UC Admissions:
Santa Margarita Catholic High School, 12 Years

This page covers one subject: the results of Santa Margarita Catholic High School students who apply to the University of California (UC). All data come from UC Infocenter, published by the University of California Office of the President by source high school, with the school type set to California private high school, covering twelve entry years from fall 2014 to fall 2025 and nine undergraduate campuses. The college destination list published by the school appears on the overview page; for UC figures, the official data here are the reference.

Twelve-Year Trend: Steady Applicant Numbers, Falling Admit Rates at Popular Campuses

The chart below shows the average GPA of Santa Margarita Catholic High School students admitted to each campus, year by year. It reflects the GPA actually earned by admitted students; it is not an admission cutoff.

Over twelve years, the number of students applying to UC from this school each year has been roughly steady, while the number admitted has increased. In fall 2014, 193 students applied to UC and 92 were admitted; in fall 2025, 186 applied and 125 were admitted. The average GPA of admitted students rose over the same period from 3.81 to 3.92, peaking at 4.09 in 2022. Enrollment was 60 students in both 2023 and 2024 and fell to 39 in 2025.

The largest changes occurred at the San Diego and Santa Barbara campuses. Using three-year totals, the admit rate for Santa Margarita Catholic High School applicants to the San Diego campus was 33% from 2016 to 2018 (311 applications, 102 admissions) and fell to 24% from 2023 to 2025 (440 applications, 104 admissions). The Santa Barbara campus also fell from 33% to 24% over the same period (341 applications and 111 admissions, compared with 432 applications and 103 admissions), and the Los Angeles campus fell from 16% to 13%. At these two campuses the number of admissions changed little; the lower admit rates came mainly from more applications. The Berkeley and Irvine campuses were roughly steady, at 17% to 18% and 37% to 36%, respectively. Over the same period, the systemwide UC admit rate rose from 62% to 66%. The additional admissions came mainly from the Riverside, Santa Cruz and Merced campuses, whose three-year admission totals rose from 76, 78 and 34 to 144, 113 and 76, respectively. Admissions at the Irvine and Berkeley campuses also rose from 95 and 43 to 128 and 57, while the Los Angeles campus fell from 65 to 57 and the Santa Barbara campus from 111 to 103.

Year-by-Year Data by Campus

Parents focus most on six campuses: Berkeley, Los Angeles, San Diego, Santa Barbara, Irvine and Davis. The table below lists, by year, the number of Santa Margarita Catholic High School applicants, admits and enrollees at each campus and the GPA; use the buttons to switch metrics.

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

In a single year, differences between campuses are easily magnified by chance. The table below adds up the counts for the five years from 2021 to 2025 and calculates the admit rate and yield. The last column shows how much higher the average GPA of admitted students is than that of applicants, which indicates which band of grades each campus selects from among Santa Margarita Catholic High School applicants.

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, the five-year admit rate at the Los Angeles campus was 12% (767 applications, 91 admissions), making it the most difficult campus for this school’s applicants, followed by Berkeley at 17%, Santa Barbara at 21% and San Diego at 22%. Second, the Irvine campus is the UC campus with the most Santa Margarita Catholic High School enrollees, 63 over five years; Los Angeles is second with 53, and of the 91 admissions to the Los Angeles campus, 53 students enrolled, a yield of 58%, the highest of any campus. Third, the San Diego, Santa Barbara and Davis campuses admitted 152, 153 and 176 applicants over five years, but only 33, 25 and 25 enrolled, a yield between 14% and 22%: most students admitted to these three campuses went elsewhere.

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 Santa Margarita Catholic High School students with those of the other high schools covered on this site at the same UC campus. The chart below places the 12 Orange County private high schools covered on this site alongside 10 leading public high schools in Irvine and Orange County and lists their combined admit rates for 2023 to 2025, with private high schools first and schools listed by name. Use the buttons to switch campuses.

This chart requires careful interpretation. Admit 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. In 2025, the number of UC applicants from the 12 private high schools covered on this site ranged from 16 to 261; Santa Margarita Catholic High School had 186, second only to Mater Dei High School. The more applicants a school has, the wider its grade distribution, and the harder it is to compare its systemwide admit rate directly with that of a small private school. By campus, this school’s three-year admit rates at the Berkeley, Los Angeles and San Diego campuses were 18%, 13% and 24%, all higher than the medians of 13%, 9% and 18% for the leading public high schools covered on this site.

Private High School Students Must First Account for IB and School Weighting

Santa Margarita Catholic High School offers the IB Diploma Programme in addition to AP. How IB courses count in the UC GPA, and how far school weighting differs from UC weighting, determine whether parents can compare a student’s grades directly with the admitted-student GPAs on this page.

How IB Courses Count in the UC GPA

UC applies three rules to IB courses. First, only IB courses on the school’s A-G list that are designated as honors earn extra points. The UC list for 2026-27 registers 54 IB courses at the school, 53 of which are UC-approved honors courses; Business and Management IB HL1 is the only exception. Second, UC counts only courses taken from the summer after 9th grade through the summer after 11th grade. All IB courses at the school begin in 11th grade, and HL courses are split into HL1 and HL2 over two years, so only HL1 and SL courses taken in 11th grade enter the UC GPA; HL2 courses and Theory of Knowledge in 12th grade are not counted. All IB HL exams also take place in 12th grade, so students do not yet have these scores when they submit UC applications in the fall. Third, honors points are capped: at most 1 point per course per semester, at most 8 points across grades 10 to 11, and no more than 4 points in 10th grade.

These three rules affect full IB Diploma candidates the most. The full Diploma requires at least 3 HL courses, meaning at least 3 year-long HL1 courses in 11th grade, or 6 honors semesters. If a student has already used all 4 points in 10th grade, 11th grade can add at most 4 more, and additional honors courses no longer raise the capped GPA used on this page. Conversely, in 10th grade the school offers only four AP courses (AP World History, AP European History, AP Art History and AP Music Theory) and no IB courses, so whether a student earns all 4 points in 10th grade depends on choosing UC-approved honors courses.

The Gap Between School Weighting and UC Weighting

The school weights more courses than UC does. The school adds 1 grade point to every honors, AP and IB course graded C or higher, and it also weights 9th-grade courses, which UC does not count. Checked course by course against the UC list, a group of the school’s honors courses receives no UC weighting; the full list appears in the weighting section of the overview page. Among them, the courses taken in grades 10 to 11 are mainly World History MUN (H), Algebra 2 Honors and Geometry Honors. For the same transcript, the weighted GPA published by the school is therefore often higher than the UC GPA and cannot be compared directly with the admitted-student GPAs on this page.

For applications and admissions by campus, this page is the reference. For the school’s admissions, tuition and courses, see the overview; for the choice between AP and IB, see AP, IB and Course Strategy; and for the grade levels of honors courses, see Courses and Course Selection.

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