Santa Cruz,CA | Community Guide

I go to UCR, but applied to UC Berkeley, Irvine, San Diego, Santa Cruz, and Davis. I know for a fact that Princeton, Columbia, MIT, Smith, and Cal Tech are verrrrry competitive to get into. If you have a great GPA, good. If you have great SAT and SAT II scores, great. If you have both, more power to you haha. I’ll tell you this though. I know for a fact that the acceptance rates for Berkeley and UCLA are very slim: we’re talking about 19-21% of applicants are accepted.
Having a low acceptance rate could be for one of two reasons. The more educated and logical reason is that these two UC’s are seen as the more prestigious. They receive many applicants from across the world yearly. They tend to take students that stand out. If you visit these schools and get on a great basis with them, it definitely will help.
Davis and Irvine are two schools that are similar as well. I know a lot about Davis as I live one town away from it: Sacramento. Davis’s standards have actually dropped in the last 18 months or so. I had this book on Universities in 2004, and compared it to the 2006 book. I noticed that their recommendations, as well as the rest of the UC’s, for testing scores have actually dropped, so you might be in luck! Back to topic though, Irvine and Davis are difficult (60-61% acceptance rate), but not as difficult as UCLA, Berkeley, or San Diego.
Santa Cruz really is like my school, University of California, Riverside. It’s very easy to get into. Their acceptance rate actually increased. When I was applying two years ago, it was about 76%; now it’s 80%. You shouldn’t have much of a problem getting in here at all. It’s a great school, by the beach, and has a very liberal environment haha.
UCSD is a very good school. They’ve got great science programs there, so I’ve heard. I didn’t get into that school, but my cousin did. They have a very friendly environment. It’s difficult to get into this school though, 44% for an acceptance rate.
It seriously depends on your major, I must say. If you’re an Art major, or plan on doing something along those lines, then a CSU would suit you better.
I’m sorry I couldn’t be of much use about the other schools you mentioned. But for acceptance rate information, and to get a feel for the tuition and other necessary information, go to:
http://www.education.yahoo.com
Hope I was of some use