The University of California again will implement a waitlist process for fall 2011 admissions. All campuses except Los Angeles and Merced will use waitlists for their freshman pools. Davis and San Diego also will have a transfer waitlist, and Irvine is considering the option for transfers.

The university enrolls more than 11,570 students for whom it receives no state funding. A waitlist is an enrollment management tool that enables campuses to attain their enrollment targets with greater precision while offering a space to as many deserving students as possible.

Each campus will manage its own waitlist, but certain principles will guide the process at all:

• Participating campuses will invite a subset of their denied applicants — those who came closest to being admitted in the campus's comprehensive review process but didn't quite make it — to indicate their interest in being on a waitlist. Waitlist offers will be made by the end of March for freshman applicants and the end of April for transfers.
• Applicants may receive waitlist offers from multiple campuses and can accept as many as they wish.
• After processing Statements of Intent to Register (SIR) in early May, campuses will analyze likely enrollment and accept students from their waiting lists if they anticipate not reaching their targets. Acceptance offers will be sent to wait-listed freshman applicants by June 1 and to wait-listed transfer applicants no later than July 1.
• Preliminary financial aid awards will be sent at the time students are notified of waitlist offers, provided applicants submitted a Free Application for Federal Student Aid by the March 2 priority deadline. Additionally, SIRs of wait-listed students will be considered on time for purposes of housing and orientation if they are submitted by the deadline stated in the offer of admission.
• Campuses will still consider appeals. Applicants who feel they have grounds for an appeal should submit one, but they should keep in mind that the purpose of the appeals process is to deal with errors and compelling new information and hardship. Students cannot appeal for a spot on the waitlist.

Eligible applicants who don't receive an admission offer from any campus to which they applied will be offered admission at a campus that has room, even if they are on the waiting list at another campus.

In the fall 2010 admissions cycle, the first time waitlists were used broadly, a total of 11,703 waitlist offers were extended to freshman applicants across all campuses except UCLA and UC Merced. Two campuses — UC Davis and UC Santa Barbara — were the only two campuses to admit significant numbers of students off their waitlists.  These campuses yielded more than 40 percent of students admitted off the waitlist.

Victoria Irwin is the student affairs communications coordinator with the UC Office of the President Integrated Communications. For more news, visit UC Newsroom or follow us on Twitter.