Admissions Blog

Wait List...

Some of who applied to our professional schools were placed on a wait list. Please comment here if you were placed on a wait list.

Not Admitted

Freshman admission to UCLA was extremely competitive this year, and we were unable to offer many qualified applicants a space. If you were not admitted, please leave your comments here.

UCLA in the LA Times

Assistant Director Rosa Pimentel, Director Vu Tran, and Recruiter Annie Huerta are featured in an LA Times article today on the holistic admissions process.

Decisions this week...UCLA in the Final Four...I don't think there has been a more exciting time here at UARS. I look back at my blog post on our quiet office with such fondness...

The Virtues of Lo Tech Continued...Visual Aids

So many apps...

Here's recruiter Julette Sanders reading a paper app.

UARS student workers sorting away...

The Virtues of LoTech

Hi. Daniel Fogg, here: programmer/analyst in the admissions office. When I’m not reading applications I work on the Web site. In all the years I’ve spent using technology, the most valuable lesson I’ve learned is when NOT to use it.

Here’s something you may not know: even though 99% of you filled out your applications (“apps” to us) online, we still convert them to paper to perform our reviews. Believe me, the logistics surrounding this choice are not simple. (My first job in the admissions office--more years ago than I’d care to remember--was as a clerk supervising the files.) We spend hundreds of hours pulling, batching, and distributing apps among 100+ readers, and almost as much time re-filing them and re-pulling them for subsequent reviews. But here are a couple of facts that make this seemingly archaic method worth every minute:

• When we review applications (with the exception of gender and ethnicity, which don’t appear on the forms) we look at everything: every course, every grade, every activity, your personal statements, everything.
• Each reader must review between 600 and 1,200 apps.

Performing such a thorough review for so many people on a computer would be miserable. Can you imagine reading 600 2-page essays on a monitor? And there’s something else: Even though the pages don’t contain your handwriting as they did in the past, there is still something more personal about paper. You can circle things and draw lines to make connections. You can dog-ear pages as a reminder to come back and reexamine something. It gives the review a vitality and urgency that would not be present online. 

Each of the 50,000 freshman apps we received last fall will have to get at least two reviews before a decision can be made. With numbers like these it would be easy for me to forget that each app represents a person whose life may be profoundly affected by what I do. But somehow holding an app in my hands keeps that from slipping my mind.

By the way, my favorite places to conduct application reviews are at a coffee house or in bed. Occasionally my reviews include both a ranking and a brown ring.

The Waiting Game?

By now all of you prospective fall 2007 freshman have submitted your online UC applications. And thus begins the waiting game--or so you might think. There are plenty of important steps to take from now to the end of March 2007 when you receive your UCLA application decision. Here's one essential step: you need to send your official SAT and/or ACT test scores directly to UCLA via the testing service so that they reach our office by January 31, 2007.

And although all you may feel like doing is playing PS3 or Wii, or maybe just staring at the twinkly holiday lights, your application is not yet complete until you have received final grades in all of your courses during this academic year. We look at whether or not our applicants maintain their level of academic performance before they come to UCLA. So keep your fingers on the keyboard, your pencils on the Scantron, and your sights set on UCLA. Just think about how beautiful the spring will be.