UCLA received more than 55,000 applications for the 2009-2010 school year, and 12,098 students were offered acceptance.
While the UC Board of Regents decided earlier this year to implement enrollment limits on a majority of campuses, both UCLA and UC Berkeley were exempted from this limitation, as well as UC Merced, which is the newest University of California campus.
According to a UCLA statement on Tuesday, the university is expecting about 4,650 students to begin their college experience here in September 2009.
“We are currently already overenrolled by about 1,600 students, so we are really trying not to overenroll anymore,” said Tom Lifka, the associate vice chancellor of Student Academic Services.
Lifka said that the estimated figure of 4,650 students to enroll is developed by analyzing historical data. Administrators see how students from various backgrounds traditionally respond to their acceptance and use that information to help determine how many students are likely to enroll.
“If we are within 50 people of our estimate, I think we are in pretty good shape,” said Vu Tran, director of Undergraduate Admissions and Relations to Schools.
Tran also said that in his personal opinion, enrollment of 125 students over the estimated figure would be concerning.
“Those students with private school options may be more likely to choose to attend UC this year because of the economy. However, some students may choose to attend CSU for the same reason,” Tran added.
Overenrollment has significant financial impacts on the quality of instruction at UCLA. According to a UC budget Web site, the state of California gives each campus $9,560 per student enrolled.
The state, however, gives no money for students over the maximum enrollment mark. This means money that could be used to improve programs and classrooms is instead used to support the amount of students overenrolled.
UCLA has admitted fewer students than last year, and the competition has increased. According to the UCLA statement, the average GPA of the accepted freshman student in 2009 is 4.36, whereas the average GPA in 2008 was 4.33.
The average SAT scores also rose by about eight points to 2004 out of 2400, according to the same statement.
In addition to the increased GPA and SAT scores, admitted students have engaged in a variety of extracurricular activities as well. Some of the more common events students participated in were athletics, student government, Girl Scouts or Eagle Scouts, music, Model United Nations, and Science Olympics.
All admissions data by campus, ethnicity, gender and geographic location can be found at the Web site of the UC Office of the President.