I just read last night on SDSU’s admissions site that my son’s high school is 1 mile outside the SDSU local service area. Applicants from schools inside the local service area get preference in admissions. The reason I’m a little perturbed by this is that our house is 5 miles within the local service area for SDSU but high school addresses are used by admissions instead of home addresses.
And not being in the local service area impacts your son in which way? No local priority (although not a guarantee of admission), having to live on-campus for 2 years (an exemption can be submitted)?
I had wanted to think of SDSU as his safety school (not that there is such a thing any more). All his other schools will be reach schools (with ccc being the backup plan). Not getting the boost of being inside the local service area just stings a little. My housing development can choose either of two public high schools. One is in SDSU’s local service area and the other is in the service area for Cal State San Marcos. Not going to switch my son’s high school now my daughter in elementary school will be choosing the other high school.
From home:
16 miles to SDSU.
21 miles to Cal State San Marcos.
I wouldn’t worry about service areas at all. Until this very moment, I had thought that one pretty prominent CSU was in my service area until I looked it up right now (it isn’t). And my kid is already in college lol. The only difference will be the slight GPA boost for eligibility. You undoubtedly would still be able to commute to SDSU.
Even local applicants should not consider SDSU a Safety school since all majors are impacted so yes being local can give you a bump but it should be considered more of a Match if an applicants stats in-line. My son’s local CSU which is Cal Poly Pomona does not guarantee admission to local applicants for impacted majors.
What is important is having a balanced college list with at least 2 safety schools, 3-4 Match schools and around 3 Reach schools. Having only 1 safety school and the rest Reach schools may lead to a very disappointing admissions cycle.
Post his stats and I am sure CC posters will give you some good ideas for Solid Match and Safety schools. ]
Does SDSU give local admission priority? Seems hard to find anything regarding that on its web site.
However, SDSU does require frosh/soph students from outside the local area to live on campus.
Yes, it stinks when you just miss a Benny like that. You lost out a a small bump in gpa admissions and the value of your house might be slightly affected too. But a miss is as good as a mile, as they say.
I miss being in a certain school district by 2 houses. I knew it going in— specifically did NOT want to be in that district. But that does affect the market for our house. The next cluster of houses just down the main road missed the line to get bus service to the schools. We fall just outside that line so our kids got buses provided.
We also fall just outside the “where the sidewalk ends” on the main road so walking is a bit of a pain till we hit those sidewalks.
A lot of near misses, but even more missed for these things.
@ucbalumnus: SDSU actually did away with local priority for several years but due to pressures from the state in 2017, “State legislators have ordered the CSU’s to expand admission preference to so-called place-bound students when campuses and popular majors are over-crowded.” Some CSU’s actually spell out how they give local priority such as SJSU which gives a 0.2 GPA bump or CSULB which guarantees admission (Undeclared) to all local applicants meeting the minimum eligibility requirements. SDSU does not state how they give preference and I still have seen local applicants not getting admission in the past 2 years.
I’ll reach out to SDSU this week and get more details. Seems unusual they are dividing the line by high school address instead of home address but I bet they have a solid reason. For me it will just be a lesson learned and glad my next child has a choice of high schools to get herself into the local service area.
Unfortunately, SDSU does not give past eligibility index thresholds like SJSU and CSUN do. It also does not mention if or how local area is used in frosh admission.
https://admissions.sdsu.edu/freshmen/apply
Defining local area by school attended may be administratively easier for the university than doing it some other way. Most CSUs which have a local area other than the entire state define it by high school (or sometimes community college for transfers) attended: https://www2.calstate.edu/apply/freshman/Documents/CSULocalAdmission-ServiceAreas.pdf