[82lsju]

When I was in HS in CA 20+ years ago ... if you were smart and worked hard you'd know you'd get into UCLA, UCB, UCSD.

Now my understanding from hearing of colleague's kids going through the process, there is much less of that certainty.

I just went through the college application process with two kids this year, one graduating high school and the other from community college.

A 4.0 GPA and a 1550 SAT score is not a guarantee of getting into UCB, UCLA, or UCSD any more.

My kid who will be attending Stanford was rejected from UC Irvine.  He thinks it's because Irvine is being conscious of their yield rate and knew he wouldn't enroll there.

UCLA nowadays is completely a dart board.  They get more applications than any other school in the country (about 150,000), and among my kid's friends there is no rhyme or reason as to who got accepted.

I was happy to see that Stanford took a transfer student from my kid's community college (CCSF).

Top 10 Most Applied-To Colleges (Class of 2027). Stanford came in a healthy #8:

University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) – 145,904 applicants (11.6% acceptance rate)
University of California, San Diego (UCSD) – 130,841 applicants (25% acceptance rate)
University of California, Berkeley (UCB) – 125,910 applicants (11.6% acceptance rate)
University of California, Irvine (UCI) – 97,937 applicants (21.3% acceptance rate)
New York University (NYU) – 105,000 applicants (12.8% acceptance rate)
University of Southern California (USC) – 80,808 applicants (9.9% acceptance rate) 
Harvard University – 61,220 applicants (3.4% acceptance rate)
Stanford University – 56,378 applicants (3.7% acceptance rate)
University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) – 54,588 applicants (5.8% acceptance rate) 
Columbia University – 52,823 applicants (3.9% acceptance rate)

It would be interesting to see the actual frosh class sizes of the top few schools. UCSD and UCI in particular look like “safety schools.”

UCI has ~29k undergrads so ~7k/year (not sure how many are frosh admits vs transfers, although the link below was 148K frosh + transfer applicants for 2024 vs 98k applicants above so if transfer have the same acceptance rate the % enrolled below is a lot lower)

https://uci.edu/about/facts-and-figures.php

from the above ~21K accepted so ~33% enrolled

UCSD has ~35k undergrads

https://univcomms.ucsd.edu/about/campus-profile/

so ~8.5k/year (again unclear how many are frosh admits, the link above says they had ~23k transfer applicants so the % enrolled below if probably also lower)

so if we look at just frosh admits then ~33k, so ~25% enrolled, less if you factor in transfers into the overall number of enrollees

[82lsju]

When I was in HS in CA 20+ years ago ... if you were smart and worked hard you'd know you'd get into UCLA, UCB, UCSD.

Now my understanding from hearing of colleague's kids going through the process, there is much less of that certainty.

I just went through the college application process with two kids this year, one graduating high school and the other from community college.

A 4.0 GPA and a 1550 SAT score is not a guarantee of getting into UCB, UCLA, or UCSD any more.

My kid who will be attending Stanford was rejected from UC Irvine.  He thinks it's because Irvine is being conscious of their yield rate and knew he wouldn't enroll there.

UCLA nowadays is completely a dart board.  They get more applications than any other school in the country (about 150,000), and among my kid's friends there is no rhyme or reason as to who got accepted.

I was happy to see that Stanford took a transfer student from my kid's community college (CCSF).

Top 10 Most Applied-To Colleges (Class of 2027). Stanford came in a healthy #8:

University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) – 145,904 applicants (11.6% acceptance rate)
University of California, San Diego (UCSD) – 130,841 applicants (25% acceptance rate)
University of California, Berkeley (UCB) – 125,910 applicants (11.6% acceptance rate)
University of California, Irvine (UCI) – 97,937 applicants (21.3% acceptance rate)
New York University (NYU) – 105,000 applicants (12.8% acceptance rate)
University of Southern California (USC) – 80,808 applicants (9.9% acceptance rate) 
Harvard University – 61,220 applicants (3.4% acceptance rate)
Stanford University – 56,378 applicants (3.7% acceptance rate)
University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) – 54,588 applicants (5.8% acceptance rate) 
Columbia University – 52,823 applicants (3.9% acceptance rate)

It would be interesting to see the actual frosh class sizes of the top few schools. UCSD and UCI in particular look like “safety schools.”

UCI has ~29k undergrads so ~7k/year (not sure how many are frosh admits vs transfers, although the link below was 148K frosh + transfer applicants for 2024 vs 98k applicants above so if transfer have the same acceptance rate the % enrolled below is a lot lower)

https://uci.edu/about/facts-and-figures.php

from the above ~21K accepted so ~33% enrolled

UCSD has ~35k undergrads

https://univcomms.ucsd.edu/about/campus-profile/

so ~8.5k/year (again unclear how many are frosh admits, the link above says they had ~23k transfer applicants so the % enrolled below if probably also lower)

so if we look at just frosh admits then ~33k, so ~25% enrolled, less if you factor in transfers into the overall number of enrollees