UC Merced “Count Me In”
UC Merced sent out an email recently about the “Count Me In” program that confused a lot of students. Below is the history of the program and my speculation for the change in timing of the email. (There also appear to be emails going out from UC Riverside inviting students to apply and I would say my explanation below about the logic and timing is applicable to that campus as well.)
UC Merced is pretty much the only campus designated as the recipient of the “referral pool” for the UC system (the “referral pool” is comprised of California students who are top 9% of the state or high school but were not admitted to any of the UCs they applied to). This is the mechanism by which the UCs offer the statewide guarantee and local guarantee (ELC). Occasionally, if another campus has room (usually just UC Riverside), that campus may make admission offers to the “referral pool” as well.
The program at Merced that made admission offers to the “referral pool” started out as “Count Me In” but was later rebranded to “Bright Beginnings.” From what I can tell, based on information released from the campus so far, this year “Count Me In” is being used to label a slightly different program than the one for the “referral pool” (looks like the campus may retain “Bright Beginnings” as the program name for the “referral pool”). For right now, “Count Me In” appears to be some sort of outreach/recruitment tool to get more students to apply to Merced and the target audience seems to be (some) students who qualify for statewide guarantee and local guarantee (ELC). The program offer is simply an invitation to add Merced, for free, to the list of UC campuses the student is applying to. Accepting or declining the invitation will have no impact on existing application to other UC campuses.
I don’t know if Merced will continue to make admission offers to the “referral pool” in April (keep in mind that admission offers to the “referral pool” is contingent on the campus having room so if the campus meets enrollment target through the rebranded “Count Me In” program, it may not have sufficient room to make admission offers to everyone in the “referral pool”) so my recommendation would be to take the offer to apply now (unless you know with absolute certainty that you won’t go).
I speculate that UC Merced is doing this so early (rather than waiting until April like previous years) because there has been an overall decline in college enrollment (source), aside from the impending “demographic cliff,” plus indications that the “demographic cliff” may more severely impact universities with a larger low-income student population (part of the college enrollment decline is attributed to the FAFSA rollout debacle; source). Given that almost 60% of students enrolled at UC Merced are Pell Grant eligible (source), it would make sense for the campus to take action to boost applications, with expectations (or hope) for meeting enrollment target.
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