University of California, Davis

Davis, California | Admissions Phone: 530-752-2971

E-mail: undergraduateadmissions@ucdavis.edu | Website: www.ucdavis.edu

ADMISSION

Admission Rate: 41%

Admission Rate - Men: 36%

Admission Rate - Women: 46%

EA Admission Rate: Not Offered

ED Admission Rate: Not Offered

Admission Rate (5-Year Trend): 0%

ED Admission Rate (5-Year Trend): Not Offered

% of Admits Attending (Yield): 20%

Transfer Admission Rate: 55%

# Offered Wait List: 9,213

# Accepted Wait List: 3,207

# Admitted Wait List: 24

SAT Reading/Writing (Middle 50%): 570-670

SAT Math (Middle 50%): 580-740

ACT Composite (Middle 50%): 25-31

Testing Policy: ACT/SAT Required

SAT Superscore: No

ACT Superscore: No

% Graduated in Top 10% of HS Class: 100%

% Graduated in Top 25% of HS Class: 100%

% Graduated in Top 50% of HS Class: 100%

ENROLLMENT

Total Undergraduate Enrollment: 30,810

% Part-Time: 2%

% Male: 39%

% Female: 61%

% Out-of-State: 5%

% Fraternity: 7%

% Sorority: 11%

% On-Campus (Freshman): 92%

% On-Campus (All Undergraduate): 75%

% African-American: 2%

% Asian: 27%

% Hispanic: 22%

% White: 24%

% Other: 5%

% Race or Ethnicity Unknown: 2%

% International: 17%

% Low-Income: 37%

ACADEMICS

Student-to-Faculty Ratio: 20:1

% of Classes Under 20: 36%

% of Classes Under 40: 68%

% Full-Time Faculty: 73%

% Full-Time Faculty w/ Terminal Degree: 94%

Top Programs

Animal Science

Biological Sciences

Communication

Computer Science

Engineering

English

Political Science

Sociology

Retention Rate: 92%

4-Year Graduation Rate: 61%

6-Year Graduation Rate: 86%

Curricular Flexibility: Less Flexible

Academic Rating:

FINANCIAL

Institutional Type: Public

In-State Tuition: $11,442

Out-of-State Tuition: $40,434

Room & Board: $15,863

Required Fees: $3,050

Books & Supplies: $1,159

Avg. Need-Based Aid: $21,402

Avg. % of Need Met: 83%

Avg. Merit-Based Aid: $6,485

% Receiving Merit-Based Aid: 5%

Avg. Cumulative Debt: $18,575

% of Students Borrowing: 48%

CAREER

Who Recruits

1. Airbnb

2. Lyft

3. Adobe

4. LinkedIn

5. Cisco

Notable Internships

1. U.S. House of Representatives

2. Adidas

3. Credit Suisse

Top Industries

1. Business

2. Education

3. Operations

4. Research

5. Engineering

Top Employers

1. Kaiser Permanente

2. Genetech

3. Google

4. Apple

5. Facebook

Where Alumni Work

1. San Francisco

2. Sacramento

3. Los Angeles

4. San Diego

5. Orange County, CA

Median Earnings

College Scorecard (Early Career): $58,200

EOP (Early Career): $61,600

PayScale (Mid-Career): $112,600

RANKINGS

Forbes: 88

Money: 5

U.S. News: 39, National Universities

Wall Street Journal/THE: 36

Washington Monthly: 11, National Universities

Inside the Classroom

Like so much growth in the annals of California state history, the story of UC-Davis is one of a post-World War II boom that saw the state’s population increase by 53 percent from the 1940s to the 1950s. The school’s rapid rise began in 1959 when Davis officially became a general campus of the University of California system. By 1962 it launched an engineering school, and its now prestigious law and medical schools opened in 1966 and 1968, respectively. One hundred years ago, Davis was known as the University Farm and offered no degree programs. Today, it is home to 30,000+ undergraduates alone and offers 102 undergraduate majors and roughly the same number of graduate programs. As with many UC campuses, the onset of the 2010s saw application numbers spike and acceptance rates plunge. The school that was once only a farm is, today, producing crops of graduates that line corporate offices at the leading tech companies in Silicon Valley.

