UCLA wait-lists 2,900 for first time in school’s history

Annette Nguyen is still waiting for a decision regarding her status as a Bruin.

When she received a letter from UCLA placing her on a waitlist to get into the university, she could neither celebrate nor move on.

“I’m still waiting, I’m still hoping,” said Nguyen, a high school senior from Antioch, Calif. “It’s a little discouraging.”

Nguyen is one of 2,900 students on UCLA’s waitlist for the upcoming school year. This is the first time in UCLA’s history that the university has opened up a waitlist.

Confusion erupted earlier in the week when the UCLA Financial Aid Office sent out an email to admitted and wait-listed students notifying them that their grant aid had been increased.

At the bottom of the email was a sentence congratulating the students on their admittance, leading 894 waitlisted students to mistakenly believe they had been moved off the waitlist.

Daniel Le, a high school senior from Aliso Viejo, Calif., was one of those students. He said when he saw the email he was skeptical, because it seemed too early to find out if he was to be moved up off the waitlist. He emailed the university to double-check.

In the meantime, Le, who aspired to attend UCLA since third grade, said he remained happy for the two days following the miscommunication.

Le said that three of his friends, who are also wait-listed, contacted him, excited by the news.

“I was the only confused person,” he said. “I guess I’m a skeptic.”

For now, wait-listed students are in limbo.

The waitlist itself is an enrollment tool to help ensure the university does not over-enroll, said Ricardo Vazquez, a UCLA campus spokesman.

In tight financial times, waitlists help to make sure that the university fills every spot in the event that fewer students enroll than anticipated, he said.

Last year, UCLA was over-enrolled by about 600 freshmen, resulting in its largest freshman class to date.

To make up for decreased funding from the state, UCLA increased the target number of California residents and nonresidents that the university would admit.

The UCLA admissions office underestimated the number of students that would accept an offer of admission, resulting in last year’s large freshman class, said Bob Cox, manager of the UCLA Office of Analysis and Information Management.

Cox also pointed to the fact that many students choose between UCLA and UC Berkeley when making their college decision. While overlap between the two schools has been fairly stable over the years, it was lower last year, Cox said.

Because they did not have to choose between the two schools, a higher number of students chose to come to UCLA in comparison to previous years, Cox said.

As of last year, UCLA and UC Merced were the only University of California campuses without waitlists.

The need for waitlists in the UC comes out of a greater number of students applying to UC campuses, as well as the trend of high school students applying to more universities in general, said Dianne Klein, spokeswoman for the UC Office of the President.

The waitlist is meant to help students who really want to attend the University of California and are not just using a campus as a backup, Klein added.

UCLA wasn’t necessarily Jessica Mersten’s first choice. It was also not the first school where she was wait-listed.

Mersten, a high school senior from San Diego, was wait-listed at Northwestern University a week before finding out she had been wait-listed at UCLA.

Mersten said she thinks UCs don’t need waitlists because many students accept UC admission offers to begin with.

“I’d be surprised if UCLA admits students from its waitlist,” she said.

Annette Nguyen’s friend Camila Chica, another high school senior from Antioch, is also on the UCLA waitlist.

But both Nguyen and Chica have already submitted Statements of Intent to Register to UC Davis.

“We were talking about not being able to be fully happy about going to Davis because we still don’t know if we are in UCLA yet,” Chica said.

Waitlist decisions will be made May 1 at the earliest, which is the deadline for submitting Statements of Intent to Register to UC campuses.