between the two."</p>
<p>its hard to prove in numbers, because, well, i dont know where to draw the line of each UC's home base. we cant limit berkeley to just alameda county... but do we include san francisco, san mateo, santa clara, contra costa, etc.? same for riverside, we cant just limit it to riverside and san bernardino countries, because riverside draws a lot of applicants from LA county, and that would skew its proportion. same for santa barbara... its county and surrounding area population is relatively small, but it draws a lot of applicants from LA region. </p>
<p>but nevertheless, you can logically estimate and i think there is a correlation between a UC's home base population and the # of apps it receives</p>
<p>no, UCLA is NOT a safety. but it is treated like one by ivy-caliber students. for those (californians) who are applying to HYPSM and others, have a realistic chance of getting in, and plan to matriculate at one, but need a backup, what is the "lowest" school they are willing to add onto their application list? some would say berkeley (or ucsd), but many would say UCLA.</p>
<p>Yeah I think people check the UCLA box because, well, it's UCLA. ;)</p>
<p>I feel there is the perception that UCB is an egg-head type UC, and UCLA is more of your traditional type, upper-echelon school.</p>
<p>One thing I wanted to comment on was where kfc4u mentioned that "berkeley is accepting a higher ratio of top-notch students in proportion to its class size."</p>
<p>According to the latest admission profiles from the UofC site, that is not true. We of course have no idea what the upper or lower bounds of the applicant pool is, nor does it specify whether the numbers for the academic stats are from the applicants or the admits. Here are the averages:</p>
<p>UCB:
36,966 apply, 8,833 accepted 23.9%
GPA: 4.15
SAT: 1340
SAT II Math: 690
SAT II Writing: 669</p>
<p>UCLA:
44,974 apply, 10,577 accepted 23.5%
GPA: 4.09 (-1.4%)
SAT: 1333 (-0.5%)
SAT II Math: 686 (-0.5%)
SAT II Writing: 667 (-0.3%)</p>
<p>Talk about close! And this year, UCLA is more exclusive than UCB by 0.4%</p>
<p>This data of course does not reflect EC's, essay's or anything like that. But from a numbers standpoint, these schools are nearly identical.</p>
<p>i think aim78 is trying to say that its SLIGHTLY less difficult to get into UCLA based solely on those stats because they are lower than berkeley's. </p>
<p>and exilio points out that because so many people with similar stats apply and because ucla cant accept all of them, they end up having a slightly lower acceptance rate than berkeley.</p>
<p>Yeah, it's almost negligible, but the average UCB scores and GPA are slightly higher. So it's more selective in terms of the quality of students. But there's almost no difference.</p>
<p>i wonder if there are stats of the students who end up matriculating at cal and ucla. i wonder if they are a little higher for cal than ucla compared to the minimal difference in acceptance stats.</p>