Here’s some more analysis of data provided by the University of California, regarding applications to UC by high school seniors in California. The application to UC is done via a single portal – students can apply to multiple UC campuses simply by checking boxes. Well, and paying $70 per box. The average applicant applies to four campuses.
Let’s look at the overall numbers for the campuses:1Remember, the data here is for California high school seniors only; out-of-state and international applicants are not included. The data is for 2022 admissions.
| Campus | Applications | Accepted | Acceptance Rate |
| Berkeley | 65909 | 9547 | 14.4% |
| Davis | 57943 | 19102 | 33.0% |
| Irvine | 72782 | 14395 | 20.0% |
| Los Angeles | 86038 | 7498 | 8.7% |
| Merced | 20158 | 18769 | 93.1% |
| Riverside | 40763 | 28018 | 68.7% |
| San Diego | 75409 | 18545 | 24.6% |
| Santa Cruz | 44865 | 19910 | 44.4% |
| Santa Barbara | 65298 | 17475 | 26.8% |
As you can see, some campuses were more popular choices than others. Are there any regional variations to this popularity? Since we have the application data for each high school in California, we can figure this out. Here is a map of the most popular UC campus applied for by high school students in each county:
A couple of things jump out:
- UC Davis is popular with rural Northern California. This is not surprising, since it is known for its vet and ag focus (and it’s the closest campus to those counties).
- Santa Barbara’s popularity with inland counties. I guess if you live inland and want the costal California experience, that’s not a bad place to go?
Just for kicks, let’s look at the campuses with the second highest applications.
One thing that I notice from the first graphic there is a ‘hometown’ lean: in counties where UC campuses reside, those campuses garner the most applications . In other words:
- In San Diego County, the most common application was to…UC San Diego.
- In Orange County, the most common application was to…UC Irvine.
- In Los Angeles County, the most common application was to…UCLA.
- In Yolo County, the most common application was to…UC Davis.
- In Riverside County, the most common application was to…UC Riverside.
- In Merced County, the most common application was to…UC Merced.
There are a couple of minor exceptions:
- In Alameda County, the most common application was to…UC Davis (but UC Berkeley ran a close second)
- In Santa Barbara County, the most common application was to…UCLA (but UC Santa Barbara ran a close second).
Finally, there is the major exception:
- In Santa Cruz County, the most common application was to UC Santa Barbara. The second most common was UC Berkeley. In third place was UC Davis. Fourth was UCLA. Fifth was UC San Diego. Finally, UC Santa Cruz came in sixth (!)
Santa Cruz is truly an outlier. Another way to measure it is the percentage of applicants who included their “hometown” campus. For example, 78.1% of the applicants in San Diego county applied to UC San Diego. That tops the list:
| Campus | Hometown application % |
| UC San Diego | 78.1 |
| UC Merced | 73.9 |
| UC Los Angeles | 73.7 |
| UC Irvine | 72.4 |
| UC Davis | 72.2 |
| UC Berkeley | 71.8 |
| UC Riverside | 66.7 |
| UC Santa Barbara | 55.8 |
| UC Santa Cruz | 45.1 |
What makes Santa Cruz (and to a lesser extent, Santa Barbara) exceptional? I don’t know. They are both mid-sized coastal towns, nice places to live. The schools’ reputations are middling, compared to other UC campuses. It’s a puzzle.
