@Ramlord
That’s a radical departure from the current process and you are asking students to rank preferences without understanding things like financial package, regents/scholarships, primary/alternate major availability, campus/student life (not every applicant can do visits pre-admit) etc. among many other things. This will simply exacerbate the inequity in admissions since low income, first gen, and middle class kids may not have the time or resources to do all this research pre-admission while dealing with admissions and classes.
9% of kids in CA = ~500k high school grads * 9% = 45K students.
Now compare that to a large impacted major (let’s pick Cal EECS as an example). You need roughly 800 admits to populate the class assuming 50% yield and let’s assume 80% of seats go to In-State. Even in that circumstance, you are looking at 640 seats.
The vast majority of the ELC applicant will be rejected. There are simply not enough seats and making radical changes to application process while reducing flexibility and stability is a recipe for furthering this disaster.
I know you are very frustrated with the results so far, I empathize and understand where you are coming from, and I hope Cal gives you a much needed admit. Good luck!