This is from last year's cycle btw but I thought it would be an interesting story for A2C.
I'm from a bay area high school (somewhat competitive, not cupertino level). Me and a friend from my high school applied to basically all the UCs. His GPA was much better than mine. Both of our ECs were pretty mid.
Long story short, he did a lot better than me. Accepted to UCD, UCI, and UCSB. I was rejected by UCD and UCI but waitlisted at UCSB. UCSB was my last hope, otherwise I would go to like UCSC, SJSU or CC.
We both applied to CS primary major and Stats&DataScience alternate major for UCSB.
What's interesting is that he was only accepted to UCSB for his alternate major (stats/ds). Which is arguably better than my waitlist, right? However, I looked into the stats/ds major and apparently you don't take many CS courses and it's mostly just a stats major.
I thought that since my friend had such a better application than me that if he was only accepted for his alternate major, then if I were to be accepted off the waitlist it would most likely be for my alternate major.
But after a couple months, I check my inbox, and I got admitted to UCSB for my primary major, CS!
So I believe it was a blessing in disguise that I was waitlisted, since if I had the same decision as my friend and was accepted outright but only for the alternate major, it would not have been optimal. Don't feel bad for him tho cuz he got into CS for UCD and UCI so he's still doing better than me lolz.