The University of California announced historic first year admissions for this fall, admitting 137,200 undergraduate students, according to the university.
The president’s office announced first-year admissions had surged 4.3 percent from last year, hitting an “all-time high.”
Total admissions, including transfers, were nearly 167,000.
The University of California has 10 campuses statewide, with 9 offering undergraduate degrees, including in Los Angeles, Berkeley, Riverside, San Diego, and Irvine.
According to university officials, there were more admission offers this year to California first-year students from historically underrepresented groups like Pacific Islanders, Latinos, African Americans, and American Indians.
“These admissions numbers demonstrate the University of California’s commitment to expanding opportunity and access, especially for historically underrepresented groups, who comprise the largest-ever share of first-year students,” said University of California President Michael V. Drake in the press release.
Latino students are the largest first-year student group this year at 38.6 percent, according to university officials.
The increase in overall offers stems from a 1.5 percent rise in applications from transfer students, California residents, and underrepresented groups, according to a statement from the president’s office in March.
The University of California–Irvine offered admissions to more than 45,000 first-year and transfer students for the 2024-25 academic year, according to a press release from the university. Just over 14,000 of those admissions were first-year students.
The University of California–Los Angeles, made offers to over 8,700 first-year California resident students.
“Our outreach and recruitment partnerships with underserved high schools, California community colleges and community-based organizations have allowed us to broaden access and opportunity for in-state students all across California,” said Gary Clark, University of California–Los Angeles’s associate vice chancellor of enrollment in a separate statement, also July 31.
Other campuses in the University of California system experienced an increase in first-year admissions, including Riverside, with an increase of around 10 percent, and Davis with a 5.1 percent increase, officials said. Davis offered first-year admissions to more than 41,000 students, and Riverside offered more than 44,000 first-year admission offers.
“UC Davis has admitted a bright, talented and diverse entering class,” said Robert Penman, executive director of undergraduate admissions, in a statement.
The increased admissions come amid a $125 million cut for the University of California’s budget for the 2024–25 fiscal year and a proposal to defer agreed-upon financial increases from 2025–26 for the school system to budgets of 2026–27, according to the school.
The cuts this year amount to around 2.5 percent of its annual state revenue, per university officials.
