More than 80,000 apply to be UC Berkeley freshmen

Students explore campus (UC Berkeley photo by Elena Zhukova)

Year after year, for more than a decade, applications for admission to UC Berkeley’s freshman class reached record highs. Not this year.

Student demand for a seat at the university remains very high, just not high enough to be record-breaking again. The number of applicants dropped from 89,580 for fall 2018 to 87,353 for fall 2019.

The reason for the drop is not clear, but the decline is in line with a slight decrease in the total combined number of applications to the nine UC campuses with undergraduate programs. The University of California Office of the President released application data for all UC campuses today.

California residents continue to submit the most freshman applications; more than 50,000 applied to Berkeley this year. The academic strength of the freshman applicant pool remains strong, and comparable to past years, with the fall 2019 pool showing an average weighted GPA of 4.13, average SAT score of 1347 and average ACT score of 29.

Among transfer students, applications also dropped slightly — from 19,199 for fall 2018 to 19,063 for fall 2019. Most applications — 15,077 — came from California residents.

Admissions decisions will be posted for Berkeley freshman applicants in late March and for transfer applicants in late April. For more on the campus’s admissions process, go to: http://admissions.berkeley.edu/selectsstudents

Detailed applications data for all UC undergraduate campuses is posted here: https://www.ucop.edu/institutional-research-academic-planning/content-analysis/ug-admissions/ug-data.html