Madeline Bedwell’s dad went to UC Berkeley. Her mom attended UC Santa Barbara. Her uncle graduated from two UC schools, including UC Davis Law School.

But even with that history, Madeline, 17 — a flute player with A-minus grades at San Francisco’s Ruth Asawa School of the Arts — faces more daunting odds than her parents did of getting into either of their schools or the three other University of California campuses she’s just applied to.

“You know, at the time my husband and I went to UC schools, if you had good grades, you went to a UC school — and you thought your kids would go there,” said Madeline’s mom, Joanne Bedwell, a physical therapist in San Francisco. “But as we’ve gotten closer to this process, we’ve learned how competitive it’s gotten. Today, I would have never gotten into UC Santa Barbara.”

It’s a familiar lament among parents during UC application season, which ended Saturday.

The number of students accepted to a UC campus actually rose by 30,913 between 2009 and 2018 — a 40% increase. At the same time, the number of California high school students accepted to a UC school also rose, by 2,984 students, or 4%.

But what has parents like Bedwell so frustrated is the acceptance rate, which has dropped like a skydiver in the last decade, according to a Chronicle analysis of UC data.

UC campuses accepted 78% of applicants in 2009. Last year, they opened the door to just 59%. The decline in acceptances was even steeper for California high school students: from 85% to 59% over the same period.

UCLA had the lowest acceptance rate last year: 14%, down from 22% in 2009. Among California high school applicants, the campus accepted just 12%, down from 18% a decade before.

UC Berkeley offered admission to just 17% of California high school applicants last year, down from 24% in 2009.

That coveted campus accepted 15% of all freshman applicants last year, down from 22% a decade before. While it doesn’t have the lowest rate of the nine undergraduate UC campuses, UC Berkeley admitted the fewest applicants, just 13,301 out of 89,609.

Experts say simple math is to blame.

“We have more students — a credit to our K-12 system — being prepared for college” — but UC doesn’t have room for them, said Han Mi Yoon-Wu, interim associate vice president and director of undergraduate admissions for the UC system.

The student mix has changed, too. UC schools are popular with out-of-state students, including international enrollees, who pay much higher tuition than residents. The system has more than quintupled the number of out-of-state students in the freshman class in the past decade — from just under 1,800 in 2009 to slightly under 10,000 in 2018.

Enrollment of domestic and international nonresident students has grown to 21% of the class of 2018 from just 5% of the class of 2009, with students from other countries fueling much of that increase. In 2017, the state put an 18% cap on campus-wide nonresident enrollment at each UC school.

Even UC Merced has become more selective. Merced accepted 91% of applicants a decade ago, but just 66% last year. Those are roughly the same rates for California applicants.

“It’s really, really sad,” said Barbara Harris, of Harris College Advising in Lafayette. “Merced and UC Riverside are still available for the high 3.8 GPA kids. But essentially, it’s a 4.0-plus university. That’s not what it used to be.”

Harris is part of a growing industry of professional advisers who coach their young clients on how to apply to college and how to write their essays — an industry tarnished this year by the college admissions scandal.

But college consultants still enjoy a growing popularity among families willing or able to pay $3,000 to $5,000 or so for help trying to beat the rising competition at the country’s academically elite campuses.

“Now I just say there’s no guarantee” of UC acceptance, Harris said, noting that Oregon State University in Corvallis has a Golden State Scholarship specifically for kids from California. “Because they know kids aren’t getting in here.”

UC now uses a “comprehensive review” that allows students who aren’t academic superstars to show in other ways that they will succeed, Yoon-Wu said.

“Every student has a chance to be admitted in our system if they’re meeting our requirements,” she said. “It’s not just about GPA and test scores.”

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She said UC looks at whether students took the hardest courses offered at their school. If they did poorly at first, did they show strong improvement? Do they have a passion or special talent?

“There are thousands of students admitted who are below a 4.0 because of comprehensive review,” she said.

UC also guarantees that the top 9% of students at each California high school offering UC-eligible courses will at least be admitted to UC Merced, said Zach Bleemer, a research associate at the Center for Studies in Higher Education, at UC Berkeley.

From 2001 to 2011, the rule only applied to the top 4% of students at those schools, Bleemer said.

It isn’t true — as many Californians think — that out-of-state students are pushing out the in-state students, he said.

“The university has turned to out-of-state students to subsidize the in-state students,” he said. “This has allowed the university to maintain educational quality. But it has not come at the cost of fewer seats for California residents. They have created seats on top of those, as a funding source.”

But you can’t argue with the math. The number of students admitted is rising — but so have applications: more than doubling in the last decade, to 182,129 from 76,526. So the acceptance rate has dwindled.

As a result, Angela Sun, a college consultant in Santa Clara, has changed her strategy.

“I no longer allow my students to count any UC as a safety school,” she said, referring to the strategy of applying to less-selective schools as backup choices. Sun also encourages students to apply to 10 to 15 schools — and no longer lets them count UC campuses as different schools.

“It’s so competitive that I have them count them as one, to make sure students have diversity in the schools they choose,” Sun said. “The last thing I do now is I have to calibrate a lot of parents’ expectations.”

Still, Madeline Bedwell is hopeful. UC San Diego is her top choice.

Told that just 30% of applicants get an invitation, Madeline said, “That’s a better chance than some of the other UCs. That means 7 out of 10 people will be turned away.”

Her mom is strategizing. If Madeline doesn’t get into a UC, she could go to a California State University campus — or spend two years at a community college taking UC-eligible courses. That would guarantee that Madeline could transfer into a UC as a junior, under a program UC announced in 2018.

“Which would be more beneficial? I don’t know the answer,” Bedwell said. “We’ll cross that bridge in the spring.”

Nanette Asimov is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: nasimov@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @NanetteAsimov