The University of California admitted 43% more out-of-state and international students than last year, significantly boosting its efforts to reach out to those higher-paying freshmen, according to data released Tuesday.
But it remains uncertain how many of these students will actually enroll since non-Californians are less likely to enroll than resident students, officials said.
UC offered fall entrance to 61,443 California students to at least one of its nine undergraduate campuses, a rise of 3.6% from last year.
It also admitted 18,846 students from other states and countries, up from 13,144 the prior year. Those students would pay an extra $23,000 a year and help plug the budget gaps caused by reductions in state funding. Students have until May 1 to decide whether they will enroll.
UC hopes to raise the overall enrollment of non-Californians to 10% of undergraduates in a few years, up from the current 6% or so, although some campuses like UCLA and UC Berkeley already have much higher shares of out-of-staters.
Because applications from state residents increased substantially and enrollment is not expanding much, it got harder for Californians to find a spot in UC. Overall, the admissions rate for California students declined from 69.7% last year to 65.8% for fall 2012. And non-Californians faced a similar trend: 53.9% of out-of-state students in the U.S. were admitted, down from 60.7% last year, and about 61.3% of foreign applicants, compared with 64.1% in 2011.
UC administrators say that all California students who met UC’s academic standards were offered at least one spot somewhere in the university, even it was not their first or second choice.
“We have the capacity to educate many more students at our campuses,” Kate Jeffery, UC’s interim director of undergraduate admissions, said in a statement Tuesday. “What we don’t have is the funding to admit more California students. Nonetheless, we continue to honor the California Master Plan, finding a space at one of our campuses for all students who qualify for guaranteed admission.”
UCLA once again was the hardest UC campus to crack for Californians, with only 17.7% of them offered entrance at the Westwood school. Next came UC Berkeley, 22.7%; San Diego, 32.1%; Irvine, 33.6%; Santa Barbara, 41%; Davis, 44.5%; Riverside and Santa Cruz, both 61.6%; and Merced, 76.5%.
When non-Californians are included in the acceptance rate, UC Berkeley had a slight edge for being the most selective UC campus, offering a spot to 21.2% of all applicants compared with 21.3% at UCLA.
Eight of the nine campuses increased their number of admissions offers to non-Californians. Only UC Berkeley, which already attracted controversy for enrolling 30% of its current freshman class from out of state, pulled back somewhat, cutting the numbers of such offers by 12.5%.