Tuesday, April 15, 2008

UC releases 2008 freshman admissions data

Date: 2008-04-14
Contact: Ricardo VázquezPhone: (510) 287-3301
Email: ricardo.vazquez@ucop.edu

This year, the University of California's freshman admission cycle took place under a challenging context that included the largest number of applicants in the university's history, budgetary constraints in light of proposed state funding cuts, and over-enrollment the previous year at several campuses.
Amid these challenges, UC admitted a record number of freshman students for the fall 2008 term. A total of 60,008 California high school seniors were offered admission, a 4.7 percent increase of admitted students (+2,690) over the fall 2007 term (57,318). Overall, 75.3 percent of fall 2008 California freshman applicants have been offered admission to the university, compared with 77.4 percent for fall 2007. The decline in the admissions rate is attributed to the fact that the growth in the number of applicants outpaced the growth in the number of admissions offers. The university will offer a space to every California resident applicant who is UC-eligible.
In addition to students who have already been offered admission, another 8,450 UC-eligible applicants who were not offered admission to a campus to which they originally applied will be offered admission to UC Merced and UC Riverside through a process known as referral. Nearly 3,000 applicants have been offered admission to the winter or spring term at UC Berkeley and UC San Diego.
Approximately 820 California resident freshman applicants to UC Berkeley, UC Irvine, UCLA and UC San Diego will receive offers to participate in the UC Merced "Shared Experience" program. Now in its second year, this program offers students the opportunity to begin their UC education at UC Merced, with the option of remaining at Merced or transferring to another UC campus in their junior year.
Nearly 9 out of 10 admitted students are California residents. Admissions offers to out-of-state and international students numbered 7,545, an increase of over fall 2007 (6,283), and bringing the total number of applicants offered admission to the fall term to 67,553 students.
A brief summary of the admissions data follows:
• Universitywide, the admission of Chicano/Latino students increased by 16 percent, followed by African-American students (11.3 percent), white students (1.2 percent) and Asian-American students (0.7 percent) compared with fall 2007 outcomes. The increase in admissions offers closely track the increases of each group in the applicant pool. The percent of American Indian students decline slightly (-2.6 percent), or 11 fewer admits than fall 2007. The percentage of students who declined to state their ethnicity increased 12.3 percent from the previous year.
• Underrepresented students -- African Americans, American Indians and Chicano/Latinos make up 25.1 percent of UC admits, up from 22.9 percent for fall 2007. All campuses registered gains in the proportion of underrepresented students in their admitted class.
• Representation by gender. The admitted class is 56.7 percent female and 43.1 percent male. The relative proportion of admitted students by gender has remained stable over the last decade.
• Geographic representation through California continues to improve. Since its inception, the University of California has striven to attract, admit and enroll students from throughout of California. Although the majority of admitted students call Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Orange and San Diego/Imperial counties home, nearly all other regions of the state experienced greater increases in the number of applicants offered admission compared with fall 2007. The Riverside/San Bernardino area experienced a 10 percent increase in percent of applicants offered admission -- an increase that was foreshadowed by a nearly 11 percent increase in applicants from this region.
• Universitywide, UC continues to excel at offering opportunity and access to students from families that have traditionally not enjoyed the benefits of higher education. Just over 39 percent of freshman admits come from families where neither parent has a four-year degree, 36.8 percent come from low-income families, and 1 out of 5 admitted students is enrolled in a high school that is in the lower 40 percent of California high schools, as ranked by the Academic Performance Index (API) score.
Note: The admissions outcomes are preliminary and focus entirely on admission of freshman applicants. Transfer admissions data will be available mid-May. These data reflect admission as of March 31, 2008, and except as noted, are for California resident students only. Some campuses will continue to admit small numbers of applicants. Unless otherwise noted, the universitywide totals are "unduplicated," meaning that each student is counted only once. Data provided for individual campuses typically reflect multiple admissions offers; on average, fall 2008 freshman applicants applied to 3.6 UC campuses. In making year-to-year comparisons, note that the fall 2004 cycle was anomalous because state budget difficulties resulted in a reduction in the number of students UC was able to admit.
For more information and tables about 2008 freshman admissions to UC: www.ucop.edu/news/factsheets/fall2008adm.html

No comments: