Research · UC admissions · October 2026

What GPA Do You Need for Each UC Campus? Admit Rates by GPA Band

As of October 2026: For California residents applying as first-years in Fall 2025, a weighted, capped GPA of 4.00 and above brought an admit rate of 15.1 percent at UCLA, 17.0 percent at UC Berkeley, 45.2 percent at UC San Diego and 98.8 percent at UC Merced. The same GPA means very different odds at each UC campus.

The table holds the Fall 2025 admit rate in each GPA band, campus by campus, for California-resident first-year applicants. It does not cover out-of-state or international applicants, and it is not broken out by major.

Analysis: Test Prep Gurus (High School Reach, highschoolreach.com), October 2026. Figures and the table may be quoted with attribution to Test Prep Gurus.

Admit rate by GPA band at every UC campus, Fall 2025

California-resident first-year applicants. GPA is UC's weighted, capped GPA.

Fall 2025 first-year applicants who were California residents, as reported by the UC Information Center. GPA is UC's weighted, capped GPA, which counts honors points only up to a limit, so it is not an unweighted average. Admits are not enrollees. The file holds admits and the admit rate, not the applicant count behind each rate. The 'Unknown - Missing' row is not a GPA band: it holds applicants whose GPA the system did not record.

How to read these bands

UC uses a weighted, capped GPA. It counts the A-G courses a student took in tenth and eleventh grade, adds honors points for a limited number of approved courses, and stops there. That is why so many California applicants land in the 4.00-and-above band. It is not a 4.00 unweighted average.

Read down a campus to see how fast the rate climbs. At UC Santa Cruz it climbs early: 43.8 percent in the 3.30 to 3.69 band, then 90.7 percent in the 3.70 to 3.99 band. At UC San Diego it climbs late: 1.5 percent, then 9.3 percent, then 45.2 percent in the top band.

What the table does not say

These are admit rates, not enrollment. A student admitted to several campuses counts once at each. The rate also covers the whole campus, because UC admits to the campus and not to the major at most programs. Engineering and computer science inside a campus run far tighter than the campus number.

The UCs are test-free, so no SAT or ACT score sits behind these rates. GPA, course rigor, the personal insight questions and a student's context carry the file. And the 'Unknown - Missing' row holds applicants whose GPA was not recorded, which at UC Davis was 3,089 admits at a 53.5 percent rate.

What a family should do with this

Find your student's band, then read across the campuses instead of down one. The distance between a campus at 46.3 percent and a campus at 15.1 percent in the same band is the whole shape of a UC application list.

Then build the list so the bands do the work. A student in the 3.70 to 3.99 band already has 90.7 percent at UC Santa Cruz and 95.6 percent at UC Riverside in hand, which changes how much risk the rest of the list can carry.

If the GPA is still moving, aim at the band line rather than at a number. Crossing from the 3.30 to 3.69 band into the 3.70 to 3.99 band moves a UC Santa Cruz read from 43.8 percent to 90.7 percent. That is the band doing the work, and the bands are how UC reports it.

Related: UC admit rates for Californians, out-of-state and international applicants · The hardest majors to get into at each UC campus · What colleges and majors pay