There are four undergraduate schools at UCD: The College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, the College of Biological Sciences, the College of Engineering, and the College of Letters and Science. The university has two sets of core requirements—Topical Breadth, which mandates between twelve and twenty units in each of the arts and humanities, science and engineering, and the social sciences—and Core Literacies, which include English composition; writing experience; oral skills; visual literacy; American cultures, governance, and history; domestic diversity; world cultures; quantitative literacy; and scientific literacy. All told, that adds up to eighty-seven units of required coursework, but the categories are broad, and pretty much any course you could take fits at least one, making those curricular requirements less limiting than they first appear.

A 20:1 student-to-faculty ratio isn’t terribly inspiring, especially with 7,500+ graduate students stealing their share of the spotlight. While class sizes aren’t small, 63 percent of sections enroll fewer than thirty students, and 72 percent of classes are kept under fifty students. There are numerous opportunities for undergraduate research through programs like the McNair Scholars Program, the Biology Undergraduate Research Program, and Sponsored Undergraduate Research programs. A solid 41 percent of Davis seniors report having assisted a professor with research, and 50 percent engage in some type of research/creative project outside the classroom. Only 1,300 students choose to study abroad each year, but offerings do include fifty programs in thirty countries with courses taught by University of California professors.

The greatest number of degrees conferred are in biology (17 percent), the social sciences (17 percent), psychology (13 percent), engineering (11 percent), and agriculture (7 percent). Among the most heralded programs are those in animal science and all areas of engineering. In recent years Davis students have begun to capture a greater number of prestigious national awards. Twelve Fulbright Scholarships were awarded to grads and alumni in 2019, a Schwarzman Scholar was named in 2017, and the school has had a number of Rhodes Scholarship finalists since 2010.

Outside the Classroom

At 5,300 acres the Davis campus is one of the largest in the country, yet housing options are still expanding to keep up with enrollment increases. The housing capacity at the university is currently 11,000 students; freshmen are guaranteed on-campus housing, and 93 percent take advantage. In 2019, the school broke ground on a new housing project that will add 3,300 beds to the West Village section of the university. The gender disparity cannot be ignored at UC-Davis as women outnumber men by nearly a 60/40 ratio. A beautifully diverse student body is 33 percent Asian, 22 percent Hispanic, and 14 percent international. Roughly seventy Greek organizations attract 10 percent of the undergraduate population. There are approximately 800 student-run organizations, including award-winning academic teams that have captured the National Freescale Cup Autonomous Model Car Competition, the International Data Mining Cup, and the grand prize at the International Genetically Engineered Machines competition. On the subject of competition, the chance to participate in athletics exists no matter your level of skill. The Aggies field fourteen women’s and nine men’s Division I teams to go with twenty-seven intramural leagues and thirty-nine intercollegiate club squads. Volunteerism is strong with 600,000 hours donated annually by members of the UC-Davis community. Given the school’s emphasis on environmental science, it should come as no shock that it is routinely voted one of the greener campuses in the United States, and 29 percent of dining hall food is sustainably grown. Sacramento is the nearest big city, only 15 miles from campus; San Francisco is a manageable hour-long car ride away.

Career Services

The UC-Davis Internship and Career Center (ICC) has eighteen professional employees who work with or on behalf of undergraduate students, many of whom specialize in a particular discipline such as engineering and physical sciences, health and biological sciences, agricultural and environmental sciences, and liberal arts and business. Others play roles in the areas of internship coordination, employer relations, and recruiting. Davis has a 1,706:1 student-to-staff ratio, which is among the poorest of any university profiled in this guidebook. While the staffing may be lacking for a school with over 30,000 undergraduates, there are plenty of encouraging statistics that indicate Aggies’ career prospects are in good hands.

