The University of California has admitted an unprecedented number of California students for the fall of 2023, with 88,285 first-year applicants coming from the Golden State alone.
It’s an increase of 3.5% from last year, and part of an ongoing effort to attract more in-state students to the state’s higher education system. This year, California’s budget included a 5% boost for the UC system — part of a multi-year agreement between Gov. Gavin Newsom and the University of California — with the expectation that campuses would use that money to enroll more California students, among other educational objectives.
Across the UC system, that seems to be exactly what happened. Admission rates for Californians increased to nearly 67% this year, compared to 64% in 2022.
The surge was more pronounced at UC Santa Cruz than any other campus. This fall, the school admitted 10,200 more first-year in-state students than the year before, a 44.5% jump. Though final enrollment numbers have not yet been released, Michelle Whittingham, UC Santa Cruz’s associate vice chancellor of enrollment, said the campus expects 4,189 first-year students from California to attend the school this fall and winter, a 733-student increase from last year.
“We are just ecstatic that we’ve been able to strategically expand that access while balancing a focus on quality,” said Whittingham.
Across the nine UC campuses, Latinos accounted for 38% of all Californians admitted as first-year freshmen, the largest proportion of any racial or ethnic group. Over 38,800 Latino, Black, American Indian, and Pacific Islander students were admitted to the UC system, the highest number in the university’s history.
“Admitting more students who reflect the socioeconomic diversity of the state has been a priority for us,” said Jocelyn De Jong, UC Berkeley’s assistant vice chancellor and director of undergraduate enrollment, in a press release. “We know that academic talent can be found…
Read the full article here