I am a high school student who lives in southern California, however I want to go to San Francisco State because many of my relatives live there. I heard that San Francisco State prioritizes applicants who attend high schools nearby, and I live nowhere near San Francisco.
Do I need to have a significantly higher GPA (and other stats) in order to counterbalance SFSU’s campus impaction?
I have a subpar GPA so far in my junior year (3.05 UW; 3.4 W).
http://www.sfsu.edu/future/apply/impacted.html describes SFSU impaction and local area procedures. However, SFSU does not publish past thresholds like SJSU does at http://info.sjsu.edu/static/admission/impaction.html .
You will need to take the SAT and/or ACT (best to do it this school year) so that you can get a more realistic idea of where you stand with respect to various colleges. However, if you have a 3.0 or higher GPA in a-g courses as a California resident, you do not need test scores for applying to non-impacted majors at non-impacted CSU campuses – see http://www.calstate.edu/sas/impactioninfo.shtml for more impaction information.
With a 3.4 and 1100 SAT, you should be fine for all but the most competitive majors at SFSU - as long as you complete the a-g courses as required.
Biology, nursing, and some other degrees are highly impacted, although that wont be a problem, since you havnt taken a class at sfsu yet.