An admirable 80 percent of undergraduates land at least one internship; 55 percent engage in two or more internships. In total, the ICC facilitates more than 10,000 internships per year. More than 500 company recruiters visit UC Davis each year looking to hire Aggies, and many major corporations attend the six large-scale career fairs that take place each year, including the Fall/Winter/Spring Internship & Career Fair, the STEM Career Fair, and the Engineering & Tech Internship & Career Fair. There are 260,000 living Aggie alumni who are embedded at many of the top companies to work for in the country. With terrific internship and recruitment statistics, the ICC overcomes its less-than-desirable staffing to be of great assistance to job-seeking graduates.

Professional Outcomes

One year after earning their BA or BS, 14 percent of Davis grads are still unemployed. Many have found homes at Silicon Valley or other California-based juggernaut employers, including about all of the world’s top tech companies. The corporations employing 200 or more Aggies include Genentech, Google, Apple, Cisco, Facebook, Oracle, Amazon, Microsoft, Salesforce, Workday, and LinkedIn. More than one hundred Aggies are presently working for Adobe and rivals Uber and Lyft. The San Francisco Bay area is home to the largest concentration of Davis alumni followed by Sacramento, Los Angeles, San Diego, and Seattle. Assisted by the large number of engineering students, recent grads take home a median starting salary of $56,000 and, by midcareer, are approaching six figures.

Within one year of graduating 39 percent of Aggies elect to continue their education, and 94 percent report that their undergraduate experience prepared them somewhere between adequately and “very well” for postgraduate study. The most popular degrees pursued are masters, MDs or other health doctorates, law, and MBA/MPA. The UC Davis School of Medicine, one of the best schools for primary care training in the country, tends to favor its own graduates, filling approximately 20 percent of its cohorts with homegrown students. The average undergraduate student who gained acceptance to at least one medical school possessed a 3.58 GPA and a 512 MCAT score. The UC Davis School of Law also draws heavily from its undergraduate schools, and many grads also find homes at other University of California schools. Currently, multiple Aggie alumni are enrolled at the likes of Harvard Law School, Duke University School of Law, and a host of other top-tier institutions.

Admission

Like all schools in the University of California system the Davis branch has experienced an influx of applicants in the last several years. It set a record in 2018-19 with 95,207 applications, 76,647 of which were from freshmen; the rest were transfers. From that pool, 41 percent were welcomed aboard to form the freshman class of 2018-19. Most had near-perfect academic transcripts as 89 percent were the proud owners of a 3.75 or higher unweighted GPA. The mid-50 percent standardized test scores were in a far wider range of 1150-1410 on the SAT and 25-31 on the ACT. A decade ago, Davis admitted 52 percent of applicants and, while grades were similarly stellar to those of the Class of 2022, standardized test scores were significantly lower.

According to admissions officers, the factors most heavily weighted in the admissions process are the rigor of one’s secondary courses, GPA, standardized test scores, and the application essay. The next rung of importance is made-up of softer factors like extracurricular activities, volunteer work, talent/ability, and character/personal qualities. First-generation status is listed as a “considered” factor, but the number of students who are the first in their families to enter college suggests that this is a point of emphasis for the university. In fact, an astonishing 42 percent of current students grew up in households with parents who had not completed four-year degrees. There is no early EA or ED plan at UC-Davis—all applications are due by November 30. Getting into UC-Davis is harder than it used to be and, like other University of California campuses, it requires a fairly pristine academic transcript in a rigorous curriculum, but standardized test scores can be a bit lower than at UC-San Diego and significantly lower than at Berkeley or UCLA.

Worth Your Money?

A whopping 59 percent of those attending UC Davis receive an average need-based grant of $21,402. Considering that the estimated in-state cost of attendance is just over $35,000, the majority of undergraduates are paying a reasonable price for a valuable degree. Estimated COA for nonresidents is $64k. For the 20 percent of attendees not from California, that would be an expensive venture without any financial aid, and you likely could find a better merit aid offer from a private institution.