Does anyone have a list of California 4-year colleges, public or private, that are a reasonable reach for a B student? This is for a 16 year old, first gen student will need financial aid and does not have a strong direction yet in terms of major. The student is taking a couple of honors classes, but no AP classes yet. Any guidance would be appreciated!
For a California resident, most of the CSUs are typically in reach of B students (but some are competitive, though there is also a local area preference). For cost and financial aid estimates, see http://www.csumentor.edu/finaid/pais/ . Non-impacted majors at non-impacted campuses will admit a student who has completed the specified a-g courses in high school and earned a 3.0 GPA in them. However, many campuses and majors are impacted and require higher GPA and test scores; see http://www.calstate.edu/sas/impactioninfo.shtml .
Some of the less selective UCs (Merced, Riverside, maybe Santa Cruz) may be in reach also. Their net price calculators can be found on their web sites.
California also has a well developed transfer pathway from the community colleges to the UCs and CSUs, where students take their frosh/soph courses at the community colleges and then transfer to the UCs and CSUs as juniors. This is often taken as a lower cost option, or an option for students who want to try to transfer to a more selective campus than the ones that they could be admitted to as frosh.
The student should be aware that the 11th grade PSAT can qualify for National Merit scholarships (see http://nmfscholarships.yolasite.com/ ). S/he should also consider taking both the SAT and ACT in the later part of 11th grade, since having the scores by summer can allow a better estimate of what colleges are in reach, and allow for a retry of the initially higher one if desired.
The a-g high school course requirements for UC and CSU are described at http://admission.universityofcalifornia.edu/counselors/files/csu-uc-a-g-comparison-matrix.pdf . In some cases, high enough SAT subject or AP scores can also fulfill part or all of the requirements in a category.
Thank you for such a thorough answer. I’ll pass the information along.
Everything but Cal Poly SLO is in play for B students I would say
I will add a few things to @ucbalumnus very comprehensive post. The Cal States and UC’s only use 10-11th grades to calculate their GPA: https://rogerhub.com/gpa-calculator-uc/
The exception is Cal Poly SLO which does include 9th grades also.
The Cal States (except SLO) also base their admissions on the Eligibility index (EI). Each applicant is ranked based on major and EI and accepted from the top down until all spots are filled.
(CSU/UC GPA x800) + (SAT Math+CR) or ( CSU GPA x200) + (ACT composite x10)
A high SAT/ACT score can make up for a less than stellar GPA.
Impacted campuses and majors will be definitely more selective than non-impacted campuses and majors. Here is a link to impacted majors for the Cal States and campuses:
https://www.calstate.edu/sas/documents/impactedprogramsmatrix.pdf
Cal Poly SLO is a viable option for B students but will depend upon major. Some majors have over a 50% acceptance rate or higher such as Dairy Science, Plant Science, Recreation Admin, Bioresource and Agricultural Engineering, Agribusiness, Ethnic studies and Philosophy to name a few.
For the UC’s, the minimum UC GPA required to apply is 3.0 for in-state applicants but at this level, you are looking at possibly UC Merced and will also be major dependent.
There are many options to explore.
I’d encourage the student to take a tour of their local CSU with their parent. Most of the campuses will offer a sit-down with an admissions counselor after the tour, you can schedule it in advance. Bring transcripts, test scores and lay them on the table and ask for help mapping a path into the campus and be honest about what it takes to gain admission. All 23 CSUs favor ‘local’ applicants and all of them want to see students succeed, especially first gen. It will be a welcoming session. The UCs will do this too but, the path to admission isn’t as predictable and ‘local’ doesn’t get you anything.
Also, the a-g matrix linked by Ucbalumnus above is crucial. If the student is short one semester of one category, they won’t be admitted - regardless of their other qualifications. This is true for all 9 UCs and 23 CSUs.