For those of you who still have the courage to read the papers, college admissions are hurting just as much as your home values. Wednesday the University of California Regents voted to trim freshmen enrollment (those who actually attend) by six (6) percent. Ouchhh! But wait it gets worse for those of you who were hoping to attend UC Irvine or UC San Diego where they will be reducing enrollment by twelve (12) percent because last year they had the misfortune at those two campuses of having more freshman accept their offer of admission than they had budgetted for. Well there’s always UC Riverside one might say…maybe not this year when they cut enrollment by ten (10) percent. Making lemonade out of lemons UC Merced plans to increase enrollment by seventeen (17) percent…always a silver lining.

What does this mean to the individual applicant’s chances of acceptance? Let’s take UC Irvine and work through the numbers. Applications are reported to be up 3% so UC Irvine has 43,712 applications. Given that last year they accepted 48.7% (20,685) and enrolled 23% (4,804),then they must lower to 19,685 those accepted in order to have 3,859 enroll. And it is my guess that the number accepted will be much less that 19,685 for fear the economy and rejections at other UC/Cal States will increase the number of students deciding to enroll at UC Irvine. Big Ouchh!

I hope this example illustrates how a cut in enrollment translates into cuts in acceptances…obviously you say. The problem then is that your son or daughter will have fewer acceptances and fewer choices..these kind of cuts put even more power in the hands of admissions officers who have such limited time to get to know the applicant. Again to save money, the UC’s and Cal States do not require teacher recommendations. The Cal States do not require essays. It’s all numbers.
Advice…diversify…spread the risk! If at all possible apply to private schools outside of California where there is not so much capacity pressure (midwest is looking really good these days) and if that is not possible and you are not happy with the choices you have do careful research into community college choices…but that’s for another blog.