UC Davis acceptance rate and your odds of getting in

UC Davis, a public university in California, reports a 42% acceptance rate and sits in the selective band. In practice that means it admits a minority of applicants, so a strong application is judged against an applicant pool that is already self-selected.

Use this page to see what UC Davis weighs, where it ranks among California schools, and how a profile like yours is likely to land. Admitted students post a 75th-percentile SAT around 1380, a useful checkpoint for where your scores sit, though it is a reference range and not a cutoff.

What are my chances at UC Davis with a 3.5 GPA and a 1320 SAT?

About 60% (Likely), by CollegeCalcAI's deterministic model, for an applicant with a 3.5 unweighted GPA and a 1320 SAT, the middle of UC Davis's admitted range, applying Regular Decision without a hook. A 3.8 GPA with a 1380 SAT comes out near 77%. Courses, activities, essays and the application round move the number; the free calculator includes them.

Estimates, not guarantees. Get yours with your real courses and activities. Assistants and developers can fetch this table from the free API: /api/v1/colleges/uc-davis.

Source: UC Davis Common Data Set 2025-26. Every figure appears verbatim in the document. See how early rounds compare across colleges in the Early Decision rankings.

There is no formula that guarantees a spot at UC Davis, but the applicants who get in tend to do the same four things. Here is what the numbers say each one looks like.

UC Davis admitted 39,400 of the 94,637 students who applied for fall 2023, which works out to 41.6%. 6,578 enrolled. Only about 17% of admitted students enrolled, so the school admits several students for every seat it expects to fill, which is why its acceptance rate reads higher than its selectivity feels. UC Davis enrolls about 32,253 undergraduates in total, 59% of them women, with a student-to-faculty ratio of 22 to 1.

Source: U.S. Department of Education, IPEDS 2023 admissions and enrollment.

UC Davis reports that it neither requires nor recommends test scores, so admission turns on your transcript, rigor, and the rest of the file.

Source: College Scorecard (U.S. Department of Education), release 2026-06-10.

The factors that carry the most weight at UC Davis are rigor of secondary school record, academic GPA, and application essay. Solid grades in a challenging schedule do most of the work here, with the rest of the application providing context. These ratings come from UC Davis's reported Common Data Set, so the full chart below reflects what the school itself says it values, not a generic guess.

The full sticker price at UC Davis (tuition, fees, housing, food, books) is about $41,238 a year. Tuition and fees are $16,774 for CA residents and $50,974 for out-of-state students, a $34,200 gap that makes residency the single biggest lever on cost. What families actually pay is different: the average net price after grants and scholarships is $14,741 a year, and it ranges from $9,211 for families earning under $30,000 to $31,272 for families earning over $110,000. 31% of undergraduates receive a federal Pell Grant.

Source: College Scorecard (U.S. Department of Education), release 2026-06-10. Net price is what students receiving aid paid after grants, by family income.

Median earnings for UC Davis students ten years after entry are $80,838 ($58,461 at the six-year mark). 86% of first-time, full-time students graduate within six years, and 93% return for a second year. Among graduates who borrowed, median federal debt at graduation is $13,000; 20% of undergraduates take federal loans.

Source: College Scorecard (U.S. Department of Education), release 2026-06-10. Earnings cover students who received federal aid.

Among the 61 California schools we track, UC Davis ranks #14 most selective by acceptance rate. Schools like California Institute of Technology (3%) and Stanford University (4%) sit nearby, which makes California a useful frame for calibrating a balanced list. As a public university, residency matters: in-state applicants generally see meaningfully better odds than the headline rate suggests.

Applicants targeting UC Davis often weigh NC State University, University of Illinois, and University of Tennessee, which sit at a similar level. Running the same profile against each one in the free calculator is the fastest way to see where you are a reach, a match, or a likely.

More data for California: Cal Poly Pomona acceptance rate and your odds

Acceptance rate, application counts, admitted test ranges, cost, and outcomes reflect publicly reported federal data (U.S. Department of Education: IPEDS 2023 and the College Scorecard) and each school's Common Data Set; figures are rounded and lag the current cycle by one to two years, so confirm deadlines and policies on the school's own site. The typical-admit GPA and SAT are CollegeCalcAI's modeled estimates. Estimates from CollegeCalcAI are a planning tool computed by a fixed, transparent model, not a guarantee of any admission decision.