UC sets record for applications

The University of California has received a record number of applications for freshman admission, with 95,201 students trying to gain entrance in the fall to at least one of its nine undergraduate campuses, UC officials announced Tuesday.

That is a 9.2% increase over last year and represents in part a demographic bulge in high school graduates.

As has been true for about a decade, UCLA again received the most applications -- 55,346 -- of any school in the nation. UCLA has been under pressure to increase the number of its African American undergraduates, which had been declining until a turnaround last fall. Freshman applications are up 12.9% from African American California residents and up 17% from Latino Californians.

After UCLA, UC Berkeley garnered the most freshman applications, 48,418. UC’s newest and smallest campus, UC Merced, saw freshman applications rise 13.2% to 9,084.