In that case, it could have been determined that, in the context of their community or personal circumstances, the opportunities were not available to them.
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I am pretty disappointed with my sonâs UC results.
Admitted UC Riverside
Waitlisted UCD,UCSC,UCSD,UCLA,UCI
He is in state, 4.0 UW, high course rigor, ELC, NMF, President of robotics club, CS internships, all 5s on APs, good essays. Not sure what he could have done more.
He has good OOS options- UT Austin, UIUC,UNC chapel HIll, Univ Wisconsin Madison all admitted him for CS or CE. Itâs frustrating not to have a good in state option.
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Probably, and I think there are plenty of students who are not low income but still may not have opportunities for CS ECs. There are middle class students in high cost of living school districts, and they are often caught in no manâs land - make too much money from a schools perspective but not enough from the parentâs perspective. These students, often middle class smart ORM kids, neither have the resources nor meet institutional priorities and I feel really bad for them.
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The UCSC result is startling for me. Generally, high stat in-state applicants are a shoo-in for CS at UCSC but looks like this year has become harder even at UCSC since many who wouldnât apply there in prior years are choosing to now do so.
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Davis was started as a Berkeley extension to house all the agricultural and animal majors (Cal aggies), that is by design need to be in the close proximity to both Berkeley and farmland. Merced, on the other hand, is designed to serves students in the valley of central California; otherwise it would probably be located near the coast/beaches like the rest of the UCs.
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My sonâs results:
Accepted: UCSC, UCD (also CP slo)
Waitlisted: UCI, UCSD
Rejected: UCLA
Waiting: UCSB, UCB
Overall, he is very happy. We have good choices which is all I hoped for.
What is shocking about this admissions round is how low acceptance rates have gone. With estimating yield, UCSD will have maybe a 15% acceptance rate? What world is this? UCLA maybe 7 or 8%? Our public schools have Ivy range acceptances rates. That is nuts. Unless we see this change with the coming demographic cliff, out of state and international admissions need to be reduced even more. Regents agreed to 18%, probably needs to be more like 9%.
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Thatâs right! I am glad that my high stat kid applied to UCSC and was accepted in scholars program with scholarship. Was waitlisted by UCLA, UCSD and UCI. He did and still doing his best in High school. There is nothing more he could have done. Sometimes itâs just luck I guess when you apply to CS or other impacted major.
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I agree to your point whole heartedly. Many people donât understand why they have high stats yet canât get into some of the UCs (my best friends included). My first question to them is⊠yes they might have a million volunteer hours, yet any of them show interest to their intended major? I mentioned in other posts that my son doesnât have the perfect GPAs, yet he was offered an acceptance at his dream school (Berkeley) over his best friend that had a perfect GPA and same amount of APs. I think what worked my son is he stuck to stem focused rigor ap classes, was in a 4 year computer pathway throughout high school. Robotics team and his volunteer and work hours are being webmaster and working to set up network at a newly built 15000 sqft warehouse. This may not help with the UC vent topic but hoping to help the future college applicants through our own experience. For reference, my son (2021) was wait listed at UCI, UCLA, UCD, accepted at Berkeley, UCSD, UCSB. No rejections since we only applied to instate UCs.
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I think institutional priorities end up taking precedence - 1st gen, low income, diversity etc. A lot of high stat kids get rejected to accomodate those priorities. Not saying itâs unfair, just that itâs the reality of UCs.
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This whole admission process reminds me of the story of a big school of fishes who are trying to evade a fishermanâs net. The fight continues for some time and eventually the fisherman manages to trap a few fishes. The others swim away happily. The trapped fishes are frustrated and ask the fisherman - âWhy trap us and let some get away?â The fisherman simply said, âThere were just too many of you!â
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Probably an unpopular opinion but I think the holistic admissions process works.
We are not low income, not first generation, not an ethnic minority and D23 is not top 9% ELC. She has a good gpa but not as high as some other applicants. She was offered admission to UCSC into a program considered one of the top degrees in the country. (Games and Playable Media).
She has been in a coding and robotics pathway for the last 4 years, took a summer course in game design at Sac State and wrote passionately in her PIQâs about her interest in game design.
UCSC saw her. They read her application and understood who she is and what she is trying to achieve. She was waitlisted at Davis. As she should be. They have some game design courses, but they are hidden inside a cinema and media degree and are nowhere near as comprehensive as what is on offer at UCSC. Davis saw her too, but understood that there were going to be other campuses that could offer her more.
She was rejected by UCI for their Game Design degree which I can also understand as the degree is inside the college of Engineering and she is competing with some ultra high stat gpa kids to even get into the college, let alone the major which has a 10% acceptance rate.
