California State Universities suspends use of SAT/ACT for 2021 Admission

State Forums
1

My son plans to apply to a few CSU in the fall and has already scored well on the ACT. The CSU website states, “The California State University (CSU) will temporarily suspend the use of ACT/SAT examinations in determining admission eligibility for all CSU campuses for the 2021-2022 academic year. This temporary change of admission eligibility applies only for the fall 2021, winter 2022 and spring 2022 admission cycles.” Does this mean that won’t accept scores from those who have taken the test? The UC website states that applicants can still turn in scores if the test was taken. I wonder how the top CSUs will evaluate their applicants without scores. Does anyone have any information? Thank you!

2

@collegecrazy21: Although the CSU’s state they will not accept any test scores at all for admission eligibility, they may still use them to determine Math and English placement. I would personally still send the scores.

Here is the information so far that they are using for admission review:

**In Friday’s announcement, CSU outlined general admissions guidelines for fall 2021 and the two following terms through spring 2022:

  1. California residents and graduates of California high schools will be eligible for admission by earning a 2.50 or greater average in “A-G” high school courses.

  2. California high school graduates with a grade average in those classes between 2.00 and 2.49 may be evaluated with extra factors, such as number of courses exceeding minimum requirements, household income and extracurricular involvement.

3)Residents of other states and nations may be eligible for admission with a 3.0 grade average in those courses.**

So GPA will have the most weight, but they will have to taken into consideration the context of that GPA for each HS.

Also on #2, how are they going to determine EC involvement since only Cal Poly SLO asks for EC hours on their supplemental portion of the CSU application?. Are they planning to change the application to accommodate the EC’s?

HS course rigor although a consideration will also be a greater determining factor. Perhaps they will follow Cal Poly SLO’s formula and use extra points for a-g courses taken above the minimum.

I think there are still too many unanswered questions at this point and hopefully by the time the Cal State Apply application opens in October, they will have definite guidelines in place.

Many other schools are still going to accept test scores, so it is to his benefit to have them ready.

3

The usual CSU method is GPA * 800 + SATRW + SATM (or an ACT based formula). Applicants are then ranked ordered and admitted by major and campus in descending order.

If they drop SAT and ACT, they would probably just go by GPA.

CPSLO has additional point categories in its MCA formula, but if they drop SAT and ACT, they can calculate a formula with everything else (probably increasing the weight of GPA to replace test score).