According to the Los Angeles Times, the University of California system accepted a record number of California residents for fall 2022, while accepting fewer out-of-state and international students. As a whole, the UC system accepted 85,268 California first-year students, a 1.2% increase from last year. Out-of-state acceptances declined by 19%, or 5,359 students, from fall of 2021, while international student acceptances declined by 12.2%, or 2,442 students, from the last application cycle.
This follows criticism that the UC system was not accepting enough in-state residents. Last year, Assemblyman Phil Ting of San Francisco accused UC Berkeley, UC Los Angeles, and UC San Diego of focusing on accepting out-of-state students over in-state students. Experts say that this move was mainly due to a decline in “state funding for the UC system.” Out-of-state and international students pay more than double the tuition that in-state students do. As noted by Teresa Watanabe of The Los Angeles Times, “the public research university system began aggressively recruiting and enrolling higher-paying nonresident students as a source of additional tuition revenue after the 2008 recession when the state slashed its UC funding by one-third.”
Gary Robbins of La Jolla Light explains that last year, in response to this criticism, the State Legislature “adopted a budget… that order[ed] UCSD, UCLA and UC Berkeley to make a roughly 4 percent cut in the number of undergraduates who come from outside California. That will collectively free up 4,500 slots for California residents at those campuses over the next five years.” This year, California Governor Gavin Newsom and the State Legislature “provided $82.5 million to enroll an additional 5,632 California students in 2022 and 2023.”
UC campuses also became more diverse. The admitted class of first year students this year are made up of 43.8% underrepresented racial and ethnic groups. For the third year in a row, Latinx were the largest ethnic group at 37.3%. Asian Americans made up 35%. Additionally, Watanabe reports that “about 47% of admitted California first-year students are low-income, and 44% would be the first in their families to earn a bachelor’s degree.”
In-State and Out-of-State Acceptance Rates at UC Campuses for Fall of 2022
Campus | In-State Acceptance Rate | Out-of-State Acceptance Rate | International Acceptance Rate |
UC Berkeley | 14.5% | 8.6% | 5.5% |
UC Davis | 32.3% | 59.8% | 43% |
UC Irvine | 18.2% | 36.6% | 21.5% |
UCLA | 9.2% | 8.8% | 5.7% |
UC San Diego | 23.8% | 31.5% | 15.5% |
UC Santa Barbara | 26.7% | 28.8% | 19.7% |
Numbers calculated based on data provided by University of California with number of applicants and number of acceptances.
