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If you were of the gambling persuasion in 2010, you could have come up to any two freshmen at UC Berkeley and bet that they came from another state. You would have been correct 29 percent of the time — not great odds — but based on biennial figures gathered from the university, your luck may increase in the next few years.

An Oct. 29 report by The Chronicle of Higher Education compiling data from the U.S. Department of Education shows that in 2008, 93.2 percent of freshmen at UC Berkeley were California residents. That number dropped almost 10 percent to 83.9 percent in 2010 due to a campus admissions policy weighted toward accepting more out-of-state applicants. The data only count first-time domestic students and exclude international applicants.

Statewide statistics for 2010 are awaiting final review and are not yet available, but in 2008, 90.8 percent of freshmen in California schools were residents. In terms of out-of-state numbers, California ranked eighth in 2008 with 10,202 freshmen.

However, the state ranked third on the list of states with the most in-state students, just behind Alaska and Texas — with 91.5 percent and 93.4 percent, respectively. To put that in perspective, Washington D.C. had the largest percentage of out-of-state freshmen with 87.9 percent.

UC Berkeley was the 13th most popular college for in-state freshmen in 2010, with 83.9 percent of the freshman class coming from California. Two years earlier, 93.2 percent were natives of the state. If you want a head count, 3,004 California natives made up the freshman class of 2010. That’s an 11.2 percent decline from 3,768 in 2006.

According to one of the charts displaying these results, it seems that smaller California colleges and universities are experiencing an increase of in-state freshmen, while larger schools are a mix of both. UC Davis, for example, reported a decline of 18.4 percent from 2006 to 2010, while CSU Northridge had a 40.7 percent influx of California freshmen. However, ntil statewide percentages for 2010 are available, a definite trend cannot be determined.

The decrease of in-state freshmen between 2008 and 2010 is not huge, but these results do not account for international students who attend UC Berkeley or other U.S. institutions. In light of the University of California’s funding difficulties, the growing trend of admitting out-of-state students may continue.

 

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