Pacific Academy Irvine UC Admissions:
12 Years of Data

This page covers one question: how Pacific Academy Irvine students fare when they apply to the University of California (UC). All data come from the UC Infocenter of the University of California Office of the President, reported by source high school with the school type set to California private high school, covering twelve entering years from fall 2014 to fall 2025 and nine undergraduate campuses. UC reports by high school code 054554, so this data covers only the Irvine campus of Pacific Academy. The college outcomes list published by the school itself appears on the overview page; for UC figures, rely on the official data on this page.

Twelve-Year Trend: More Applicants, and More Admits at the Most Popular Campuses

The chart below shows the average GPA of Pacific Academy Irvine students admitted to each campus, year by year. It reflects the GPAs that admitted students actually earned; it is not a cutoff. Because this school is small, UC left the admitted GPA blank in many years due to small numbers, so the lines in the chart are not continuous.

Over twelve years, the number of UC applicants from this school grew from single digits to more than twenty. In fall 2014, 7 students applied to UC and 4 were admitted; in fall 2025, 28 applied and 27 were admitted. Over the same period, the average applicant GPA rose from 3.37 to 4.00. The average admitted GPA was not published for 2014; it was 3.69 in 2015 and 3.98 in 2025.

The biggest changes came at the most popular campuses. Looking at three-year totals, from 2016 to 2018 the published applications from Pacific Academy Irvine students to UC Berkeley and UCLA totaled only 8 and 17, and admits to both campuses were fewer than 3 each year, so UC did not publish them; from 2023 to 2025, applications rose to 50 and 58, with published admits totaling 9 and 6. Over the same periods, UC San Diego went from 34 applications and 3 admits (admits for 2016 and 2017 were not published by UC and are counted as 0) to 59 applications and 14 admits, with the admission rate rising from 9% to 24%. UC Irvine, by contrast, dipped slightly from 43% (47 applications, 20 admits) to 39% (62 applications, 24 admits). Summing UC’s published figures (with unpublished years counted as 0), admits across the nine campuses rose from 89 to 182; the largest increases were at UC Santa Barbara (17 more), UC Davis (14 more), and UC Merced (13 more), while UC Irvine added only 4.

Year-by-Year Data by Campus

Parents focus most on six campuses: UC Berkeley, UCLA, UC San Diego, UC Santa Barbara, UC Irvine, and UC Davis. The table below lists, by year, the number of Pacific Academy Irvine students who applied to, were admitted to, and enrolled at each campus, along with GPA. Use the buttons to switch metrics.

Five-Year Totals: Admission Rate, Yield, and GPA Gap

In any single year, differences between campuses are easily exaggerated by chance, especially at a small school like this one. The table below adds up the five years from 2021 to 2025 and calculates the admission rate and yield. The last column is the amount by which the average admitted GPA exceeds the average applicant GPA, which shows which part of the Pacific Academy Irvine applicant pool each campus selects from.

Data: official University of California UC Infocenter data by high school of origin. Admit rate = admits ÷ applicants; yield rate = enrollees ÷ admits. The GPA difference is the average across years of “average admit GPA − average applicant GPA”; the number in parentheses is the number of years with data. Cells marked * include years that UC left blank because the counts were too small, so the totals are understated. The systemwide row counts students, not applications: a student who applies to multiple campuses is counted once.

Three points stand out in this table. First, UCLA and UC Berkeley are the two hardest campuses for students from this school: over five years, UCLA received 89 applications with only 6 published admits, and UC Berkeley received 76 applications with 12 published admits. Second, 36 students enrolled at UC over the five years, 40% of the 90 admits; enrollment by campus was fewer than 3 in most years, and among the published figures, UC Riverside had the most with 7 students and UC Irvine had 6. Third, admitted students at UC San Diego and UC Irvine had average GPAs 0.46 and 0.41 higher than applicants, while at UC Riverside the gap was only 0.05: the first two campuses admit students from the upper part of the school’s applicant pool, while UC Riverside, with 75 applications and 68 admits over five years for an admission rate of 91%, barely differentiates by GPA.

Applications and Admissions by Campus, Most Recent Year

Campuses are listed in order of the U.S. News national university rankings. UC leaves a category blank when it has fewer than five applicants or fewer than three admits or enrollees.

Comparison with Other Orange County High Schools

This section compares Pacific Academy Irvine students with students from other high schools covered on this site at the same UC campus. The chart below places 12 Orange County private high schools covered on this site alongside 10 leading public high schools in Irvine and Orange County, showing three-year combined admission rates for 2023 to 2025. Private high schools appear first, and schools are listed by name. Use the buttons to switch campuses.

This chart needs careful interpretation. Admission rates reflect the makeup of each applicant pool, including the number of applicants, the grade distribution, and campus choices; they are not a comparison of teaching quality. Pacific Academy Irvine is one of the private high schools on this site with fewer UC applicants: 28 students applied in 2025, while the 12 private high schools had between 16 and 261 applicants. At this scale, each campus receives only twenty-some applicants per year, so the outcome for a single student moves the admission rate by about 4 percentage points. Three-year totals reduce this fluctuation, but differences of a few percentage points still should not be read as differences between schools.

Two Points Private High School Families Should Note Before Reading This Data

A Small School: Single-Year Figures Are Unstable, So Use Multi-Year Totals

Over the last five years, Pacific Academy Irvine has had between the teens and the twenties of UC applicants each year: 24 in 2021, 15 in 2022, 12 in 2023, 26 in 2024, and 28 in 2025. Small numbers have two consequences. First, single-year admission rates swing widely: the UC Irvine admission rate was 36% in 2023 (11 applicants, 4 admits), 29% in 2024, and 48% in 2025. Second, many cells are left blank by UC: UC does not publish admits or enrollees fewer than 3, and from 2021 to 2025 admits were unpublished for two years at UC Berkeley and three years at UCLA. Cells marked with * in the five-year table reflect this, and actual numbers are slightly higher than the totals shown. For this school, EDUBUS recommends relying mainly on three-year or five-year totals and treating single-year figures only as a reference.

International Students (F-1): UC Applies Different GPA Rules to Nonresidents

Pacific Academy Irvine holds federal authorization to issue the I-20 and can enroll international students on F-1 visas. Students on F-1 visas are nonresidents of California when they apply to UC. UC’s GPA rules state that when UC checks the minimum GPA of 3.4 for nonresidents, it adds honors weight only for AP and IB courses, not for school-designed honors courses. This means that for the same transcript, an F-1 student’s GPA in this check may be lower than under the calculation used for California residents.

There is one more point to note when comparing with the data on this page: the UC school-level data used here is not broken down by residency status, so it cannot show applications and admissions for international students on their own. The admitted GPA for each campus serves as an overall reference for the school’s applicants. F-1 students should first confirm that they meet 3.4 under the nonresident rules and then refer to the figures on this page; for how UC-approved school honors courses are treated outside the minimum GPA check, EDUBUS recommends confirming with UC admissions.

For applications and admissions by campus, rely on this page. For admissions, fees, and international student support, see the overview; for honors and AP planning, see Courses and Course Selection and AP Courses; and for the mathematics sequence, see Math Pathway.

Data verified on 2026-09-24. Course catalogs are updated each spring; prerequisites follow the school's current Course of Study.