The numbers include a surge in freshman applicants, including the highest numbers ever of African American and Chicano/Latino students.
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Overall, nearly 250,000 students applied to at least one campus. That is an increase of 16.1% from last year.
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"Our record number of applications is a testament to the resilience of students and their families as well as their undeterred focus on higher education," UC President Michael Drake said in a statement.
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UC Berkeley received 112,820 applications for fall 2021 admission, up from about 88,000 the year before. UC Santa Cruz received about 62,000.
On Friday, Olufemi "Femi" Ogundele, Assistant Vice Chancellor and Director of Undergraduate Admissions at UC Berkeley joined our 3 p.m. show "Getting Answers" to talk about this record surge.
Ogundele attributes the spike in applications to intensive outreach efforts along with the removal of the SAT barrier.
Although the record surge is a welcome sight, Ogundele says they, unfortunately, won't be increasing the class size which will cause the acceptance rate to go down.
Watch the full interview with the assistant vice chancellor and director of undergraduate admissions in the video above.