The University of California system has released data on the number of applications it has received for this fall’s entering class. Systemwide in 2014, 99,761 California residents applied to one of the university’s nine undergraduate campuses. Of these, 5,840 are African Americans. Thus, African Americans are 5.9 percent of all in-state applicants to the University of California. African American applicants are down slightly from a year ago. In 2013, African Americans were 6.0 percent of all applicants from California. Blacks make up about 7 percent of the California population.
There are 2,517 African Americans who applied to the flagship campus at Berkeley. They are 5.7 percent of all Berkeley applicants. At the University of California at Los Angeles, Blacks are 5.8 percent of all applicants from California.
Blacks make up 6.8 percent of the applicant pool from California at the University of California at Riverside, the highest percentage among the nine undergraduate campuses. At the University of California at San Diego, Blacks are 4.7 percent of all California applicants, the lowest percentage in the system.
The number of Black applicants is down at six of the nine undergraduate campuses. The largest increase was at the University of California at Irvine. The largest decline was at the University of California at Riverside.
According to state law, all admissions decisions by the University of California must be made without consideration of race. This past fall, Blacks were 2.6 percent of the entering class at Berkeley and 4.5 percent of the first-year class at UCLA.
