UCLA faces over-enrollment

Despite the UC Board of Regents’ recent cut to university admissions, both UCLA and UC Berkeley will allow for over-enrollment this year just as they did last year, Lifka said.

Lifka also said that although this record-breaking applicant pool is larger and more competitive than previous classes, it should not hurt any prospective or current students.

UCLA applicants must still abide by the same guidelines as previous years and will be evaluated on the same criteria as well, he said.

According to a university press release, the number of freshman applicants for fall 2009 rose by 199 from 55,437 for fall 2008, while the number of transfer student applications saw a 9.6 percent increase from 15,075 for fall 2008 to 16,521 for fall 2009.

Although the acceptance process for incoming freshman will remain similar to previous years, prospective transfer students will face a slightly different admissions evaluation, university spokeswoman Claudia Luther said.

The entering class of 2009 will experience a 500 student increase in UCLA transfer students in an effort to reduce the size of entering classes upon graduation, said UC President Mark G. Yudof via teleconference at a regents meeting on Jan. 14, according to Daily Bruin archives.

This will make the evaluation process slightly more competitive than in previous years, but that is to be expected, Lifka said.

Since the UC Board of Regents recently requested to reduce freshman enrollment by 2,300 students earlier this month, prospective UC students face a more rigorous application process this year, Lifka said.

But UCLA will not be affected by the enrollment cut because of its already rigorous admissions process, Luther said.

Although UCLA is allowed to over-enroll, it still has to remain within the enrollment margin at the request of the Office of the President and the UC Board of Regents, Lifka said.

UCLA cannot exceed the amount of students they can enroll like it did this past year, said Lifka. This year’s entering class of 2012 was the largest entering class to enroll at one time at UCLA, he said.

The UCLA Office of Admissions declined to comment on this year’s applicant pool. Admissions decisions are scheduled for the end of March. Luther said that with the record-breaking number of applicants this year, it is hard to determine what the exact admissions numbers will be.

Ricardo Vazquez, a UC Office of the President spokesman, said that UCLA was saved from the reduction in freshman enrollment, as was UC Berkeley, because both universities claimed that the admissions process is already difficult enough.

Both UCLA and UC Berkeley turn away an estimated 80 percent of their applicants every year and cannot afford to make it more difficult than it already is, said Luther.

Similarly, UC Merced was spared from the cut because it is still trying to build up enrollment rather than reduce it, said Luther. According to Daily Bruin archives, the universities that will see the largest reductions in freshman admissions in fall 2009 are UC San Diego, UC Santa Barbara, UC Davis, UC Riverside, UC Irvine and UC Santa Cruz.

According to the Los Angeles Times, all of these universities will have to reduce the number of students they can admit into their school by 6 percent come March, while UCLA and UC Berkeley will not.

Lifka said that it is still unclear how much the admission cuts will affect the UC system, but thankfully it won’t hurt prospective UCLA students waiting for a decision letter this spring.