The University of California – Santa Barbara just sent out its acceptances for the class entering in fall 2015. The office of Admissions indicated via email that they had received 70,453 freshman applications (that’s over seventy thousand) and sent about 22,756 offers of admission to freshman applicants (a 32% admit rate). It’s a beautiful campus by the beach about a third of the way north along the Pacific Coast highway between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Florida student thinking of UCSB? It’s harder to get in! In fact, The University of California sets different criteria for an out-of-state applicant: above and beyond admission requirements for California resident students, you must earn a minimum grade point average (GPA) of 3.4 or better in the 15 college-preparatory courses the State requires, with no grade lower than a C.
But wait, those are minimum requirements. As many people know, there’s often a monumental difference between a college’s website-published minimums, and the actual data generated by an incoming freshman class. That is, the competition is well above the minimums you can read about in a view book or at a website. Santa Barbara is a perfect example. Here’s what we know about statistical averages for last year’s (2014) crop who were accepted to California’s Santa Barbara campus:
Weighted GPA: 4.03
ACT: Composite 29
SAT: Reading 623, Math 662, Writing 640
Fully 78% of admissions went to California residents ― in a school that has approximately 96% in-staters. If you’re curious about what it takes be considered for a California state system school, here’s a reasonable place to start: http://www.ucop.edu/agguide/
Needless to say, costs are higher for non-residents. The school estimates that a California resident will see costs of more than $34,000 living on campus, while the school estimates that costs for non-residents will be over $58,000 with on-campus living (about 60% higher).
We always tell our families to check carefully when they consider application to state schools “beyond the border.”
