Hi. I’m not 100% sure on this, but if your major isn’t impacted at a CSU or UC does that mean everyone that applies for that major will get in?
no
You must have completed the a-g courses with a C or better and you have to meet the school’s admission threshold.
At a UC, that means a competitive application; including GPA SAT/ACT, ECs, challenging coursework, essays and other qualifications. Notice several items are subjective so, above par GPA and test scores don’t guarantee admission.
CSUs use the same a-g course list but, look only at your academic GPA from grades 10-11 and your ACT/SAT. They are combined to create a CSU Index. For non-impacted major at a non-impacted campus, you need a 2900 SAT index to qualify. For an impacted campus, you’ll need a better index. Applicants are stacked by their Index and a line is drawn when all the seats are full. As a result, the threshold can vary year to year and it varies widely for each campus. A popular campus like SDSU requires arouund 4100, Sonoma requires around 3200.
Read about the index here:
http://www.csumentor.edu/planning/high_school/elig_index_calculator.asp
Non impacted major means that applying for that major means that it is not more selective than the baseline for the campus, which can still be highly selective (and not purely numbers based at UCs).