It's official—the University of California Board of Regents approved a budget plan to enroll an additional 10,000 California undergraduates over the next three years, including 5,000 freshman and transfer students for the Fall of 2016. 

Click here for the article.

Here's the Wall Street Journal's take on the University of California and the shift at many of its campuses to greater foreign and out-of-state enrollment.  According to the article, the UC system accepted 62% of in-state applicants in the 2014 school year compared to 84% four years earlier.

The good news for Class of 2020 applicants is that in-state admissions should improve this year, thanks to $50 million in additional state and UC system support.  If approved later this week, an additional 5,000 in-state applicants will be admitted relative to last year.

Click here for the article, or here for our take on Fall 2015 UC admission trends.

With the University of California application now open for submissions, it's time to make sure everything is in order.  

Here are the top five tips for freshman applicants, courtesy of the University of California:

Here's an updated list of reported admission rates for the Class of 2019. This update adds several popular private and public schools to the list, including Clark University, DePauw, Oberlin, Smith, University of Richmond and Washington & Lee University.  

Click Continue Reading for the list.

An update to College Kickstart 2015 has just been posted! 

In addition to Class of 2019 admission rate updates to our database, this release features an enhanced Plan Highlights page to help Plus Edition subscribers get organized and track admission requirements for the schools on their list.  If you're a Plus Edition subscriber, you'll now be able to see application requirements at a glance for all of the schools on your list, including testing, recommendations, interviews and most importantly, essay counts! 

Click on Continue Reading for the details. 

University of California counselor conferences have commenced, and there are lots of useful insights to be gleaned—including the latest freshman admission profiles from this past year (Class of 2019).

We've tabulated the findings for you in this post. Two things to keep in mind:

• The profiles are for California residents only
• The profiles are for admitted students, so they're likely to appear more selective than the profile for the class that actually enrolls

Click Continue Reading for the list.

The Fall 2016 application is now available for University of California applicants.  You can begin filling out the application now, but as always, you'll need to wait until November to submit it.

Click here to access the UC application website.

An update to College Kickstart 2015 has just been posted! 

This release features a new Plan Highlights page to help you get organized and track admission requirements for each school on your list.  We've also added two new MixFixer™ filters to help you find safeties, targets and reaches with greater ease, and updated our database with the latest admission rates for University of California campuses.  

Click on continue reading for the details. 

Hot off the press!  We've had a chance to review the Fall 2015 admissions data released earlier today by the University of California and thought it would be helpful to summarize it and our key findings.  

Long story short, overall freshman admission rates are down and its getting tougher for California residents as the University of California focuses on increasing the mix of "full pay" out of state and international students to hedge against budget uncertainty.  If you're an out of state or international student, pay close attention...there appears to be a window of opportunity to take advantage of favorable odds at several UC campuses.

Click on Continue Reading for the details.

We're pleased to announce the latest release of College Kickstart 2015!  You'll notice faster performance, updated admissions data (including 2019 admission rates for several top schools), expanded school coverage, and for College Kickstart Plus users, over 200 department-specific admission rates across 34 public and private institutions.

Click on continue reading for the details. 

For those of you that have been waitlisted at one of your top choices, here's a list of waitlist statistics for several popular private and public schools, along with notification dates and links for more detail if available.  

Our sample of waitlist statistics from 127 private and public institutions paints the following picture:

• On average, 18% of students accepting a place on a waitlist were admitted

• Half of the schools admitted 10% or less of the students accepting a place on the wait list last year

• 35% of the schools admitted 5% or less

• 9% admitted no one

There are several factors driving the low rates, including the size of the waitlist (often very large), and how well a school anticipates its admissions yield. 

Click Continue Reading for the list.

The University of California recently introduced an online information center to increase transparency to UC admissions and other areas of public interest.  Though the site has not been updated with 2015 admissions data, it should prove handy for those of you interested in understanding how gender, residency, GPA and other factors influence admissions.  Note: it does not currently provide test score statistics, nor does it detail admission rate by departments or majors within a university.  

Click here for the press release, or here to go directly to InfoCenter.

Lots of big-name schools post their decisions over the next 48 hours, including Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Georgetown, Harvard, Princeton, Rice, University of Pennsylvania and Yale.

Continue reading for the updated list of regular decision notification dates for several popular private and public schools. Good luck, seniors!

University of California President Janet Napolitano indicated earlier this week that the UC system will not expand enrollment of California freshmen and transfers this fall if more funds are not appropriated from the state. Furthermore, enrollment of out-of-state students at UC Berkeley and UCLA will be capped.

Click here for a Los Angeles Times report on the topic.