Berkeleyside43%
UC Berkeley reclaims status as most selective campus in the UC system 8%
By Felicia Mello38%
7/29/2026, 5:00:38 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 14 faulty reasoning types, including Negativity Bias, Appeal to Authority, and Optimism Bias, with Availability Heuristic as the most egregious example at 15.1% saturation with 100 hits. Analysis detected 610 faulty-reasoning hits from 661 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 19.2% and a BS Rank of 8% (23,646 of 25,453 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 92.90% of the article peer group.
UC Berkeley offered admission to about 19,000 undergraduates this year, posting the lowest first-year acceptance rate of any UC campus after a record number of applicants sought entry.
The campus accepted 10.5% of first-year applicants for fall 2026, just under UCLA’s rate of 10.8%, after several years in which admission to the Southern California campus had been more competitive, according to new data released Wednesday.
More than 150,000 first-year and transfer students applied to enter UC Berkeley this fall, illustrating ongoing strong demand for slots at the campus consistently ranked as the nation’s best public university by US News and World Report.
The university accepted slightly fewer students overall compared with fall 2025, in what university officials described as a normal year-to-year fluctuation.
“Admission and enrollment planning is part science and part art as each year admission officials seek to estimate, based upon historic trends, how many students will accept admission offers,” UC Berkeley spokesperson Will Kane said.
At a time when California lawmakers have been pushing the UC system to admit more California residents, the number of first-year admits from California fell slightly from fall 2025, to more than 9,000.
That’s in contrast to the UC system as a whole, where first-year California admissions grew and officials say they are on pace to comply with a five-year state compact requiring them to boost enrollment of California undergraduates by 1% each year in exchange for regular budget increases.
Nevertheless, it was easiest to gain acceptance to UC Berkeley as a California resident – more than 12% of first-year California applicants gained admission, compared with about 10% of domestic non-California applicants and 5% of international applicants.
The number of students admitted to UC Berkeley as transfers grew by 4% from last year, as the UC system as a whole offered admission to a record-breaking 29,000 California community college students.
UC Berkeley also continued to offer spots to significant numbers of students who were the first in their families to attend college — 30% of first-year admits and about half of admitted transfer students.
“There is no singular path to UC Berkeley, but we are particularly proud that over 93% of our incoming transfer students hail from California community colleges,” John Marfield, UC Berkeley’s assistant vice chancellor and director of undergraduate admissions, said in a press release, adding that those students bring with them “tenacity and determination.”
Among California residents admitted as freshmen, about 56% were women — tied with UC Santa Barbara for the highest percentage of any campus — while 38% were men and 1% identified as nonbinary.
While the number of admitted California first-years declined across most ethnic groups, it fell most steeply for Black students, by about 18% from fall 2025.
Freshman admits had an average weighted GPA — meaning extra points were added for honors courses — of 4.52, according to the university, and included two 15-year-old wunderkids.
Transfer admits ranged in age from 13 to 79, the university said.
UC’s admissions process – often contentious in a system with the twin goals of academic excellence and broad accessibility – has been under a microscope in the past year, with the federal government launching investigations into several campuses’ practices (including Berkeley’s), while accusing medical schools at UC Davis, UC San Diego and UCLA of illegally discriminating in favor of Black and Latino applicants.
The university’s Academic Senate recently announced it will undertake a review of admissions requirements, including whether to reinstate a standardized test requirement or change the list of high school courses students must take to qualify.
Admissions numbers are distinct from the students who actually choose to enroll at UC Berkeley; that data will likely be released in December or January.
UC officials cautioned that the admissions data were preliminary and could change as campuses continue to accept students from their waitlists.
Berkeleyside partners with the nonprofit newsroom Open Campus on higher education coverage.
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