Dive Brief:
- California State University is piloting a direct admissions initiative to automatically accept certain students attending public high schools in Riverside County, the system announced late last month.
- The pilot is the 461,000-student system’s first-ever attempt at direct admissions, which will inform students via mailed brochures that they’ve been accepted before they even apply. Ten of the system’s 23 campuses are participating in the initiative.
- High school seniors in Riverside County who are on track to complete required college preparatory courses will be offered conditional admission to the participating colleges for fall 2025. Students will then use an online platform to select their preferred campuses and receive official acceptance letters.
Dive Insight:
Direct admissions has been gaining traction as a way to nudge more students to attend college, particularly those who might otherwise not have considered going. Cal State joins several other higher education networks that have adopted the approach, including those in Wisconsin and New York.
The initiative is meant to expand access to the system to California residents and is part of the system’s overall enrollment strategy, a spokesperson said via email Tuesday.
“We want students to know that the door to college opportunity is open to them, and to help relieve some of the stress and uncertainty about applying for college,” April Grommo, Cal State’s assistant vice chancellor of strategic enrollment management, said in a statement.
Around 15,000 high school students will receive conditional admissions offers, according to the system spokesperson.
Grommo said that Riverside County — an area with some 2.5 million residents nestled between Los Angeles and San Diego — is an “excellent location” for the pilot because it represents the ethnic and economic diversity of the state.
Meanwhile, California State University, East Bay — one of the campuses participating in the system's direct admissions effort — announced a separate initiative to streamline its own admissions process.
Late last month, Cal State East Bay said it would send letters to high school seniors in two K-12 districts, San Leandro and Hayward Unified, informing them that they will be guaranteed acceptance if they meet the university’s admissions requirements.
“Cal State East Bay is proud of these partnerships which will expand access to higher education for local students,” Cal State East Bay President Cathy Sandeen said in a statement.
The system initiative follows a proposal from state lawmakers to cut Cal State’s base funding by $397 million in the 2025-26 academic year — a decline that could contribute to a budget deficit projected to grow as high as $802 million that year, according to a board agenda document from September.
If the system boosted in-state enrollment by 1%, that increase — along with recent tuition hikes — would help partially offset the proposed state funding reductions. But Cal State would still face a net revenue loss of $209 million.
Cal State’s enrollment reached 461,439 in fall 2024, a 2% increase compared to the year before, according to preliminary figures.
Some public college systems have adopted direct admissions efforts amid enrollment woes.
That’s the case at the State University of New York, a two- and four-year system that enrolls roughly 368,000 students. In the spring of 2023, SUNY sent letters to 125,000 graduating high school seniors in the state, informing them that they were accepted at their local community college.
The following fall, SUNY’s enrollment ticked up 1.1% compared to the year before — the first gain in a decade. The system has recently rolled out another admissions initiative.
High school students in the state who graduate within the top 10% of their class will be guaranteed admission to at least one of nine participating system campuses. Stony Brook University and University at Buffalo, the state’s two flagships, are included in the program's initial round.
However, research into direct admissions has shown mixed results.
Idaho pioneered the first statewide direct admissions effort nearly a decade ago and saw positive enrollment trends. But that wasn’t the case when Common App, an online portal that lets students apply to multiple colleges simultaneously, began piloting a direct admissions program in 2021.
Students who received admissions offers through the program were more likely to apply to college, according to a working paper analyzing the second round of the pilot. However, the program didn’t boost students' likelihood of actually enrolling in college.
Common App launched a full-scale direct admissions program in late 2023 and announced an expansion of the initiative in September.
