Tough to Get In

From the San Francisco Chronicle: These days, it’s so difficult to get into many top colleges in the U.S. that college counselors are referring to the most selective schools not just as “reaches” but as “super reaches.”

“I try to be very clear around the terminology,” said Irena Smith, former independent college counselor and author of “The Golden Ticket: A Life in College Admissions Essays.” “Even for highly competitive applicants, once-target schools like Michigan, USC and NYU have gotten tougher. Schools like Stanford, Harvard, CMU, University of Chicago, Caltech and MIT are extreme crapshoots even for students at the very top of their class. Hence, ‘super reach.’ ” Most of these “super reach” schools have admissions rates in the single digits, with Caltech and Harvard reporting a strikingly low 3% for fall 2023 admittance. California’s next most selective colleges are Stanford at 4% and Pomona at 7%...

UCLA’s acceptance rate

UCLA’s acceptance rate makes it a “super reach,” with the campus having received the most first-year applications of any university in the country for many years now. It has the lowest admissions rate among UCs at 9% (for in-state applicants, it’s 10%). College counselors we talked to while building our California College Admissions guide said that, even for in-state applicants who are at the top of their high school class, you simply can’t control whether you will get into UCLA — even if you maximize your GPA and have exceptional extracurriculars.

It wasn’t always this way: Historical data shows that UCLA’s admissions rate plummeted in the last three decades. Between 2011 to 2023, it dropped from 23% to 10% for California residents, the biggest change among top California universities over that time.  UCLA has seen a faster drop than UC Berkeley, once the most selective UC, which had a more modest decrease, from 18% to 15%.

UCLA’s plunging admissions rate is an acute example of a broader trend: In past years, the number of undergraduate applicants has risen sharply, and the number of applications each applicant submits has also gone up. And it will only get harder in the years ahead: The number of prime college-age applicants in the U.S. is about to reach a generational peak.

Why is UCLA so popular now?

But why has UCLA become so much harder to get into than all the other UCs, including even Berkeley?

[Irena Smith, former independent college counselor] is a UCLA alumnus and says the school’s surging popularity “flummoxes” her. When she applied, the admit rate was 70%.

“I think it’s a combination of factors: a desirable location in a big city, nonstop appearances in movies, commercials and TV shows… skillful marketing, and the vicious cycle of perceived scarcity. When a school’s admit rate starts going down, it’s automatically perceived as more desirable because it’s harder to get in, which results in more applications, which results in an even lower admit rate.” ...

Full story is at https://www.sfchronicle.com/college-admissions/article/ucla-student-acceptance-rate-19804682.php.