UC Applications Soar; Pool of Students Rises Only 2%

The University of California’s new admissions system, which allowed students for the first time this year to apply to more than one campus, has resulted in dramatic increases in the number of applications to all eight of the system’s undergraduate institutions.

UCLA, for example, reports a 61.4% increase in applications for the 1986-87 academic year, while UC Riverside’s applications for the fall jumped nearly 360%.

The increase in applications is a result of individual students filing multiple applications, which they were not allowed to do under the old system. The actual number of students applying--in contrast to the number of applications filed--has risen only about 2% this year and that is below previous application periods when the increase was closer to 10% a year.

New Procedure Presented

A report on the new admissions procedure was presented by UC officials to the Board of Regents last week in Riverside.

All of this has led UC to believe that it is quite unlikely that there will be a surge in overall enrollment at UC as a whole because of the new application procedure. But the new procedure could result in shifts in enrollment from one campus to another.

That, however, cannot be determined until after May 1 when students who have been admitted must tell the campuses where they intend to enroll. Students will be notified by March 15 whether they have been admitted.

Because not all students who are admitted at any given campus will enroll there, many campuses, particularly the ones with sizable jumps in their application pools, are uncertain how to plan for the fall.

“There is a lot of fingernail biting going on on the campuses right now,” said William R. Frazer, UC’s senior vice president for academic affairs.

Admission Eligibility

Under state law all California students who have taken a required list of courses and who rank in the upper 12 1/2% of their high school graduating classes through grades and standardized test scores are eligible for admission to UC.

Even if they were “eligible,” however, students are not guaranteed a slot in the institution of their first choice. Under the old system, those campuses that had more applications than they could handle automatically “redirected” students to campuses that were not full.

Although far less cumbersome for the university, the old system was criticized by parents and students, many of whom were redirected not to their second-choice institutions but to campuses far down on their list of preferences.

“The new system will probably have little impact on a student’s first choice,” Frazer told the board. “But it could be a significant help in seeing that students at least get matched up with their second-choice campus,” he said.

APPLYING TO UC CAMPUSES A change in the application process to University of California campuses has resulted in whopping increases in the number of students seeking to attend certain schools beginning in September. Rather than apply once, listing the top three choices, the student can now apply to as many campuses as he chooses.

Campus 1985 Applications 1986 Applications % Change Berkeley 15,816 25,581 61.7% Davis 6,869 14,195 106.7% Irvine 4,875 14,166 190.6% Los Angeles 16,767 27,065 61.4% Riverside 1,139 5,236 360.0% San Diego 6,950 18,390 164.6% Santa Barbara 8,973 20,370 127.0% Santa Cruz 2,511 8,447 236.4% University-wide 55,046 56,211 2.1% (unduplicated)