UC Davis acceptance rate and admissions profile

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.

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.

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.

Acceptance rate and admitted test ranges reflect publicly reported data (U.S. Department of Education / NCES IPEDS / Common Data Sets). Estimates from CollegeCalcAI are a planning tool computed by a fixed, transparent model, not a guarantee of any admission decision.