UC Davis Transfer Acceptance Rate: 57% vs. 45%

UC Davis's own admissions page states a 57% admit rate for transfer applicants, against a 45% admit rate for first-year applicants, in a profile snapshot dated "as of Aug. 1, 2025." That's a 12-point gap, and directionally it points the same way as most of the other UC campuses covered in this series: transferring into UC Davis has, at least by this published snapshot, been easier than getting in as a freshman.

Before going further, it's worth saying plainly: this is one of the more thinly sourced comparisons in this series. UC Davis publishes the two rates themselves, on its own site, but not the underlying applicant and admit counts that would let a reader verify the arithmetic. The school's Common Data Set, which normally provides that detail, wasn't accessible through the channels used to compile this article. What follows explains exactly what is and isn't confirmed, so you can weigh the 57% figure appropriately rather than treating it as more precise than it is.

The numbers, side by side

Both figures are labeled "Admit rate" directly on UC Davis's own admissions landing page, and both are dated the same way, "as of Aug. 1, 2025," which lines up with the Fall 2025 admission cycle. That shared dating is what makes the comparison meaningful at all: these aren't two numbers pulled from different years or different reports, they're the same snapshot, same page, same day.

Show the math (and why it can't be fully shown here)

For most schools in this series, the transfer rate is a simple division: admits divided by applicants. UC Davis doesn't make that possible from public sources. Its admissions page publishes only the finished percentage, 57%, along with a middle-50% transfer GPA range of 3.46 to 3.90. It does not publish the raw number of transfer applications or transfer admits alongside that rate.

The Common Data Set, which is where that underlying arithmetic would normally live, could not be located for UC Davis through its likely institutional-research host, which returned an access error on every path attempted. A separate UC systemwide dashboard that tracks transfer admissions by campus exists, but its data lives in an interactive chart format that couldn't be extracted into a verifiable number for this article. So the honest answer is: UC Davis's 57% transfer admit rate is a real, officially published figure, but the applications-and-admits math behind it isn't independently confirmable from what's publicly reachable, and this article isn't going to pretend otherwise by inventing plausible-looking counts.

Why transfer works differently here, with a caveat

Directionally, the 57% versus 45% gap is consistent with the pattern seen across most other UC campuses in this series, and UC Davis's own participation in the systemwide Transfer Admission Guarantee is the most concrete, verifiable reason a meaningful share of its transfer pool is admitted through a different mechanism than freshman applicants face. TAG replaces general holistic review with a defined GPA-and-coursework checklist for eligible California Community College students, which tends to produce a different selectivity profile than the broader freshman applicant pool.

That said, treat the size of the 12-point gap itself with some caution. Because the snapshot page reports rounded, whole-number percentages rather than the precise fractions a Common Data Set would provide, and because neither cohort's cohort label ties cleanly to a formal reporting section the way it does for other schools in this series, the 57% and 45% figures should be read as UC Davis's own official, but comparatively lightly documented, public claim about its admissions cycle, not as an audited statistic with a fully reconstructable paper trail.

The pathways that actually exist

UC Davis publishes one formal transfer pathway: the systemwide UC Transfer Admission Guarantee.

Transfer Admission Guarantee (TAG). UC Davis's own framing describes TAG as "a written agreement" that will "Guarantee your admission to UC Davis" for eligible transfer students from any California Community College who meet the program's requirements. The process runs on a fixed calendar: applicants begin the UC application on August 1, submit the TAG application through the UC Transfer Admission Planner between September 1 and 30, and receive a TAG decision by mid-November. GPA thresholds for TAG eligibility vary by college and intended major; UC Davis's page directs applicants to a separate TAG requirements page for the exact figures for their specific program, which weren't independently re-verified for this article.

As with UC Irvine and the systemwide program generally, TAG is a guarantee for students who clear its bar, not an improved-odds lottery ticket. A student who doesn't meet the specific GPA and coursework requirements for their target major and college doesn't receive the guarantee, regardless of how the general 57% rate looks.

Requirements

UC Davis's transfer requirements page lays out the baseline for all transfer applicants, TAG-eligible or not: complete at least 60 semester (90 quarter) UC-transferable units by the end of the spring term prior to fall enrollment, and complete the seven-course pattern (two courses in English composition, one in math or quantitative reasoning, four more spread across at least two of arts and humanities, social and behavioral sciences, and physical and biological sciences), all with grades of C or better.

On GPA, UC Davis is explicit that it holds a higher bar than the UC systemwide floor: while the UC baseline is 2.40 for California residents and 2.80 for nonresidents, UC Davis's page states the campus "requires a minimum 2.80 GPA for admission," with selective majors requiring more. UC Davis also flags that "very few lower-division transfers are admitted," meaning most colleges at Davis only accept transfer students who have completed roughly two years of coursework and are entering at junior standing; the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences is noted as an occasional exception to that pattern.

What this means if you're considering transferring

The takeaway for a community college student or a family reacting to a freshman denial from UC Davis is genuinely two-sided. On one hand, UC Davis itself is telling you, in its own published admissions materials, that its transfer admit rate runs well above its freshman rate for the same cycle, and that TAG offers a structured, GPA-based route in for eligible California Community College students. That's a real, actionable signal.

On the other hand, this is not a school where you can currently verify the exact size of the applicant pool or confirm whether the 57% figure holds steady across majors, because UC Davis hasn't made that breakdown publicly reconstructable. A student targeting a specific, more selective major at Davis, particularly one requiring above the stated 2.80 GPA floor, should not assume the 57% headline applies evenly to their case. Given that Davis explicitly restricts most colleges to junior-level transfers, timing your community college coursework to hit 60 transferable units with strong grades matters more here than at schools with more flexible entry points.

Because TAG runs on a fixed calendar, the UC application opens August 1 and the TAG application window runs September 1 through 30, missing that window means waiting for the next cycle entirely. Our application deadline tracker keeps dates like these in one place so a narrow window like TAG's doesn't slip past you.

For a plan that accounts for UC Davis's junior-standing preference and TAG's fixed calendar, talking through your specific coursework timeline with a coach can help you avoid missing a narrow application window. You can book a call to map that out.