With a 10.5% admission rate this year, UC Berkeley is harder to get into than ever before \u2014 especially for underrepresented minorities.<\/p>\n
The UC system saw a record-breaking 251,907 applications this year, leading to tightening acceptance rates. Following the 2026 data, UC Berkeley is once again more selective than UCLA.<\/p>\n
\u201cGetting admitted to competitive colleges like the UC system is \u2026 getting harder because there are more students applying,\u201d said L\u2019Heureux Lewis-McCoy, an associate professor of sociology of education at New York University. \u201cThe question then becomes, \u2026 if there\u2019s a hunger for education, then how do we provide it?\u201d<\/p>\n
In this cycle, competitive college admissions hit underrepresented minorities the most.<\/p>\n
At UC Berkeley, African American and Latine admissions have decreased from the 2025-26 cycle to the 2026-27 cycle, with a percent change of -18.1% and -9.8%, respectively.<\/p>\n
The percentage of UC Berkeley\u2019s first-year admits who self-identify as an underrepresented minority \u2014 including African American, Latine, Native American, Pacific Islander and Asian students \u2014 also dropped 11.1%. Yet as a whole, UC admissions went up for African American, Latine and Asian Californians from 2025 to 2026.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat is a deep concern because California is a very diverse state, and if other campuses are able to find talent out there regardless of background, (UC) Berkeley really should be able to do that too,\u201d said OiYan Poon, co-director of College Admissions Futures Co-Laborative.<\/p>\n
College Admissions Futures found more minorities have been applying to \u201cprestigious, highly resourced universities\u201d in the last few years.<\/p>\n
Outreach strategies might also impact fluctuations in admissions numbers for underrepresented minority groups.<\/p>\n
Margaret Solomon, incoming ASUC president, shared that in the predominantly Latine Inland Empire, she didn\u2019t get much interaction with UC Berkeley in high school.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s very important that we send recruiters to different communities all around, especially \u2026 places that might not be feeder schools or places that might have students \u2026 that aren\u2019t really excited about a certain college,\u201d Solomon said.<\/p>\n
In total, the UC system admitted its highest-ever number of California residents, with two-thirds of incoming freshmen being Californian, but in Berkeley that number has been decreasing, going from 79% in 2024 to 68% this year.<\/p>\n
Rising California resident admissions were motivated by the UC 2030 \u0421a\u0440acity Plan, which aims to add about 17,000 California undergraduate students by 2030. According to a UC press release, the system is on track to meet its target.<\/p>\n
A 2022 multiyear agreement between Gov. Gavin Newsom and the UC system requires the university to increase undergraduate enrollment of California residents by 1% each year in order to receive greater state funding.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs the nation\u2019s No. 1 public university, we have a responsibility to serve all of California and we look for the highest achieving students in the context of their own school and community,\u201d said John Marfield, assistant vice chancellor and director of undergraduate admissions, in an email.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With a 10.5% admission rate this year, UC Berkeley is harder to get into than ever before \u2014…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":422551,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[36519,143,145,144,5247,149,1092],"class_list":["post-422550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-l","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-uc","tag-uc-berkeley","tag-ucla"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=422550"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422550\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/422551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=422550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=422550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=422550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}