This past weekend, Mosaic College Prep’s Senior College Counselors headed to San Diego for the Annual University of California Counselor Conference. At 7:30 in the morning, we joined hundreds of other high school counselors (all armed with coffee in hand) to prepare for this year’s UC application process.
After introducing Directors of Admission from the ten UC campuses, they got right down to business. At the forefront was a clear commitment to increasing the number of in-state students. For the past several years, the University of California has been balancing its mission of accepting a high percentage of California students against the financial gains of accepting more out-of-state students. With the recent release of the UC budget for 2015-2016 and the increased funding of California students, the Office of the President was adamant about its commitment to California students. Also announced: no tuition increases this OR next year, which is always good news for our seniors!
Also making UC news this year was the rescinding of admissions for hundreds of students at UC Santa Cruz for various reasons, including missed deadlines and academic performance. While it’s important to understand that schools cancel acceptances every year, UCSC rescinded more than ever before for missing documentation and missed deadlines, and much of their inflexibility was accredited to the fact that too many students had enrolled. What does this mean for students applying this year? Besides meeting every deadline and keeping track of what campuses need from you (keep track of those emails!), it’s important to understand the UCSC will be admitting fewer students for Fall 2016 in order to balance their enrollment numbers following an unexpectedly large entering class in the Fall of 2015.
This means that UCSC will become more selective this year – if you are looking at last year’s stats to determine where you fit at Santa Cruz, err on the side of caution. What may have been a match last year may be a reach this year!
If there was a hashtag for campus announcements, it would have been #datastudies. Almost every campus introduced a Data Studies major. With the amount of information being collected on a daily basis, the UCs are officially ready to prep the next generation to use it!
And not only are the UCs ready to teach students how to use data, but they are ready to take on us college counselors as well! The Office of the President unveiled their newest data resources for both high school and community college counselors at the UC Information Center. With data boiled down to individual high schools, college counselors will be better able to predict the likelihood of acceptances. With the increasing selectivity of all UC campuses, information is always helpful!
The afternoon was spent going over UC Application case studies. The information we learned in those sessions deserves its own blog – so keep an eye out in the upcoming weeks for advice on filling out the UC Application! But for now, take time to get started on your app. Typically, the UC app isn’t available until October 1st, but it was released early this year! Take advantage of that and start filling in your info!
