"I've had a lot of anxiety problems with school," said Berkeley High School senior Cesar Perez, who's not even trying to get into UC Berkeley, based on his friend's experience. "He tried to get into UC Berkeley with a 4.0 in high school and he didn't get accepted."
The UC system says it accepted just under 70 percent of California freshmen for the fall of 2011. That's down more than 1 percent from last fall and about 2 percent the year before.
"I think that kind of sucks, honestly," said UC Berkeley student Phoebe Simon. "I feel UCs were meant for California students."
Meanwhile, UC Berkeley is accepting 9 percent more out of state students than last fall -- mostly because they pay more, about $23,000 more annually.
"The fact is we're admitting out-of-state students on top of, not at the expense of, California students," said UC spokesperson Ricardo Vasquez.
Vasquez says the system does not have a capacity problem, it has a funding problem.
"But if you think about it. All of the international students are in some way paying for the California students who were admitted to Berkeley," said UC Berkeley international student Alex Cui.
And UC agrees, saying fees from international students are helping maintain salaries. Meanwhile 16,000 California residents are on a waiting list to get into UC schools.
To put it in perspective, UC says it still outpaces most major state school systems.
"About 94 percent are California residents. In other systems comparable to ours like Michigan and Virginia, their enrollment of out of state students is about 30 percent," said Vasquez.
Right now UC says about 6 percent of admissions are from out of state, but it will cap out-of-state enrollment at 10 percent.
