Residents of California have plenty of colleges and universities to choose from when it comes to applying to college. Within the state of California alone, there are hundreds of institutions of higher education that offer bachelor’s degrees. But within those in-state colleges, there is a special group that belongs to the University of California college system.
The University of California (or UC) college system hosts several public four-year colleges. Some of them rank among the best colleges in the United States, according to several expert sources. Indeed, some of the colleges that comprise the UC system can be quite difficult to get into. At the same time, many of these UC colleges offer very affordable tuition costs to students whose permanent residence is in California.
In order to find out the easiest colleges to get into in the UC system, BrokeScholar analyzed all the schools in the UC system in terms of their admission rates. Read on to find out the easiest colleges to get into in the UC system.
Table of Contents
- How many schools are in the UC system?
- No. 1 easiest college to get into in the UC system
-
The bottom line on the easiest colleges to get into in the UC System
How Many Schools Are in the UC System?
There are 9 schools in the University of California system that offer both undergraduate and graduate education. The UC schools are large public research universities. Not only that, the UC schools typically are considered to rank among the best public universities in the U.S. The UC system has nearly 300,000 students and close to 230,000 faculty and staff. The colleges and universities that make up the UC system include:
The Easiest Colleges to Get Into In the UC System
These 9 colleges have many shared characteristics, including a system-wide base tuition rate. However, the costs of tuition ultimately vary from university to university because of each school’s own additional required fees that must be paid along with tuition. And then, of course, students who are not residents of California, have significantly higher costs of tuition to pay than in-state students.
Below is a table ranked in order of UC colleges with the highest admission rate to the lowest. Data comes from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) and individual college sites:
|
College |
Percent Admitted |
Undergraduate Population |
Student-to-Faculty Ratio |
2023-2024 In-State Tuition and Required Fees |
2023-2024 Out-of-State Tuition and Required Fees |
|
89% |
8,321 |
19 to 1 |
|||
|
69% |
22,868 |
24 to 1 |
|||
|
47% |
17,864 |
24 to 1 |
|||
|
37% |
31,657 |
21 to 1 |
|||
|
26% |
23,091 |
17 to 1 |
|||
|
24% |
33,343 |
19 to 1 |
|||
|
21% |
29,449 |
18 to 1 |
|||
|
11% |
31,814 |
20 to 1 |
|||
|
9% |
32,122 |
18 to 1 |
What's interesting are the changes in undergraduate admission rates since the last iteration of this study in 2022. Almost all UC system colleges witnessed a tightening of undergraduate acceptance rates, with UCLA most notably seeing its admission rate decline to an incredibly competitive 9%.
The Easiest College to Get Into in the UC System
Overall, the easiest college to get into among the schools in the UC system is the University of California, Merced, with an undergraduate acceptance rate of 89%, up from 87% in our previous iteration of this study. Although UC Merced ranked as the easiest college to get into in the UC system, this doesn't make it educationally weak. Although, it should be noted for prospective students who love ordering in, UC Merced does not have a national fast-food restaurant within a 2-mile radius.
Opened in 2005, UC Merced is the youngest campus in the UC system and is known for its academic rigor and commitment to research and discovery. It hosts three schools: School of Engineering, School of Natural Sciences, and School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts. These schools offer a range of undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral programs in various disciplines, including the natural sciences, engineering, social sciences, and arts. These programs are taught by an esteemed faculty, many of whom are leaders in their fields. UC Merced is also committed to sustainability, boasting the first LEED certified campus in the UC system. In terms of admissions, the school is known for its holistic review process, examining applicants' academic achievement alongside personal accomplishments, talents, and the life challenges they have faced. Not everything comes down to how well you performed on the SAT or ACT exams.
UC Merced is followed by the University of California, Riverside, which has an undergraduate acceptance rate of 69%. The hardest college to get into in the UC system is currently UCLA, which has an undergraduate acceptance rate of 9%. That’s even more selective than Berkeley!
When it comes to attention given to students by instructors, UC Santa Barbara has the lowest ratio of students-to-instructors at 17 to 1. The easiest college to get into in the UC system — UC Merced — has a students-to-instructors ratio of 19 to 1, which is better than many other UC system schools. At UC Riverside and UC Santa Cruz, the ratio rises to 24 students to every 1 instructor.
The Bottom Line on the Easiest Colleges to Get Into in the UC System
Only 2 of the easiest colleges to get into in the UC system have undergraduate acceptance rates of 50% or more. Meaning, they accept more than half of applicants. On the other hand, 2 colleges in the UC system have undergraduate admission rates of less than 20%, meaning that, less than a fifth of applicants get accepted: UC Berkeley and UCLA.
When it comes to choosing the college that's right for you, obviously considerations such as cost of tuition must be included. For California residents, the costs of tuition and required fees at most UC system schools are comparable and affordable. For out-of-state applicants, however, the costs of tuition rise substantially, with all 9 universities charging more than $40,000 per year from non-California resident students. Fortunately, BrokeScholar has a vast library of scholarships and student discounts to help bring down the financial burden on students, whether they are in-state or out-of-state students.
