Decisions for Class of 2025

Congratulations Class of 2025! It was a better year for my students with fewer waitlists and more acceptances than the previous two admission cycles.

And once again, the students who took the time to work on essays and create a balanced college list fared better than those who haphazardly applied to colleges based on rank and name alone.

In general the UC acceptances landed the way we thought they would (with a few exceptions) but UC San Diego was the one campus which waitlisted more students than we expected.

The Cal State University System was fairly predictable as well with San Jose State University and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo as the usual favorites and Cal State Long Beach not far behind.

A few of my engineering students had a hard time getting in at Cal Poly SLO where the competition was fierce but they have other strong choices (UT Austin, UC Davis, UC San Diego, Purdue, Rutgers) so I'm excited to see what they'll choose.

I was happy to see my students open up to the possibility of attending liberal arts colleges (LACs) and we saw acceptances at Reed College (OR), Baylor (TX), Seattle U, College of Wooster (OH), and Occidental (in SoCal)

Another change this year was that students were opening up to going a little further away from home. During the worst of Covid, many of my students ended up choosing colleges closer to CA, in fact, most of my 2021, 2022, and 2023 graduates chose a college in or around CA in spite of having many choices in the north and on the east coast. Last year I saw a rise in enrollments in Boston and the Virginia/ Washington DC area but this year I see more students excited about their acceptances across the country with Purdue University and Penn State being favorites especially for engineering majors.

(The following information has been taken directly from newsletters and emails from the universities' admission offices)

Another engineering favorite - Georgia Tech's overall admission statistics (includes all rounds) were as follows:

Total Applications: 66,895

Total admits - 8,520 out of which 22% opted for engineering, 16% for CS, and 21% sciences

Georgia Admit Rate: 30%

Non-Georgia Admit Rate: 9%

USC is also popular among Bay Area students for business, film, and engineering. They received roughly 83,500 applications for first-year admission and admitted about 3,500 (12%) in Early Action and another 5,200 (8.5%) admits in regular decision. USC doesn't do waitlists but if a student has been accepted for the spring term, they might be offered admission to the fall term as space opens up over the summer.

NYU is always a popular choice for my business majors. Three of NYU’s undergraduate colleges—the College of Arts and Science, the Leonard N. Stern School of Business, and the Rory Meyers College of Nursing—offered admission to fewer than 5% of applicants. Overall, NYU’s New York campus admitted just 7.7% of the more than 120,000 students who applied, making the Class of 2029 one of the most selective classes in NYU’s history. 

Only a handful of colleges and unversities have over 100,000 freshmen applications- NYU is one of them and Northeastern is another one. Northeastern received a record 105,092 undergraduate applications for the 2025-26 academic year — a significant increase over the past few years but Northeastern has the popular co-op program that draws a lot of interest and makes the ROI substantially better.

Other Boston favorites are Boston University and Boston College. BU is a R1 research university and a powerhouse STEM school. They received 76,770 applications and admitted just over 9,000 students ending with a 12% admit rate.

Boston College is much smaller but also known for research and not necessarily a traditional LAC - they received just under 40,000 applications and offered admission to 5,000 students making their admit rate 13%.

Cal Poly San Luis Obispo received 81,914 applications this year which was up 3.6% from last year. They haven't published their numbers but the acceptance rate is usually around 30% so my guess would be around 24,000 acceptance letters went out again this year.

Similar to past years, San Diego State University was harder to get into for my Bay Area students because of the local mandate but San Jose State came through especially for my engineering majors.

From the University of California Office of the President:

The University of California received 249,824 applications for admission for fall 2025, a 0.5 % decrease from fall 2024 (250,959 applications). This includes 205,158 applications for first-year admission and 44,666 transfer applications. These are unduplicated counts of applications received systemwide at all levels and include both California residents and nonresidents.

Applications for fall 2025 first-year admission were down 1 percent from last year’s total (decreasing by 1,973 applications). California resident applications were also down from last year, decreasing by 2.6 percent (3,520 applications). Overall, applications from nonresident students increased: applications from domestic nonresidents decreased by 2.4 percent 1,020) while international applicants increased (by 8.7 percent or 2,567 applications).

The number of students who were admitted this year will be known in the fall but 85% of the students admitted to the UCs are from California.

	Total CA freshmen applicants	Total out of state freshmen applicants	Total applications Fall 2025	Total applications Fall 2024
UCLA	89,324	55,734	145,058	146,250
UC San Diego	87,549	49,079	136,728	134,439
UC Berkeley	72,646	54,150	126,796	124,204
UC Irvine	86,224	37,990	124,214	122,661
UC Santa Barbara	74,639	35,526	110,165	110,236
UC Davis	68,909	34,049	102,958	98,834
UC Santa Cruz	52,562	13,616	66,178	71,697
UC Riverside	61,259	9,319	70,578	57,420
UC Merced	41,761	6,288	48,049	29,351

(While looking at this table, keep in mind that most of the UC campuses have less than 9,000 freshman seats).

Waitlists were definitely down among my students and even though it probably doesn't feel like it, it's arguably better to have a concrete decision right now and move on. But for students waitlisted at their top choice schools, my advice would be to keep an eye on your inbox and when and if the college reaches out to you, reply promptly. Always remember that the waitlist is more of a pot than a list and we never know who's going to get pulled from it. At this point, we have no idea of the size of the waitlist at any university since this information is not really shared with the public until the fall when colleges can say - we took X number of students from the list of Y..

Class of 2025: Congratulations! Take your time and decide which school is right for you. Research the schools you've gotten into and visit them this month so that you can make an informed decision. Enroll and deposit by April 30th (or sooner!) so that you can start looking for a roommate and housing. Reach out to me early if you have any concerns or questions. Hourly sessions are useful to discuss financial aid letters and to compare your acceptances.

Class of 2026: Good luck as you finish up your school year. If you're still thinking about college counseling, now is the time to sign up. It's crucial that we get started on your college list and you should already be researching majors and programs. I cap the number of seniors I work with so if you are interested in signing up for senior year, please reach out to me this week. Once I'm full, I will only be able to take students on a need by need basis.

Class of 2027: Keep that GPA up and make the most of your summer. If you haven't planned anything yet, there's still time to do so. Let's talk about what works best for you; whether it's test prep, passion projects, volunteering, work, or classes. Personal growth should be your goal from here on forward. I'm half full for this class so reach out to me if you have questions.

Class of 2028 and beyond: I take a certain number of students every year and every year I get full sooner than the previous year. If you are interested in counseling packages please plan to meet as soon as possible so that we can make sure you are on the right track. The earlier we start, the fewer surprises we face!