When you look closely into the individual applications and the intended majors those applicants are applying for, I think it shows a different picture. In our experience, the holistic approach works.
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Your sonâs other acceptances are amazing! Congratulations and Iâm sure you son will just have to âsufferâ somewhere like UT in Austin or UNC in Chapel Hill. Will cost more but these are incredible options. Still shocking given your sonâs other OOS CS acceptances but UCâs loss in this case IMO.
Good luck to him!
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If your goal is CS/CE, I think you have some fantastic options. Last year, we went back and forth on the Cal vs. UIUC decision and we almost picked UIUC. Ya, I think its frustrating to not have in-state choices but I would keep the hope for Cal. Also curious to know if you applied to CalPoly and SJSU. These 2 CSUs are fantastic for CS and have stellar reputation in the industry.
Watching my DDâs UC decisions come in, Iâm also thinking the holistic admissions process might be working. She has no âhooksâ but is top 9%. Admitted UCD & UCSC (and Cal Poly SLO). Waitlisted UCLA & UCSD. Rejected UCI. And guess what? We live in NorCal, not SoCal. The decisions seem to be falling âcorrectlyâ to suit her. Iâve never been to Irvine in my life, and neither has my DD. UC somehow âsensedâ or knew sheâs not the UCI âtype,â whatever it isâthey knew sheâs not a good âfitâ there and I tend to agree. Likely even if admitted off the waitlist to UCSD, she wouldnât attend there either. Sheâs not as interested in UCSD or UCI. They could tell. And I KNOW sheâs a UCD type, as I was, and her father, and even two of her grandparents (if she SIRs there, sheâll be a 3rd generation Aggie, and a 4th generation UC student). It was and is a top choice for her and UCD could sense it. Sheâs only been admitted into NorCal and Central Coast universities so far. And likely thatâs the way it should be, as far as âfit.â (That said, she really wanted to try living in LA for a while, and UCLA was/is a tippy top choice.)
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My SoCal boy thought he was the UCI or UCSD type but was waitlisted and got into Davis 
He canât remember ever going to NorCal, but heâs game for Davis!
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We are Norcal too and already have two Aggies! They both love it there. My oldest daughter is graduating in June with honors and a double emphasis. She interned for 3 years for UCD and will miss it when she leaves 
. My second eldest is a junior at UCD and thriving.
They just didnât have exactly what my third daughter wanted to study, so she is more interested in UCSC. All three of them were/are not really interested in studying in Southern California so yes, the admissions process is working for us too.
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California population of 18 years is projected to increase thru 2026. 2027 looks down a bit, but still in line with/ even above todayâs population of 18 year olds.
Data at these links:
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Accepted: UC Riverside
Waitlisted: UCSC, UCSD, UCI, UC Davis
Rejected: UCLA
I would drop my cal poly slo acceptance in a heartbeat to go to davis 
davis has become my top pick out of my waitlist offers, so Iâm really hoping to get off of the waitlistâŠthe last few days have been absolutely brutal and I just want to get into 1 UC besides riversideâŠplus, my GPA is ok but not great (while other peopleâs GPAs went up because of COVID, mine went down because of personal circumstances) and they donât look at SAT scores, which doesnât make matters better
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Iâm in a similar position, and understand the UCs for it. Applied to UCSD CS-Bioinformatics (which is an interdisciplinary biotech-esque field within their CompSci department) as a pre-med presenting profile and was waitlisted. Have a couple life science-related ECs and a lot of community service experiences, however noticeably zero reported CS experience. Also ELC designated with a 4.3 UCGPA (top 2% of class to be exact).
I know a bit of Java and have done some coding of course, like many high school students these days, but I canât help but feel like it was my lack of official CS experience, either through a reported AP CS class, coding bootcamp, or otherwise, resulted in my waitlist decision.
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As many have said, thank you for all the great information you provide. As you are aware, the 18% oos cap does not apply to some of the top UC campuses, though:
"The UC Board of Regents has officially decided to place a cap on the number of out-of-state and international students each UC campus can enroll. During their meeting at UC San Francisco today, the Regents voted in favor of limiting nonresident admissions to 18 percent of the total enrollment.
UC Berkeley, UCLA, UC Irvine and UC San Diego, are exempt because their current percentages of nonresidents are higher than the 18 percent cap: UC Berkeley: 24.4 percent, UCLA: 22.8 percent, UC Irvine: 18.9 percent and UCSD: 22.9 percent.
However, they are required to maintain their current percentages and limit their future enrollment percentages of nonresident undergraduates to their current levels."
So really nothing has changed.
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