University of California, Santa Barbara

What UC Santa Barbara's own numbers say, from its Common Data Set 2025-26.

All 2 insights at UC Santa Barbara PRO

5 more things the data says PRO

1. The share of women in the first-year class has risen from 56% to 60% since 2019-20, about 0.6 points a year.
2. 18,022 students stayed on the waitlist and 9,603 were admitted from it (53.3%).
3. 12% of admitted students chose to enroll, lower than 95% of similar colleges.
4. Applications rose 18% from 2019-20 to 2025-26 (93,457 to 110,187).
5. Men were admitted at a lower rate: 40.5% for women against 34.9% for men.

What students say PRO

From students' own posts on Reddit and admissions forums: self-reported, unverified, never used in your odds.

• About 17 admits ran or built tech projects: robotics teams, coding or AI clubs, cyber teams or hackathons.
• About 16 admits did research or a research internship, and a few had a paper, preprint or conference talk.
• Many admits started their own club, nonprofit or group, such as tutoring, STEM, sustainability or health clubs.
• Many admits held top roles like president, captain or editor-in-chief for several years.
• About 8 admits had a real job or family care duties alongside school, in some cases dozens of hours a week.
• Students report UCSB moved many waitlisted students to admitted, though numbers swing year to year.
• Waitlist offers trickle out on a rolling basis with a short reply window and can run into late June or July.
• UCSB is test-blind, and students say it weighs course rigor and AP count heavily rather than uncapped GPA.
• Students report engineering and computer science are far harder to get into, with admit rates around 10% and few waitlist offers.
• In the College of Letters and Science, students report the chosen major is not considered, so you can apply to your real interest.

Every number, year by year: University of California, Santa Barbara on Open College Data. Something wrong? Suggest a correction.