University of California Class of 2021

The University of California schools continue to try to boost their in-state student enrollment figures (photo credit: Satyriconi).

The University of California schools offered admission to 69,972 students who attend high school in California this year, to be members of the Class of 2021 at Cal, UCLA, UCSD, UCSB, etc. These 69,972 admitted students who grew up with In ‘N Out close by were among the 106,011 first-year and 24,685 transfer students who were offered admission to be members of the Class f 2021. So indeed many admitted members of the University of California Class of 2021 were in-state residents. But not quite as many as last year.

In fact, the percentage of California residents offered admission to the University of California schools this year fell by 1.7% from last year, though the figure is up from two years ago. As our readers may remember, it was two years ago when the University of California schools agreed to admit more in-staters. After all, the UC schools had developed somewhat of a reputation and suffered some backlash over the years prior for limiting the number of in-state admits. And why? Because out-of-staters and international applicants pay the full cost of tuition — not the in-state, discounted rate.

But this slight decline from last year’s cycle shouldn’t come as a surprise. It was anticipated, all part of the plan to offer admission to more California residents consistently through the years. As Teresa Watanable writes for “The LA Times” in a piece about the UC application figures, “UC made clear early on that admission offers to Californians would be smaller this year than last — UC President Janet Napolitano had laid out a plan for increases of 5,000 in 2016-17 and 2,500 in the two years after that.” And if you compare the number of in-state residents admitted in 2017 to the number of in-state residents admitted in 2015, the difference is striking — an increase from 61,834 admits to 69,972 admits. Sure, 71,178 Californians were admitted in 2016 but the UC schools shouldn’t be faulted for adhering to a planned rollout to increase the number of in-staters on UC campuses.

And cherrypicking the two most selective UC schools, note that UC Berkeley admitted 9,715 Californians compared to 8,732 in 2015. The figure stood at 9,750 in 2016. At UCLA, 9,292 students were offered the chance to be Bruins — which is a bit lower than in both 2015 and 2016.

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