What’s up with UCLA’s international student admit rate?

UCLA admits oos transfers at 8%. They admit international students at 20%. It doesn’t seem to be a rounding error either, since they admitted about 500 international students and 60 oos students. I was wondering why that’s the case, and whether a dual citizen like me should apply as an international as opposed to an OOS.

For 2021, UCLA had 927 OOS Transfer applicants and admitted 35 so that is an 3.8% admit rate.

UCLA had 4117 International Transfer applicants and admitted 725 which is an 18% admit rate.

The # of International applicants is little more than 4 times more than OOS.

https://www.ucop.edu/institutional-research-academic-planning/content-analysis/ug-admissions/ug-pages/applications.html

It is all relative on how you look at it. You will compete with less applicants if you apply as an OOS student vs. International. If you received your Green card then you would apply as an OOS.

Not sure where you got your Transfer data since I posted the application and admissions data from the UCOP website directly for transfers.

Also look at the admission trend for the last 3 years which is pretty stable.

Right. I see what you mean. My dilemma is whether I should declare myself as international or oos, since I could just say that I’m a Canadian citizen and omit the fact that I have a green card. While it’s true that there are way more international students applying, it also seems like they accept disproportionately more internationals than oos students. This kinda goes against what I assumed, which is that international students have the absolute lowest priority in UC admissions.

Btw, my source is this: https://admission.ucla.edu/apply/transfer/transfer-profile/2018

What you are missing by just looking at admission rates is that the applicant pools could be very different in terms of applicant strength.

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Where do you live and study now @whippymop? If you don’t mind my asking.

How is 18% “very close” to 3.8%?

Multiply 3.8 by 4.4 more International applicants, you would get around the same acceptance rate based on the relative numbers of the applicant pool.

Sorry but no. 18% and 3.8% are the acceptance (you say “admit”) rates already (hence 725 vs 35 admitted, a 20 fold difference)

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Point taken.

I live in Michigan right now and Im not totally sure what I’m studying, but probably stem :slight_smile:

Is it cold right now? Do you like it?

The reason I asked about where you are is that I think the higher admit rate for international students is due to these international students attending California Community Colleges prior to transfer, and not institutions abroad. In our area there are many international students attending CC. There are students that have come with their families and are living here permanently but also students that come from abroad to enroll in CC and then transfer to a UC. If you are in Michigan studying I don’t think you will be in the higher admit rate pool even if you declare yourself as international. I’m not 100% sure of this but that’s my reading of the situation.

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I’m not an expert, but I believe that UCLA only takes junior transfers and you must transfer into a specific major. You can’t just say you want to study stem.

Very interesting. I think this might be worth calling admissions about to get a definitive answer.

(As someone who grew up in California) It is very very very cold out here :grimacing:. I’m lukewarm about this school. It’s not a perfect fit for me but I wouldn’t be devastated if I were “forced” to attend Michigan for all 4 years.

@me29034 i already meet the prereqs and have ECs for biochemistry, so I’m applying for that, but I don’t know what I actually want to do at this point.

Sorry, but thought I would respond to this belatedly. The OOS transfer applicants to UCLA are doubtlessly predominantly from four-year colleges. The International transfer applicants are mostly from CA community colleges. The transfer acceptance rate to UCLA from four-years is considerably lower, doubtlessly because of the mismatch of courses taken compared to what UCLA requires as xfers, excepting for intra- (inter?) UC xfers. Even then to be accepted from other UCs their gpas need to be higher than the gpas [of xfers] from CC.